“I am only one, but still, I am one. I cannot do everything but I can do something. And, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do what I can”

Those words of Edward Everett Hale, an American clergyman and writer (1822-1909), underscore our thinking at FEE. The moral, economic, and philosophical pillars of liberty are just too important for us to ever let up or fall short of what we can do to make liberty’s case!

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A year ago, in the wake of collapsing markets and the government’s appalling response, many lovers of liberty despaired. At FEE we see opportunities in crisis—opportunities in the form of teachable moments for open and attentive minds starving for the right ideas. Not only is our message needed more than ever, it’s also being sought more eagerly than I’ve witnessed in years.

The recession and financial crisis that are fueling this renewed interest in our message cry out for clear explanation. They resulted not from free, unregulated markets but directly from the Federal Reserve’s reckless money and credit policies and the government’s reprehensible jawboning of financial institutions to extend mortgage credit to unqualified parties.

^[1]This month FEE is publishing a brand new, powerful monograph by Professors Steven Horwitz and Peter Boettke entitled “The House That Uncle Sam Built: The Untold Story of the Great Recession of 2008,” which lays all this out in engaging, jargon-free detail. We will be pleased to send a copy to those responding to this appeal with a contribution of $200 or more ^[1].

But before you decide whether or not to help FEE with a year-end contribution, please consider what we’ve accomplished this past year and what we hope to do in the next:

• We dramatically revamped the FEE website (FEE.org), doubling the average monthly traffic in 10 months. We’re aiming for a million page views per month by the end of 2010.
• We created a new website for our magazine, The Freeman (TheFreemanOnline.org), prompting a large following and several thousand additional subscribers to our weekday In Brief e-mail service. We’re looking for even faster growth in readership next year.
• We made our entire archive of past Freeman issues available online. Users can now easily browse issues by year and month, search for their favorite authors and subjects—and view them in HTML and download PDFs.
• We started a FEE fan page on Facebook and in a matter of weeks gained nearly 3,500 fans. We expect to add thousands more Facebook and Twitter fans in 2010, especially since we have added a searchable database of free-market Twitter users at FEE.org.
• At our week-long summer seminars for high school and college students in 2009, we had 700 attendees over 9 weeks, beating the all-time previous attendance record by almost 65 percent! Attendees came from nearly every state and 38 countries. It’s only November and nearly 1,000 students have already signed up to receive e-mails about next year’s programs.
• FEE presentations have been extremely well-received on college and university campuses. Thousands of students have heard FEE speakers at schools like Penn State, Wilkes, Columbia, George Mason, Grand Valley State, Colorado Christian, Northwood, Hillsdale, Webber International, Grove City, Wake Forest, Western New England and Southern Methodist, to name just a few.
• Our high school debate programs drew in a record 5,000+ students this past year. Reaching high school and college students is one of our great strengths. Educating relative newcomers to the freedom philosophy—young people especially—is our special niche. We plan to set new records in reaching both high school and college students in 2010.
• For the first time, FEE is now posting videos of its summer seminars on both YouTube and FEE.org. Our online video library, inaugurated less than a year ago, features dozens of great lectures from current FEE speakers and even a classic talk by our founder, the late Leonard Read. Those videos have been viewed nearly ten thousand times. Next year we will add one to three new videos every week and we expect tens of thousands of viewings.
• All told this is remarkable growth in outreach, undoubtedly the most dramatic one-year expansion in FEE’s more than six decades.

Though I have already mentioned our magazine, The Freeman, I want to share with you some further observations about it. It’s been our flagship publication for half a century and a highly acclaimed leader among free-enterprise journals. (Contributors to FEE of $50 or more receive the magazine for a year).

No publication has covered the financial crisis from a pro-freedom perspective as thoroughly and as clearly as The Freeman. Issue after issue applied solid analysis to all aspects of the episode and has explained the free-market solution in banking and housing.

Likewise, we have relentlessly offered the case for the free market in health care and exposed the prevalent statist fallacies and proposals. Intellectual ammunition from FEE on these issues has become an important weapon in the arsenal for the pro-liberty side of the debate.

We have jumped on every major political-economic issue with clarity and consistency, while also attending to lesser-known threats to liberty and important episodes in economic history. We keep readers informed of the most important new books of relevance to champions of freedom.

The most respected names in the broad free-market movement grace our pages: Israel Kirzner, Richard Epstein, Bruce Yandle, Murray Weidenbaum, Roger Garrison, Lawrence White, Gerald O’Driscoll, Wendy McElroy, Peter Boettke, Ben Powell, Sanford Ikeda, Doug Bandow, James Bovard—not to mention the best of the up-and-coming pro-freedom scholars and writers.

^[1]Our regular columnists are an all-star cast and include Robert Higgs, Walter Williams, Thomas Szasz, Don Boudreaux, Charles Baird, David Henderson, Steve Davies, Burt Folsom, John Stossel, and Sheldon Richman. All of this comes in the most attractive packaging in The Freeman’s history—and I don’t mean just the print version. The newly redesigned website, TheFreemanOnline.org, draws in hundreds of thousands of readers, who continue the lively debates by posting comments, emailing articles to friends and sharing The Freeman through social networking sites. Please visit TheFreemanOnline.org at your earliest opportunity!

So there you have, in a nutshell, the good news about our work this past year. But you should know that we practice what we preach in every respect. We don’t think we’re entitled to anything, but we do hope we have earned your support. Ask yourself these questions as you ponder your year-end giving:

• Does FEE stand for what I believe in?
• Has FEE remained faithful and true to the principles of liberty?
• Is FEE’s message really needed?
• Does FEE and its mission deserve my support?

I hope you will answer all four questions with a resounding YES! Since our founding in 1946, FEE has relied exclusively on the voluntary, generous, and tax-deductible contributions of friends of liberty everywhere. We can’t do our work without you.

I started this letter on an optimistic note and I want to end in a similar fashion. I’m a firm believer in an optimistic outlook. Anything less is a losing proposition. Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy because if you let anything get you down, the chances are you won’t then work as hard and you won’t attract the followers necessary to win. Consider these words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and man of conscience who was martyred for his opposition to Hitler in 1945:

“The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy”

As 2009 comes to a close and opportunities to turn the tide for liberty in 2010 present themselves, we need FEE to be in a strong position to present its message better and to more people. With this letter, I ask you to be generous in making gift to FEE at your earliest opportunity. Please join us, or stick with us, or even increase your gift if you can! I thank you for your support and partnership.

Liberty—it makes all the difference in the world!

Sincerely,

Lawrence W. Reed
President

P.S. Don’t forget that contributions of $50 or more assure that you will receive our magazine, The Freeman. Contributors of $200 or more will receive a complimentary copy of “The House That Uncle Sam Built: The Untold Story of the Great Recession of 2008.”

P.P.S. If you would like to earmark your gift toward scholarships for summer seminar students ($1,000 per full scholarship, $500 per half-scholarship), let us know and we’ll be sure to have the recipient(s) send you a personal thanks and testimonial next summer.