Looking past the 2012 election, how can defenders of liberty focus their energy on constructive political outcomes? by Jahfre Fire Eater
(libertarian)
Monday, February 6, 2012
There is one key strategy that every constructive defender of liberty should adopt to improve their effectiveness.
Don't waste your breath!
That's the best advice you'll ever get from me. I believe in it so much I'm going to give it again...for free!
Don't waste your breath!
The enemies of liberty exist. No need for the continually recharged outrage and frustration. Don't draw more attention to them than necessary...they hate that. They will continue to block the path of defenders of liberty at every opportunity. Their behavior results in oppression, meaning growth of government...meaning growth in the power for individuals in secure governent positions to make decisions that affect specific individual's very rights by nullifying supposed Constitutional protections of those rights for that individual.
Government growth is always at the expense of liberty. Anyone who advocates giving government bureaucrats more criteria by which they are empowered to make decisions that affect individuals is an enemy of your liberty...even if they are nice people who go to your church or your TEA Party events and wear their big "R" Republicanism on their sleeve along with their Patriotism and their love, God and of the Red, White and Blue. None of those things, in any combination, are sufficient for determining if someone is a defender or an enemy of your liberty.
If the folks you meet advocate granting more power over individuals to the federal government they are an enemy of liberty. That is the only test. They certainly will disagree...so what? Don't waste your breath. Certainly they 'feel' that they are 'good people' who are 'doing what is best...' but their feelings and self-image are irrelevant to the consequences of their choices. They shall be identified by their choices; each choice is either for government growth or for limits on government. There is no gray area when determing if one's actions will shore up or erode protections of individual liberty. The continuous, unlimited growth in their power of decision making and enforcement gives a bureaucrat in some cubicle in some government or contractor's office space the power to decide whom the US Constitution protects...or does not protect.
So then, how do we deal with the enemies of liberty after the 2012 election? They will still exist then, too. We must deal with them same way a hiker deals with a rock slide across a trail. We continue pushing relentlessly towards the defense of liberty through limits on government, despite the obstacles. We don't try to evangelize the rockslide into becoming more 'trail-like'. We don't use angry bullying to intimidate it into being less obstaclular. We don't try to un-obstaclize it by laying on it the most airtight logic the world has ever seen. No. We assess the obstacle and we go over it, through it or around it. The same attitude is the way forward after November. We must acknowledge the obstacles and work at getting past them as efficiently and effectively as possible.
There is no need to ever engage them...just to replace them; vote them out! Shine the spotlight of limited government on them so they cannot escape association with the destructive consequences of their big government corporatist status quo. Do not let a potential leader take refuge in being 'the lesser of available evils.' We must endeavor to make them prove their conviction to limited government before allowing them a slot on our GOP ballot.
One can't evangelize obstacles or shame them into adopting a limited government perspective. THIS IS FUTILE. Don's waste your breath. Their faith in the system in which they have invested a lifetime in is too strong, too comfortable. History shows that scant few individuals have the strength of character to abandon their faith even when faced directly with the disastrous consequences wrought by their past adherence to the tenets of that faith. The only choice we have as defenders of liberty is to replace them. Replacing them locally is a great place to start. The candidate pipeline needs to be cleansed of individuals who are beholden to the corrupt corporatist status quo and who plan to benefit from their home-state's economy being addicted to the perpetual war economy.
There is no constructive political outcome that can arise from engaging the enemies of your liberty. Any time one devotes to engaging the enemies of liberty in a one-on-one encounter is time wasted stroking their own ego. Rise above yourself! No constructive political outcomes can result from attempted evangelization of ONE of your enemies. The most effective enemies of your liberty are the entrenched powers who run the GOP and their traditional war loving, fear and hate-driven supporters. Enemies of your liberty who are not registered Republicans are not worth your breath. None of them. They are obstacles no different to one's liberty oriented goals than the rock slide is to a hiker's goals. The path past these obstacles lies inside the GOP. The enemies of liberty who are active GOP members are the only obstacles any defender of liberty needs to acknowledge...but only to plan ways of overcoming the obstacle, not to befriend them or negotiate with them or pacify them....and certainly not to evangelize them or reason with them. Any encounters of this nature are ego driven and not constructive to one's goal of defending liberty. Not all folks outside the GOP are direct enemies of liberty...many have simply chosen a comfortable, ego stroking herd to satisfy their need to vent....None of which is of any use to we who are determined to defend our liberty. It is more politically constructive to leave them alone to their clubs, movements and useless herds. They cannot help defend our liberty. They can only undermine the results of our efforts...that is the BEST their behavior has to offer in the struggle for the defense of liberty...they are akin to some misguided kid who keeps dumping pails of water on your sand castle....they think they are helping but their efforts only erode yours. It is best to just focus their attention on useless issues and forget them. No need to engage them.
Don't waste your breath!
The only choice inside the GOP is to replace advocates of government growth as they die off and keep adding more limited government conservatives into the candidate pipeline at every level from City Council to the Oval Office.
It used to be easy for neocons to keep the candidate pipeline full of replicants...easy for them to self-perpetuate their influence and easy for them to capitalize in the next generation on power granted to Congress by the previous generation. Of course, now, since the Newt Gingrich Congress granted vast new powers to the Executive, the trend has been away from giving Congress more power. The focus has been shifted to creating an all-powerful central ruler in the office of the President. History has shown for thousands of years that controlling one strong leader at the top is a better strategy than controlling 535 individuals in Congress. Newt has worked his entire career to increase the power of the executive in hopes that he would one day weild that power for his personal ambitions.
The time is ripe to change the long-standing status quo perpetuated by the lovers of big government who now control the GOP. Many liberty defenders are finally willing and even eager to come in from the sidelines to help make sure any neocon candidate is challenged by a limited government candidate in as many races as possible...Especially for positions INSIDE the GOP. The liberty movement has capitalized on the apathy created by decades of GOP promotion of government growth that had left huge swathes of GOP internal voting seats unfilled. Most of those are now filled with freshly energized and motivated liberty defenders, promoters of limited government. The era of the neocon is over.
Turning a vote mining machine like the GOP from a destructive, oppressive government growing purpose towards a constructive, liberty oriented purpose will take generations. The best thing any of us can do is to focus our effort where it best fits our goals. State and local candidates are my focus...until another Ron Paul comes along... after he is gone I'll not spend additional resources on national politics until the local and Colorado state GOP are working with me in that effort.
Winning the Presidency on a fluke without first replacing significant numbers in Congress with individuals who are adversarial to the status quo of perpetual war, accelerating domestic oppression and devaluation of the dollar's purchasing power to pay for it, would only result in a 'lame duck' presidency for 4 years. The folks who voted him in would feel their mission was accomplished and go back to sleep while the dems and the GOP and most importantly the enemies of liberty who currently control the GOP prepare for the next cycle with renewed vigor and determination.
It is up to those of us who remain motivated active in the defense of liberty to continue overcoming the obstacles after the 2012 election...we're on the right path despite the rock slides along the way.
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The views expressed
in this article are those of Jahfre Fire Eater only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
Jahfre Fire Eater 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.
