Dale Franks
Dale Franks (1964- ) is an American author; radio personality; and political, military and economic affairs analyst. Currently, he a publisher and editor of the online political journal The New Libertarian[1], as well as an editor of the popular weblog, QandO [2]. He also presents a weekly internet podcast, Observations, under the aegis of the QandO Weblog[3]. All of these current projects are co-produced with Jonathon Henke and Bruce McQuain.
Franks served as a military police officer in the United States Air Force from 1984 to 1993, in variety of assignments both in the United States and Europe, where he also was assigned to the staff of the Headquarters of Allied Forces Central Europe. While it is not well known, the Air Force Security Forces, formerly known as Security Police also serve as the ground combat branch of the United States Air Force. As such, Franks is a graduate of the USAF Air Base Ground Defense (ABGD) course at Camp Bullis, TX, where he was also trained as an M60 Machine Gun Specialist, and Franks remained an ABGD Specialist for his entire tour of servce in the USAF.
From 1993 to 1996, Franks was the host of The Business Day, a daily, four-hour business and financial news program on KMNY Radio in Los Angeles. From 2002-2004, he was a contributing writer on military and international affairs for TechCentralStation [4].
Since 1996, in addition to broadcasting, writing, and speaking on various topics, Franks has also been a technical training instructor on a variety of computer software and technology subjects. He has also been involved with information technology as a web designer, programmer, and technologist, serving as the corporate knowledge specialist for Microsoft™ Outlook at Science Applications International Corporation, which was, at the time, the largest employee-owned corporation in the United States. Additionally, he is the author of a number of software user guides used for classroom training by one of Southern California's premier computer training and consulting firms. Franks has also written one book, SLACKERNOMICS: Basic Economics for People Who Find Economics Boring.
Since 2003, Franks has been one of the primary thinkers behind the creation of the political philosophy of Neolibertarianism (as originally developed by Jonathon Henke) and is credited with articulating the basic tenets of the modern Neolibertarian philosophy. In Franks' writings, he has defined the basic tenets of Neolibertarianism as follows:
- When given a set of policy choices,
- The choice that maximizes personal liberty is the best choice.
- The policy choice that offers the least amount of necessary government intervention or regulation is the best choice.
- The policy choice that provides rational, market-based incentives is the best choice.
- In foreign policy, neolibertartianism would be characterized by,
- A policy of diplomacy that promotes consensual government and human rights and opposes dictatorship.
- A policy of using US military force solely at the discretion of the US, but only in circumstances where American interests are directly affected.
Most recently, Franks has become an advocate of Network Neutrality, arguing that broadband Internet access providers should be completely deregulated, while, at the same time, regulating the network providers only in respect to treating them as Common Carriers, in much the same way as telephone service providers are.