I think the time has come to face some facts. In the "liberty
movement" we have fallen prey to some misconceptions, some
intentional, others not. Let's look at these misconceptions, where they
come from, and why we need to get past them if we want to get anywhere in
our desire to see "liberty in our lifetime". I think these
misconceptions lead to our failures in elections and lead to a despair that
leads to the desire to "gang up" on a state or small country and
make it ours. I think we can win right where we are now; we just need to
try something new.

The biggest misconception is what I call the "zero sum election
game" which is a misconception that started off as an accusation and
has developed into a self-limiting delusion. The Republicans have accused
Libertarians of "stealing votes from good Republicans". Well,
first off where are their receipts for those votes? How can we steal what
they don't own? Also what is a "good Republican"? The problem
with this idea is it depends on the lie that the 15% of the population that
votes Republican, the 15% that votes Democrat and the 2% that votes Minor
Party are the sum total of all the people who will ever vote. The almost
70% that don't vote will never vote no matter what you do. Thus the only
option we have is to take votes from the 30% pool, thus
"stealing" from the Republicans, as no Democrat will ever break
lockstep with their masters and vote for a Minor Party.

What does this do to us when we fall for it? Well, primarily it keeps us
from accessing the portion of non-voting population that thinks there is no
difference between a Democrat and a Republican thus keeping us from forming
a base that can win elections. Secondly it makes us the geek looking for a
date for prom, "gee, um, if, like you don't want to go out with the
football player, then, um maybe you might, er, go out with me." We
accept in our minds a second choice status, and as such we don't try to win
just not lose so badly.

Another misconception is that the voters are just waiting for someone to
deliver them a big old Liberty Pizza. This shows itself in the
misconception "If we can just get X% of the vote then the republicans
and democrats who are voting out of fear will come our way and BAM! We will
start winning elections." The problem with this idea is we think that
a large portion of the electorate is voting for the lesser of two evils
instead of voting because they truly agree with the major party they are
voting for.

Sure you may have had a friend who votes Demopublican or Republicrat tell
you some variant of "I'd vote for you, but that would just make the
other guy win and I can't do that." Well, do you tell your friend his
haircut is butt ugly? No, you make up some lie to keep the friendship.
That's what the "I'd vote for you, but." line is all about. They
are lying to you with something that sounds plausible instead of telling
you "Gee, I think your ideas are crazy, letting people be actually
free, we cant have that, it's too dangerous."

The opposite of this one is the idea that all the people who want liberty
are already in the Libertarian Party, thus making the total population of
liberty seekers something like a half a million in a country of something
like three hundred million. Sounds pretty depressing, don't it. This of
course is not a real number. In the 2002 election, I got something like
five hundred votes. There are about seven hundred registered Libertarians
in the whole county, and
I will assure you that five hundred of them don't live in my district. Our
numbers are far greater than those who actually join the party, just not
large enough to win yet.

One of the other depressing factors is the entertainment industry. Some
call it intentional brainwashing, but in fact it is simply a method to get
you to stay put between commercials. The programming would be eliminated if
they could get you to sit in front of all commercials all day. However
there is some hope in this vast wasteland as well. Most of us would say
that advertising does not work on us. Television is practically free for us
as the commercials go past us with no effect. Now, we can extrapolate from
this that
liberty minded people are not worth advertising to, and thus the TV people
don't waste time programming for us, thus the utter void of "Liberty
TV". It's not that they want the world to be enslaved, it's simply
that we don't buy what they want to sell, so why put stuff on we will
watch?

Finally we need to understand human nature. We figure that if given the
opportunity people would love to have government taken off their backs. If
a spell could be cast or Martians could be summoned to suck government off
the planet, what would the reaction of the population be? Those who
currently vote will vote the same class of tyrants into office, they will
rejoice as the same types of bureaucrats find their way into positions of
petty power and they will dance in the streets only when issued a permit to
do so. We have the government we have not by evil conspiracy, but by the
legitimate will of the majority of voters.

If this is not obvious after a few years of the Bush Regime, then I worry
about your attention span. Conservatives who we thought worshiped the
Constitution when Clinton was in office discard it as "ink on a
page" when their boy is in office. The conservatives and liberals both
want tyrants; just they want them to be of their own party. If we don't
learn this lesson now, while both the tyrants of the left and right are
fresh in our minds we might as well give up. Don't start looking to the
left as a place to mine voters from, they may sound on our side just like
the right did a few years ago but
they are not looking for liberty, they just want their own tyrant in the white house.

What is the future of liberty in this country, and the world? I think
election victories can be had; we just have to work for them. The roughly
70% of the population that does not vote is ripe for the picking. These
people have been driven from the electoral process by mud slinging ads, by
realizing the R's and D's are no different and because they think their
vote will not change anything. If we can get a fraction of those non-voters
we can put people in office and once in office we can interpret the
Constitution in our way, just like the others have done in the past.

