The emergence of LibertyForum.org constitutes one of the most-startling success stories on the Internet. Founder/owner "John Deere" agreed to give this, his first-ever interview on the subject of his creation.

Todd Brendan Fahey: Following the mass-putsch of Constitutionalists and libertarians at FreeRepublic.com, many fine Web sites devoted to the concept of Liberty began to appear on the Web. Were you among FR's posters?

Unfortunately, at the time, the climate on Free Republic was not positive toward libertarians. I noticed a definite hostility to libertarian posts and ideas, and more than one poster suggested to libertarians that they "go and start your own site." It was apparent that we weren't going to accomplish much by attaching ourselves to someone else's view of the world.

When I approached some of the other libertarians on FR with the idea for a new site, the response was quite positive, so I got in touch with a couple of programmers that I knew and we started work on LibertyForum. We brought the site online in late March of 2001 as an invitation only project, and kept it that way for over a year while we worked out features and bugs. LibertyForum opened to the public in September of 2002.

My work on this project was motivated by the wide range of possibilities that a libertarian/anarcho-capitalist forum presented. I characterize the creation of LibertyForum as a move toward these possibilities rather than as a critique of Free Republic, to which I am grateful for providing the initial setting where libertarians could congregate...

While on this subject, the credit for LibertyForum's existence goes to those individuals who believed in this project and provided their support early on. Without their input, participation and encouragement, LibertyForum would still be wishful thinking.

JD: My primary philosophical model is Jesus. It is my opinion that the Christian model, properly understood, presents a view of a God who holds human free will as one of his highest values. If God is love (as defined in 1 John 4:8, 1 John 4:16), principled love (agape love is a close approximation) cannot exist apart from the freedom of the object of God's love to reject said love—free will. Since coercion and free will are mutually exclusive, I believe that coercion has no place in the interactions between Christians and those around them. The Biblical account of Jesus' life reveals an emphasis on persuasion, voluntary relationships, and cooperation. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus advocate coercion in either conversion or treatment of noncriminal offenses. Jesus says, "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me." (Revelation 3:20). Notice that he doesn't say "I come with a no-knock warrant and you will submit."

From my perspective, Jesus' mission on earth had a twofold objective. First, he came to demonstrate the true nature of God, as a God of love. Second, he came to show that the law, on which he placed the greatest of importance (Matthew 19:17-19, Matthew 5:17-20) had been perverted beyond its original intent, which was to protect our rights as individuals and to establish the boundaries to our exercise of free will. These boundaries, You shall not murder, you shall not steal, etc., are essentially prohibitions against the violation of another's free will. Unfortunately, the folks in positions of power within the society at the time chose to step beyond the realm of man's authority—the judgment of crimes (i.e. the violation of another's free will)—and elected to apply criminal penalties to actions that may have been immoral, but were certainly not crimes. As we look around today, not much has changed. We still have busybody bureaucrats, moralists and politicians intent on making crimes out of issues that were strictly within the realm of man's relationship to his God.

Another observation I've made is that many Christians today are focused on the pursuit of a "relationship" with God for the sole purpose of assuring their own "salvation." I have yet to read a single statement by Jesus where we are commanded to work toward our own salvation. "Thou shalt save your own butt," is nowhere to be found among Jesus' sayings, and yet that is the emphasis of much of the preaching that comes from Christian pulpits. What Jesus does command, on a regular basis, is that we love our neighbors. Something that many Christians would rather not think about, since it would require that they deal with reality rather than an abstract construct of their own imagination.

There is a complete disconnect between many Christians' professed beliefs and the manner in which they apply said beliefs once they step outside the doors of their places of worship. On the weekend, they marvel at the actions of a Jesus so loving that he would accept a prostitute without condemnation, and reverently look at their WWJD bracelets to reinforce their belief that they are in sync with Jesus. On Monday, these same committed Christians write a letter to the editor wondering why the prostitutes haven't been removed from the town's main drag, and on Tuesday, they go to the voting booth to vote for that politician who has promised to clean up Main Street, and throw those filthy dregs of humanity known as prostitutes and their johns in jail where they belong.

