Liberty International

Established in 1969, Liberty International is the oldest organization promoting libertarianism worldwide. Our purpose is to bring liberty to every corner of the world by sharing the philosophy and benefits of freedom, with special emphasis on educating newcomers. We spread liberty and foster a global network of freedom champions, empowering them to become change agents in their own countries.

Browse the links below to find libertarian and pro-freedom websites, organizations, e-texts, books, action opportunities, and much more. ... This resource directory was established in 1995 as part of Free-Market.Net: The Freedom Network. It is now published by ISIL.

Healing Our World has been published in Russian, Serbian, Lithuanian, Rumanian and Croatian, in addition to English. The International Society for Individual Liberty has established a fund that accepts contributions for further printings in Eastern European nations. 'The Martie Ruwart Memorial Fund' is named after Ruwart's sister, who died in 1992 and was a staunch supporter of the book. ... Dr. Ruwart is an in-demand speaker on libertarian ideas ... She has spoken on libertarian communication, and other topics ... at International Society for Individual Liberty gatherings ...

ISIL began in 1980 as Libertarian International, founded by Canadian libertarian activist and publisher Vince Miller. LI started the international libertarian conferences in Zurich, Switzerland in 1982. The current ISIL was formed in 1989 through the merger of LI with the Society for Individual Liberty, the first explicitly libertarian grassroots organization which had been founded by Jarret Wollstein, Dave Walter and Don Ernsberger in 1969. The original SIL emerged out of an historic split between conservatives and libertarians at a Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) conference in St. Louis, Missouri in 1969.

In late 1968, the Liberty Amendment Youth Council was dissolved. [Nolan] turned over a copy of the organization’s membership list to another young libertarian he'd met, Jarret Wollstein, who used it to launch the Society for Rational Individualism (SRI), one of the first modern libertarian organizations in America. SRI quickly evolved into the Society for Individual Liberty (SIL), for years one of the most important organizations in the liberty movement. In 1989, SIL merged with Libertarian International and Groundswell-USA to become the International Society for Individual Liberty that we know today.

Dear friends:
It is with considerable sadness that I bring you the following news: My good friend and ISIL director Marshall Bruce Evoy passed away at 8:30 pm this evening, July 8, 1998, at a hospital in Toronto, Canada ... Bruce was also a co-founder, along with myself and 7 others, of the Ontario Libertarian Party in 1974 ... and later in the 1980s joined the Board of the International Society for Individual Liberty. ...
Vincent Miller, Pres. ISIL

Four years ago, at the YAF convention in Pittsburgh, there was born a unique coalition—the coalition that is known today as "the libertarian movement". There, for the first time, Randists, Miseists, and elements of the old "radical right" from all over the country got together and established an embryonic network of organization and communication ... Where, in 1967, we had no organizational home save the semi-hostile Young Americans for Freedom, today we have the Society for Individual Liberty.

There are movement historians who would differ with this account in one or more particulars ... Sam writes as though SIL, the Society for Individual Liberty, already existed at the time of the St. Louis YAF convention. Its predecessor organization, the Objectivist-oriented Society for Rational Individualism (founded by Jarret Wollstein), had existed for about a year at that time. Still, this is somewhat misleading. SIL was founded in St. Louis in 1969, while the YAF convention was underway across town.

By this time I read about the work of Vince Miller, Jim Elwood, and Bruce Evoy at the International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL) and later joined their Board. ISIL was dedicated to translating free market literature and networking globally in order to spread free market ideas. Their mission was perfectly timed with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the opening of so much of the world that had formerly prohibited free market ideas ... Close friends, Hubert Jongen, Virgis Daukas, Kerry Pearson, Mary Ruwart, and hundreds of others in ISIL, collaborated to bring this about.

The fall of 1969 was ... a busy season for the nascent libertarian movement. At the same time SRI [Society for Rational Individualism] had jumped the Randian ship and turned Rothbardian, the student activists who had made up the Libertarian Caucus of the conservative youth organization Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) had decided to walk out of YAF en masse and seek institutional support for their activities elsewhere. That fall, SRI merged with the former Libertarian Caucus of YAF to create the Society for Individual Liberty (SIL).

By the end of this meeting [in 1969 in St. Louis], the Society for Rational Individualism had taken on several of the old YAF Libertarian Caucus leaders as directors and transformed itself into the Society for Individual Liberty (SIL), the first libertarian institution established by the first generation of libertarians for whom the libertarian movement was already a fact of life by the time they got old enough to be interested in ideas ... In 1989, the Libertarian International [founded by Vince Miller] merged with the Society for Individual Liberty and became the International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL).