Watch Matt Welch & Nick Gillespie Answer Your Questions, Tweets, etc. at 3pm-4pm ET!

As part of the closing ceremonies for this year's annual webathon, in which we ask readers of this site to help support our efforts, Matt Welch and I will be hanging out via Google+ to answer your questions, tweets, etc. from 3pm to 4pm ET today.

Send questions, comments, burning desires (keep it cleanish) to the comment thread below, to Reason's Facebook page, and to out Twitter account (@Reason).

Last week, we did a Google Hangout that featured Reason staffers and our roving video correspondent Kennedy (click above to watch the magic, including two-plus minutes of yours truly inspecting the inner working of my webcam). This time, it's full-throttle reader-response time, and Matt and I will rip through as many questions as we can in 60 minutes.

And while we're talking about the webathon, go here to donate now!

Comments

[The Late P Brooks]

What change, however impractical or unlikely, do you believe would be effective in restraining the growth of government? For example, what would it take to drive a stake through the heart of the TSA?

[$park?]

Since neither is going to happen anyway, why would it be better to get libertarians into the current government rather than starting over with something new?

[$park?]

Here’s another one for you.

Since thousands of years of human civilization have gotten us to this point, is it possible that libertarianism is wrong?

[Raston Bot]

WTF is wrong with Illinois?

Dogfish’s best offer to compensate Glunz for terminating its distribution rights was 4.8 times Glunz’s gross profits from June 2011 through May 2012. …Glunz’s gross profits on the sale of Dogfish beer brands in Illinois exceed $900,000. Therefore, Glunz believes it should be compensated approximately $9 million

Leaving the market is not an option…

While the dispute is being resolved in court, under the [Beer Industry Fair Dealing Act], Dogfish is required to continue using the services of Glunz to distribute its beer products at a level consistent with past practices and future growth. Trial will not occur for at least a year…

What is this blue state nonsense?!

[Christina]

It’s the glories of the Three-Tier System, made all the more absurd in the morass of Blue State politics.

[The Late P Brooks]

is it possible that libertarianism is wrong?

Apparently, the fatal flaw of libertarianism is that it lacks the will to force people to embrace freedom.

[sarcasmic]

Tony said libertarianism forces those who use force to not use force.

It imposes liberty on people against their will.

Libertarianism is tyranny.

[Pro Libertate]

If you could amend the Constitution to help restore the concept of limited government, what (roughly speaking) would that amendment or amendments do?

[SugarFree]

Libertarianism is not wrong, but it is not a self-evident philosophy. Acting as if it is doesn’t make for a good growth strategy. Dragging everything back to first principles that are not self-evident doesn’t win any argument, or convert any skeptic. Libertarians are often not good judges of their audience when they present themselves and their philosophy.

Start slow, keep it easy, and utterly humiliate the evangelical statists from the sidelines whenever you have a chance.

[iggy]

Libertarianism essentially requires a level of thought. This makes it harder to get people on your side. You can be Republican or Democrat in our country and go your whole life without having to think about your position.

This is especially true of leftists because the media is so aligned with their point of view.

[$park?]

You can be Republican or Democrat in our country and go your whole life without having to think about your position.

This is my point. People don’t want to think, they don’t want to have to think, and they don’t want to have their minds changed. IME, people believe that they are right and if you don’t agree then you are wrong, period. People do not take kindly to having their beliefs challenged.

[Restoras]

Argh…yes exactly this. Shoulda read the whole trhead…

[iggy]

What’s your wishlist in regards to programs we should cut? Other than the obvious programs like anti-drug initiatives and the ATF. Personally I’d totally eliminate the Department of Education and Homeland Security. Then again, according to my girlfriend, I want children to starve in the streets, so what the hell do I know?

[Ryan60657]

Does the notion of a “hate crime” run afoul of either the Due Process and/or the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

[The Late P Brooks]

If you could amend the Constitution to help restore the concept of limited government, what (roughly speaking) would that amendment or amendments do?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and I have come to believe “accounting” as practiced by the United States Government is largely responsible for the mess we’re in. The vast hidden costs of programs makes it too easy to pretend we can provide unlimited handouts.

If every branch and office of the government were required to adhere to Generally Approved Accounting Principles, and accurately show the sources and uses of the funds which pass through their hands, it would be obvious to at least some significant minority of the population just how unsustainable our current path is.

This is, of course, just one more reason to despise Warren Buffett; Berkshire would never, in a million years, get involved with a private enterprise with completely inscrutable books. Yet he is perfectly content to make vapid exhortations about shoveling more money into the furnace without the least evidence of interest in where that money will go.