The question remains, how do we love our neighbors? From the Christian perspective, we love our neighbors in the same manner that God loves us; first and foremost by respecting their free will and by refusing to coerce them into our idea of morality. If anything, I would think the dismemberment of innocents abroad by bombs and weapons paid for by Christian taxes, and motivated by falsehoods, should be of greater concern to Christians than the issue of gay marriage, or whether the Ten Commandments are displayed in public buildings. End of sermon.

Other individuals that have influenced my thinking include Ayn Rand, whose work helped me to understand that there can be a scientific approach to philosophy, Richard Rice—in particular, his book The Openness of God: The Relationship of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will—whose writings gave rise to the "Open God" theology and with it a re-examination of the traditional Christian view of reality—and Neal Stephenson—who, through his engaging fiction, presents the reader with a wide range of possibilities for the organization and operation of free societies.

I also reserve a special place in my philosophical bookshelf for Karl Hess, one of the founders of the modern libertarian movement in the U.S., and for Joseph Campbell, whose studies on myth helped me to understand that there are many valid spiritual models in addition to Christianity. Finally, I would be remiss if I neglected to give credit to the many fine minds with which I have debated, and sometimes battled, over the years, especially the members of LibertyForum, whose differing views and extensive knowledge have served to enlighten me and, on occasion, forced me to re-evaluate positions.

JD: Thank you Todd. I am not sure whether that is completely accurate, since there are many fine sites on the net; I'll take the compliment nonetheless : ) Our base system is a 2U dual Athlon machine with 2 GB of DDR RAM running multiple Hard-Drives and software RAID. The operating system is Linux 8.0, the web server is Apache, and the database back end is MySQL. We have additional servers available to share processing duties should user load exceed the primary's capacity.

Our basic software is a heavily modified version of WWWThreads (now UBBThreads). We selected WWWThreads due to limited time and programming resources, and WWWThreads provided a good foundation for rapid development.

LibertyForum was modeled on Slashdot, although many of the features we have in place are the result of suggestions by our members.

JD: I am not sure that there exists such a thing as a selfless move. The free speech aspect of LibertyForum was the easiest decision to make. Only by providing an open environment where no ideas are taboo can we hope to reach a better understanding of the truth many of us claim to seek. The focus on free speech is actually quite selfish in that my goal (and the goal of many libertarians and anarcho-capitalists that I know) is to learn and to test my ideas in a realistic environment where I am guaranteed to be challenged, rather than patted and atta-boyed into irrelevant complacency.

JD: No. We place no limits on who can or cannot join LibertyForum, and neither do we impose an ideological test on the types of ideas that can be expressed on LibertyForum. This is a long way of saying that anyone who wishes to present their particular point-of-view is free to do so, as is anyone wishing to challenge them. On the question of Israel, there are certainly some extreme views presented . . . on both sides of the issue.

LibertyForum exists, first and foremost, to give libertarians a voice. LibertyForum is as faithful a representation of libertarian principles as is possible given our (meaning the people that have worked to make LibertyForum a reality) understanding of libertarian principles, legal realities and the limitations of the technology we use. This means that the policies which govern LibertyForum are based on libertarian principles, and approximate libertarian ideals as much as is feasible, given our real world constraints.

This is a crucial point, since there is a distinct difference between libertarian principles--freedom of speech being one of the most fundamental of these--and those posts made on LibertyForum that don't reflect libertarian principles. Many posters on LibertyForum hold and express philosophies that run counter to libertarian principle—the collectivist thinking involved in judging a whole ethnic group by the actions of a few members of that group is an example—and could even be called hostile to our ideals. Said ideas are permitted to remain, not because libertarians agree with them, but because libertarians value and have chosen to practice the principle of free speech they espouse. The objective of LibertyForum is not just to preach libertarian principles, but to also practice them. It would be hypocritical for libertarians to claim a position in favor of freedom of speech and then not allow said freedom on a libertarian forum.

