Or why decentralized forms of human organization will displace top – down hierarchies.
What I learned from 43 years of activism. Why I wrote this memoir.
When I originally became active politically I assumed others agreed with
me on a common goal. For me it was very clear. Get government out of
our lives. Affirm the Mission of the Declaration of Independence.
I was naïve, I confess it openly.
I assumed once freedom was firmly established we would fold up the then
empty tents called political parties and go home to do something more
productive. I was wrong. I discovered most people in the Movement did
not connect words to reality. As time went on other alarming
realizations came to light.
Disturbingly, few saw the LP as a strategic tool to be used to return
power to individuals and then discarded. They had bought into the false
assumptions shared by those who believe government is more than a means
for a free people to handle a few commonly useful services. Many
expressed the idea government, and not people, was sovereign.
To my horror, I confronted the expectation of loyalty to the
organization. It was clearly the equivalent to pledging fealty to your
plumber's helper, a touchy subject.
Other individuals focused on single issues. Gaining easier access to
guns, pot, ending cultural standards for sexual behavior, all of these
motivations were present. All other issues were irrelevant to these
individuals, to be deep sixed if they proved bothersome.
“Freedom” for many involved perpetuating some benefit accrued through
use of government. An example of this is the nearly universal hostility
to ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment. Affirming previous injustice as
“freedom” was all too common. This was not limited to the Libertarian
Party.
As time went on the understanding of a term previously heard but dismissed finally sunk in. Psychopathy. It eventually dawned on me some people were more different than they appeared on the surface.
It was a clear case of Arrested Paradigm.
When this became clear to me I left and joined the Republicans. I began
researching how a 'real' political or community organization looked from
the inside. It was instructive.
This is a brief outline of what I discovered and finally my conclusions with suggestions on how to achieve the goal of freedom.
In September of 1955 I received my first political qua philosophical
input a friend/cousin who was then 24. He and I were sitting in the back
yard when he told me the story of Howard Roark from the Fountain Head.
He did not tell me the names, or I did not remember. He told me about
the integrity of living your life for your own purposes. It was, he
said, a work of art which should reflect all you want to say about
yourself. It should be lived, he said, with integrity. “Yours to live,
yours to give.” His name was James Dean. It was the last time I saw him
but everything he said stuck with me.
The history of the Freedom Movement as it exists today.
The wave of activism which resulted in the Goldwater Campaign began with
folks, mostly women, going door to door selling cheap paperback books.
Pausing on the doorstep, these foot soldiers for freedom provided
information to ordinary Americans which resulted in the grass roots
activism which became the modern Conservative Movement.
The Goldwater Movement was, arguably, the first spontaneous grass roots moment.
Women, active in politics, was a radical concept in the Western world.
Alice Paul, following in the footsteps of Lucretia Mott, Quaker,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony and a host of others,
finally achieved for women the right to vote in America with the passage
of the 19th Amendment, ratified on August 18, 1920.
Women went on to reshape American politics from every political
viewpoint. The Republican Party, which had sponsored suffrage, was a
natural haven for women and in 1938 the growing number of Republican
Women's Clubs were gathered in to become the National Federation of
Republican Women, still the largest political organization in the world.
Women were very much involved in the growing Conservative Movement
forged by Goldwater, but the meaning of Conservative was about to change
sharply under the influence of two men whose names today are synonymous
with the word.
Neither Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley, Jr.,
were Conservatives. Instead they rebranded the word to mean Big
Government, corporate-friendly, make war for profit, and love your
friendly, fascist state. While using the rhetoric both men associated
the word, by usage, with a very different agenda
When the first grass roots revolution was taking place I was sneaking
books from my parents cache and then into Goldwater Headquarters and
continuing my own efforts to get people to read Conscience of a
Conservative – or at least a piece of literature. No one takes you
seriously when you are under 10 years old. I did collect some candy
bars, however.
