Abusters lost the case and, in realizing that you can’t simply force another into business – that it, in fact, takes the mutual consent of both parties to make a contract valid – apparently now rejects the very concept, evident by one of the latest ABTV videos.

Titled Ad-idas, the 5-minute video documents Neil Boorman’s quest “to claim due advertising fees from a brand giant”.

The brand giant in question is Adidas and the “due advertising fees”? According to Boorman, it amounts to 10,000 pounds based upon – nothing consensual, of course, but rather – the 10-15 years Boorman has voluntarily spent being a “human billboard” for the company. You know, wearing Adidas shirts, shorts and shoes out in public.

Now obviously, Mr. Boorman isn’t a true Adidas fan. He isn’t a fan of any corporation. In the same vein as Naomi Klein, he’s a hardcore anti-consumerist borderline luddite; and in the same vein as Michael Moore, the video is dishonest in strategy but authentic in message. But yes, Boorman believes this garbage. As the tagline states, “Why do we buy clothes that advertise brands? They should be paying us!”.

Yeah!

Companies should be paying consumers who choose to buy their branded products for the subsequent advertising that the aforementioned companies never asked for. The consumers deserve it. It’s just!

Yes. In fact, tomorrow I’ll be sending Adbusters an invoice for showcasing the crappy Neil Boorman video in question.

Take a look. Or don’t! It doesn’t matter really. There isn’t a contract or any criteria whatsoever I have to meet. I don’t even have to speak highly of the content. I determine what they owe me. It’s that simple!

As you can tell, the twin’s quite the artist…and, yes, quite the lib. But – admit it – for an Obama shirt, it’s pretty badass. I mean, an AC/DC reference? Genius!

Moreover, it lacks the nauseating messianic dimension that everything else Obama-branded has.

Anyways, for the last few years, I’ve been pushing my libertarianism on him pretty solid – and, for the last year, my active disinterest/dismissal of Obama – so it was only inevitable he’d try to shut me up with something convincing.

Last week, he shot me an email with a link to Wick Allison’s – ex-publisher for National Review and current editor in chief for D Magazine – A Conservative for Obama.

I read it. Yeah, not convinced.

The editorial actually starts off quite strong, describing the abstract difference between conservatism and liberalism and then going on to show how Bush’s tax cuts (without subsequent spending cuts) and foreign policy are unsound political moves. Totally agree.

But then, after associating these unsound policies with McCain (a move I more or less agree with), Allison immediately shifts to an empty endorsement of Obama, citing his intellect, strong rhetoric/speaking skills, and pragmatism as reasons for doing so. Nothing else. Obama was, apparently, that easy of a decision for Wick. After all, it’s him or McCain!

To which I have to respond with a big ole’ bullshit! These are not the only options and, Wick, you know it.

What about Bob Barr? I lament: WHAT ABOUT BOB BARR!?!

This Wick Allison guy is ex-National Review. How can he not mention, not even in passing, Bob Barr?

Bob Barr’s foreign policy? Arguably isolationist. Spending? He’ll veto everything and anything! And questions regarding how Barr thinks it is “America’s job is to ‘defeat evil,’ a theological expansion of the nation’s mission”? I don’t think so. Bob cites my girl Ayn Rand all the time!

This is your man, Wick. Unless you address the issue, I am left to assume that your editorial is just a pathetic attempt to get some traffic to an online news source that no one’s every heard of.

When did the idea of freedom become a political orphan?

Steve Chapman

September 7, 2008

This year’s Republican National Convention had a different theme for each day. Monday was “Serving a Cause Greater than Self.” Tuesday was “Service,” Wednesday was “Reform” and Thursday was “Peace.”

“We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom. “

—Barry Goldwater, accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination

So what was missing? Only what used to be held up as the central ideal of the party. The heirs of Goldwater couldn’t spare a day for freedom.

Neither could the Democrats. Their daily topics this year were “One Nation,” “Renewing America’s Promise” and “Securing America’s Future.” The party proclaimed “an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights.” Expanding and upholding individual liberty? Not so much.

Forty-four years after Goldwater’s declaration, it’s clear that collectivism, not individualism, is the reigning creed of Republicans as well as Democrats. Individuals are not valuable and precious in their own right but as a means for those in power to achieve their grand ambitions.

You will scour the presidential nominees’ acceptance speeches in vain for any hint that your life is rightfully your own, to be lived in accordance with your beliefs and desires and no one else’s. The Founding Fathers set out to protect “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” but Barack Obama has a different idea.

The “essence of America’s promise,” he declared in Denver, is “individual responsibility and mutual responsibility”—rather than, say, individual freedom and mutual respect for rights. The “promise of America,” he said, is “the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.”

In reality, that fundamental belief is what you might call the promise of socialism. What has set this country apart since its inception is not the notion of obligations but the notion of rights.

“All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself,” wrote the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. “The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary co-existence of individuals.”

That idea got lost somewhere between Thomas Jefferson and John McCain. What do Republicans believe in? McCain told us Thursday: “We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law . . . We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.”

Would it be too much to mention that what sustains the American vision of those things is freedom? That without it, personal responsibility becomes hollow and service is servitude?

Apparently it would. Republicans are big on promoting freedom abroad, but in this country, the term encompasses a lot of things they don’t like—the right to a “homosexual lifestyle,” the right to protest the Iraq war, the right to privacy, the right not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and more. Conservatives who once thought Americans had too little freedom now sometimes think they have too much.

Liberals, on the other hand, are wary of embracing freedom precisely because of its historic importance to the right. They fear it means curbing the power of a government whose reach they want to expand.

While they value many personal liberties, they have no great attachment to forms of freedom that involve buying, selling, trading and accumulating. Those, after all, can involve selfishness, and Democrats, like Republicans, don’t want to protect selfishness.

But freedom isn’t freedom without the right to pursue what you value—money or knowledge, pleasure or sacrifice, God or atheism, community or misanthropic solitude—rather than what others think you should value. It includes the right to go to hell, and the right to tell others to do the same.

The latter is a valuable prerogative that we have not yet lost. After watching the conventions, if you have the urge to use it on either of the two major parties, feel free. If he were alive, Barry Goldwater might join you.

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune’s editorial board. He blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman and his e-mail address is schapman@tribune.com

Digg it!

…with an ad that communicates outright ambiguity and equivocation regarding the sanctity of individual rights?

Yo…

“When should the needs of many infringe on the rights of one?” beckons the ad. It’s response: “there is no right answer”.

Come again? Am I not understanding the definition of “freedom”, the ideal the Freedom Museum purportedly stands for? You know, freedom: the state of being lacking external coercion or compulsion. Freedom: the ability to act according to one’s will. Freedom: the opposite of collective imposition.

According to utilitarianism and other common-good analysis, fine; you’re correct – there is no fundamentally correct answer to the question. It requires an arbitrary case-by-case decision-making process. But if freedom is the bedrock – if freedom is the underlying philosophy inspiring subsequent action, there is a right answer to the question posed by the ad. When should the needs of many infringe on the rights of one? NEVER.

As Ayn Rand said in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:

When ‘the common good’ of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.

No more bullshit squabbling about spoilers, about who Nadered who, about how voting third party is going to take away votes from the “practical” choice. No more discrepancies between values and strategy.

With RCV, your vote – your choice – is meaningful!

Check out the video below and tell me it’s not amazing:

Really. Just think about many election-time political flights would be prevented!