Finding Common Ground -- Liberty vs. Power

I had an interesting response to the last post from an old friend who describes herself as "progressive" politically. Although we've recently been Facebooking, my comments had not been directed at her. She's been open and honest, as opposed to some of the smirking, snide, high school-like comments I've encountered elsewhere. But since I am finding this description adopted more and more by seemingly apostate Democrats, it may be helpful to examine her response, as well as mine.

She: "From my progressive seat, I'd say the thing I've liked most about your posts is seeing the common ground we have - namely, both worried about the U.S. jumping solo into another war! Both thinking that the "drug war" should end. I think finding and building on common ground is a way to move forward."

 ‎Me: "Progressive" is an elusive term to me. Just like "conservative." My general impression is this self-descriptor is someone who is socialist-communist, but doesn't want to use these "harder" terms. "Progressive" leads a certain amount of fuzziness, while not opening up to the charges that one is an old-style socialist or communist.

I've been perusing Danny Goble's book about Oklahoma's progressive roots. What I see could more accurately be called libertarian roots. There was certainly a reaction against the robber barons and the unfairness of what we would today call "corporatism," or more succinctly still, fascism.

America has been on a continual morph into fascism since the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. Each supposed failure of capitalism brought more government control, with the attendant corruption and collusion that control breeds.

Fascism seems to have accelerated with FDR's response to the Fed-caused Depression; then the establishment of the CIA after WWII; LBJ's Great Society after the CIA's coup to get rid of JFK; the Vietnam War; and certainly with the vast expansion of US imperialism and total surveillance grid after the false flag 9-11 event.

I still wait for the Progressive-Left to call Obama out for being Bush on steroids. But they seem to be as neutered by Obama as the conservatives were by Bush. It seems that party still is more important than principle.

I should have added that I really agree with her point about finding common points of agreement. That is essential for our conversation. So much of the pervasive mind control in the MainStreamMedia is designed to drive us apart. Divide and conquer is an age-old strategy. The false left-right paradigm, which I've written about many times, is essential to the PTB strategy. Left-right, liberal-conservative, are components of a dualistic paradigm whose poles are self-contradictory in terms of the issue of liberty and power.

It's a form of Orwellian Doublespeak designed to obscure reality and inhibit any clear thinking about the issues. So many people I meet try to establish their "independent" credentials by saying they are economically conservative but socially liberal. The term they are searching for is "libertarian." That political philosophy was called "liberal" in the 1700's. It is fundamental to the American idea of limited, representative government bound by a Constitution. They just haven't studied the philosophy to see how to derive a consistent, non-contradictory political philosophy that will help them analyze our situation more clearly. (You might want to explore this further by taking the Nolan Chart Quiz here.)

In that vein, it is clear to me that when the Libertarians and the Christian Right come to see that the most consistent political position with Christianity is libertarianism, then we will have the makings of the powerful political force required to restore America. Far too many Christians let others do their political thinking for them and become easily manipulated by the NeoConservatives or the Progressive Left.

There is a legalistic, moralistic streak in too many Christians that wants to force areas of personal morality into their own mold. They want to deprive others of the freedom of choice that Jesus clearly gives in Rev. 3:20. He forces Himself on no one. Nor should we. As long as a person is not violating the inalienable rights of another by force or fraud, he should be free to make his own choices and live with the consequences. I don't have time to expound on this further in this post, but I've given you enough to think it through.

Here are a couple of examples of sound libertarian thinking that progressives and conservatives who don't put party above principle can surely agree on:

• Judge Napolitano on Obama's hypocrisy on state power and Guantanamo; and
• Ron Paul on why establishing a "no fly" zone over Libya is an act of war against a country that has done us no harm. If we fall for this one, I fear it will be a match to a powder keg labeled World War III.

What do you think? I have open comments, so please use them. Thanks!

It's Getting Very Strange Out There

The title seemed natural to me, until I thought about it. "Out There"? As opposed to "In Here" where I live my daily life. I just reflected on the implications about spending so much of my time "out there," where I try to stay somewhat abreast of our rapidly unfolding crisis. I spend so much time "there," that I tend to forget that most people don't. (The irony, of course, is that my way "out there" is mostly through the portal of an internet connection.)

Even though we're in a great awakening, most of the people I run into outside of my activist circles aren't talking about it. That has to change. We really need a national conversation about how we got here, where we need to go, and how to get there.

