Brian’s Column: A Citizen Libertarian in King MIGOP’s Court

Big Doin’s in Lansing, Michigan, State Republican Convention 2015

IMG_20150220_191224_editSomeone recently rediscovered[1] that as public parties, both the Democrats and Republicans, are actually susceptible to grassroots influence—through the precinct delegate elective process. Thus, yours truly, a bona fide secular libertarian, to help out his liberty-oriented[2] friends in the Republican Party:

  • put my name on the August 5 ballot
  • won as one of two persons running for three spots
  • attended the (Oakland) county state-delegate selection convention August 14
  • … where I was selected as a delegate to the state candidate-nominating convention on August 23
  • then as a delegate to the county convention on February 5, 2015 (charged with selecting delegates to the state-party organizing convention) I was selected as an alternate delegate to the state-party organizing convention[3]
  • and now as an alternate delegate to the state-party organizing convention held February 20, 21, 2015, in Lansing I may have a chance to be elevated to delegate status

Whew! Someone said politics is like making sausage. Further, the above steps are solely for appointing the officials of one party’s organization—and nominating a handful of general election candidates, like secretary of state or attorney general (the remainder being nominated by primary elections). [Also, I skipped a county- or congressional-district-level convention that I was supposed to attend but did not.]

Geez it’s cold out here

IMG_20150220_174546The convention is being held in the Lansing Convention Center, which I must say, all in all, is quite an impressive operation, with what seems like adequate parking, a nice route of pedways hooking up the Radisson Hotel and stores and offices surrounding the capitol as well as the convention space proper. Nothing negative to report. Friday, late afternoon, I park the ol’ Villager and take a long walk to the center and the registration area.

Making a long story short

All right, since I’m only an alternate delegate, my only real hope to have any effect on the proceedings is to be elevated to fill vacancies for delegates who have not attended. Turns out that is not realistic because my rank is like 81st, so a lot of people will have to be missing. And they weren’t. The red, white, and blue button shown on my lapel above serves as an emblem for the liberty-oriented team, and plenty of us—my guess is we now are just short of equal to the so-called Old Guard or establishment forces—are here and glad to see me, talk to me, etc.

So from a social aspect, this uprising in the Republican Party via the liberty-oriented grassroots is quite positive for me. I’m naturally gregarious, but with so few of us in the Libertarian Party (of which I’m a member) lately, it’s like one hand clapping there. I fit in with this rising Republican group quite nicely and naturally, and as I point out in the footnotes, so long as I bite my tongue about lacking religious sentimentality—I can do without so many invocations and pledges of allegiance to ‘the flag’ that Republicans, establishment or not, inflict at the drop of a hat—we can hang well.

IMG_20150220_191427Moreover, the best and brightest in the liberty-oriented contingent are always doing ‘real work’ toward meaningful goals, mostly trying to hold on to the liberties we still have and reviving the Constitution as a meaningful document. So count me in. I like to work, as well. Which generates mutual respect among the all these good people,of which many exist and are present tonight. Still, I don’t make the cut into delegate status. Nor does my guy, Matt Maddock, win chair of the 11th Congressional District, losing 99-110.

Observations and departure

Believe it or not, I have other matters to attend to—being the recent author of After 9/11 Truth and developing a truth campaign in coordination with my Website here—so I’m not upset to have lost the delegate nod. I do hang around and take a pass by the display and literature tables. At the Norm Hughes for Chair table, I strike up a conversation with a solid citizen, commiserating with him on a few matters: ‘smart’ meters, GMOs, police-state aggressions, 9/11, etc. But mostly more down to earth matters that affect our rights as Americans directly. I say to this good man:

“You know, what I’d really like is for someone in power, like the chairman of a major state political party, to come out categorically against something like civil forfeiture… or torture… or NSA blanket surveillance. Just state the obvious act of aggression against the people and the Constitution, and work unswervingly to undo it.”  And this gentleman I was talking with was totally with me. I gave him my 9/11 questionnaire postcard and my vaccine awareness questionnaire postcard; he promised to fill them out and send them to me. He even declined my offer of stamps!

