As I observe the machinations of politics in the United States, one thing has become perfectly clear to me: Our government has increasing contempt for the people, and the Constitution by which it was founded. Last night's passage of a healthcare bill is just the most recent example: Most Americans oppose this bill, and more importantly, it ignores the constitution in virtually every manner possible. This leaves some folks, myself included, in something of a quandry: I have sworn to uphold our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, but what happens when enemies are now running the country and trampling the Constitution? Where is that line? What's the trigger? How do I know when they have gone too far? When do I act? What actions do I take?
I ask these questions not as some revolutionary kook, but as a guy who looks and sees that his government is plainly in breech of its founding document. Will setting things right now require that I cast off all protection of law as it did our founding fathers? Will I be forced into a position that in order to repair this situation, I must be willing to engage my government in open warefare?
These things I know: I will never participate in the universal healthcare plan, and I will never pay for it, and I will never go to jail because of the foregoing. Must I wait until they 'come and get me' before I launch my resistance? What is the trigger? What is the point at which I become not merely an 'opponent of healthcare reform,' but instead an open counter-revolutionary warrior?
If I adopt that position, what acts must I entertain? This is dangerous ground, because my training instructs me that my best role is as an insurgent. Is this really how I wish to spend what remains of my life? Do I organize with others? What, exactly, is the right course of actions here?
I realize that some of you will respond with various insults, but my question is a serious one: When is enough enough, and when do I know that line has been crossed? Our Congress has become a terrorist organization, implementing its will without regard to the law which had formed it. Our President is clearly bent upon casting off the Constitution in its entirety. The foxes are not merely in the henhouse, but have control of it. What's a liberty-loving, ordinary guy to do?
The folks at ACTIVE have come up with an interesting idea. They're calling for a nationwide strike of citizens against the government, turning the international socialists' tactics against them and possibly launching a movement which will have even more impact than the Tea Parties have had.
At a time when the extreme left has become the establishment, those who support traditional American values of liberty and free enterprise are by default the radicals, just as we were in 1776 when we opposed the tyranny of British rule. I don't agree with all of the beliefs and methods which groups like ACTIVE and the Patriotic Resistence and Bureaucrash advocate, but this idea of adopting the methodology and rhetoric of the radicals of the 60s in the fight against the growing power of the leftist state in America is very appealing.
Back in the early days of the Libertarian Party this is very much the approach which we took. As editor and a columnist for Liberty magazine back in those days I was constantly writing articles which sought to capitalize on the enthusiasm of student radicalism and direct it against the terrible policies of the Carter administration. In the SLS we were borrowing ideas from the SDS which had preceded us by about a decade, and we were drawing on the hardcore anarchism coming out of the anti-government riots and the punk music coming out of England in the late 70s. At the time there was only so far we could go with the idea, because Carter's incompetence made his administration too soft a target and the entire dynamic changed when Reagan came into power and drew a lot of libertarians including myself more into the political mainstream.
The days of Reagan are long over now and the champions of liberty are the underdogs again. This time we have a statist establishment to oppose which is much more powerful and much more dangerous than Jimmy Carter ever dreamed of being. The time really is ripe for a liberty revolution, and the tactics of the revolutionaries of the past are now ours to use. The liberty movement has made a lot of strides in the last couple of years and generated a huge diversity of organizations and issue groups, both inside the Republican party and among independent voters, but it's clear that a lot of these groups are looking for opportunities to take action in more radical and dramatic ways.
The Tea Parties brought a lot of different groups together with a common goal, but their effectiveness is inherently limited and they have been successfully undermined by a media disinformation campaign to portray them as "astroturf" events because of the involvement of Republican party groups and big money advocacy groups like FreedomWorks. As an idea they have also lost momentum from being overused and have pretty much run their course as an effective protest campaign.
Whatever succeeds the Tea Parties needs to go even deeper into the grassroots and nothing could do this more effectively than a protest which is purely based on individual action. Instead of gathering together into a group and marching or rallying, every person can take action on his own, but coordinated on a nationwide basis. That's what makes something like a general strike such an appealing idea. If enough people can be involved to really represent the high level of dissatisfaction in the country, the results could be impressive and impossible to ignore.
The only problem is the timing. I assume that those who have proposed a date of November 4th picked that date because it's the one-year anniversary of the election and because it gives plenty of time to organize a nationwide protest. The problem is that by then it's likely to be too late for even a wildly successful strike to have any impact on the most serious threats from the Obama regime. If we don't stop Obama and Pelosi as quickly as possible we are going to be out of luck. Cap and Trade and ObamaCare will be done deals by November 4th and we'll be well and truly screwed as a nation. These socialist programs will never be reversed once they are implemented, so we need grassroots protest on a huge scale before the end of the Summer.