We need to shift people's attention enough to get them actively engaged in the conversation. To be sure, we're distracted by a smorgasbord of bread, circuses, continual wars and fears of terror. So it is imperative that those of us who are sociopolitical entrepreneurs to become intentional about the idea that we are, indeed, about shifting attention.

We're not just presenting facts. We need to shift attention. We need to challenge, break and shift old cognitive structures. We need to help them start some creative thinking about solving our situation.

To some degree, certainly more than we would like to believe, we're living in a trance. The more reflective a person is, and the more he understands the power of the social structures that inform our daily lives, the more freedom he can exercise. The decision to do so is the "red pill" that begins one's liberation from the "matrix."

So I've been experimenting on Facebook. I've taken several webinars recently that point out that Facebook is now the "hot" place to market, that it gets more usage per day than Google. The movie about its founding, The Social Network, won the Academy Award, generating even more interest. Moreover, and more importantly, the instigators of many of the social movements in the Middle East extensively used Facebook and Twitter. So I started Facebooking several weeks ago.

While I do a little bit of purely socially "nice" things, for the most part I try to inject ideas into the conversation. Sometimes I share important news stories or articles, along with a sentence of two of commentary or a provocative question. Often I will leap into someone else's posting and do the same. A little bit of instigation here, some subversion there.

One of the first things you learn when running for office, or for just plain old marketing, is to hunt where the ducks are. Focus your attention and efforts where you want to get results. Simple enough. If your goal is to help make things better, it makes sense to go where you can have a conversation with many people, and do it efficiently.

If oil goes to $200 a barrel as Lindsey Williams is predicting, people will probably be staying home more. And maybe dumping the TV for a national conversation. No doubt, we need it.

I've had some adventures. Being a Liberty person, I don't spend a lot of time around Progressives. Most seem to be rather nice, but their worldview doesn't seem to hold individual liberty, property rights, and free enterprise as important values. When I ventured into a few conversations that largely included people I presumed are "progressive," I was astounded at their lack of intellectual acumen and honesty. I heard many of the same kinds of pithy, sarcastic, ill-informed remarks I had come to expect from many NeoConservatives.

Any way, I've posted a number of good things on Facebook that would actually be nice to include on a blog. That might be a more congenial format, giving me the ability to share what I find, without the pressure to produce some kind of essay. So that's what I'm going to try for awhile and see if that works. If I can get in the habit of it, I might post several times a week, as time permits.

There is no end of important things to share. We have so many life-changing possibilities it seems to take increasing amounts of courage to even look at them. So many factors could produce doomsday scenarios that it is often hard to keep the optimism that we can turn this thing around. The Hundredth Monkey phenomenon indicates that we can quickly hit a tipping point of consciousness. We never know what will provide the impetus for the final push, or when it will happen. Indeed, in a larger historical scale of things, it could well be that the tipping point was crossed last November.

I was going to share some of those links and comments, but I've been told people might like shorter postings. So I'll start with the next one!

In the meantime, consider doing your part to shift the national, world, and certainly local, conversation toward acknowledging our crisis and searching for solutions. We are already in the mess. The blades of the fan are chopping up our old state of affairs at breath-taking speed. We have to go through the ordeal. It won't be painless, and we can't do it alone.

Our refuge from this storm will be our families, friends and neighbors. We need to build our relationships in all those areas, because the artificial substitutes for community provided by the Feral and State Governments are collapsing. Governments are broke, and the Dollar will die, probably much sooner and more quickly that we can imagine. We will hit the re-set button. We'll need to work together to re-establish America on the principles of Freedom envisioned by the Founders.

The PTB Globalists and their minions have different ends for us in mind that we would want. So we need to engage in this conversation in self-defense. If you haven't started Facebooking, or if you've only been doing it for purely social reasons, try going a little deeper. You'll be surprised who starts responding.

And if you want to see what I'm posting as I pick it up, be sure to friend me!

Brush Fires of Liberty: Announcing the Free State Project

[This will soon appear on a new website at TheFreeStateProject.com.]