I truly doubt that Mr. Hughes, if elected, would make so bold a statement of principle or justice. I’m practically sure that his opponent, Ronna Romney McDaniel, would not. And that’s the problem. Across the board. No mainstream political official even thinks to stand IMG_20150220_201723boldly for individual rights. Not one instance of them. [Even our beknighted Ron Paul in his holy of holies, never wrote articles of impeachment against the war criminal George Bush II… or testified for the owner of the Liberty Dollar in Bernard von Nothaus’s dire hour o’ need.]

Most officials are like ‘our’ attorney general over here, Bill Schuette. It’s all PR and razmatazz. He stands for victims… except for marijuana users, same-sex couples, or anyone the system makes it a policy to beat black and blue thru various state acts of aggression.

IMG_20150220_201905Then in the ultimate victory of form over substance, the Republicans don’t want to be left behind in the PC chase. What demented committee came up with a position called Ethnic Vice Chair?! I’m sure Linda is a fine person, and fulfilled her role wonderfully reaching out to ‘ethnics’ during her term.

So in many respects, watching this overblown conventional spectacle of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic has made me glad the Libertarian Party exists (and that I had a hand in its founding 43 years ago).  [Even though, until it changes its grand strategy, the LP is a dead horse politically, it does stand for the unqualified nonaggression principle… and a big tent embracing all the live-and-let-live life styles people can come up with. Why not?] Ironically, both Linda above and her opponent, who is black, want to legally hammer other minorities, e.g. preventing people of the same sex from partnering up officially.

Let’s not even get started on freedom of choice when it comes to a woman and her pregnancy. There used to be a pro-choice caucus in the Republican Party, not sure that exists anymore. [I will say, however, the Republicans are undoubtedly more tolerant than the Dems of a wide range of expression on any issue: just mention, at a Democratic gathering, that you’re prochoice on union membership, Obamacare enrollment, or public schools… and good luck on escaping the PC lynch mob.]

With the Republicans, though, to the extent they’re establishment-based, certainly, the public face of diversity is genuine. It’s just, in terms of how things get done and how power is inflicted on the people, diversity is irrelevant. At the level of the deep power sickness, nobody can care less about your ethnicity. Establishment Dems and establishment Reps are two sides of the same coin, they all answer to the same über-Mob (the central banksters and, these days, the Israel Lobby), it’s just their designated sub-Mobs are set up like professional wrestlers, to maintain the appearance of antagonism.

Final tally

Here’s the Detroit Free Press article on the convention. The good guys made progress, the establishment will have to make minor concessions to them one of these days, and the drab reality of Leviathan remains unaltered. As Buckminster Fuller states so brilliantly:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

[1] Not sure who made the key discovery, but roughly at the time of the first Ron Paul presidential race, during the primary season, someone figured out that one of the legacies of the Progressive Era—whose big deal was giving the people more direct influence in public affairs of a state, and in its political parties (contra the ‘smoke-filled room)—was to make it easy for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to get in on the ground floor of the political process: become a precinct delegate. In Michigan, I learned of the idea to exploit that legacy to leverage grassroots Ron-Paul libertarian Republicans into eventual control of the party from a Mr. Adam DiAngeli. The precinct delegate imperative became especially urgent following the 2012 primary and Republican convention in Florida, where suckup Republicans dictatorially bashed the libertarians and Ron Paul. New battle cry: “Remember the Tampa Bay Times Forum!”

[2] I use the phrase liberty Republican to designate the group of individuals who have coalesced, many thanks to the Ron Paul presidential primary campaigns of 2008 and 2012, to work through the Republican Party to restore Constitutional limited government based on the Freedom Philosophy. These individuals call themselves constitutional conservatives, Tea Partiers, or libertarians/truthers—it seems to me—in about equal proportions. We’re definitely a potpourri, and as a secular libertarian myself, the only ones in the broad coalition I would hook horns with ideologically are rabid anti-choicers or militant Christians (whom I’d estimate as one-third to one-sixth of the Tea Party set). Thus, I think that works out to 15/18 to 17/18, for the mathematically inclined, are copatriots working for exactly the same ends I am: to be left alone by the state so we can live our lives better. They’re willing to stand up and fight for their freedom. Real people, for whom liberty isn’t just something they read in a book or see in a commercial on July 4th.

[3] I may have the terminology wrong, but descriptively this is what is happening. We had the state nominations convention in August, and the convention this weekend is for picking the officials who are going to run the party in Michigan for the next two years… including officers, central committee members, and congressional district leaders.

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