The surge of support for Goldwater, enthusiasm for the writing of Ayn
Rand, fractured on the frustrations of Vietnam. Older efforts continued
their work, the Liberty Amendment, the brain child of Willis Stone, promised hope of ending the Income tax, the Foundation for Economic Education, 1946 by Leonard E. Read, provided education on the free market. The work of Rose Wilder Lane and the Reverend James W. Fifield of the First Congregationalist Church of Los Angeles, continued to impact minds.
I picked up a copy of Atlas Shrugged and read it, riveted, around 1962.
My mother later said she seriously considered forbidding my reading –
but this would have conflicted with the family principle on self
education, a principle in place since at least the early 1800s.
The John Birch Society withstood a serious take over attempt from
Buckley in the 60s at the same time Reagan was beginning the run up to
his campaign for the Governorship of California.
ARTICLE NOW BEING WRITTEN – Take over of the Environmental Movement by
elements including George H. W. Bush.
On August 15, 1971 President Richard Nixon went on live television and
announced to the Nation his intention to institute Wage and Price
Controls.
At that moment people across the country dropped their registration as Republicans. David Nolan,
the former YAF member, MIT graduate, and Goldwater supporter, had just
written an article, "The Case for a Libertarian Political Party,”for the
Individualist, a libertarian oriented magazine.
In New York an attorney named Ed Clark
called his wife, Alicia Cabo Clark, to vent his rage. Alicia, the
daughter of a former Mexican Senator and the CEO of a multinational
corporation, sympathized. One of the things that had brought them
together was their shared belief in the ideas of freedom. The Clarks
also left the Republican Party. Clark would become the third Libertarian
candidate for President and Alicia would eventually serve as National
Chairman.
The Libertarian Party was founded in David and Susan Nolan's living room
in Denver, Colorado on December 11th, 1971.
The article written by Nolan had called for the creation of a political
party, not primarily to elect candidates, but to become a voice for the
unadulterated ideas of individual freedom. Stated this way, starting a
political party seemed like a good idea.
Wage and Price Controls would prove to be an absolute failure. The
controls did not stem inflation and yet, with the logic of other
government programs, continued to be used as a tool until 1980.
For those who had hoped to move toward individual freedom it was a time
of devastation. I, for one, had not heard of the Libertarian Party until
after I read, “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World,” by Harry Brown,
published in 1973. I was pregnant with my third child and worried about
the world I would leave them. The growth of government, the steady
losses of our rights, were hard to contemplate. The LP came like a shock
of new hope.
Similar scenes played out all over America as young people who had
worked feverishly for Goldwater and burned their draft cards as members
of the Libertarian Caucus of Young Americans for Freedom, began to
coalesce into a group.
This was the second incidence of spontaneous grass roots action
resulting in a wave of political action in opposition to the Corporate
Group.
As Nixon settled into a grumpy retirement in Yorba Linda, California on
August 8, 1974, the newly fledged Libertarian Party was experiencing a
surge of growth and excitement along with internecine warfare. About
that time I heard Toni Nathan on the radio. I sat there, crying and
holding my baby daughter. Later that day I joined the LP.
The LP began as an organization that looked to individuals to take
action themselves in accordance with their inherent, natural, rights,
which pre-exist all government. This was the mission statement of the
Declaration of Independence. As the structure of the organization
congealed a conflict of visions began, pitting the top down style of
traditional American political parties with the spontaneous, local
organizing which characterized its first several years. The lack of
formal structure and innovation fired ever more activism, a reprise of
the Goldwater Movement.
Into this mix came a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, back in his
hometown of Los Angeles and making his way as a financial adviser.
His name was Edward H. Crane, III. Crane was elected Southern California
Vice-Chairman for the Libertarian Party of California. While doing
research for this memoir I could find not one instance of local
organizing or activism carried out by Ed Crane while serving in that
capacity.
Crane was intent on moving up in the hierarchy of the Libertarian Party.