Imagine an America where every State is in a friendly, earnest competition to make their State the freest State in the country. Each State legislature has decided to carefully inspect their Constitution and identify the many areas where State authorities have overstepped their constitutionally granted powers. They have rectified every aspect of their government that hinders the free market, and re-tooled their legal system to assure fair play and equal justice for all. They are working deliberately to remove all impediments to economic freedom. Furthermore, each state is asserting, in no uncertain terms, that they do not honor Federal laws which exceed the enumerated powers explicitly granted in the Constitution, according to the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

The ideal result would be a nation of 50 States as different as the people who choose to live there. This was the original intention of America's founders. Their desire was to give as much decision-making power as possible to smaller government entities, while stripping away as much power as possible from larger government entities. They knew that the closer the citizens are to their own governments, the more they would actually participate in key decisions. Their intention was a radically decentralized system in which each state and thousands of cities towns, villages and counties decided, imagined, and created the kind of societies that they desired.

In such free communities, individualism and cooperation would be boundless, with everyone living by the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would have them treat you. Play fair. No force or fraud allowed. Everyone would bloom where they planted themselves. Secure in property rights and sound money, they could build for the future as they enjoyed the present. Taxes would be minimal. Governing functions would be largely by norms, with a justice system that was based on preserving freedom. Obviously, no two communities would be alike. In fact, the nation would experience diversity unified by a commitment to Liberty. What else could "yearning to breathe free" mean?

The most famous phrase in the most important political document ever crafted is "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Most every American knows these words by heart, and would agree that this is the essence of the goal and purpose of American government. Indeed, these words are the soul of the American Dream. These words define the self-evident, unalienable rights held high as a banner in the Declaration of Independence that began the American Revolution just 235 years ago.

Today it is easy to lose sight of the fact that America's founders intended America to be a nation of free, independent States, in which free and independent individuals lived. In fact, at the end of the Declaration when the united States of America are mentioned, the word "united" is not capitalized. There was no entity "United States of America." There was a confederation of free States declaring their independence from the tyrannical English crown.

A thoughtful reading of the Declaration makes it clear to the aware observer that we are in the same situation today relative to our own Federal Government as the colonists were back then. Americans are taxed at all levels more than 70% of their incomes, inflation has destroyed their retirements, we have foreign legions attempting to suppress native populations all over the world, and the war on terror has laid in place the most sophisticated total surveillance and control grid in history. And we are bankrupt.

In case you haven't read it recently, this is the relevant passage:

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.....When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

The easiest way, and certainly the preferred way, is through peaceful transformation. Violent revolutions seldom end well, and too often the ruling class foments violence in "false flag" operations to create a reaction to clamp down on dissidents. There is certainly no need for violence today. A "New Great Awakening" is well under way. People everywhere are waking up to the fraud and deceit the system uses to control them. We have passed a tipping point from which there is no return to the previous state of hypnotic control.

People have many ways of waking up. There is more than one entrance down the rabbit hole. All of them can be characterized as a "Truth Movement." (Isn't it cute how the Ruling Class has tried to make "truther" a dirty word?) Each individual awakening involves finding some way that the ruling class has deceived them, aided and abetted by the Mainstream Media. Each is a "red pill," to use an analogy from "The Matrix," that opens their eyes and wakes them up to another way of viewing what is going on. Today this is happening worldwide, as people everywhere are waking up to the reality of the Ruling Class, what they are up to, and how their control system works. Truth demands "Courage and Honesty" and is the bedrock of of Freedom.

Returning to the Declaration of Independence, it ends with a clear statement about each State's independence and sovereignty: "and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do." Could anything be more clear than the original intention of America's founders for free, sovereign, independent States? There it is, the key to the American Dream and Freedom hiding in plain sight!

The Tea Party movement is based on the spirit of the American Revolution. It is "explicitly populist, and is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian. Reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit, and adherence to an originalist interpretation of the United States Constitution." Just as the Boston Tea Party in 1773 is said to have sparked the first American Revolution, we can easily date the second American Revolution from the reaction to the October, 2008 TARP “Banker Bailout Bill.” Thus far, most of the action has been directed at the Federal Government and federal elected officials. But that is changing.

A far more effective approach is to start "Brush Fires of Liberty" in every state in America. Most every state now has courageous leaders like Representative Charles Key in Oklahoma. These patriots have introduced numerous creative pieces of legislation based on the idea of 10th Amendment Nullification. They can now focus their attention equally toward examining their own State governments against the plumb-line of its own Constitution.

