There are some scenes in your life that are so significant you can never forget them. And there is no common vocabulary to describe them. Words like “epiphany” and “allegorical” fall short even after the dictionary has been dragged out.
I went to a meeting early in 2008 to discuss “the future of the Ron Paul Movement” in an upscale South King County subdivision. Only four people showed up, but “as it happened” we (supernaturally?) represented four of five tributaries of the phenomenon, the R3VOLUTION that had unexpectedly exploded across America that year, re-igniting the grassroots nationwide and spawning “money bombs.”
On immaculate hardwood floors, beneath architecturally vaulted ceilings, we theorized what would happen, what could happen, after the Presidential election in the event that Ron Paul was not the Republican nominee and what we could do to continue that r3volution. We represented four key elements that some act of God had brought together to make the Ron Paul campaign the one the Establishment hated and feared…
… and now appears to be coming apart again in the direction of the elements it unified (for the first time).
1. The Believers
Cindy, in whose home we met, was the wife of a pastor. She had been wonderful to work with during the campaign; hard-working, dependable, intelligent, and honest to a fault. Cindy did not think the movement could survive Ron Paul’s retirement. It had taken his long career and unique character to convince Cindy he was, in contrast to her assessment of other politicians, genuine. She had never been involved in politics before, came into the Ron Paul campaign just for Paul at the direction of the Holy Spirit, and had no intention of continuing when it was over. She didn’t think another politician could replace him. I have met many “Cindys” in the movement. The Republican Party Establishment is anxious for their departure.
2. The Classical Libertarians
Chip was the anarcho-capitalist Libertarian. In fact, his family had participated in the founding of the Libertarian Party in Washington State. Despite his antipathy for all government, he liked political organization as a process and spoke of how to continue the campaign as a movement by replacing the person of Ron Paul with the principles he had stood for in the same way Indiana Jones had replaced a golden Idol with a bag of sand in Raiders of The Lost Ark.
3. The Reaganite Paleoconservatives
My presence at the meeting represented what we have for the last eight years called the Reagan wing of the GOP, those who have been laboring since 1988 to return the Party to its founding principles, those who, like me, know from long firsthand experience the Republican landscape, its opportunities, pitfalls, and the treachery of its leaders. Our faction in the Paul movement was perhaps smallest in numbers, but most influential because we knew, quite clearly, what we’re doing.
4. The Ron Paul Left
Jay was the quintessential Ron Paul leftist.
He was (and is) essentially a San Francisco liberal on everything but fiscal matters, drawn to Paul by the same factors that repelled many Republicans: Ron Paul’s advocacy for peace and an end to the federal drug war. He bragged about being a member of the ACLU and having this bumper sticker on the back of his car:
He either did not care or was unaware that the bumper sticker was a direct attack on Cindy. Jay attempted, moreover, at the outset of the meeting, to get everyone present to “admit” that Paul could not win. He did not think the campaign would stay together after Ron Paul and didn’t seem to care much about that either. But Jay was very influential among a certain crowd, including Chip.
This, Jay’s faction, is the Paul faction that the GOP/pragmatic Left highlighted to stereotype and demonize Ron Paul Supporters fomenting hatred in the Republican base. What is ironic and fascinating is that this is the faction most compatible with the GOP/pragmatic Left establishment, itself. They actually have few political disagreements and there is evidence they are now finding common cause.
5. The Jones Brigade
The missing element at the meeting was what we might call the “Alex Jones influence,” those for whom every visible event in politics is easily explained by the dark collusion of known evil organizations. Political wisdom begins, they feel, when someone drops his “naivete” and accepts that there is only one political party and “They” control everything.
The “Professionals”
By the end of the year a small group of men and women who would become national leaders of the “Campaign for Liberty” had coalesced around Dr. Paul and established two founding principles for the fledgling organization:
- There would be NO OTHER “Ron Paul” organization. Perhaps the only thing they would fight for was their exclusive stewardship of the legacy surrounding his name, and…
- Campaign for Liberty would have NOTHING TO DO with any attempt to make Ron Paul the next President of the United States.
But by June, 2008, I had already identified two obvious contrasting principles:
- The only thing holding the disparate elements of the movement together was Ron Paul’s Presidential candidacy, and…
- The grassroots infrastructure groomed by the 2008 Washington State Ron Paul campaign had everything it needed to take every single national delegate from Washington to Tampa to nominate Ron Paul in 2012… if someone would use it.
By October it became clear to me that the Ron Paul movement was firmly in the hands of men and women who were willing to sacrifice Ron Paul’s chances to win the Republican Nomination in favor of their own incomes and careers. And while the single motivation of all his followers was the belief that a Ron Paul Presidency could begin to return America to Constitutional government, that little group of national “Professionals” in control embarked on a path almost certain to prevent such an outcome.
It worked.
Cindy
With no campaign on the horizon to elect Ron Paul, with no political “agenda” and true to her word, Cindy left the movement and has not been heard of since. I do not know if she campaigned in 2012.
Chip
By 2009 Chip had succumbed to his more radical self and was out of politics, recommending “withdrawing consent” by not voting. “Government itself” was to blame. Voting “only encourages them.”
Jay
By September 2008 Jay was actively working to deconstruct the old campaign team with slanders signed by pseudonym and found common cause with the RP “Professionals.” By 2010 he was in San Francisco managing the campaign of a San Francisco liberal for public office.
Doug
I was the fool. Unwilling to give up on a historic candidacy (as it turned out, the only Constitutional Candidate among the top four in 2012) I did not publish my findings about C4L leadership, hoping the grassroots could regroup. On that theory I wasted my time for four years fighting the “Ron Paul Professionals” and their Washington State proxies, who wanted no part of a winning agenda. I will tell that story.
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Thanks for the prologue of what I’m sure will be an important series. I just sent the link to my friends, all Christian conservatives who supported Ron Paul.
While we await the unfolding of this perfidy which Providence allowed to infect a country hardly deserving freedom anymore, let us not forget…. to those who really see the light of liberty, who have not waned in their zeal:
Dr. Ron Paul is still running and expecting to be nominated in Tampa… eat your heart out Goldman Sachs! Ron Paul – White House – 2012! November!
It is not over! Some delegates think they are going to Tampa for Romney… they might have another thought coming when they find out that it really is actually wrong to steal, or kill another fellow human being, or to counterfeit money… or to cheat your way into Tampa!
We are still charging towards victory!
Though I were Alfred Lord Tennyson I would still charge with the Light Brigade, for their hope was victory, not defeat! Had Tennyson been there to charge with them they might just have prevailed!
Freedom is too precious to opine on defeat and serfdom. Leave that for those who have become serfs already in their hearts, for those who have never seen the blessing of liberty nor joined in the animated contest freedom requires of those who would be free!
I suppose that, when I came into the campaign in 2007, I was part of the same ‘Reagan’ paleo-conservative, constitutionalist faction — but I was like Cindy too, (worked on the 2 Alan Keyes nomination attempts against the Bush machine).
I have become more enthused and energized by the last 5 years of struggle and impressed by many of those who joined me in it. If we can keep growing we will take over the process in WA State.
While we may be ‘unequally yoked’, we are making progress and we are the ONLY faction in the GOP with ‘ideas and outreach’. While the old guard stumbles and lashes out at us in it’s death throes, our people are learning and organizing and will soon control the Party that is our rightful vehicle.
Doug’s assessment of the ways in which we failed may be historically interesting but my focus will remain on how we will succeed in the next 4 years.
Thank you for writing this Doug. It is a monumental shame that the potential we saw in 2008 was and remains mostly squandered. Your recording and analysis of the lessons learned is a valuable contribution.
I’m happy to confirm your representation of me as the (now) anarchist faction of the Ron Paul movement. I stand by the idea that freedom is not ever to be found in participating with a group of people whose mode of operation is directly contrary to it. This country was a perfect proof-of-concept experiment for limited government that we should learn from and commit to evolve, not revolve. You don’t protect property rights by entrusting a small group of people with the ability to ignore property rights! People can and will persuasively, rather than coercively, solve social problems and we will look back on the institution of government with the same shame we look back on slavery or the subjugation of women.
I take issue with the idea that Jay did anything but fight to help this facet of the freedom movement achieve success. He can speak for himself, and I hope he will here, especially on the idea that he and those like him are compatible with the GOP establishment (speaking of slander!). I can say for certain that like myself and many, many, many other top-shelf volunteers, he was driven away by the hubris and near-total lack of professionalism of those leading the official ’08 campaign and those that were approved (or presumed) to represent the fledgling C4L here in Washington. You rightly characterize these folks as wanting no part of a winning agenda.
The winning agenda of any organization must be built on high standards for those in leadership roles. The kind of people that a Ron Paul campaign or C4L needs to have any success, people that are intelligent, good at things, that are valuable to a cause and busy in life, they have high standards for the people they work with and the efficacy and professionalism of the groups they join. Unless someone like this is willing to take a leadership role and make a large commitment to fight established momentum (which nearly no one is), they won’t continue with (or even join in the first place) a group that doesn’t also have high standards, a clear and followed mission, and learned, honest leadership. Jay and I and more than a few others like Molly Megyessy who is a beautiful woman, expert data-base manager and political organizing phenom, and Michael Foley who was a public relations pro (!), went to the mat fighting for these ideas. If these ideas and standards are not recognized by the leadership of an organization we’d expect to see this group dwindle to only the maniacally dedicated or those without anything else going on in their lives, no matter how noble the cause. Sound familiar?
Thanks for commenting, Chip. As one of the “maniacally dedicated” I appreciate your “Chipping in.” I respond only where necessary.
Chip says, “You don’t protect property rights by entrusting a small group of people with the ability to ignore property rights!”
But no one has ever attempted that.
In his comment, Chip asserts, first that there is such a thing as “property rights.” I assume by “rights” Chip doesn’t mean “prerogatives I feel strongly about although there are many who feel just the opposite,” but, instead, Inalienable Rights such as with which we were endowed by our Creator. That they were “rights” objectively, not a “social construct” that could be deconstructed and that, therefore, they could be legitimately protected by force, was the assertion of the Founders. That is the basis of Law.
There are two models for society: the rule of Law and the rule of Men. Tear down Law itself, as do War Lords, Communists, Anarchists, and despots of every persuasion and what remains is personal proclivities of men – that is, Lawlessness and the men who enforce their own will.
Here is the story of LAWLESSNESS: Every man does what is right in his own eyes. The strongest prevail. Strong tribes assimilate surrounding tribes, the strongest rule, Tribes, by similar steps, become Kingdoms, the strongest dominate or assimilate their weaker neighbors, etc. and become tyrannical Empires. Empires last hundreds of years, crumble from their own corruption, and are overrun by barbarians who burn and pillage and we start all over again. Men, undeterred by Law, do whatever they wish.
The rule of Law is the alternative for those who believe in universal principles of conduct that are not subjectively determined (things like “Thou shalt not steal”) AND believe in the objective right/responsibility to enforce those principles to the benefit of all. Government, properly construed, is the enforcement of those principles.
Chip’s assertion “entrusting a small group of people with the ability to ignore…rights” is, of course, historic fiction. What we have in American Government is a people generally committed to Inalienable Rights, first enshrining them in Law, and then slowly growing apathetic to the operations of Government, slowly losing sight of the source of rights, and slowly allowing, by complex and deceptive means, the growth of a statist force within the nation hostile to the rights and the source of those rights.
Chip says, “People… will look back on the institution of government [and he means all government] with… shame…” and references the “the subjugation of women.”
Chip promises us the same transformation of the nature of man the Communists do, without any magical agent to change him. And gives us the same culturally Marxist historic fiction the Communists put in our school curricula.
Chip says, “I take issue with the idea that Jay did anything but fight to help this facet of the freedom movement achieve success.”
Jay’s “fighting” included the publication of a series of fabricated slanders, that, in collusion with his contacts among the duplicitous “Professionals” at the national level were effective in preventing a Pro-Life Liberty movement in the Republican Party, indeed, any Paul-based Liberty Movement within the Republican Party. Because Jay was a leader of the minority among the Ron Paul movement who were committed to a woman’s right to kill her children. Those slanders were, in concept, in execution, and in intent, evil acts. I will tell this story.
Chip says, “[Jay] can speak for himself… on the idea that he and those like him are compatible with the GOP establishment (speaking of slander!).”
Jay is pro-abortion and so is the GOP Establishment. Jay is pro-Gay Rights and so is the GOP Establishment. He is an across the board Social liberal, a card-carrying member of the ACLU. These are essential elements of the Gorton-Evans-Pritchard-Munro-Reed-McKenna-Dunn Mainstream Republicans of Washington Establishment that has dominated the Washington State Republican Party since Evans’ governorship and his and Slade’s Senatorial reigns beginning in 1964. As late as 2006 they opposed the Iraq War. Opposition to the Iraq War was a plank in the U.S. Senate campaign of their golden boy, Mike McGavick, in 2006. They all lie to achieve their goals. So does Jay.
How Jay feels is not at issue. On paper he has a lot of elements of compatibility with the GOP establishment
If you have been working on this project since 1988 and have only seen three co-workers (co-conspirators?) leave, it seems like no big deal. All you are finding out is that politics is hard work.
Just by way of example, it was 1848 that a bunch of nut-jobs convened at Seneca Falls, NY to begin work in earnest on women’s suffrage. Seventy-two (72) years later, the 19th Amendment was ratified. Civil rights for blacks and other minorities was probably a 150 year project.
Your project – taking over the R party from Conservatives is at least as ambitious, and the Romney-Dole-Nixon-Ford-Rockefeller people who “own” the R party are not going to give up power without a long, protracted fight. Indeed, you may never wrest control from the Conservatives. It might be that some other way is the path to victory.
Those who founded the Libertarian Party 40 years ago were, in large part, just disgusted with the Rs and Nixon’s wage-price controls, and determined to abandon the R party in favor of building a whole new alternative. But, the group working to build the LP has itself found that a mere 40 years is not enough to change America. The project is just too ambitious to complete in that short a time.
1988??? That was the blink of an eye ago in American politics, which is, by design, not subject to change based on whims. American politics requires building slowly, brick-by-brick. So, have fun in Tampa, but do not expect that the r3VOLution is destined to come to fruition this year. We have a long, hard fight ahead of us.
200 years ago, America was founded by visionaries, but even they were a product of their time. Hence, they owned slaves, repressed women and minorities, and had low tolerance for alternative lifestyles. They did not oppose taxation, but only “taxation without representation.” In short, they wanted a seat at the table of power, rather than seeking to dismantle the centers of power.
A truly free America is, therefore, not modeled on the past, but is instead a future that most people still cannot comprehend. The champions of liberty are trying, as best we can, to blaze a path for others, but that isn’t going to happen easily or quickly. And, Ron Paul will be the first to admit that it may not happen even in his lifetime.
Still, what would be the point of just giving up the fight?
Welcome, John! (Or is it Jay?)
It is stimulating to contend with a “voice” such as yours –truly my polar opposite within the late “Ron Paul Movement,” – one for whom words and ideas, verily even ostensible historic narratives, are wielded (or discarded) as melee weapons ~ for their strategic value. I had to bring myself up short and not make the mistake of responding line-by-line, as if you had misread the article in one place, or had made a political error in another. No. Where you depart from reality it is not any kind of error, is it? Each departure is part of a complex rhetorical “kata,” anticipating the opponent’s defense before he takes it, moving on to strike in another place without defending any position.
Your response to the article is a worthy example of such battle prose…
You begin outside the fray, as a disinterested observer ¬– a critic, if you will – speaking to “you all,” from some “higher ground,” seemingly “without a dog in the hunt,” ~ someone who sees history and politics from a grand perspective, yea, even a spiritual clarity. Indeed, one’s first impression is to be grateful that we have someone with your 150 years of experience watching over us.
But let us concentrate on each kata of your assaults on my piece.
The “1988 Conspiracy” kata,
The “Naïve Volunteer” kata,
The “Conservatives are in control” kata,
The “40 years is not enough to change America” kata,
And most lethal of all,
The “Founders were visionaries emerging from deep historical darkness; true freedom is Anarchy” kata.
The “1988 Conspiracy” kata
As you know, John (or is it “Jay”?), the “common undertaking” in the article had nothing to do with 1988. It was the movement to make Ron Paul President that had launched in 2007 (and now looks to have had a roughly 5-year shelf life.)
Because it united disparate elements over a single candidacy, it brought together people who could tolerate one disagreement (one of Chip’s friends so-mentioned Paul’s pro-life beliefs) in favor of their agreement with other elements unique to that candidacy. That project is over and whole groups of individuals that helped comprise it (and could, with leadership, have won a Presidency) were allegorically represented around Cindy’s table but won’t continue to work together.
The “Naïve Volunteer” kata
Contrary to your imaging, those who came – new to the political fray – for Ron Paul did not so much underestimate the scope of a winning Presidential Campaign as they were misled and thwarted by their own leaders. Especially after the scorched-earth political slaughters by the GOP Left in 2008, no one thought that the Republican nomination would simply fall easily into their hands. That they were prevented from winning by “Paul Professionals” (and, in this State, by Jay) from working on that goal is the real tragedy. Ronald Reagan, by contrast, accomplished the same project in 5 years with a grassroots army, a lot of sweat and good leaders.
