Topic: Bob Barr
Time to move on Libertarians The time for blaming Bob Barr has long passed. It is time to move forward and rescue our country. I need your help to restore the Republicby Jonathan Cymberknopf
(libertarian)
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Some things never change; I just read an article by George Phillies accounting for every penny misused in the Bob Barr 2008 Presidential Campaign.
The first thing that occurred to me while reading was isn't this old news? Hasn't this topic already been beaten to death; discussed at nausea?
So then it occurred to me to look at all the 2009 articles written by George Phillies, who happened to run against Mr. Barr for the 2008 Libertarian Presidential nomination and lost.
Low and behold all 5 articles written by George have been on the same topic. So now I understood it's not about disclosure it's about obsession, it's about payback, and most of all it's about ego.
After all, I know George Phillies is an intelligent man, who would be much better off directing his energies at today's very real problems happening in the U.S. and abroad in the world. Instead George uses great research and his skills to beat up an old carpet. I know I would be better off and so would countless others if George Phillies would focus this passion, energy and research prowess at where the real misuse of funds is occurring which is in the Obama Administration.
This is a mistake that most people do which is to spend so much time and energy being against someone or something and what this accomplishes is actually the opposite.
As I said above, George Phillies is still beating up an old carpet. But he better understand that this carpet might be a Persian carpet which only helps to cleanse itself with every beating.
The person whom all this negative energy is directed at actually grows stronger feeding off this energy. This concept was first introduced to me by the now famous book "The Secret". But think about it. George W. Bush at the end of his first term had like the lowest presidential ratings and was already the most hated man in America as far as the eye could tell, especially around the world.
There was more anti-Bush energy being thrown into the cosmos than Pro-Kerry energy. As a result Bush won by a landslide and actually broke ballot records at that time.
I remember visiting Margarita Island where a group of Englishmen approached me and were like what happened? They went on and on how every time they turned on the news they saw how much Americans hated Bush and then he gets re-elected by a landslide? It made me chuckle, as the only thing I could think of was "The Secret".
It is no coincidence that John McCain lost the election to Barack Obama because in this case there was much more Pro-Obama energy rather than Anti-McCain energy. If you remember John McCain was a stand up guy liked by both Parties.
Recently I have become a student of Kabbalah and the same Universal Law applies and is taught. Kabbalah is an ancient wisdom and actually goes much further. You see, not only is George Phillies sending out negative energy out into the universe with this never ending obsession, but that energy will boomerang back if he is not careful. It might take a few minutes, a few years, or even a few lifetimes, but as sure as time and space is an illusion, it will undoubtedly boomerang back to the source.
The good news is this separation of time and space helps us potentially to close the gaps on the very judgment waiting to hit us, giving us ample opportunities to duck when the boomerang comes towards us.
When we judge people, be it undeserving foes, our own fate is sealed; so the trick is to refrain from judging and our judgments against us will never come to fruition.
The same holds true for positive boomerangs. Not wanting to get too deep into spirituality or universal Meta Physical laws, the point is we have lost our way as a country and the very Libertarian values George Phillies represent are all but dead in the water in today's America.
My purpose here is to wake up Libertarians and urge them to, yes, accept the past, but more importantly to get over the past, get behind someone, get behind something, be PRO-ACTIVE, rather than REACTIVE. When this is done we will see miracles in this great land once again.
I leave you with an example of being Proactive rather than Reactive. Due to the hard work and dedication on the part of a rather small group of people in comparison to others known as "Campaign for Liberty", Ron Paul's Audit the Fed bill, HR 1207, is gaining the support of a majority of the House of Representatives. This bill will go along away in helping to restore transparency to our nation's monetary system.
If we can focus our energy on this project by sharing information, sending emails, talking to our neighbors, writing editorials, making calls, this bill will become reality and will be an incredible victory for the freedom movement.
Let us all spend and send positive energy behind HR 1207 and reclaim our country.
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 17 thumbs so far
The views expressed in this
article are those of Jonathan Cymberknopf only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Jonathan Cymberknopf 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.
The conclusion of your article is very good, and I agree with you that what the C4L is doing is the right path to take. But I agree with George Dance that you spend too much time and too much negative energy criticising Dr. Phillies, who is performing a valuable service. His major criticism seems to be that Mr. Barr and the Libertarian Party spent far too much of their time on the trappings of a major party campaign and very little on building a libertarian movement throughout the country. The Campaign for Liberty is, as you say, small but seems to be making significant, if not yet overwhelming, progress in that direction.
