Opposed Sortie
columnist: Random Outlier

Topic: Ron Paul
For All Ron Paul's Chillun

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We can't succeed without the youthful revoutionary fervor but, then again, we can't succeed with enthusiasm alone.

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by Random Outlier
(Libertarian)
Sunday, March 30, 2008

God love you children.

Without the sometimes wild-eyed enthusiasm of the young, not much happens in the world. The status stays quo, the rulers rule, and the people are meekly shorn.

A while back I wrote about taking the revolution to the 2008 Republican National Convention. Predictably the piece generated a few "yippies" -- calls to invade  St. Paul and create gridlock and general havoc.

Some avid soul even proposed the biggest political tailgate party in history, and that idea has potential.  Count me in.

A drawback in our movement is personal isolation. Our troops are held together by the internet, and there's too little of simple humanity in phosphor dots in an empty living room. The new-media experiment is working well with fund-raising success, Dr. Paul's soaring name recognition, and the obvious depth of feeling for his presidential candidacy.

But it lacks that necessary sense of fleshly intimacy which powered the young masses  of the 1960s. Nothing sends the spirit soaring like being part of a great crowd-animal,  chanting down with something or other. Among other things it fulfulls the urgent human need to annoy the people you believe to be oppressing you.

Abbie Hoffman put it pretty well when he called it "revolution for the Hell of it."  Being revolting to your elders is just plain fun.

It didn't work, however.  It never does.  Putting aside the liberal-statist political agenda of the 1960s crowd,  their movement failed for all the reasons which made it a charming experience for them.

The sensual joy of the Woodstocks and semi-riots on the New Haven Green ended,  as parties must, victims of pure fatigue as much as anything else. The kids went back to Mom and Dad -- or the state-sponsored substitute of America's schools. 

The young 60s rebels are today's establishment, dearly barbered, in Brooks Brothers, tooling around the metropolises in stretched limos, plotting energetic schemes to capitalize on the the latest fiascos of the fiat dollar. 

Jane Fonda married Ted Turner, and her overly tressed marching comrades went on to become the investment bankers of the Reagan and Clinton years.  (That too few of them went to jail for fraud is another subject.)

In their tear-gas laden dust they left  millions of Americans who were at best apathetic about their cause. More generally, their excesses created active hostility, the kiss of political death. Collectively they created the hard-hat electoral block which worshipped  police and came very close to establishing George Wallace as an  enduring  national power.

Anything like that would be a tragic denouement to the libertarian ideal and it's current leader, Ron Paul. We're marching a long road, and every citizen we alienate for no good reason makes it miles and years longer. 

If you take to the September streets of St. Paul, I'll be cheering you on, applauding your street theatre,  appreciating the value of the exposure you give the freedom movement.

I'll also be one of the guys advising against a repeat the errors of Chicago, 1968.

Create gratuitous gridlock, goad a cop into slapping on a headlock, and we are acting absolutely -- and I mean  absolutely -- as our opponents want. We are flipping birds at the people we claim to love and certainly need --  the Mr. and Mrs. America who vote.

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Tailgate party? The more I think of it the better I like it.  But let's accommodate the current imperative of Mother-May-I. Get the permits,. Obey the traffic laws. Turn down the music at nine o'clock.

And for crying out loud, easy on the hooch,.

(Although if one of you has the grace to bring a disc of "Rising of the Moon" by Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers, I'd be pleased to pour a wee dram of Tullamore Dew as we muse that the pike-upon-the-shoulder bit, however romantic, is at this moment in history acceptable only as metaphor.)

Preserving the Ron Paul movement is in the end an exercise in politics, and there's nothing to be gained by pissing off the very people we need to make Constitutonal government a reality.

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2008 Random Outlier, all rights reserved.
Published: Sunday, March 30, 2008
Last modified: Monday, March 31, 2008

The views expressed in this article are those of Random Outlier only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Random Outlier is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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