Most State governments have, thanks in part to the influence of the Federal Government, vastly exceeded the intentions and scope of their founders. Both the Federal Government, and most State Governments, are like a horrific hybrid creature that is a cross between a giant tick and an octopus! The people are trapped in countless ways by multiple tentacles, while their life blood and energy is sucked up by taxes, and poisonous policies infect the community.

Thanks to the Tea Party Spirit, each state has scores of leaderless organizations following the model of the groundbreaking book, "The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations." (Download pdf summary.) These organizations are developing their political and leadership skills, and are now well-positioned to work with and support Liberty-minded politicians to reform their own States, City, and County governments.

The Free State Project is a leaderless effort to deal with the tremendous crises that we are now experiencing not only at the Federal Government level, but also in each State government. The vision is for each state to set a goal to develop the freest and fairest market economy of all. Frankly we have no choice. The bankruptcy of the modern, Western welfare state is evident worldwide. Just as the Federal Government could not do anything to save the victims of hurricane Katrina, it can't help the states either. We must each find our own way through this crisis and depend upon ourselves.

Each State must also clearly declare that they refuse to honor Federal laws which exceed the powers explicitly granted in the Constitution. 10th Amendment Nullification needs to become a way of life for the states until the Federal Government is again restrained by the Constitution.

The Federal Government is bankrupt, paying its bills like a counterfeiter printing up fake money in the basement. In this case, the Federal Reserve (it is neither "federal" nor a "reserve"), a cabal of private banking interests creates "money" out of thin air and uses it to purchase US Treasury debt so the government can pay its bills. Government spending means government control and corruption. The US dollar is rapidly losing its favored status as the world's reserve currency, as evidenced by skyrocketing prices in gold, silver, and other commodities. Unfunded Federal liabilities top $100 trillion and can never be paid. Worldwide, financial derivatives number almost $600 trillion, an amount equal to 20 times world domestic product. The national and global economic situation is clearly unsustainable.

At the State level, more than 40 States are facing bankruptcy due to overspending and the effects of the Greatest Depression, as trend forecaster Gerald Celente aptly calls it. Each state is faced with making drastic cuts in their budgets and retooling their governments to fit the new reality. Everyone is realizing we cannot continue as we have.

The beauty of the Free State Project is that it is so simple. No American should have any difficulty understanding the objective. Freedom is in our DNA. We all know what the real American Dream is. Freedom means not to be taken care of by someone else, or to have a parasitic relationship with anyone. The politicians and their cronies are likely to protest that it cannot be done. But we should not believe them. Why should they want to give up their power and privilege obtained by using government to control us? WE are the ones paying the bills.

The Great Awakening comes along with the Great Reckoning. We are witnessing the collapse of the central government paradigm. Those people who want to be free, the creators, the artists, the inventors, the entrepreneurs, craftsmen and workers, the savers and investors, have begun to ask themselves "Why are we allowing this to happen? Why are we supporting this? Isn't there a better way? What is a free society like?" Do you want to be free?

The creators of this website hope to use it to empower you to become a vital part in making your State a Free State. The first step in this process is to give you the vision. Now you have it. Shortly we hope to provide a number of different tools to help you become more effective in this effort. We plan to provide discussion forums, as well as a link to various projects in each State in America. We will publicize successful efforts as models as well as point out pitfalls encountered along the way.

It is important to realize that Gandhi pointed the way when he instructed those who wanted to follow him, to instead "be the change you want to be." You will change the world by first changing yourself. You have to choose to be free. Likewise, you will change your nation by helping to change your family, city, county, and your State. But it all starts with your commitment and creative decision to fulfill your destiny. Then help empower others to do the same.

I have laid out the the vision. It came to me in a creative spark and continues to unfold. I think it is emerging from our collective American DNA. For a fuller picture of the infinite possibilities a radically decentralized governmental structure offers, see this excellent article which fortuitously appeared as I was working on this. With the vision, and the creativity and commitment of each person who catches it, we will restore America to the Dream of our forebears. 

Our time is now. What we need to do now is to start the conversation among our family, friends and neighbors everywhere. Like a giant wave approaching, the tipping point has crested and is sweeping us along toward an amazing destiny. That time we've all been waiting for, that unspoken anticipation lurking in the recesses of our minds, is awakening with fresh vigor and is rising within us. Do you feel it? Can you begin to see what real freedom looks like? I can. It feels really, really good. Imagine the possibilities. A bright, new day is coming. Get ready!