The “Conservatives are in control” kata
Nowhere is the façade put up by your rhetoric more in denial of reality than in your suggestion that the “overall project” is wresting control of the Republican Party from Conservatives(!) or that such a thing would have to take a long time. From 1980 to 1988 the cause of Liberty (not Anarchy) was dominant in the Republican Party. The ideals of Constitutional Government, Sound Money, and Inalienable Rights won virtually every Platform War. That was CONSERVATISM. The Liberals and moderates like the “Romney-Dole-Nixon-Ford-Rockefeller people” you mention (and falsely call “Conservative”) lost the national party after a few short years of work each time, to Goldwater in 1964 and Reagan 1980-1988 at the national level.
The Liberty movement in Washington State, however, took the national presidential delegates away from the GOP Left Establishment for the Liberty Cause in 1976, 1980, 1988, 1992, and 1996. The Ron Paul campaign could have done it easily.
The “40 years is not enough to change America” kata
The “project” on the board “since 1988” (and not by the Ron Paul movement) was NOT to take control of the Party, but to TAKE IT BACK. And that can be done relatively quickly.
The Republican Party began in 1854 organizing around ending slavery. In six short years they elected a President of the United States.
Ross Perot ascended to a 39% position in national Presidential polling in a year’s time.
Stealing Perot’s issues the “Contract with America” overcame 40 years of Democrat domination to overrun Congress in a single year.
Giving the Republican Party a 150-year head start the Tea Party surpassed it in voter identification in six months of 2009.
And in 1970-71 I participated in a movement that began with four full-time male workers sleeping in a school bus parked in the U-district that, within a year, swept America and has been equated with the Fourth Great Awakening.
And most lethal of all, the “Founders were visionaries emerging from deep historical darkness; true freedom is Anarchy” kata
It is clear, John (or is it “Jay”?) that you believe the purpose of the Liberty Movement is not to restore the proper function of Law, but to eliminate Law altogether and you ask, “…what would be the point of just giving up the fight?”
You should give up because you cannot win.
You cannot beat us… those of us who believe in the rule of Law. It is true your efforts (as a movement) have had enormous success (especially in the 20th Century), widely spreading recreational drug use and eviscerating sexual morality, erecting judicial majorities for “living document” interpretations to the exclusion of Law, to name just a few. And it is true that your “movement” is of great historical age, your serpentine rhetoric, itself, tracing lineage all the way back to the Garden.
But to really win you must be, as you suggest, transformational. We must have the emergence of Libertopia: the great Lawless Societies…
“Can you picture what we’ll be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand
In a desperate land.”
~ “The End” Jim Morrison
And while such circumstances arise for short periods as described here:
Hope and Change in the New Century
they cannot be sustained without a transformation of the nature of man, somehow making him reject reason and his conscience and that cannot happen, universally, unless you succeed in silencing the gospel.
And that cannot happen unless you kill us.
And I must warn you, aside from the fact that we have, as individuals, subdued kingdoms, stopped the mouths of lions, stopped fires, proved valiant in fight, and received the dead raised to life again; aside from the fact that many were willing to endure torture and others, trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, moreover, some of bonds and imprisonment, and that we have been stoned, sawn asunder, tempted, were slain with the sword, and wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented and wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth (throughout all of which we have proved very difficult to exterminate) we do, in fact, resort to spiritual forces at least as strong as your own.
Doug:
By “sound familiar?”, etc. I meant to reference the current state of the C4L, not you personally, though you are maniacally dedicated. I love that about you.
I am positive our Mr. Mills is not Jay. Nowhere near the style. Jay indicated to me he was not interested in responding, take from that what you will.
As for the political philosophy discussion; thankfully many folks have begun to recognize the folly of monopolistic, monocentric law and societal organization around the invariably corrupt, violent state. I would no more accept 18th century technology for governance than I would for medicine. In service to the ideas of non-aggression, peace, persuasion and the greatest love are where I will toil.
And, thank you for your representation of me in #2 as bright enough to look forward and as Indiana Jones like.
As for the “transformation of the nature of man” I supposedly count on, some of us recognize the fact that men are fallible and therefore should not be given immunity from the consequences of their actions and control of a military or an economy.
Thank YOU, Chip, for civil discourse and for that fascinating window you have opened on “omnicentric, market-based” law and military bodies not controlled by immune persons.