Today’s global libertarian movement emerged in the United States during the 1960s.  Many of the future leaders started as high-school students supporting the 1964 Barry Goldwater for President campaign.  Then in college, they joined the conservative Young Americans for Freedom.  It was an uneasy alliance, and a nasty split occurred at the 1969 YAF national convention in St. Louis over issues like the Vietnam War, the draft, and social issues.  The libertarians walked out and/or were purged.

On October 2, 1969, three ex-YAF leaders – Don Ernsberger, David Walter, and Jarret Wollstein, met near Philadelphia and formed the Society for Individual Liberty (SIL), the first explicitly libertarian organization.   Their intellectual inspiration came largely from Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand.  SIL published radical, philosophical pamphlets and The Individualist magazine, started Tax Protest Day and Census Resistance and held national conferences.  Members of SIL’s network went on to form leading movement organizations such as the Libertarian Party, Laissez Faire Books, Cato Institute, Reason Foundation, and other organizations and publications.

The activities launched by SIL were subsumed by the Libertarian Party, and the organization faded during the 1980s.  In fact, Dave Walter became Libertarian Party national chair, and Don organized the 1989 Libertarian Party national convention in Philadelphia.  They did not have much time or energy left to put into SIL.

There was also libertarian activity in Canada during the 70s.  Bruce Evoy founded the Libertarian Party of Canada in 1973, and also published an early movement magazine Libertarian Option.  His partner in much of this work was Vince Miller.  Tired of screwups by commercial printers, Vince bought his own press and typesetting equipment and produced many movement newsletters and outside publications.  Having his own equipment (and the mechanical aptitude to run and maintain it) saved up to 90% from commercial printing rates.

Vince went on to publish a magazine called the Mercury International Digest for 1976 USLP presidential candidate Roger MacBride.  MacBride, who was wealthy and a world traveller, found fledgling overseas libertarians and fed the names back to Vince.

On August 3, 1980, Vince, Bruce, and many other prominent libertarians attended a Students for a Libertarian Society conference at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  Both 1980 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ed Clark and Institute for Humane Studies president Leonard Liggio called for the creation of an international libertarian movement.  Vince stood up and said, “I’ll do it!”  The new organization was named Libertarian International.  He used his contacts and his publishing equipment to quickly build a strong Advisory Board and produce quality stationery and publications that made LI appear bigger than it was.

A top goal of LI was to organize the first international libertarian conference.  The Mont Pelerin Society held conferences, but they were invitation-only meetings of elite classical-liberal free-market academics.  The LI conferences were to be open to anyone in the movement.  Bruce Evoy joined in to help organize the first LI conference in August 1982 in Zurich, Switzerland.  There were about 70 attendees from North America, Western Europe, and individuals from Australia, Guatemala, and South Africa.

Inspired by Zurich, Hubert Jongen of the Dutch Libertarian Center organized a big conference the following year in Brussels.  LI continue to focus on building the European movement with conferences in or near London (1984), Oslo (1985), Stockholm (1986), Dusseldorf (1987), and Paris (1989).

Stockholm was livened up by controversy in our having white South Africans speak at the conference.  Ultra-liberal Sweden assumed that all SA whites were racist.  Never mind that Leon Louw, president of the Free Market Foundation of Southern Africa in Johannesburg, and his wife Frances Kendall, were top anti-apartheid activists.  It took endorsements from Winnie Mandela and Bishop Tutu to get the Swedish government to admit the Louws into the country.  Then we got picketed by the Communist Youth League!

In 1988, Frances & Leon organized the LI World Conference in neighbouring Swaziland, a safe haven (although there were a handful of obvious South African police spies).  We had 12 members of the still-banned ANC, who were quite open to libertarian ideas.  Frances had published a non-fiction best-seller South Africa: The Solution, which proposed a Swiss-style cantonal system (and libertarian ideas) to diffuse hostility between the various racial and tribal groups in the country.  Their work, and the help of contacts made at the previous Stockholm conference, led them to be formally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988, 89, and 91 – an honour which goes to only about 10 people each year).