Currently, cognitive liberty is not a very much respected philosophy in American politics. Most psychoactive drugs like cannabis, psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, and mescaline are considered illegal to possess and consume. Similarly, we see young children all throughout the nation being force-fed certain psychoactive drugs (the “good kinds”) in name of “normal thinking” and “normal behavior.”

As a libertarian, I feel cognitive liberty is a necessary component to any free society. I have written numerous times about my disdain for the War On Drugs and specifically the failure that is marijuana prohibition.

I am also against our tendency as a society to administer psychoactive drugs so carelessly and with so little respect for the free choice of young people and the mentally ill. It is an awful thing to offer a drug to any person without appropriately informing them on what the drug is supposed to do or how it might make them feel. We should also explain to children very clearly that they have a choice whether or not to continue taking the drug if they don’t like its effects. It often happens where a child’s personal interest is put secondary or even overlooked completely.

Let it be known that I do think there are cases where someone needs to be given a drug against their will (maybe if they are unconscious or completely delusional and incoherent). But these situations are limited, and I think it is safe to say that society and government has overstepped its boundaries on more than a couple fronts when it comes to this issue.

Who really has the authority to tell a conscious and thinking being what they can and cannot put into their body or how they should experience reality? I don’t consider it justified for any free society to draw such arbitrary distinctions between what is “good” or “bad” for an individual if that individual is exercising their own rational free choice. People have different values and interests in life – this is the same dimension of diversity that characterizes all of nature and what has made evolution possible.

The act of consuming drugs is a victimless crime, and it does not justify people getting locked up in prison or having a criminal record that inhibits them from ever getting a good job or building a bright future. Drugs have been present in every society known to man and it is time we respect their place in the structure of our humanity. It is one thing to advise others against the use of certain drugs, and it is another to try to banish their existence or ignore it entirely.

I am perfectly comfortable acknowledging the fact that some drugs have negative consequences while still promoting the freedom for others to use these same drugs. For one thing, negative consequences are a part of all decisions we make – it does not mean we sacrifice our freedom to make those decisions. To borrow from something I wrote in a recent article about government spending,

“Just because half of American marriages end in a divorce doesn’t mean we want the government to make decisions on who we should marry. Life is filled with mistakes; it is how we learn, and it is a part of freedom.”

If you really want to help those who are dependent on drugs – or if you really want to make a long lasting change in any individual’s behavior – then you need to appeal to that person’s reason. You can not rule a rationally thinking person by force. And yes, even a drug addict has his or her own mode of rational thought in accordance with their own values and interests.

When people value something strong enough, they find a way to go against government restrictions in order to satisfy that want. This is why prohibition always leads to a black market for goods that society finds valuable.

When will people recognize that others value these drugs? When will we learn to tolerate these differences? If we really want to make a positive change than we need to re-think freedom and re-think the way we influence others if we want to continue living in a free society. If we don’t accept the notion of cognitive liberty, if we sacrifice those fundamental principles of self-ownership and freedom of thought, then in what ways are we really free anymore?

To learn more please visit The Center For Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, which includes notable members like visionary artist Alex Grey, libertarian psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, and psychedelic researcher Ralph Metzner (who used to work with Timothy Leary).

For many of us who already understand the unintended consequences of the “War On Drugs” this video covers most of the main arguments; however, it puts it in a way that I think almost any rational thinking person could understand.

THE CATO INSTITUTE

These guys are just about everywhere nowadays and for good reason: they have been pushing libertarian ideals hard since 1977.

This non-profit, pro-free market libertarian think tank, and public policy research facility, was first founded by Edward Crane after he received assistance from Mr. Libertarian himself Murray Rothbard as well as some funding by engineer and CEO Charles Koch.

According to their website,

“The mission of the Cato Institute is to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace. The Institute will use the most effective means to originate, advocate, promote, and disseminate applicable policy proposals that create free, open, and civil societies in the United States and throughout the world.”

The Cato Institute is responsible for a variety of publications and essays throughout the decades on a on a wide range of policy issues including taxing and spending, education, free speech, Social Security, regulation, federalism, individual rights, the rule of law, globalization, national security, and the environment.

