A message from Portugal

A couple of months ago, I started getting hits from a website in Portugal.  A Portuguese guy named Joao has a (mostly) photography blog called Dois Tabefes and had linked to a couple of my rants.    After I commented on his site a couple of times, I got the following email, which I'm reprinting with Joao's permission. 
You may have read about how the stupendous debts of Greece and Portugal are threatening to blow up the Euro, the European Union, and the entire Axis Of Socialism.  (Go to this chart to see a worldwide ranking.  The U.S. is now ahead of Jordan, Nicaragua, and Tunisia in this ranking of the unfortunates.)  Here's Joao, with his personal testimony about how he escaped the darkness:

As with many other libertarian sites I've been discovering lately (yours was from Cpt Capitalism's blog roll, by the way), I thoroughly enjoy reading it daily. It sure is helpful to me, but I'm afraid it won't be of much help in spreading libertarian sites to my circle of friends. Unfortunately Portugal is a very centre-left leaning country and trying to speak about libertarianism to most people is almost the same as being considered a fascist (40 years of "soft"-fascism sure did a lot of intelectual damage around), so in the end, it isn't surprising at all why Portugal is coming next to Greece in government debt.

Oh, and by the way, I came to get acquainted with libertarianism (and the Austrian school of thinking) in a rather amusing way. First I got into AGW skepticism after some research for an academic work, then I got to find a couple of liberal (not american liberal) portuguese blogs, which have been speaking about that subject, and in the middle I got interested in their posts about economic freedom and liberty, Hayek, anti left-wing rants and so on.

One brief interlude here.  The word "liberal", as many of you already know, has the same meaning in Europe that "libertarian" means in the United States.  The word was highjacked by American Statists sometime in the 1930's, as best I can tell.  Look on the blogroll to your right for the "I am 100% Liberal Quiz" to learn a few things about the word, and about yourself. 

Somewhere in between I got to read Road to Serfdom and now i'm reading Atlas Shrugged daily in my cell phone when I go to my university - I'm currently a Ph.D student in environmental engineering. I've started it in November, read 2/3 of it already and I consider it already one of the best books I've read in my 24-yo short life so far.

Greetings,

João

Good Lord in heaven !  Can you imagine plowing through Atlas Shrugged on a cell phone?  How many page views would that be? 
Anyway, that's what's going on with one lonely libertarian in Portugal, where the government is spending everyone into oblivion.  Hope you stay in touch, Joao.   
One other thing....I have no idea what this is in these pics, since my Portuguese is a little rusty.  I want one to take cruising in the Trinity river. 

John Stossel on "The Road To Serfdom"

John Stossel's show tomorrow night will be centered around F.A. Hayek's "The Road To Serfdom".
Set the Tivo to record. Go ahead. Make yourself a note. Thursday night. Fox Business Channel.

Go here for a teaser:

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin seems to understand the threat: He's worries that "more people have a stake in the welfare state than in free enterprise. This is a road that Hayek perfectly described as 'the road to serfdom.'" (Tomorrow I will ask Ryan why, if he understands this, he voted for TARP and the auto bailouts.)