Posted By: Thomas L. Knapp
Date: 2009-06-14 17:32:06
Mr. Phillies has been covering the spending habits of Libertarian campaigns for a long time -- since well before he himself ran for the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination.
I see no reason to assume motives other than positive ones in this coverage, i.e. when he sees Libertarians' money being spent unwisely, he wants to show them the details so that they're forewarned the next time a candidate comes along displaying indicators that he or she will repeat these errors (or, if evil motive is imputed, misdeeds.
"Moving on" implies leaving one state and transitioning to another. If Mr. Phillies is making correct assessments (and to a large degree I think he is, though that may be because many of his claims confirm my own "cargo cult" hypothesis), the way to "move on" is to us those assessments to correct the problems he observes -- not to blame the messenger and keep doing things the same old way.
I have great respect for the intelligence of George Phillies as I mentioned in the article. And I do know this web site is fertile ground for his support and so I expected my article to be taken out of context and for you all to get defensive. Something that always happens in Libertarian circles by the way.
It is a mere observation since George has been talking about this topic before, during, and after the campaign. Again it is healthy to put it out there and debate it but there is a limit. With all the things going on in this country, there comes apoint of overkill, don't you think?
Because I respect George Phillies' talents , I am hoping he moves on to more important issues at this stage in the game.
Unless ofcourse Barr did something illegal besides misusing campaign money. Every campaign is allowed to run their campaign the way they think is right and all campaigns make mistakes. Some may say Bob Barr did well as he is just the second Libertarian candidate for President to receive more than 500,000 votes.
Again don't misunderstand me. I am not praising Barr and frankly George knows I did not vote for him because I did not like the way he handled his campaign. We got more important fish to fry , we are losing this country for G-ds sake.
Posted By: Jake, the Champion of the Constitution
Date: 2009-06-15 08:13:13
Jonathan -
Nice piece, I see nothing wrong with Mr. Phillies writing about whatever he wants, but your overall message to "move on" is exactly right.
I recently met with some LP party members (I have never been LP by the way) and my message was that the game plan needs to change. In the next 4 years, the LP will either grow tremendously off of the growing eco-political dissent, or it will shrivel. I, for one, hope it grows like wildfire with a message centered on the core tenets of the LP's party constitution, which I admire.
Although economic unrest is unfortunate, it can and WILL lead to political change in the years to come -- the main question is will the LP switch strategies, re-energize, grow, and take advantage or let the Reps and Dems trot out and win with some quarantined skeletons who will look pretty ONLY because they were MIA for the last 4 years or so??
What may make this post a little humorous is that I am running unaffiliated for US Congress in my home district, but I would love to affiliate with local LP candidates that share the same principles as I do - even Rep or Dem.
Like you said, it's simply a question of who wants to save the country and how they plan to save it
Posted By: George Phillies
Date: 2009-06-16 06:55:11
Apparently Jonathan is a victim of a computer search glitch.
He refers to 'all five' of my articles, and there are at this point rather more like ten.
With respect to 'old news' , sorry, the people who gave us the Barr campaign, such as it was, by making him are still with us, so this is new news, not old news.
Running a campaign poorly is not a criminal act. Running a Presidential campaign that raises millions and millions of dollars -- this is obviously not Barr -- and then transferring 3.5 million of it into your Congressional campaign account, as Ron Paul lawfully was allowed under law to do and did, is also legal, but his donors may wonder what they bought with their donations. However, when a party leadership campaigns hard for candidate after candidate -- I am skipping Mike Badnarik, whose campaign was well-run even though it can be Monday-morning quarterbacked -- who give us far worse campaigns than was possible, you need to realize that perhaps some fixing is in order.
Readers who wonder about my columns on past campaigns can read them all in the pages of Let Freedom Ring!, available for free at http://cmlc.org, and for the Browne campaign you can read my book Funding Liberty, availablefrom Third Millennium http://3mpub.com/phillies
Want to comment on this
article? Leave your comment here. Your email address is
required to track your comment. However, we will neither
publish your email address nor distribute it to other
organizations or persons. The only reason we might use
it would be if we needed to contact you regarding your
comment. All comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