Where to start:

Their main blog is great as well as their multimedia section and homepage where they display recent articles and recommended links.

LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE

The Mises Institute considers themselves the world center of the Austrian School of economics as well as libertarian political and social theory. That can certainly not be disputed. They also have an incredible amount of content – so you are going to want to get digging soon.

In the media center you will find a variety of downloadable video and audio files of lectures, documentaries, and interviews. These are great to put on your IPOD and listen to on long road trips. Topics cover welfare, bureaucracy, war, monetary reform, and economic critiques on Keynesian, classical, monetarism, socialism, Marxism, and communism.

The literature section is also full of gold, where you will find hundreds and hundreds of downloadable books, journal articles, essays, and even study guides.

Where to start:

One of my personal recommendations is to check out their study guide dedicated to Mises’ magnum opus Human Action, which lays out the Austrian methodology of praxeology – the basis of all Austrian economic theory. Praxeology is a form of methodological individualism (who early economist and Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek, and one of the most influential philosophers of science Karl Popper both advocated), which demands that social sciences ground their theories in the actions of individuals and not collective entities who do not behave as autonomous decision makers.

If that last paragraph bored the heck out of you: then just check out their daily archive and recommended links on their homepage.

LEWROCKWELL.COM

I’ll be honest here, LewRockwell.com is my favorite libertarian resource but it is also the most extreme recommendation on this list. I think their main slogan sums up what you are going to get here perfectly: “Anti-State, Anti-War, and Pro-Market,” and their articles are certainly not bashful of it.

You won’t be seeing many kind words regarding government – but it is not like they are just being spewed by the mouths of government fear-mongering, Fox News-motivated drones.

Far from it: LewRockwell.com is nothing but quality reading. They update their site daily with about 13-15 new articles, with about 75% being about current issues in politics and economics and 25% regarding miscellaneous topics like art, culture, and science.

LewRockwell.com’s strong point is its stunning display of diversity in perspective. Authors range anywhere between university professors, politicians, economists, financial experts, authors, doctors, psychiatrists, and various others devoted to individual rights, limited state (sometimes flirting with anarchism), and the freedom to choose within the marketplace.

You may not readily agree with some of the ideas you read, but at the very least LewRockwell.com offers one of the freshest, inspiring, and most intellectual perspectives on what liberty really means.

Where to start:

Just check out their daily articles and pick whatever sounds interesting.

FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION

The Foundation For Economic Education (FEE) was first founded in 1946 by Leonard E. Read. Since then they have been dedicated to provided a consistent case for freedom and the sanctity of private property, individual liberty, the free market and the moral superiority of individual choice and responsibility over coercion.

Since FEE was established they have published or hosted lectures by some of the greatest economists of the last century: Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Vernon Smith, Israel Kirzner, Walter Williams, George Stigler, Frank Chodorov, John Chamberlain, F.A. “Baldy” Harper, William F. Buckley Jr., among many others.

One quick look through their library of books, articles, audio and videos and you will see the massive database and free information that FEE has to offer to the general public. I also recommend their main blog, Anything Peaceful which gives a free market perspective on current issues facing our nation’s economy, and how we can help move our country in a more free and prosperous direction.

AYN RAND INSTITUTE

It is clear that Ayn Rand as an individual would never endorse libertarianism as a political movement or philosophy.

But the fact of the matter is the ideas of Rand’s Objectivism and the ideas of capitalism, individual rights, and limited government are essentially synonymous. Rand just never liked the term “Libertarianism” because she saw it as inherently collectivist.

If I had to say one thing about Rand I would say she was misunderstood, and this was partly because she was such a stubborn person.

But ultimately, she was an intellectual tyrant, and true defender of freedom, the pursuit of happiness, and peace. I highly suggest reading The Ayn Rand Institute’s FAQ page for a full overview on what Rand was about, what her writings were about, what her philosophy called Objectivism was all about, and what the Ayn Rand Institute is doing today, as a non-profit think tank, advancing these ideas and trying to make real world changes.

