When Terry Verhoeven showed me the recent animated ad for LibertariaNZ, I was greatly impressed. It is extremely well done and will undoubtedly be effective in attracting newcomers to the libertarian movement.

The wording of this Philosophy of Liberty (PoL) came at the instigation of a young Russian soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Dmitry Kostygin was preparing a publication of the Russian edition of my book, The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey (JG), but worried that Russian readers wouldn't understand the market. "Please write a brief introduction to explain the basics of property and taxes," asked Dmitry.

So a statement was prepared that became the introduction of the first free market book to be published in St. Petersburg after the fall of the Iron Curtain. His friends were astonished that he was allowed to publish such a book without permission. Dmitry told them it was the first time the authorities had never required a permit, they just needed to make money. Five thousand copies sold out in two months and Dmitry went on to translate and publish Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The PoL statement was then included as an epilogue in all subsequent editions of JG, now in 35 languages.

Kerry Pearson expressed interest in the PoL and worked for several years at putting it into flash animation. At the World Conference of the International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL), Kerry met with others to translate the statement into Spanish (with Judy Nagy and Alvaro Feuerman), Portuguese (with Gustavo Lacerda), and French (with Louise Zizka). The Movimiento Libertario immediately took the Spanish edition from the internet and used it weekly on their nationwide television program in Costa Rica. Responding to popular demand, Tim Skousen (of Napoleon Dynamite fame) produced it on DVD for use in classrooms and public forums.

Supporters were urging additional language editions in Japanese, Dutch, German, Danish, etc., but all plans ground to a halt with the sudden death of Kerry in 2004. Nevertheless, Andrew L. Sullivan, Christian Butterbach, and Paul Miniato revived the project with a fierce determination. Kerry's source files had been lost, but Mario Knezovic and Sanja Tasic spent a year re-engineering the software so that it is now ready again to add new languages.

Such is the tale behind your brilliant new advertisement. The new presentation is significantly, but very effectively, abbreviated from the original. This will surely demonstrate to many the world over how to better utilize the media for our common message of liberty. Congratulations!