Who Are We?

Description

          Le Québécois Libre is a libertarian webzine that was launched in February 1998 by Martin Masse, its current owner and publisher. It is published on the 15th of every month. It is not connected to any organization and receives no funding. All its contributors are volunteers. Martin Masse and Gilles Guénette, its editor, take care of the editing, the lay out, the correspondence and the coordination of the magazine.

          QL started out as a publication whose purpose was to offer a libertarian viewpoint on Quebec current affairs. Its name is a pun on the nationalist slogan "Québec libre": instead of promoting the sovereignty and freedom of an ever larger and tyrannical Quebec state, its goal was to promote the sovereignty and freedom of individual Quebecers.

          However, its network of contributors and its readership quickly grew to include French-speakers in Europe, as well as English-speakers in North America and elsewhere. It now has a North American and European section (distinguished by the respective green continent above the title of each article) and covers topics as varied as the origin and interests of its contributors. It remains the only real libertarian magazine produced anywhere in French, and its bilingual and multinational character allows it to reach readers all over the world. Its archives contain over 2500 pages, which makes it one of the largest Websites in Quebec in terms of content available for free.
 

Philosophy

          QL promotes libertarianism and classical liberalism, that is, a philosophy that sees individual liberty, the free market and voluntary cooperation as the basis for social relations. It is opposed to state intervention and to collectivist ideologies, of either the right or the left, whose aim is to force individuals to conform to their values and goals (see "What is libertarianism?").

          There exist several libertarian and classical liberal schools of thought (Austrian, Objectivist, neoclassical, minarchist and anarchist, etc.) whose methodologies and conclusions differ on several points. The one that we favour at QL (but not to the exclusion of others) is the Austrian school, whose main historical figures are Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard and Friedrich Hayek.

          QL’s mission is not to be a forum for debate among libertarians, but to offer a wide range of analyses and commentaries so as to educate and inform its readers who share the libertarian philosophy, and others interested in discovering new ideas and perspectives. In short, to broaden the scope of libertarian contribution to public debates and bring those ideas to a wider audience. Although all articles share this general libertarian or classical perspective, each author is responsible for his or her own particular opinions.
 

Past and present contributors

          Thibaut André, Paul Beaudry, Jayant Bhandari, Jean-Louis Caccomo, Scott Carpenter, Pierre Desrochers, Yvon Dionne, André Dorais, Bradley Doucet, Gérard Dréan, Francis Dumouchel, Hervé Duray, Bogdan C. Enache, Sean Gabb, Olivier Golinvaux, Roland Granier, Marc Grunert, Jasmin Guénette, Randy Hillier, Carl-Stéphane Huot, Philippe Jaunet, Claire Joly, Richard C.B. Johnsson, Mathieu Laine, Heidi Lange, Jean-Hugho Lapointe, Georges Lane, Bertrand Lemennicier, Chris Leithner, Pierre Lemieux, Clément Leroy, Carlo Lottieri, David MacRae, Ralph Maddocks, Stefan Metzeler, Christian Michel, Jean-Luc Migué, Mickaël Mithra, François Morin, Brigitte Pellerin, Yvan Petitclerc, Michel de Poncins, Erwan Quéinnec, François-René Rideau, Daniel M. Ryan, Pascal Salin, Christian Saucier, Chantal K. Saucier, Gennady Stolyarov II, Pierre-Luc Thibault, Harry Valentine, Christophe Vincent, Edward W. Younkins.
 

Submission guidelines and Readers’ Corner

          QL welcomes new contributors and invites its readers to send letters, comments and opinion pieces. Articles submitted for publication should be written in proper English and ideally discuss a topical issue from a libertarian perspective in an original way. Articles normally have between 800 and 1500 words (2 to 4 pages), although longer pieces will also be considered.

          All relevant letters commenting on QL articles (including critical ones from perspectives other than libertarian) will be published in our Readers’ Corner. Comments that are not for publication are also welcome and will be forwarded to contributors. All correspondence should be sent to ql@quebecoislibre.org.
 

Reprint policy

          We want articles published in QL to be read by as many people as possible. Those who wish to print articles directly from the Website and distribute them are encouraged to do so.

          For reprinting an article in another format or publication (i.e., another Website, a newspaper, magazine, book, etc.), our policy is that:

QL stats

          There are more than 2,500 pages on QL (which means almost as many articles). From 4,000 to 5,000 persons visit QL every day, with peaks of sometimes more than 6,000 visits. More than 1,200 people receive our update message for every new issue (to subscribe, send an e-mail to ql@quebecoislibre.org with "subscribe" in the subject).

          As many as 1,200 other Websites around the world link to QL or to one of its pages, which gives it an exceptionally high "page rank" on search engines like Google. A page rank determines the position of a given page among all those listed when doing a search with keywords. For example, in November 2006, the keywords "Canadian competitiveness" found a QL article in 18th place out of 1,760,000 pages listed; another one with "what is libertarianism" found a QL article in 9th place out of 930 pages listed; and a third with "France libéralisme" found a QL article in 2nd place out of 1,950,000 pages listed.