We are all already fighting to keep the last vestiges of our Freedom, but the "vestiges" keep disappearing. Might as well learn how to fight and win - and then go for broke! by Alex Wallenwein
(libertarian)
Monday, August 23, 2010
After its almost 250 year stint in these United States, freedom is almost completely out the door.
Why?
Because conservatives and libertarians, who are by and large the only Americans who value individual liberty anymore (at least by word, if not always by deed), don't know how to fight and win.
As a result, they have been losing ever since.
The Wrong Attitude
If you count yourself as a conservative and read this, you may beg to differ with this statement, and I hope you do because it shows you still have some fight left in you but that does not change the truth of the matter.
One of the reasons for this lack of fighting - and winning - ability is the very fact that conservatives have accepted the label assigned to them. What does it mean to be a "conservative"?
Here is the Webster's Dictionary version:
a: disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change; specifically : such a philosophy calling for lower taxes, limited government regulation of business and investing, a strong national defense, and individual financial responsibility for personal needs (as retirement income or health-care coverage)
And here is what Wikipedia says about the subject:
Conservatism (Latin: conservare, "to preserve") is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and opposes rapid change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism and seek a return to "the way things were."
If you're paying attention, you see a pattern emerging here.
Freedom is under attack from all sides and conservatives are constantly losing more and more of it. To anyone who plays football or any other team sport, or any boxer or competitive martial artist, the reason is clear. Conservatives "preserve" things. They want to "maintain" things (like social traditions, institutions, mores, and norms). They are "defending" traditional values.
We might as well call ourselves "preservatives" instead of conservatives!
All of the attitudes implied by the above definitions are defensive in nature. If you have ever been in a fight, tell me if purely "defending yourself" has any chance of success. Any military strategist can tell you it does not. There are good reasons for the old adage "offense is the best defense". The reason is clear: pure defenders always lose. Always. Period.
If you want to stop losing, better change how you label yourself and how you approach the fight for freedom that is currently in full swing all around us.
Compare all of that to how so-called "liberals" label themselves. They call themselves "progressives". That implies advance, progress, attack! It implies taking new ground all the time. If you're in a fight and your opponent is taking new ground, that means by definition that you are losing ground.
Conservatives need to quit calling themselves that. They need to quit allowing others to label themselves that way and, by God, they need to stop thinking and acting defensively!
If you are in a fight for your life, you have only one chance: you need to take your opponent out. You need to slice through his attacks like a knife goes through warm butter, put him on the defensive as quickly as possible, find his weakest area and hit it, over and over, again and again until he cannot fight any more. That's how you win a fight.
Forget Politics. Try "Libertics"
Now, how do you translate this new aggressive attitude into the political arena?
First, you need to forget about "politics" the same way you need to forget about being "conservative" if you want to win and survive with your freedom intact. "Politics" is a struggle for political power, for influence, for advantage in the halls of government. That's not what you want or it shouldn't be if you want to stay free (or gain your already lost freedom back). "Politics" is the game of easily corrupted politicians who are jockeying for positions of power and influence for the mere sake of power and influence.
You only want Liberty and all of the blessings that come with it like life, property, responsibility, and the pursuit of happiness. You want Liberty, but the name "liberal" is already taken and has a bad connotation of being a leftist/statist government shill. "Libertarian" is taken as well, and as you know, the Libertarian Party may have great ideas but, as a party, they don't exactly have a track record of shining victories, either. So what are you, then?
Do you want Liberty only for yourself, or do you want others around you to be free as well? It's kind of hard to be free when those around you are not, isn't it? If you are, and they are not, that makes you more like an oppressor. Your freedom" only comes at their expense, but that's not freedom. It's the opposite.
What's in a Name?
If you want others to be free as well as your own self, might as well call yourself a Liberator.
Sounds too pompous? Maybe - but if you are in a contest and you are the liberator, what does that make your enemies? If they oppose you, they pigeonhole themselves as the enemies f Liberty - and that's what they are.
By calling yourself by this admittedly somewhat pretentious name, you expose them for who they truly are and for what they really want. Suddenly, you have turned the tables on your opponents, psychologically speaking. Now, they are no longer "progressives", or if they are, you have now exposed them as "progressing" in the wrong direction. Now, they are no longer "liberals" or if they are and they oppose you, they are not liberals in the freedom-sense, in the liberty-sense, but only in the "taking liberties" sense. Now, they are taking liberties with your and other people's property and freedom.