[The Late P Brooks]

As for an Amendment, it wouldn’t even necessarily have to require a balanced budget, as long as it enforced transparency and honesty.

[The Late P Brooks]

People don’t want to think

They are ruthlessly punished for any attempt to do so in their years of indoctrination in government schools.

[Restoras]

Even if they aren’t, they still don’t want to think. It’s hard, requires introspection, and may even result in dicovering that something you thought was true is actually false. People hate that regardless of socio-economic status.

[Tim]

The President is after the authority to raise the debt ceiling himself,couple with this the fact that we are increasingly monetizing our debt and I wonder; “Is there a chance the track could bend?”

(note I am not a Hindu)

[$park?]

They are ruthlessly punished for any attempt to do so in their years of indoctrination in government schools.

It goes farther back than that. Back to ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Babylon, etc. Every civilization in recorded history has had some upper class of people in charge of the rest. It appears to be exactly what people want. Why do libertarians think they can change that?

[Dr. Frankenstein]

Is it what people want or the way things shake out? C

ommunism offered but did not deliver the opposite of having an upper class in charges.

At best you can say that some people will always be more ruthless and opportunistic than others.

[$park?]

I could be wrong, but I think if enough people didn’t want it that way then it wouldn’t shake out that way.

[sarcasmic]

You can have plenty of people who don’t want it that way, even a majority, but until they organize they have no power.

[Restoras]

So…they need a community organizer?

[sarcasmic]

They need guns and the willingness to inflict violence.

[$park?]

They need guns and the willingness to inflict violence.

Now we’re getting somewhere. The willingness to inflict violence is inherent in all animals, humans included. It is a purely natural drive that keeps all animals fighting for their right to exist. Humans have developed governments in an attempt to subvert this drive, as a way to come to peaceful resolutions to conflict. Of course the problem that comes up is what you say below, once you put people in charge they want to stay in charge. Does anybody really believe it’s possible to change this?

[sarcasmic]

Even if you don’t put anyone in charge, someone will take charge. And as long as their gang is better at violence than yours, they will be government. Until another gang comes along. Witness Syria.

[iggy]

Here’s the problem I see with your $parky’s argument. There are tons of things that stayed the same for enormous amounts of time. Slavery existed for thousands of years and its morality wasn’t even questioned until the late 17th-19th centuries. Legitimate racist, sexist, and homophobic acts have been pretty constant throughout history, but these problems are at least beginning to change.

The fact that people have not yet effectively organized a government that exists free of tyranny doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

[sarcasmic]

Freedom from tyranny depends on the self restraint of those who govern.

That restraint can be imposed in some ways, such as the amendment that imposes the two term limit for the president. Once upon a time the men who sought that office voluntarily limited themselves to two terms. It is doubtful that anyone who seeks that office today would voluntarily leave.

Without that self restraint, tyranny is just a matter of time.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Slavery existed for thousands of years and its morality wasn’t even questioned until the late 17th-19th centuries.

What am I, chopped liver?

[sarcasmic]

There will always be a group of men who will use their monopoly on organized violence as a license to steal.

It’s not so much what people want, but a matter of inevitability.

History is and will continue to be little more than chronicles of parasitic governments fiercely defending their monopoly on organized violence as they use it to suck society dry.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

[Restoras]

Well said, fellow appreciator of svelte female forms.

[The Late P Brooks]

Every civilization in recorded history has had some upper class of people in charge of the rest.

But did they make the trains run on time?

[Restoras]

Rome had to wait for Mussolini to make that happern.

[A Mathematician]

What would you see as the best argument against anarcho-capitalism? Do you believe that a minimal government is stable? In other words, do you think it is possible to have a limited government which do not grow indefinitely (or end up collapsing), and if not, what do you think is the most stable form of government and why?

[Jumbie]

I request, nay DEMAND, that Matt Welch call Lucy Steigerwald live on camera and tell her that he loves her alt-text.

…In a dirty old man voice.

C’mon people, we won’t get this chance ever again. Reply with your support for this idea!

[Warty]

What would it take for you, Matt and Nick, to join TEAM RED or TEAM BLUE?

[$park?]

Just tell them you’re on your way to reason HQ with a bucket full of frogs and bad intentions.

[Spiny Norman]

That pantsless mannequin in the background creeps me out.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Who did a better Arbor Day song: Welch or Buckwheat Groats?

[sarcasmic]

If a man is speaking in a forest, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?