DAILYPAUL.COM

A lot of the recent popularity in libertarianism is because of Congressmen Ron Paul who ran for President in 2008 under the Republican Party, and also back in 1988 under the Libertarian Party.

He is also currently getting a lot of recognition in the media for his new bill HR1207: Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, which currently has 297 cosponsors, as well as Dr. Paul’s new book “End The Fed” which is an intellectually marathon on the economic, philosophical, and moral reasons why the Federal Reserve is a threat to everyone’s liberty.

I go to DailyPaul.com because when Ron Paul is getting coverage I like to see what he has to say. Just the other week he was on the Daily Show discussing his book. Ron Paul’s opinion matters, and he is still going to be relevant in the next coming years – especially as our economy continues to slide, and the American public gets more eager for answers and rational explanations to what got us into the mess we are experiencing now.

REASON.COM

Reason.com is updated daily with articles and columns on current developments in politics and culture. It also contains the full text of past issues of the print edition of Reason Magazine. Like all these other resources, it is also entirely free. You can look through their Print Archives here.

One of my personal favorite features of Reason Online is REASON.TV which contains videos, celebrity interviews, and short documentaries on a variety of topics like civil rights, health care, business and technology, welfare, foreign policy, government spending, The War On Drugs, abortion, gun rights, labor unions, global warming, science, art, culture, and much more.

Their slogan is “Free Minds, Free Markets,” which are ideals they hold to pretty well since they are very non-partisan in their political beliefs and very dedicated to the principles of liberty and voluntary transactions as they would take place in a free market.

There is also REASON.ORG, or the Reason Foundation, which takes a more academic approach at critiquing public policy, offering different solutions. According to the Washington Journal, “Of all the nation’s conservative or free-market policy groups, it may be the most libertarian among them, the Reason Foundation in Southern California, that ends up having the most direct impact on the actual functioning of government.”

Where to start:

It really depends if you want to read articles, watch videos, or listen to podcasts or audio files. Reason has all of the above and the best idea is to just go to their main page and start digging through all they have.

FREEDOM WATCH ON FOXNEWS.COM

Yes, it is affiliated with Fox News. Yes, Judge Napolitano sometimes fills in for the Glenn Beck show. Now can we get over it? The truth is Freedom Watch is the best libertarian TV show on the internet, and it is now running on a new daily schedule, or as Napolitano calls it: “A Daily Dose Of Raw Liberty!”

Frequent guests include pretty much everyone we have discussed above: members from The Cato Institute, Reason magazine, Mises Institute, Ayn Rand Institute, and politicians like Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, Rand Paul, and Jim Demint, including many other knowledgeable guests, authors, constitutional and law experts, etc.

Where to start:

You could just check out the site and start streaming the videos. Or, if you want to take a personal recommendation, check out my recent article, “Legalize It? Director of NORML on Marijuana Prohibition.”

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

HOOVER INSTITUTION

They Hoover Institution at Stanford University is a public policy think tank which has had much influence in both conservative and libertarian circles. It was first founded in 1919 by then-future U.S. president Herbert Hoover. High-profile conservatives like Edwin Meese, Milton Friedman, George Shultz, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and Amy Zegart are all Hoover Institution fellows. Check out their website for a great archive section and various other material on economics, politics, and freedom within the marketplace.

HUFFINGTON POST

Sure it’s not libertarian, but it is always healthy to keep up to date on what other political commentators are saying about current issues in America. The Huffington Post has a lot to offer libertarians and the American public in general by raising awareness about serious issues our country is facing.

Even if many of the solutions they might propose are more government and regulation, I still find their reporting much more unbiased than some of the stuff I have found at DailyKOS, truthdig and alternet.

FORA.TV

FORA.TV is not libertarian either but its site gathers the web’s largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates at universities, think tanks and conferences. Of course their politics section and economics section would be the pages libertarians would be most interested in but they also include some great information on various things about science, culture, the environment, and technology.