To do that he needed to ensure one happened. A newly fledged financial
planner, he came out of the office of Southern California Vice Chairman
of the Libertarian Party of California and with the help of the man
acknowledged to be the best floor manager for campaigns in recent
history, John Hix, took the office of Chairman of the Libertarian Party
at the Dallas Convention in 1974.
Crane's personal habits say a lot about who he is.
I was sitting on the floor with my daughters, Dawn and Ayn, ages 2 and
1, celebrating our success in qualifying Roger MacBride as the LP
nominee for President in 1975 and fell into conversation with a woman
sitting next to me. Her name was Maureen, as I remember. Maureen told me
about her experiences in working for the LP and with Ed Crane. She said
women were scheduled to come over to the 'office' every hour. The first
half hour was spent typing. The second half hour in bed with Ed. As she
left, the next woman was arriving.
Nothing I later observed about Crane from that date to this caused me to doubt her honesty.
Beware those ambitious for fame, glory and sex and willing to deceive to
achieve. They may be psychopaths.
Over the next years, under the direct management of Ed Crane, the
Libertarian Party was converted into a top down organization, losing the
networking, initiative, and innovation at the local level, which had
provided its power. It would still retain its 'name brand power,'
however, a value worth controlling.
One of the early respected leaders of the Libertarian Party was Roger MacBride.
MacBride was the Elector from Vermont who bolted the GOP to cast his
electoral vote for John Hospers in December of 1972. Roger, the adopted
grandson and heir of Rose Wilder Lane, was well to do.
At first Crane sucked up shamelessly to Roger MacBride, according to
those who were positioned to observe them. Then, after Roger introduced
him to Charles and David Koch he transferred his allegiance. Talk of a
think tank began almost immediately, rolling rapidly into fruition.
Control of the formal structure of the Libertarian Party became the
focus where before it had been local activism.
Roger's presidential campaign in 1976 had been very good for local activism.
William Hunscher, a successful entrepreneur and close friend of Roger
MacBride's declared as a candidate for the Libertarian presidential
nomination in 1978. Hunscher eventually spent a sizable chunk of money
seeking the nomination, pledging to run a campaign focusing on
encouraging local activism. Crane persuaded Ed Clark, Chief Legal
Counsel for Arco, to run against Hunscher. Ed, highly respected for his
good character, was a popular choice for those who had known and worked
with him.
Hunscher was new to the LP and was far from being a perfect candidate.
But he pledged to run full time for 18 months, a promise which weighed
with activists.
To say it was a campaign of dirty tricks and payoffs understates the
case. Crane, as Chairman of the LP used the resources of the LP for
Clark, treating it as his personal property. In every way possible power
was centralized under Crane.
The National organization, states and local groups, had a working
arrangement whereby inquiries and donors were shared. The list of donors
and inquiries were sent to National. National was to do the same. It
soon became obvious this was not happening.
I had been elected Southern California Vice Chairman and noticed the
names of large donors did not seem to be included on lists coming from
the Headquarters in DC. I had a longish conversation with one woman,
very well to do, who had lived nearby my family home while she and her
husband were at UCLA. She had been told by the HQ, “there is no active
organization in Los Angeles,” so she and other big donors, the names
helpfully supplied to them by National, began organizing their own
events. She was delighted to find us, but puzzled. For me the meeting
was very illuminating.
Los Angeles was one of the largest local organizations, comprising seven
local groups. This was not an oversight and explained many things which
previously puzzled me.
Deviousness, I discovered, was the stock and trade of what we came to
call the Crane Machine. To a person they reflected an attitude of
arrogance, entitlement, and superiority entirely unsupported by their
performance.
The Crane Group also issued White Papers for the Clark Campaign which
repositioned Clark as a “Low Tax Liberal” while Ronald Reagan was
explicitly using the rhetoric of freedom, rhetoric which Americans were
hungry to hear, eager to believe. Using the rhetoric of freedom which
originated in the Libertarian Movement, Ronald Reagan won the
presidency, beginning the ongoing process of converting America to a
fascist state while the Libertarian Party's Presidential Campaign said
nothing much worth remembering.