Now, I know there will be those who say it can't be done. I would say how
do we know until we try. Walking precincts to talk to the non-voters will
be hard work, but in the end we can win if we put in the effort. Ignore the
misconceptions that bedevil us, ignore the crap the major parties have
tricked us into buying hook, line and sinker. This is the time to strike,
2004 will be the optimal time to get the non-voters off their butts and
into the polling places if we are willing to try.

I plan to run in 2004. I have the campaign team assembled and we have a
plan. We will be walking precincts all summer long and into the fall. We
will be asking the inactive voters to loan us their votes in November, we
will be asking them to give us one hour of their year for a chance to
change the way this state has been run. If we can get ten thousand of them
to vote for me, we can either win or place a damn strong second place and
shake the pillars of heaven. All we need to do is get off our butts and
talk to them, these people have been ignored and insulted by the major
parties for years and we can win them over. All we have to do is stop
whining, and start winning.

Scott Graves [whiteknight{at}pcisys.net]

* * * * * * * * * * *

WOULD I KID YOU? (MUCH LESS TROLL FOR YOU?)

I just read the article "Homeland Security: My Take On A Good Homeland
Security Bill" by Donald L. Meaker
http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/libe220-20030421-05.html>. All I can
say is that the editor has got to be trolling again. How seriously can the
readership be expected to take such a fool's cry for a bigger police state?
You've got to be kidding. We're about three weeks too late for April Fools'
Day. Maybe we (whoever in the hell that means) should
just make all the foreigners living here wear a big yellow star on their
clothes so they're easy to identify. Sounds cheaper than Mr. Meaker's
solution.

Robert Lallier [rlallier{at}attbi.com]
Lodi, California

* * * * * * * * * * *

As the World Coordinator of the World Church of Human Dignity, I have the
privilege of being the spokesperson for the church and its beliefs. This is
a good thing, because it gives me a platform from which to blast Senator
"Sanctorum" and his sex police.

The root of the Senator's error lies in his definition of the fundamental
unit of society. The fundamental unit of society is not the family - it is
the individual. Individual human beings have rights protected by the US
Constitution. Families are not even mentioned in the Constitution. Families
do not vote. Senator Santorum was elected by individuals, not by families.

There is no more powerful force in a politician's mind than the urge to
stick the government's nose into places where it does not belong. This is
true of Republican politicians who claim a belief in limited government as
well as Democratic politicians who claim a belief in civil liberties.
Consenting adults should not have to be looking over their shoulder to see
if the sex police are going to enter their bedroom.

The role of government is to protect the life and liberty of the individual
citizen. Anything more leads down a slippery slope to rule by Ayatollahs
wishing to impose their personal views of proper behavior on the rest of
their fellow human beings.

Government can play a role vis-a-vis civil society, but that role needs to
be limited to protecting the rights of individuals. And individual adult
humans have the right to exercise their sexuality with other consenting
adults without regard to the effect it may have on the Senator's
"family values".

Paul McKnight [paulmc{at}vtc.net]
World Coordinator, World Church of Human Dignity
One Commandment, Ten Suggestions
http://www.wchd.info>

* * * * * * * * * * *

AN OPEN LETTER FROM A PATRIOTIC AMERICAN

These are the last flickering days of liberty in what was once the united
States. A piece at a time, the great system put in place by our magnificent
Founders has been dismantled and replaced by a dictatorship. Don't believe
me -- believe Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelman. They painstakingly document
the transition from "democracy" to social fascism in their book,
"The State vs. the People: The Rise of the American Police
State."

Another convincing tool is the acclaimed "Death by `Gun Control'"
by Aaron Zelman and Richard Stevens that fixes America's place among the
other totalitarian "governments" that systematically butchered
their own citizens. Hard to swallow? Truth is a bitter pill. Once, America
was a country where, according to Theodore Roosevelt, "No man is above
the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we
ask him to obey it."

Last week, in response to questioning by reporters, United States Supreme
Court Justice Scalia announced that the Constitution was only a list of
minimums. We can now expect, according to Scalia, that our liberties will
be curtailed to be more consistent with those minimums.

We are at a unique point in the history of the Republic: all three branches
of the Federal Government are now in complete agreement that the
Constitution is no longer relevant. We are now a nation of men, not of
laws. What can we expect in this brave new world? Dead citizens. On any
pretext.

Among an extensive list, notable examples include Randy Weaver's unarmed
wife, Vicky, by shooting her in the face from two hundred yards away while
she was holding her ten-month-old baby in her hands inside their home; his
fourteen-year-old son Sammy, by shooting him in the back as he was running
away and even his dog. Read "Ambush at Ruby Ridge," by Alan Bock,
available at Laissez Faire Books.