Paul Armentano, the Deputy Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) (check out their blog here), is an expert on marijuana policy, health, and pharmacology. He has served as a consultant for Health Canada, the Canadian Public Health Association, and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

As a guest on yesterdays Freedom Watch, Armentano starts by discussing the potential treatment and prevention of certain cancers through the medical use of marijuana:

ARMENTANO:Things like THC and several other unique properties [of cannabis] actually have the ability to selectively target cancer cells and kill those cells. [This is] sort of the Holy Grail for cancer research; and frustratingly the Federal government has not funded appropriately clinical trials in humans on this sort of work, but we’ve know that marijuana has had these effects on animals now for three decades.

Although President Obama has been more lenient on Federal laws prohibiting marijuana use when compared to the previous administration, the DEA is still raiding certain third-party vendors in states like California, who have authorized doctors to prescribe marijuana to certain patients.

ARMENTANO:What is very interesting with these raids is that no criminal charges are ever filed. The Federal government comes in, they kick down some doors, they seize some merchandise, they seize cash, they seize computers, and then they leave.

According to Armentano, the U.S. government first got involved the “marijuana prohibition business” all the way back in 1937,

ARMENTANO:Now when you look at the actual transcripts of those hearings we laugh at them – even though they were the foundation of marijuana prohibition. The government’s argument at the time was that if you use marijuana you would go insane and be inspired to commit acts of violence and murder.

Nowadays the government doesn’t so much propagate the “Reefer Madness” fad. This is maybe because anyone who has ever been exposed to marijuana, or those who do it, knows simply through their everyday experience alone that it doesn’t cause people to be more violent. Instead the government now tries to perpetuate the myth that marijuana has worse health risks than tobacco or alcohol, which is simply not true.

NAPOLITANO: Which is more harmful statistically: the excessive use of marijuana or the excessive use of alcohol?

ARMENTANO:Well if we are looking at either the harm caused by the drug to the individual or if we are looking at the harm done to society, clearly alcohol is the far more detrimental substance.

According to Armentano, despite all the governments prohibition and propaganda surrounding cannabis 51% of those polled by Rasmussen Reports believed alcohol to be more dangerous than cannabis. Only 19% of those respondents said marijuana was.

ARMENTANO: The public understands this issue. They have it right. It is the law that has it wrong.

NAPOLITANO:Do you think we will ever get to the point where the government will let us make our own choices? Even if they are bad choices, even if they are stupid choices, but they are our own choices about what we put in our body? As long as whatever we put in doesn’t harm somebody else?

ARMENTANO: Let’s certainly hope so. I mean that is one of the main reasons why this prohibition of marijuana is so detrimental. The federal government has drawn an arbitrary line that says adults can put certain substances in their body and then other substances they cannot. And that line is not based on science – it is not based on potential dangers to the user or potential dangers to society.

As I noted, it is an arbitrary line. Yet we have arrested in this country over 20 million Americans since 1965 on marijuana offenses. Almost 90% of those arrested were arrested on simple possession only. Yet if we go back to 1965 we will see that marijuana is more prevalent today then it was then, that young people have easier access to marijuana than they did then, that marijuana is more potent today then it was then, and that there is more violence associated with the illegal drug trafficking of marijuana today then it was then.

We have literally spent tens of billions of dollars and ruined millions of people’s personal and professional lives. But we have not in anyway disrupted the flow of marijuana to this country nor have we dissuaded anyone from using marijuana in this country. It is time to acknowledge this reality and regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol.

To add just a bit of my own commentary on this issue: I agree with Armentano, but I think the drawbacks of having marijuana prohibition – especially in a supposed free society – can be probed even deeper and even more philosophically.

Even though prohibition has already empirically proven itself to be more harmful to society than helpful, shouldn’t we also be supportive of marijuana legalization simply due to the principles of freedom and self-ownership?

A free society should be obligated to respect the individuals decision on what does and doesn’t go into his or her body, as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s rights. If this holds true for a persons actions, then it is a victimless crime, and the person should not be punished for pursuing their own sense of happiness. If this individual right is not respected, then we have to ask ourselves as a society what side of freedom do we really stand on?