But that's not the point of this essay. The point is that in order to have any chance at winning, you'd better start attacking.
Get Offensive
If you want to be effective, the apart from this psychological "turning of the tables" on your opponents, you had better also change something about your tactics. Stop trying to "defend" your already undermined and denuded freedom and start attacking those who are have already taken it away from you. Get it back from them. Attack!
I am not talking about grabbing your gun and shooting at people. I am talking about clearly defining (literally "nailing"), who your true enemy is and then cutting him in his liberty-taking function off from his support system - and therefore from his power over you and your family, your friends, neighbors, and fellow Liberators.
Forget about "the" enemy. The real question is: who is your (primary) enemy?
To do this, you need to determine who your primary oppressor is and what exactly he is oppressing you with.
Here in these United States, it's not the local warlord with his armed and jack-booted thugs. Here, your oppressor is the one who participates in formulating the primary tool of power in America: the "law."
We are supposed to be living under the rule OF law, but it has long since been perverted and twisted into the rule BY law.
Perverted by whom? By lawyers?
No. Not primarily. The rule of law has been perverted by lawmakers, by "legislators" (okay, granted, most of them are also lawyers, but it's mainly those lawyers that congregate in the halls of government than in the courtrooms of the country who are guilty of this). The rule of law has been perverted by congressmen, US senators, state representatives and state senators, as well as city council members, county commissioners, and every other shade of lawmaker there is in America.
Lawmakers have turned into lawbreakers because, in order to make and pass the laws that oppress you and steal your freedom, they have done violence to the one law that created the very offices they occupy and the very powers they exercise over you. That law is the Constitution.
So, is that who is your oppressor? Is it all of the lawmakers in this country? No. Not all of them.
Only yours.
Your congressman (very likely) routinely votes for and/or fails to oppose laws that kill your freedom. Your US senator (likely) does the same thing. If you are lucky and your congressman doesn't, then his successor might. At each level of government, you have at least one lawmaker who oppresses you - or who at least has the power to oppress you. He is your primary "enemy" in this fight for freedom. He is the tool of the legislative aristocracy that continues to take it all away from you.
He is not your only enemy, to be sure, but he is your primary enemy. If you allow him to do so, he will become the mugger of your liberty and the thief of your property - if he hasn't done that already. It is how the system works. It cannot work any other way because if you don't protect yourself in life, you will lose all of your stuff and your freedom to boot. It's that simple. Nobody else will do it for you. Leaving the protection of your freedom to someone else - anyone else - is like entrusting the protection of your wife and children to a violent sex offender.
What you need to do now is, again, to change your perception. Do not look at your congressman as your "oppressor". "Oppressors" are ominous. "Oppressors" are powerful and overwhelming. He is not. You are! Turn the tables on him and make him your target, instead!
Target him with your Liberator-form of political pressure. It's not political' pressure, really. It's constitutional pressure. Stop trying to "defend" the Constitution! It won't work. The proof for that lies in the undeniable fact that it you and so many other Americans have been doing - and it quite obviously hasn't worked.
And look what happened.
Roll up that Old Constitution!
Use the Constitution as your weapon of choice; use it and the truth that comes from exposing how your congressman's past votes have ignored and defaced that document. Take the Constitution, roll it up real tight like you do with your newspaper when you're getting ready to "educate" your puppy, and whack him across the nose with it real hard, again, and again, and again, until he either quits doing what he's not supposed to do, or he takes off running.
The reason this Constitution of ours gets piddled on all the time by our respective federal congresspuppy is twofold: we haven't trained him properly, and we left the Constitution just lying there on the floor, unattended and unused, where he can walk right up to it and do his "business" - you know, whatever it is that he does when he says he is "working" for you.
How to Whack Feral Legislators on the Nose
Now, how do you "whack him" with the Constitution in actual reality?
You create or join an online news network for his constituents who, after all, are your neighbors right where you live, and their neighbors, and so on.