Emboldened by the total lack of resistance and public outcry when happily
murdering harmless women and innocent children in Idaho, the feds, our
erstwhile "defenders," pressed on to Waco Texas and
intentionally, mercilessly, and indiscriminately, slaughtered another
eighty-six innocent Constitutionally-protected U. S. citizens, men, women,
and children.

Talk show host Michael Reagan calmly pointed out that the Clinton Empire
had used more tanks against American citizens at Waco than to support
American troops slaughtered in Somalia. When Britain grimly paid fierce
Hessian mercenaries to cheerfully slaughter brave colonial patriots, at
least they didn't torture and murder harmless women and innocent children:
it took the bloody ATF to do that, and we've let them get away with it.
Who's heartless now? Incidents like Ruby Ridge and Waco, although highly
publicized, are the standard, not exception of "government"
behavior.

Before Waco, the last time any "government" burned innocent
people alive for their religious beliefs was the Spanish Inquisition -- and
they didn't do it on live disinformation media TV -- are we progressing, or
moving backwards? Watch "The F. L. I. R. Project," by Mike
McNulty, available from Laissez Faire Books, or just wait for the
gore-covered ATF to appear ominously outside your windows.

What happened in Lidice Czechoslovakia in 1942, and why is it chillingly
similar to the events in Waco in 1993? Read "Stolen Lives,"
available from Loompanics Unlimited, which documents over two thousand
cases of citizen's lives summarily ended by "law enforcement."

This behavior on the part of our beneficent "government" has been
ongoing throughout our history. In 1932, over twenty thousand World War One
"the great war for civilization" veterans, led by the legendary
double Medal of Honor recipient Marine Corps General Smedley Butler,
already sickened by years of the most horrible warfare imaginable,
peacefully assembled in Washington D. C. to beg congress (which should be
more properly spelled "incongruous") for their promised war
bonus.

General Douglas MacArthur, often described as an "American
Caesar," soon to be promoted George Patton and future Supreme Allied
Commander Dwight Eisenhower, whose most memorable quote is, "History
does not long trust the care of freedom to the weak or timid," burned
them out with tanks; fully offensively-armed troops shot and bayoneted
unarmed disabled veterans, their harmless wives and innocent children, just
like at Waco.

Even resolute Israeli commandos refused to slay their bitter enemies, the
murdering Palestinian terrorists holed up in the Church of the Nativity,
and patiently waited them out, but here in the land of the free, we
publicly incinerate eighty-six of our own innocent men, women and children
with savage delight, even refusing permission for firefighters to douse
their smoldering remains.

The May thirteenth 1985 Philadelphia "government" MOVE bombing,
or those in the 1974 California Symbionese Liberation Army shootout are
other examples extending back as far as 1890, when they murdered one
hundred eighty peaceful, unarmed Native Americans at what the
"government" described as the "battle," one-sided as it
was, of Wounded Knee. The common denominator is the same in our current
undeclared "war." Either we're a nation of laws or we're not.

The supreme law of the land is the Constitution -- all of it -- not just
the bits and pieces "government" chooses to utilize for their own
aggrandizement at a particular moment. If, as our erstwhile Holy Lawgivers
assert, they'll "protect and defend the Constitution," then when
they betray that public oath, any further orders are therefore illegal. The
Constitution plainly states that Congress declares war -- it doesn't
provide the option to delegate that authority to a completely distinct and
separate branch of "government," the executive.

The Constitution is the Federal "government's" Employee Handbook.
It explains how the Federal "government" operates. Adherence to
its edicts isn't optional by those in "government." If they find
that they can't abide by its rules, their only recourse is to resign their
office or to amend the Constitution. Was this Constitutional requirement
fulfilled for our current expensive round of flag-waving?

A mere matter of semantics, you say. Or would you phrase it, "it
depends on the meaning of the word `is.'" Emotion is insufficient to
compel a nation to destructive and irrevocable deeds, or should be. At the
beginning of the Civil War, the wealthy and politicians brought picnic
lunches to casually observe what they believed to be the first -- and final
-- battle, Bull Run. Murphy's Law was in effect then, too.

At other times, and in other nations, proud families patriotically waved
flags and cheered on their brave sons to do glorious battle against the
evil vermin at places like Auschwitz, Dachau, Sobibor and Treblinka. After
the war, at their trials, they asserted that they "were just following
orders," a corrupt translation from the literal German, "it was
legal for us to do so."

Is Hussein a monster? Obviously. Should he be dealt with? Certainly. The
vast majority of "anti-war" protesters don't dispute it, they're
simply too politically naive or ignorant to point to the proper legal
documentation -- forgive them, they're products of our public schools --
but like the supreme court's definition of pornography, "they know it
when they see it," and they -- and you -- aside from your emotion,
know that any "government" that refuses to follow the rules set
down for it by the Founders is illegitimate, and its dictates shouldn't be
followed, legally, morally and ethically.

Sincerely,
Mike Straw [comp_threat_man{at}juno.com]

---