Freedom Circle

Where Can You Find Freedom Today?

How This Site Came Into Being

One of the owners of Freedom Circle, LLC, was introduced to libertarianism by Harry Browne's How To Find Freedom in an Unfree World in the mid-1980's. He also became acquainted with objectivism from reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and later on Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal as well as The Virtue of Selfishness. In 1996, he read from Mark Skousen that Harry was running as the Presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party (LP). That led to a renewed interest in libertarianism (and limited involvement in Libertarian politics, since discontinued).

Influences

Aside from the LP itself, two organizations nurtured that interest. One was the Advocates for Self-Government and its "Liberator Online" e-mailed newsletter. The second was The Future of Freedom Foundation and its monthly Freedom Daily publication.

Another notable influence leading to the development of the Freedom Circle directory was Dr. Ken Evoy and his Make Your Site Sell! (MYSS!) book and the Site Build It! (SBI!) service. MYSS! and SBI! provided excellent insights on how web sites really worked from a non-technical perspective, including how to acquire traffic from the search engines.

Two libertarian sites served as incubators for the idea that eventually became this directory. The first was the Advocates for Self-Government Libertarian Celebrities. This is a list of libertarian or near-libertarian individuals who have achieved a certain level of fame or notoriety, most with links to separate pages of biographical information. It helps to put a popular perspective on the libertarian movement which is seldom seen in the political or scholarly sites. An objective of this directory is to extend that popular reach.

The second site was Free-Market.net's directory, now known as the ISIL (International Society for Individual Liberty) Freedom Network. This consists of thousands of links to external web pages and sites each with a brief description. Unfortunately, they are categorized in a way that is not very helpful for someone who is not already familiar with libertarian topics. The Freedom Circle directory attempts to make the subjects more accessible to everyone.

Last but not least, the influence of the original Yahoo! Web Directory (see for example, the early 2002 version) as well as the Open Directory Project must be acknowledged. The original conception for the Freedom Circle directory was to have categories similar to those of Yahoo! and ODP. However, as research and development of the site began, we realized that the Life, Liberty, Property and Pursuit of Happiness themes were a more favorable and appropriate organizing scheme.

Recent Developments

About a year ago, we decided to add the full text of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, each with links to various topics within the directory. More recently, we translated these documents into Spanish and created pages to view the translation separately or side-by-side with the original English text. We are planning to add other documents in original and translated versions.

Early in 2005, we added a What's New page to highlight recent additions and changes to individual directory topics. We also provided a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) capability so that you can be notified via RSS (also through My Yahoo! and My MSN) of the new and modified topics.

Technical Info

The Freedom Circle directory is currently hosted by Hub.org. It is served by an Apache 2.0 Web Server, running on FreeBSD. The data is currently maintained in a PostgreSQL 8.0 database and the source pages are written in PHP 4.3. In addition, we use Subversion and Trac for version control and project management.

How Can You Help

Needless to say, if you find the information in the directory useful, please spread the word by referring friends and others to www.freedomcircle.com. Naturally, if you purchase books, supplements or other products and services linked from our pages, you also help fund further work on the directory.

If you'd like to see a topic covered in the directory, please use the Suggest a New Topic link found on various pages. It may be easier to visit a related topic first, particularly one that encompasses the desired new subject. If you'd like to suggest additional links or information under an existing topic, please use the Suggest an Entry under this Topic link found in that topic's page. For any other requests, please use the Contact Us page.

If you have a passion for freedom or other related topics and would like to participate in a more active role in building the directory and thus help spread the message contained in these pages and those we link to, we encourage you to contact us for more information. Please understand that currently all work is done on a volunteer basis. If you have special skills or interests, be sure to mention them in your message.