Crane was responsible for the positioning of the Clark Campaign. He has never explained himself.
Reagan was personally charming, kind, charismatic. I first became aware
of him through comments from my Father in 1962. I believe they met
through the Republican discussion group my father ran at UCLA for many
years. Father was asked to go to Sacramento with Reagan as governor and
again to Washington when Ronnie was elected President. Father refused.
Reagan was not a Conservative. What happened to America happened to
California during Reagan's two terms there as Governor. In 1975 United
Republicans of California, UROC, had begged Americans not to support
Ronnie if he ran for president or vice-president. No one listened. Here
is the UROC Resolution. I rekeyed the last copy so you can get it online.
The Clark White Papers were issued to the media. Their message went
along with the 'low tax liberal' positioning adopted by Ed Crane.
Activists found it impossible to obtain copies. My own efforts to read
them myself continued until 1984. I later learned from Bob Hunt, a long
time Libertarian who lived and lives in DC, that piles of White Papers
were still in their store room as late as 1999.
Even with David Koch on the ticket, Koch personally contributed
millions, the 'big win' in votes or respect for the ideas of freedom
promised by the Crane Machine died an ugly death, leaving the Clark
Campaign in debt. Crane then abandoned the candidate leaving Ed and
Alicia Clark to pay off the debt themselves.
The Kochs were not pleased either. Millions had been expended in large
salaries, media, and for fundraising efforts which failed to break even.
“Alternative 80,” a 'fundraiser' held which was to be, in effect, an
early Money Bomb, both raising money and exciting mainstream interest,
fizzled. The event linked events across the country which viewed the
entertainment taking place at the Century City Hotel in the late summer,
1980. Phones were ready to receive the calls of eager donors. Calls did
come in – but not enough for the event to break even.
I learned that even billionaires have limits in the elevator after the
event. The doors opened and as I got in I recognized Ed Crane being
quiet as Charles Koch expressed his unhappiness with the money spent,
his commentary unimpeded by my rapt attention.
A subset of the Craniacs, organizing under Howie Rich, would become
active in another deceptive and covert enterprise in the early 90s aimed
at suborning the electoral process.
The names of contributors would be recycled into the Cato Institute. The
only thing that surprised me was the cooperation Crane was receiving
from Murray Rothbard, who was named to the Cato Board of Directors.
Rothbard was the only real Libertarian involved in Cato from my
perspective. However, Murray was fey the way only a Jewish academic can
be. He adored the mock danger of political battles but for the most part
lived in the cerebral world of economic theory. After Ludwig von Mises
Murray was The Free Market economist, clearly enunciating, despite his
love of argument, the verities of a real free market.
About that time I sent a button to Crane at the Cato HQ in DC.On it was
"Question All Authority (Except Mine)
I believed then, and now, when government is involved there is no free
market. A free market defends our inherent rights as individuals by
allowing each a 'Yes' to what we want and a 'No' to unacceptable
choices. Where individuals are denied the exercise of their right to
choose no free market can respond to provide the desired choices and
there is no freedom, only privilege.
It was Rothbard's insistence on this position which, it was generally
believed, caused him to be ousted from the Cato Board of Directors in
early 1981. In the public eye he was replaced, as a spokesman for the
“Free Market' by Milton Friedman. Friedman was no proponent of the free
market, but a monetarist. Aaron Director, known for his integration of
law and economics, married to Milton's sister, referred to Milton as,
“his New Deal brother-in-law,” according to Butler Shaffer who knew
Director well. Asked his opinion of Friedman on the free market Butler
agreed, “as you cannot be a little bit pregnant so you cannot suggest
withholding tax and call yourself an advocate of the free market.”
The Koch brothers were the major funders of Cato from its founding on.
