Brian’s Column: Rethinking Libertarian Party Strategy:2

LP_RocketFrom Part 1, I hope that I effectively made several points that warrant an effective grand strategy for Libertarians and libertarians. Before I summarize these points, let me first stipulate the larger community that the strategy is intended to serve:

World Citizenship Alliance

The community of service is composed of you or I or any of a vast number of what I’ll call free men.[1] I mean free in the Jeffersonian or Lockeian sense of persons living—achieving their material, real existence—in a natural condition of purely voluntary relationships with others, free to choose what to do with their lives without the initiation of force (aggression) by any of the others, and asserting this condition as fundamentally right. In other words asserting what historically is called the Rights of Man.

Note: a concomitant of that assertion is assuming the social responsibility of reason and accepting and helping to maintain practical systems of dealing with civil disputes and criminal aggression in one’s society. These systems—i.e. the law—are very important.  But out of scope of the present discussion.

Often our political conversations start midstream without examining certain premises that, given proper understanding, can afford solutions of lightness and ease. Notice that in the description of natural freedom or natural rights nobody said anything about a government or a constitution or, more to the point, a nation state. Let me suggest that we begin our grand strategy for liberty by identifying and certifying in an appropriate manner all the persons on the planet who assert the Rights of Man and willingness to be bound by the nonaggression principle (NaP)—let’s designate them world (free) citizens [worldfrees]. This grouping will certainly number in the 10s of millions initially and in the 100s of millions very shortly thereafter… as the immense benefits of belonging are grasped.

Here’s what I have in mind: (Again, no government or nation-state is entailed in the forming of this worldwide association of free individuals.) Next, because none of these individuals presents any risk whatsoever to the residents of any country, no conventional existing coercive government of a country needs to keep the worldfrees from entering or leaving its borders, or otherwise restraining or compelling (or privileging) them. Two concerns solved immediately: immigration and homeland security. With cost savings into the hundreds of $billions. All that’s needed is a simple, voluntary, noninvasive ID method applied by the privately funded, noncorporate, public-service world-citizen certifying entity. Piece o’ cake.

Next + 1: People are going to think about the worldfree phenomenon, almost everyone will strive to be certified—which, if the individual is a felon or corporate-state official, will be considerably more difficult or qualified—as a world free citizen, and in a microsecond we will all come to the conclusion that since hardly anyone is a threat to anyone else, we don’t need war or the nation-states any longer. Goodbye Old Paradigm.

Next + 2: The world maps won’t change right away, in fact, they probably won’t change at all; people will still refer to themselves as Americans or Norwegians or Costa Ricans out of a sense of tradition and for various social or recordkeeping purposes. The major result will be that national governments won’t have much to do: the emerging preference among the billions of new world free citizens will be countries whose governments leave people alone as a matter of policy. The compulsory big-budget national compulsory state withers to the status of your old bridge club kept alive for sentimental and ceremonial reasons.

[Clearly, much detail to be worked out on the new world citizen paradigm shift. But clean and easy. Without nation-states, people can focus on their regional and local political reality. Develop voluntary, inexpensive means for maintaining common infrastructure and administering what makes sense to handle as public property. ‘This portion intentionally left blank,’ with people to fill in as the spirit of destiny moves them. So it will be with all key strategic concepts: Individual people in cooperation will become the living force who bring life to the concepts.]

Outline of Grand Strategy

These were in order of priority in our current condition in America:

  1. Deal forthrightly with abject criminality/threat of federal tyranny
    1. Grand jury investigation and indictments
      1. 9/11
      2. Climate engineering
      3. Poison foods
      4. Toxic medicine (incl. ACA)
      5. Hazardous radio-freqency exposure
      6. Security-state intrusions
      7. Torture and war crimes
      8. Federal school compulsion
      9. Etc.
    2. National Boycott
  2. Recognition of previous failed strategies
  3. Determine working strategies in the freedom movement
  4. [Accept and know who/what the LP/LPM is and must be by nature]
  5. LPM complements the working strategies
    1. Develop grassroots network of self-government
    2. Actively cooperate with aligned liberty projects
    3. Personnel and volunteers learn local/state conventional govt.
    4. Leverage and move toward government by contract, cantonism

Item 1 above was developed previously in Part 1. Item 2 was an analysis prepared by the author in two parts showing that ‘what the LP/LPM is doing ain’t working… and, regardless of marketing wizardry, ain’t never gonna work.’ And, believe me, I wish it would work and could work, because the people I have known in the LP are so (almost) universally wonderful. We’ve all put in quality time and care, learned the media ropes, taken training in being effective candidates, practiced ‘scientific’ literature distribution, abandoned the macho flash syndrome and embraced Michael Cloud’s Secrets of Political Persuasion.

