This message to The Privateer is posted exactly as it was written
Permission has been given to reproduce it here
The writer of this letter has been a Privateer subscriber for a number of years. He recently sent us the message that appears below. This is perhaps the greatest reward that we get for writing our newsletter and, dare we say it, that our subscribers get from reading it.
From H. V.
November 25, 2008
Dear Mr. Buckler:
Back in 2004, I carefully read your Issue Number 513, and for the first time in my seventy-six years I actually understood the political entity which governed me. At that very moment of realization it became obvious that the nation in which I was born had reached an irreversible tipping point. This had been a long time in the making, and, like most of my fellow citizens, I simply did not see it coming. But then I read your enlightening commentary.
It was the very evening I read your defining arguments about "statism", and my understanding of all that entailed, that I made the decision to remove myself from the ever-increasing control of that same state. As a "producer", rather than merely a "consumer", it was obvious from your remarks that I, and the way of life that I had always enjoyed, was in great peril. So I set about to find my own version of Ayn Rand's fictional "Gult's Gultch", while there was still time.
Had I not been so fortunate as to have been one of your subscribers, had I not read and taken to heart your admonitions as to where this continual drift toward statism would all lead, I would not have been able to extricate myself (and my assets ... at least what few there were) from the financial disaster that followed just a mere four years later. Thanks in large part to you, I was able to dispose of my real estate holdings, redeem my hedge and money market funds and sell off my equity positions well before the Wall Street debacle that took place almost four years to the day after reading your prognosis of the terminal illness from which my country was suffering.
I will be forever grateful, sir, for your clear, concise and thought-provoking analysis. I only wish that I possessed greater eloquence with which to convey the depth of my appreciation for your efforts on my behalf and that of your subscribers.
Yours very truly
El Hombre Viejo