It was at the insistence of Charles Koch that Rothbard was thrown off
the Board of Directors and denied compensation. By so doing the best
defender of the free market was marginalized. The rebranding of the
word, “Free Market,” followed.
Koch Industries advocated not free markets but markets manipulated to
disallow choices which would not profit them and enforce choices which
would. Koch Industries today profits from the Corporate War in Iraq with
Halliburton as it did in Vietnam with Halliburton during the Vietnam
Conflict.
One of the first acts of the Bush Administration in 2001 was to quash
the nearly 400 major EPA violations enforced against Koch Industries.
Along with Phillips and TRW, Koch Industries shares a history of
repeatedly violating workplace and environmental laws while being
numbered among the nation's largest government contractors, according to
Holding Corporations Accountable. The article on the Holding site
originally appeared as US: Unjust Rewards,
by Ken Silverstein, in Mother Jones, May 1st, 2002. According to the
article, “the three corporations received a combined total of $10.4
billion in federal business-at the same time that regulatory agencies
and federal courts were citing the companies for jeopardizing the safety
of their employees, polluting the nation's air and water, and even
defrauding the government.”
In August of 1996 two teenagers, Danielle Smalley and Jason Stone, both
17, were burned nearly beyond recognition in an explosion caused by the
petroleum giant. “Koch officials conceded in court that corrosion
control had been inadequate and that the company had not effectively
distributed information to the public on how to recognize and respond to
a pipeline leak,” the statement appearing on the site of the attorney
who represented the grieving family, Jim Arnold Associates.
The deaths resulted in an award of “$296 million, the largest award for
actual damages in a wrongful-death case in the nation's history. Koch
appealed, then settled with Smalley.” The sum collected was between 25
and 30 million, which the family used to set up a foundation in their
daughter's memory.
Rebranding is an obvious ploy once it is pointed out. The question must
be posed to old timers in the movement as to why they did not speak out
when the process was going on. Two other examples of rebranding which
still haunt us are 'privatization' and 'deregulation.'
To privatize, used correctly, would be to return control to individuals.
The correct word in this context is 'corporatize,' or 'converting the
rights of individuals into commodified units, allowing these rights to
be sold by government to corporations. This was true of garbage pickup,
where your garbage became such a commodity in the 1970s. It is true of
the toll roads in Texas today.
Deregulation removed limitations on the actions of entities who had
abused the power they accrued through prior relations with government
and in violation of both statute and common law. And example of this is
Standard Oil, which profited from outright violent criminal behavior in
establishing an effective lock on the market of oil. Other examples
include power companies which received government subsidies in producing
power generation or had those resources transferred to them and were
classified by statute as 'semi-governmental entities' and excused from
responsibility for their actions.
The cancellation or limitation
of liability is an intolerable interference with the market. Any
limitation of liability makes a free market impossible.
Instead of regulating industries the solution was to ensure the legal
system could assert accountability. In allowing corporations to exist
the problem created with unequal parties in disputes was bound to occur,
and did.
The 80's saw the continued conversion the ideas of Libertarianism to the
use of ever bigger government and ever fatter corporations. The
redefinitions of words, including 'free market, now installed in
NeoConservatism as well, took place through the coordinated work of Ed
Crane, Cato, and an array of think tanks and journalists who
consistently used, and use, the words in their converted form.
Since most people pick up definitions by usage much of this would have been accidental.
Cato's assault on the Libertarian Party began when Alicia Clark was
elected National Chairman in 1981. Alicia was a woman and had just
experienced the ugliness of Crane's manipulations during her husband's
campaign. The Crane Machine found a candidate for Chairman to oppose
Alicia. He lost.
The Crane Machine immediately went into overdrive. The then Executive
Director was ignoring orders from Alicia and spending hours on the phone
with Crane, who was still in San Francisco at the time. Alicia fired
him and changed the locks on the office, always a woman of decision.