I love the irony of using classic radical tactics against this government, because the truth is that they may have started out as radicals, but they are now the establishment and we are the radicals. So grab a copy of Rules for Radicals, Steal this Book or Stir it Up and learn the tactics that used to drive our enemies, because they're ours now and it's time to turn the tables on them.
This nation was founded by radicals and it will take a new generation of radicals to reclaim our stolen liberty. Founding radical Sam Adams said: "It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." We are the new irate minority – sons and daughters of liberty like Sam Adams – and a general strike might be just the kind of brushfire we need.
The International Intifada of Greece by Cassandra Troy is incredibly important. Hats off to her for a terrific exposure of an under-reported threat and an aggregation of significantly related articles. Why is this information important to Conservative activists? It has to do with rapidly developing a firm appreciation of the power of technology to propel social movements - for better and for much, much worse.
I'll begin by recapping the most salient feature of Cassandra's post:
Over the coming days, the rioters that numbered between 1,500-2,000 people (30% of those immigrants-mostly Muslim), were able to move from one part of the city to another in a quick way using a variety of methods, such as public transportation in small groups, motorcycles or even riding taxis alone and gathering in a specific "meeting place".
Lastly, they used extensively the internet, mobile phones and instant messaging services to alert against police and gather information of what the media were transmitting. In a few words, they were trained in a fashion that distincts them from the usual "Athenian rioters". They seemed to have international experience and plenty of hideouts within the city centre. (...)
Modern technology and communications such as large television screens, the internet, and cell phone text messages allowed Yushchenko to rally support despite the fact that much of the media was controlled and censored by authorities.
Unless you were under a rock or suffering from poverty and had no TV, then you heard about the terror attacks at Mumbai. Evidently, the mode of communication was relatively simple. While we would never big up terrorists (unless its one of our homies terrorizing the box, or gals going all rodeo queen on some poor sap) they had to show some creativity to go with a not well laid out plan. Once the party started, the rumor is that they jacked cellies to stay in communication. Research in Motion, or RIM, should be happy to know that they went with Blackberrys.
Today's activists, both violent and nonviolent, are applying technology to tactically deploy resources such as supplies, weapons, people, transportation and media coverage to strategic geographic locations at strategic times to achieve very strategic goals. Most significantly, they are achieving extraordinary results - like, say, the non-violent overthrow of governments, the disruption of major economies and the ability to marshal forces to win national elections. On our shores, we can look to the Obama campaign as a premier example. When Obama drew 75,000 attendees in Portland, OR was it specifically because that many voters wanted to hear Obama, or did it have as much to do with the vastly under-reported but extremely popular punk band (the Decembrists)? It doesn't matter - once the perception of the ability to attract hundreds of thousands was created, it influentially drove the next event toward a similar goal. We also know that the Obama campaign was ever-vigilant at collecting the cell phone numbers of millions of attendees as well as attracting them to the campaign website.
There is always a master plan behind these events, and when the participants follow it they can achieve spectacular results.
Conservatives must not only analyze technology-related public activism, we must adopt it. Like it or not, the time is coming when Conservatives will, in fact, have to seriously put aside our natural reticence to take to the streets for the purpose of driving the news cycle and influencing public opinion. The alternative is to risk being permanently dominated by others who are not afraid to take to the streets and drive the news cycle themselves. This may be especially true for College Republicans because the public tends to sympathize with youth activists, although it's just as effective for the rest of us.
Case in point: Saul Anuzis and the Michigan Republicans staged a small but extremely radical (because it was so Conservative!) demonstration in Ann Arbor during the summer of 2008 to protest Nancy Pelosi's book signing after she shut down the House while House Republicans were in the midst of an energy debate (Drill Here, Drill Now, #dontgo). When you see these pictures of what everyday Michigan Republicans were willing to do for this cause, imagine what a coordinated group of Conservative activists can do using professional organizing methods and high-tech communication. The photos of people who look like Mom and Dad with the Kids taking to the street in business attire as well jeans and t-shirts is powerful, relevant, and is going to be absolutely essential to our future survival because we cannot survive unless we can recruit and proliferate our values. Compare that image to those of violent RNC anarchists with their faces covered (organized by a group called "United for Peace and Justice" LOL!) creating chaos and mayhem, and the branding potential is absolutely brilliant. It's Mom, Dad and the Kids versusThe Creepy Anarchist Bandits from Hell.