As part of operating that news network, you "follow him around" by reading news reports about what he's been up to and letting your neighbors (and their neighbors, and those neighbors' neighbors) know that what he is doing is either completely unauthorized by the Constitution or is downright in derogation of it, and you keep this up, week after week, month after month, year after year.
If there's anything your congresspuppy hates, then it's bad press. What he hates even more is bad press that evaluates his work "for you" in terms of the only standard that should ever matter in government affairs: how well or how poorly he follows the Constitution; how what he votes for and against either keeps you free and keeps your property yours - or doesn't.
Finally, what he hates more than anything in the world is to see that a growing (and growing, and ever growing) number of "his" constituents, "his" voters, is learning (a) that there is such a thing as the Constitution and what it says, and (b) that he is by law and by his oath of office supposed to follow it (God forbid!) and to vote only for laws it specifically authorizes.
Grow an Army
As your readers' numbers grow, those of his followers diminish, by definition.
How do you make your numbers grow? You talk to your neighbors and leave them information on how they can access your news network. You can then recruit them to also write about him, or research his votes and his other behavior, and report it to your readership.
You make it so that every member of your news network gets your latest news reports delivered to their computer via "RSS feeds". You report on him every week and expose him for the constitution-piddling government-dog he really is, and that way you simultaneously educate them about how that affects their life and their freedom, just like it does yours.
In doing so, you will slowly create and build a massive repository of news and information about your congressman that any news reporter looking for a story about him online, come election time, will immediately find. Reporters will find it because over time your network will percolate to the very top of major search engine results for his name by the very fact that you write about him so much and mention his name so often. That's how search engines work: by relevance.
Re-Convert Unwitting Subversives
That repository of news and information will shine a new light on your unfaithful congresspuppy from a constitutional, freedom-oriented, "Liberator" point of view, which will often be the first serious exposure to such things any news reporter will have had in his lifetime. It may well change how reporters think and that will eventually change how they write.
Now, imagine that congressional news networks like yours will spring up in every congressional voting district in these United States. How will Congress change? How will politics in America change when the readership of these congressman news networks reaches majority-voter proportions? How will congressional and even presidential election campaigns change when the candidates (incumbents and challengers alike) finally realize that Americans do know what freedom is and just figured out how to effectively fight to get it back?
Incumbent and wannabe Congresspuppies will have to start competing against each other based on how "pro-Constitution" and how "pro-Liberty" they are and what they will do to prove the point once they are in office! How will that change the power structure in this country of ours? Just imagine!
Your Delivery System:
This type of news network already exists in its rudimentary stages. It is free to use and it allows you to invite all of your email contacts at the click of a button to join the network. If any of your contacts live in another district or state, it allows them to build their own network for their own congressman right where they are, with only a few mouse clicks, and it's free on top of all that.
It takes virtually no computer knowledge to maintain this network, but it has the potential to cover every single congressional district in the country with a perfect tool, no, a weapon, that is specifically designed to put and keep maximum constitutional pressure on your dog-gone-wild Congresspuppies in the feral government.
It allows you and everyne else to each turn the tables on their congressman by rendering their corporate donor, mainstreeam media, and political party power networks ineffective. In the end, what all of these must be able to deliver to your congressman is votes. If they cannot, they do not work. You can prevent them from working in the future.
WIth this network you, without any money and just a little bit of elbow grease and some Fire for Freedom in your belly, can render the entire socio-political power machinery ineffective within the limits of your congressional district, and others can do the same within theirs. This is an advanced political "weapons-system." It just needs some determined fighters to operate it.
Your freedom, and ultimately your life, will depend on whether you do or don't. What oppresses us are unconstitutional laws. Our only realistic way of throwing these laws off the books is by launching an offensive at reasserting control over those members of this system whom the FOunders in their wisdom have made subject to our control We just have to exercise that control and leverage our advantage. That advantage is truth. Truth about the legal limits on Congress' legislative power. Truth about the fact that allowing lawmakers to exceed those limits is the root cause of all political evil in America, and finally, truth about the fact that these lawmakers are, indeed, subject to our control as intended. Thanks to the Internet and this new weapons system, we can now, finally, exert that control in an effective way.
You can either continue to play "defense" and keep losing, or you can turn the tables on your local government honchos by taking the offensive - and win for a change.
The choice, as always, is yours.
Fight to win!
Alex Wallenwein
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