At the moment Crane did not control the LP the Crane Machine began an
overt drive to take Alicia out of office. It failed.
At the next presidential nominating convention the abrupt withdrawal of
unopposed candidate Gene Burns, well known talk show host, just months
before the nominating convention brought two candidates into the field.
David Bergland had been the VP candidate for Roger MacBride in 1976.
Earl Ravanel, the candidate fielded by Crane, was viewed as Crane's bid
to rerun the Clark Campaign with Crane in control.
Crane and Ravenal lost. Crane and his cohort walked out, despite their
promises to heal previous disagreements and work for the winning
candidate. Immediately afterward attempts to destroy the LP began. Calls
were made to valuable activists across the country urging them to leave
the LP and reregister Republican. I received several such calls from
John Fund who I had known since 1980.
After nearly a full decade the cadre of people around Crane, which was
pretty much unchanged since their exit from the New York Convention in
1983, acquired a new toy. That was an organization the Koch Brothers had
not been able to use effectively, the Citizens for Congressional
Reform.
Acquiring this not for profit spawned an incredible proliferation of
identical not-for-profit organizations, each dedicated to doing pretty
much the same thing. Visually, their sites appeared to have been created
by the same web designers. Each used a stealth approach to electoral
politics, employing lavish rhetoric to justify using the initiative
process to change the laws in states where this was allowed. This fit in
exactly with the original game plan of the Crane Machine. Crane had
always viewed local activists as an obstacle to action within the LP
unless those acting locally were directly under his control.
In employing this growing collection of nonprofits Howie extended this
approach to Americans as a whole. The first of these organizations, U.
S. Term Limits, focused on limiting the number of terms for any elected
legislator. It was followed by initiatives promoting an end to eminent
domain, school choice, and spending caps by government and eventually
measures such as legislation relating to end of life issues raised by
the Terry Schrivo Case.
Many individuals in various states had worked for this kind of measure;
the problem was not the use of the initiative process. The initiative
was introduced by the Populists to allow local people to change
government, making it responsive to their needs. The problem was who was
using the tool.
The initiatives themselves did not reflect the will of those who had to
live with the resulting law. Even more egregiously, the initiatives were
deceptively run as 'grass roots' efforts to potential donors outside
the state when they lacked support within the state. No minds were
changed. No freedom happened. No body of local expertise or enhanced
organization remained in Howie Group's wake.
It was a reprise of the Crane – Clark Campaign, this time run at a
profit. Unused funds were, according to investigative journalists,
transferred into the accounts of those who Crane and Howie had known and
worked with since the 70s. At best the strategy came with the
underscore, “Fool them into freedom.” But there was worse.
Worse than the misuse of the Initiative process was use of this tool for
the profit of corporate outsiders to diminish control by local people.
In the original vision of American government the Founders had assumed
that local towns and the people who lived in them would make their own
rules in how they structured their lives. This could be seen as a
multitude of small experiments in living, allowing for a learning curve,
helping a free people to reduce conflict as they learned to live
outside of a traditional hierarchy imposed from the outside.
In some cases the Howie Machine would outspend local activists six to
one to get their measures passed into law. Eventually the left noticed
through the research done by Hart Williams. William's work spawned a nonprofit which followed Howie's Group to some extent, focusing on the Ballot Fraud issue.
Howie's Group learned some things from their encounter with Williams and
transparency. They now all blog.
During the time, 1990 – 2007, the Howie Business Plan was revving up
there was another eruption of frustration which would reprise the early
days of both the Goldwater Movement and the Libertarian Party. It
started on Larry King Live with an interview of Ross Perot.
The next day people were opening campaign headquarters across the
country. The leading expert in third party ballot drives, a Libertarian
named Richard Winger, who runs Ballot Access News,
was found and flown into the brand new Perot HQ in Texas. It could have
been a revolution - but at the very least the people were flexing their
muscles, finding ways to cooperate in pursuit of a common goal.