Republicans also protested Nancy Pelosi's book signing in Florida, which was covered not in the news but in the Miami Herald's blog (Naked Politics). No photos were included. Even though people took to the streets this was obviously seen as weak, non-newsworthy filler. To be sure, the Michigan Republican protest was primarily covered by the blogs, and barely covered by the local news. However, this YouTube video should have been virally proliferated using a coordinated email/cellphone/blog strategy and circulated to the YouReport websites for Fox and other national news affiliates.
All you have to do is re-read Cassandra's article and all her links very thoroughly and see the consequences of inaction. The future is ours to create, BUT (and that's a BIG BUT) we must prepare to engage in marrying technology with committed in your face, in the streets activism in order to make the news that influences the people to help us create it. Either get ready to go, or get ready to get out of the way and let others take command of public opinion while we sit back and passively watch the fruits of their labor create far-reaching changes to our culture and politics.
There's a great pressure mounting on the Left right now regarding Obama's commitment to strip retroactive immunity from the House FISA bill. The problem is, he's stopped short of promising to filibuster the bill.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign.
In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party's base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists.
Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the "Potomac Primaries," but issued a statement that day declaring "I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty."
Some on the Left are opining that this will affect Obama's contribution levels (which we may already be seeing, as in Patrick's post on McCain nearly outraising Obama in May. Others are much more agitated, such as LivinginReality on the Daily Kos:
More and more, I do not believe that "change" can really happen through the ballot box in this country.
There are other ways that change can happen. But I've pretty much lost all faith in our electoral system ALONE to bring it about.
Rather, our electoral system is designed to take the desire for change, absorb it like a lighting rod, and then channel it into nothingness as it dissapates into the ground. Without some sort of mass movement that exists outside of the electoral system--like militant labor unions, organized civil rights boycotts, or massive anti-war protests that shut things down--the electoral system will, at the most, promise change . . . while changing little or nothing in so far as furthering the interests of the "little people" it is supposed to represent..
In the 1960's, this type of dialogue was discussed openly on camera in the latest technological medium of that time: television. Most famous for his "Ballot vs. the Bullet" speech was Malcolm X, who was no stranger to exploiting the media to communicate his message. In his wake came the 60's radicals preaching revolution on a sliding scale from relatively non-violent "community organizing" to all-out terrorist nihilism (with examples like Saul Alinsky on the forward end and Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn on the rear end of that spectrum).
Eric Hoffer, in his book The True Believer, sees Marxism as one of the chief examples of a mass movement which offers The True Believer a glorious, yet imaginary, future to compensate for the frustrations of his present. Such movements need people to be willing to sacrifice all for that future, including themselves and others. To achieve this aim, such movements need to devalue the past and present. This is not only a criticism of communist tenets specifically; Hoffer's other chief examples are Fascists, Nationalists, and the founding stages of religions.
Marxism has been described as a closed system. Closed systems, like certain re-emerging fundamentalist religions, have several common threads: they claim to represent a universal truth which explains everything and can cure every ill; they can automatically process and reinterpret all potentially damaging data by methods of case-based reasoning. While a principle-based approach might claim that lying is always morally wrong, the case-based approach would argue that, depending upon the details of the case, lying might or might not be illegal or unethical. Closed systems are emotionally appealing and beyond common logic; and can invalidate criticisms by deducing what the subjective motivation of the critic must be, and by presenting this motivation as a counterargument. An example of this last feature might be the disregarding of such concepts as the free market or self determination as instances of false consciousness engendered by bourgeois [or infidel] ideology.
In the Wall Street Journal's Potomac Watch, Kimberley Strassel laments the death of the [culturally conservative, free market economist] New Democrats. Efforts are visibly afoot in Open Left and other "Progressive" websites to eliminate the Bush Dogs in 2008. There can be very little doubt that those left holding the reigns in the Democratic Party will constitute Hoffer's True Believers. And if the ballot does not fulfill their perfect vision of a glorious future, what will they be capable of? If the chilling possibilities do not galvanize the Republican Party to reform and reinvent itself, who will meet their challenge? Young Conservatives, it's time to read your history. Older Conservatives, put aside any differences and align together against a very real potential threat from within the two most dangerous True Believers allied together within and outside the country: Fundamentalist Marxism and Fundamentalist Islam. I truly think that if we underestimate any aspect of this partnership for any reason, it will be a very grave error.
