So here it is — halfway through December already! That friendship you started at last year’s ISFLC, FEE seminar, or IHS conference has miraculously lasted. You are happy, and maybe even in love. And now you need a gift for your liberty-loving partner.
It’s a problem. Odds are they already have all the t-shirts they want from Liberty Maniacs and all the books they want from Liberty Fund. You could just get them the kind of gift you’d get anyone else for the holidays. Or maybe a gift card? Or cash? But you’ve read your Mankiw, and you understand the importance of signaling [how much you value this person] by finding a really good gift.
Don’t despair! Learn Liberty and I are here for you with a list of 15 gifts — large and small — for the liberty lover you love.
- I have long been in love with these pencils, imprinted with Woody Guthrie’s famous line about his guitar: “This machine kills fascists.” If you want to be particularly cute, you could pair them with a copy of Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil,” for a one-two punch of pencil-themed gift-giving.
- Settlers of Catan: You cannot go wrong with a game whose tag line is “Trade. Build. Settle.”
- Ticket to Ride: Another board game, but this one lets you be a railroad magnate. Build railroads. Connect distant cities. Outwit your opponents. This is fun for fans of both Dagny Taggart and Cornelius Vanderbilt. You know they’re out there.
- Obvious State art prints: I love these witty and beautiful minimalist black and white prints of famous quotations. Many prints are available as posters and on a variety of other goods, like tote bags and mugs. It’s hard to go wrong here, but particular liberty-loving favorites include:
Frederick Douglass: “Once you learn to read you will be forever free.”
Oscar Wilde: “An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.”
Henry David Thoreau: “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.”
Henrik Ibsen: “The majority is never right.””] - Raw Milk Cheese — Smash the state! Have a nosh!
- I can think of very few liberty lovers whose hearts would not grow three sizes when presented with a nice bottle of small batch bourbon and a copy of Jeffrey Tucker’s book Bourbon for Breakfast. Be cute and throw in a box of cereal or an offer to cook the pancakes.
- The question is not, who will let you buy Lego Architecture Blocks for your favorite Objectivist? The question is, who will stop you?
- Trust me: no one else will have gotten your beloved a set of perfumes inspired by the legal writings of Antonin Scalia. Pick your favorite scent, your favorite court case, or your favorite phrase — check out the “Jiggery Pokery” scent — or go mad and buy them all. A portion of the profits will be donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which might be a problem. But another portion goes to the Trevor Project and to the National Center for Transgender Equality.
- A collection of libertarian movies is a much classier way to invite someone to Netflix and chill the cold winter days away. It is, per Vogue, cuffing season, after all.
- Why not prepare your partner for their annual battle with receipts, government forms, and personal ethical commitments with A World History of Tax Rebellions? Over 4300 years of revolts, protests, and wars ought to inspire anyone to look a little harder for deductions!
- There are few things that liberty-lovers love more than liberty. One of those things, though, is ranting about infringements on liberty. Give your favorite blogger a set of carefully labeled Grump Notebooks for ranting, raging, and plotting against the state.
- Every good browncoat needs a Mal Reynolds statue of her very own — or anything from Think Geek’s Firefly collection — except the Alliance Security Shirt. That one’s probably a mistake.
- Prepare your darling for holiday travel with anti-thermal imaging fashion. It won’t protect them from the TSA, but they’ll look like something from a dystopian sci-fi movie, and they’ll be much less visible to drones. What better way to say “I love you”?
- It’s hard to buy books for book lovers, but you could grab a lovely edition of something they already know and love. Here’s a collection of Orwell’s best, with a fancy new custom book jacket Or, if you’re trying to really impress them, grab a first edition and hope you never break up.
- 2016 has been a rough year all around, and 2017 is looking a little scary, too. A private island might just be the gift that keeps on giving. Don’t forget to write your constitution and work out a monetary system before you go!