Getting back to the question of Israel and the Middle East in general, there is much to criticize about Israel's actions and U.S. policies in the region. At the same time, there is much to criticize about the Palestinian and Arab extremists on the other side of the conflict there. In short, there is what appears to be an intractable problem, where extremists on both sides are more than willing to sacrifice the lives of innocent people in an effort to make their political point. An honest and open discussion of these problems does not make a person either an "anti-semite" or a "zionazi." Unfortunately, such open discussion is difficult to come by when extremists on both sides insist on painting any opposition to their particular position in rhetorically extreme terms.

Regarding Jews, many of the greatest libertarian thinkers have been Jewish. I am quite confident in saying that these great men and women would fully support the individual right to be stupid.

TBF: Absent quarterly beg-a-thons or corporate sponsorship, how do you afford to do what you do?

JD: All the money that funds LibertyForum's hardware and connection fees comes from private entities who believe in the mission of LibertyForum. More important to our continued existence, however, are the volunteers that provide programming, editorial and moderating assistance.

TBF: LibertyForum has seen an incredible upturn in traffic since its fairly recent invention. It's no secret that FreeRepublic founder Jim Robinson is now beholden to the Republican Party and Republican National Committee, versus its mission statement of being an "online forum for independent, grassroots conservativism"; what do you hope to accomplish? Chat boards are a dime-a-dozen, but with something as powerful as LibertyForum appears to be, are you shooting for a certain goal or result?

JD: Yes, we have a very specific goal in mind. Libertarians are known for their great rhetoric, unwavering stance on principles and often unassailable logic. We are also known for our political ineffectiveness and are recognized more as election spoilers than as political leaders. It's my opinion that libertarians should abandon unrealistic hopes that we will ever effect significant change via participation in a political system that is designed to support the continued existence of a coercive state.

In short, the chances of winning in someone else's playground by following someone else's very fluid rules is nil. Without the possibility of positively influencing society via political means, we are left to criticize, complain, and fantasize about how great things would be if only libertarians were in charge. This may be great for letting off steam, but not very effective at ending the environment of coerced compliance in which we live.

One of the main objectives of LibertyForum is to parlay words into action, with the eventual goal of fostering the creation of a world-wide community of Liberty loving individuals working together to eliminate coercion from our lives. We are currently developing the preliminary details of LibertyForum's second phase. Whereas the first phase of LibertyForum provides a home for libertarians and serves as a source of information and education for liberty-seekers and those that may disagree with us, the second phase involves a long-term campaign to put our ideas and principles into practice. This we will accomplish through the creation of, and participation in, systems and structures that will make a life of Liberty lived outside the confines of our current political and economic systems, an achievable reality. We stand at a unique point in history, where technology has given us the tools to achieve Liberty in a peaceful and non-confrontational manner, and we are actively working to take full advantage of this opportunity.

TBF: You've stated on more than one occasion that LibertyForum is an international rather than a U.S. based site. What is the reasoning behind this?

JD: I think that the ideals of individual liberty and voluntary interaction transcend the artificially created borders that we have today. We exist in a world that is smaller and more interconnected than ever. We work and trade in a global economy and have firsthand knowledge that we do not live in a political vacuum, and every day it becomes more and more evident that national borders are becoming an anachronism of outdated thinking. LibertyForum merely reflects the reality that a libertarian from Alabama may have more in common with a libertarian from Chile or Poland, than with her Bible-thumping neighbor.

I've seen some people refer to LibertyForum as un-American. I would argue that, if anything, it is pro-American, since Americans who visit LibertyForum and interact with folks from Australia, South Africa, Palestine, England, etc., will gain a new perspective on the place 280 million Americans occupy amid the world's 6 billion people. In the process, we can hopefully adjust our worldview to steer clear of policies that leave us asking, "why do they hate us?" and result in the needless deaths and suffering of innocents, not only in the U.S., but throughout the world.

TBF: Finally, and to puncture the mystery: Who is "John Deere"?

JD: John Deere is a Christian whose metaphysics, politics, ethics, etc., are shaped by the Christian model. John Deere loves people, has a passion for Liberty, and envisions a peaceful world, where people are free to seek and achieve their wildest dreams through voluntary interaction. Finally, John Deere believes that it only takes a few committed people to change the world, and is willing to work his ass off to accomplish just that.
[Third-person speak © Bob Dole : )]

-O-

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