Angela Keaton, Antiwar.com Development Director and Antiwar Radio producer, discusses the quarterly fund drive and reminds us how Antiwar.com remains vigilant 24/7 on the depredations of the state, especially its foreign policy. Individual donations average 45 dollars, so every little bit helps. Antiwar.com accepts credit cards, Paypal, XIPWIRE, old cars, gold, silver and, apparently, goats?!
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
Now we go to this show's producer and AntiWar.com's development director, Angela Keaton.
Welcome back to the show, Angela.
How are you doing?
Oh, glad to be back, Scott.
And let me tell you, one of the reasons why I'm back is to talk about given how much everyone in the audience just loves Anti-War Radio, the important thing to do is to keep it on the air.
And I've got a million ways of how you can help do that.
Because it's that time again.
It's our quarterly pledge drive.
AntiWar.com runs a pretty lean ship.
We manage our operating budget.
It stays right around half a million dollars every year.
Things have been shaking up a little bit.
Remember, angel donors have been hit hard by the Ben Bernank.
Yeah.
Yes, they've been.
Even, yes, even people who've earned their money honestly.
And remember, there are many rich who have earned their money honestly and without too much help from the state.
So they too are being, of course, ravaged by the fantastic, amazing policies of the smartest men in America, the men who could do no wrong, the men from Harvard, have placed upon us.
The men with all the power.
And all the answers, really.
I mean, my God, if I knew I could be that much of a Simpleton and be a Timothy Geithner, I would have worked less hard in school.
Yeah, there you go.
In fact, what's that?
The Iron Law of the scum rise to the top somehow or something?
Didn't Mises write a whole book about that?
You know, it's really the victory of mediocrity.
It's really, we're living in a Ryan Rand dystopia at the moment.
It's like a comedic Rand dystopia.
If Rand had more of a sense of humor and more of a sense of irony, she would have perfectly captured what's happening.
But let me tell you what's happening a little bit in antiwar.com.
Well, but wait, I mean, that's important, that's important, though, to say.
I think it's important that you mention that.
You know, we understand that everybody's suffering here.
We're not, you know, naive about the situation that people are in.
It's just that we're asking you all to notice that we're in the same one.
We're in the same one, but we don't need that much help.
We just need a lot of different people helping out.
Our average donations are $45 each, not a big, we don't ask for big amounts.
Each person, you know, you get 45, think about it, for $45, $50 a quarter, you get 24-7 foreign policy news.
And we, I mean, antiwar.com literally does not sleep.
There's always someone doing something.
The staff is a machine.
Someone once asked me what is it like to work at antiwar.com, particularly under Eric Garrison.
It's like working at Andy Warhol's factory, not .com to production of art, in this case foreign policy news for you.
So it's an amazing, intense machine, but we have to fuel it a little bit, and you're getting your best bang for your buck.
We're one of the largest libertarian, well, I know libertarian organization might not be the right way to describe us, but we're one of the largest libertarian-operated organizations, and we have one of the smallest budgets.
We've kept everything really, really lean so that we can keep going regardless of what happens next.
Of course, God knows we do live in a situation where journalists are under attack.
People are, I mean, antiwar activists are being spied upon.
We're in different, not dangerous, but difficult times, but we're up for the challenge, and we're not going anywhere.
Antiwar.com will be the last thing of the libertarian movement that collapses if they come and get us.
Right on.
I like the sound of that.
When they come for me, I'll be sitting on my desk with a gun in my hand wearing a bulletproof vest.
It's like that Catch-22 song.
The reason why you and I can work on this intensity is because we very, very much are committed to keeping, I mean, we're basically keeping antiwar.com your best source for foreign policy news.
The URL was brought in 1995, and it's libertarians who are the best and the strongest on this issue, as you've pointed out many times.
I want to focus on that a little bit, too.
You're right, because that's what this is all about, is the obsession.
We could all, possibly at least, get real jobs and make real livings, but instead we're doing this because this is what's most important to all of us.
It absolutely is the most important.
It's the most important issue.
Of all the things the state does, this absolutely, by far, is the most evil, and this is the thing that must be stopped daily.
As one of my old buddies from college libertarians says, and he still says this 20 years later, we must fight the state at every level and every way, every day.
Right, and this is their highest level.
This is, as you say, war is the biggest government program.
It becomes, as Randolph Bourne said, the focus of all the rest of everybody's activities once the state is involved.
It's the most destructive to our financial health, to our liberty.
It's the most important thing.
I mean, after all, we consider ourselves, and I think I mentioned this once, we consider ourselves a moral people, and a lot of people think of this still as a Christian country.
It takes a great pair of stones to consider ourselves a God-informed country when we're out there killing innocent men, women, and children every day.
That's what I'm saying.
All right, so now that's the why.
Let's get to the how.
If people look at antiwar.com/donate, how many different ways can they find where you've made it easy for them to chip in whatever they can?
Whatever you can, and we have a million different ways on that site.
We have your ordinary credit cards.
We can run all your typical normal credit cards, American Express, Discover, Visa, MasterCard.
We have PayPal.
For those who still want to use PayPal, and I understand there's some political controversy there, so as an alternative, we also have Zipwire, which is X-I-P-W-I-R-E, and if you need more information on that, you can call me.
There's monthly ways of donating, and we can, of course, take money directly from your checking account, from your debit card, from your credit card.
Monthly donations, of course, are sustaining.
They really help us budget and keep us on track for the year.
It gives us a sense of how much we're going to have and how much we can reasonably do, which we do a lot, and we have done a lot, especially in 2010.
It was an amazing year for us.
If you're interested in giving up an old car, we have a service that will take your used car.
You can donate that to us.
You can look at...
Really?
Yes, we do.
We have that.
Just like Goodwill or whatever?
Yes, just like Goodwill.
You can donate your old crappy car to antiwar.com.
All right, all you with the Buick up on blocks in your backyard, you know who you are.
Yes, exactly.
I know some of you are broadcasting from it.
I know who some of you are, too.
We have also...
You can also leave us, mention us in your will.
I mean, none of us listening are planning to die any time soon.
However, feel free to leave the Randolph Warren Institute, mention that in your will.
We can take that.
We can take just about anything, any form, gold, silver, whatever, you know, goats, grass, cash, all of it, we take it.
And we can take it in different forms in a way that won't offend any of your political sensibilities because we understand that given the situation last year with the attitudes towards WikiLeaks, we want to stay on top of how people feel about the current situation.
Right.
Well, I guess...
I mean, we used to have a thing where you could pay us through Amazon.
Is that right?
Yes.
But that is no longer the case because antiwar.com as an organization is boycotting amazon.com, right?
Yeah.
Well, you know, there's a...
Daniel Ellsberg publicly stated that we can't...
I mean, and of course I realize this is a tricky issue, but we can't reward companies for giving in to the state.
Right.
Absolutely.
And, you know, every one of those companies, the credit card companies and PayPal, all of them said, well, the State Department said what WikiLeaks is doing is illegal.
Yeah, right.
Like you don't have lawyers, you can't read the First Amendment with your own eyes.
Like you never heard a case law in the United States of America where it is not illegal to publish classified information.
Give us a break, you know.
And for them to hide behind that phony excuse that the executive branch said so is, well, boycottable.
It is, but of course it also reminds us who's really in charge.
So at antiwar.com/donate, people, there are phone numbers, there are snail mail addresses, there's every kind of e-gold or recurring donations, all different kinds, every way in the world except through amazon.com.
You can donate to antiwar.com.
We really need your help.
Thank you, Angela.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, everybody.
That's Angela Keaton.
323-512-7095 for questions about donating.