The Perot Movement was the third spontaneous political grass roots moment in the 20th Century. It resulted in the Reform Party.
Which brings us to the very unexpected outcome of Ron Paul's decision to
run for president again and the eruption of the Ron Paul R3VOLution,
the first grass roots action of the 21st Century.
Congressman and physician, Ron Paul had been around the Freedom Movement
since the 1970s. His run for president as the LP candidate in 1988 was
largely ignored by the public. After the 1988 campaign Paul returned to
the Republican Party and again ran for Congress successfully. His
campaign manager, Penny Langford, continued to run the Paul reelection
efforts. As she describes it, these are highly decentralized and grass
roots driven themselves. Ron, according to Penny, was never very
involved in campaigning.
When Paul announced his candidacy at the Free State Project most old
time activists doubted he would do more than use the opportunity to
speak out on the standard Libertarian issues. They were half right. Ron
was talking about the same issues. But now people were listening because
of the Desperation Factor.
In any population 5% of the people will try new things, ideas, products,
tools, with little resistance. These are first adopters. 15% will adopt
a new approach, technology, idea, tool, if they are desperate for a
solution to their immediate problem. 60% of the population will adopt as
soon as it looks like everyone else is doing it or if someone they
perceive as high status is using the new thing. We call them Ballast.
The last 20% will die before they adopt something new. We call them Dead
Men Walking.
From the first debate on the divergence between the official Ron Paul Campaign and the Ron Paul R3VOLution, so named by Ernie Hancock, owner of Freedom's Phoenix
and a long time Libertarian, was palpable. Ernie began putting up bill
boards promoting Ron's candidacy in February, 2007, even before the
official declaration took place.
As in the early days of the Goldwater Movement, the Libertarian Party,
and the Perot Campaign, the ones moving the action were volunteers. It
was volunteers who hammered the Ron Paul HQ, insisting a check be cut so
Ron could participate in the GOP debate in South Carolina. The fuel in
the engine was always volunteers.
Many became active for the first time in their lives, leaving their jobs
to work full time and unpaid for the candidacy of Ron Paul.
The Internet became the nexus point, allowing individual initiative and
innovation to be multiplied many times over. Adoption of strategies
became seemingly instantaneous, allowing a group of people who had never
met to change outcomes which previously would have been impossible to
achieve.
Media, unwilling to cover Paul experienced reports from their
advertisers, concerned over the calls coming in to them from Ron Paul
supporters threatening to boycott their products. Market pressures
worked.
The power of the Ron Paul R3VOLution continued to build until Paul
stopped campaigning. Looking for an outlet for frustrated energy other
projects came into form. One of these was the Tea Parties, which may
have been planned as a means for redirecting the energies of the grass
roots into the GOP. If that was the intention it has not worked.
The Tea Party Movement was produced by the Ron Paul R3VOLution and the
frustration all of us experience when no clear goals can be identified
and we are facing disaster. But while the activities taken up were
similar to those of the campaign they were, in effect, an after school
program with rhetoric and signs and a tee-shirt. The people, hungry for
real goals, are now again frustrated.
Electing Ron Paul was never really the goal. He only symbolizes the real
destination which has always been a world where our individual rights
are lived out peacefully, without war. Where prosperity follows honesty
and hard work. Where we tolerate differences and build community.
This was and remains the vision of America which drew millions to a New World.
Which brings us to the series of articles now being written for Integrity, the newsletter for several related websites and organizations. Build a business for yourself putting the Grid out of business.
Declaration of Independence – America's Mission Statement
Constitution – First try.
Problem: Ignored the Mission Statement.
Other Terms:
Free Market – Exchange taking place when recognition of the inherent
rights of all individuals allow their choices to drive market response.
Privatize – The act of selling off small slices of the rights of
individuals to corporations. Properly: Corporatize
Deregulate – Ignoring prevailing conditions of injustice masked by
statutes previously passed into law and removing statutes passed to mask
the original problem.
