Matt Kibbe attends a Grateful Dead show and explains what makes this iconic band so quintessentially American. The music, the community, and the legacy of the Grateful Dead are a metaphor for liberty and the beautiful chaos that emerges when people are free to work together and create what they’re passionate about.
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Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialog. Feel free to leave a comment!
Matt Kibbe
Matt Kibbe is President at Free the People, an educational foundation using video storytelling to turn on the next generation to the values of personal liberty and peaceful cooperation. He is also co-founder and partner at Fight the Power Productions, a video and strategic communications company. Kibbe is the host of BlazeTV’s Kibbe on Liberty, a popular podcast that insists that you think for yourself.
Dubbed “the scribe” by the New York Daily News, Kibbe is the author three books, most recently the #2 New York Times bestseller Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto.
He was senior advisor for a Rand Paul Presidential Super PAC in 2016, and later co-founded AlternativePAC to promote libertarian values.
In 2004 Kibbe founded FreedomWorks, a national grassroots advocacy organization, and served as President until his departure in 2015. Steve Forbes said: “Kibbe has been to FreedomWorks what Steve Jobs was to Apple.”
An economist by training, Kibbe did graduate work at George Mason University and received his B.A. from Grove City College. He serves at the whim of his awesome wife Terry, and their three objectivist cats, Roark, Ragnar and Rearden. Kibbe is a fanatical DeadHead, drinker of craft beer and whisky, and collector of obscure books on Austrian economics.
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Nice comments about the Dead. Yeah there was/is a free flowing anarchism emanating from the band but as individuals I doubt they were/are aware of that in a conscious conceptual way. I believe they are pretty much lefty Democrats who haven’t made the connection between the cultural freedom they characterize and its economic corollary – a truly free market.
The Grateful Dead and Kibbe trying to put lipstick on the gratingly extremist society of the anarcho-capitalist pig movement.
Anarcho-capitalism swings.
What about all the people dead of drug overdoses?
What about them? Legal drugs would alleviate most of that as knowledge of quality control and dosage amount would be readily available.
No music!
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