Item 3: Determine Working Strategies in the Freedom Movement

But we’ve come to what I call the Indian and the Mermaid Perplexity… which by all logic IndianMermaidmust lead us to a reevaluation of who we are and what we want or think we want. This apparent objective-reality hard stop ideally causes the dedicated liberty lover to find out who he truly is, begins a spiritual quest of discovery. In my own case, starting roughly at the LP national convention in Atlanta, 2004, I fully realized that the LP/LPM had to tap into the ‘higher power’ of broader liberty, and that each of us individually had to reach the next stage of consciousness… to avoid recurring cycles of failure and self-destruction.

Ten years later, my own personal spiritual journey has convinced me that we have a fighting chance to survive and prosper as a noble species, that each of us can find human spiritual and material fulfillment, and politically we can shift quickly to the New Paradigm, that is, a free, peaceful, abundant, benevolent society. What does its achievement require of us? Simple: psychological independence, willingness to face the facts of things, public assertion of those facts, cooperation with others. I have set forth my map, my argument, in the form of a graphical syllogism, or syllograph, entitled Shakabuku 9·1·1 (9·1·1 as in H·E·L·P. The syllograph appears below, and the Shakabuku Tour is my life for 2014.

Truth_Stake_FlowLet me draw the reader’s attention to the upper right hand quadrant of the ‘flow’ chart. At the point you see the figure for an individual’s soul and mind breaking free of the chains that bind him, that is where we enter the realm of practical political activity. Note that if one has not ‘broken free’ of the psychological authority of the collective-mind adversary—and believe me this bugger is a subtle and devious alien(like) monster who has been preying on humankind for centuries, deceiving and mind-controlling even virtuous libertarian (and especially Randian) persons—one will find it difficult to plug in to the multimodal thrust for individual liberty. Please persevere. [In particular, follow the yellow brick road and attend to videos labeled 4 and 7. These, in my humble opinion, are the lowest common denominator, absolute essentials.]

Thus, Item 3 is Shakabuku-suggested, and if you go no further than becoming active in one or more of the liberty causes identified in the upper-right quadrant of the syllograph, that activity will make you 100 times more contributory to reaching the New Paradigm than any almost any Libertarian Party activity that has been tried to date… or is being proposed to try (aside from actions in the context of this grand strategy I’m proposing). Notice also, that when I was imagining the Shakabuku flow for the liberty cause network, I didn’t think to include an image or reference to the LP/LPM. Why? Because I hadn’t yet  conceived a strategy for successful activity along Libertarian lines. Now I have.

Outline Items 4 and 5: LP/LPM Complementing Working Liberty Strategies

Item 4 is simply to accept our definition as a political party in the conventional system. We hold meetings, obtain ballot access, run candidates, and perform all those actions that pertain to such an organization via the coercive-government laws and regulations that apply in our geography. That tells us who we are qua political party, but not how. And ‘how’ is the key to a winning strategy.

The key phrase from the outline describing the strategy I advocate is from 5A: ‘Develop grassroots network of self-government.’ It can be stated several ways, but what I mean is we (the LPM/LP) complement strategies that work by facilitating individuals who influence existing local and regional (including state) governing bodies toward cooperative, voluntary solutions. In two ways: a) actually getting individuals elected to especially local nonpartisan offices and b) in coordination with a third-party public-private organization (which the LPM will help create) develop a Libertarian ‘practice government’ or virtual government network.

Note: I have already described the base functioning of a Libertarian virtual government network in coordination with the LPM in this column here. Only instead of a virtual government network, I had named the entity a Libertarian local action network (LLAN). Here is the dataflow diagram and procedure:

LLANActually, I believe the term virtual government network (VG and VGN) is more descriptive and works better, makes it easier to concretize. And I’ll soon update the figure and procedure accordingly.

  • The LLAN is to be initiated in Michigan under auspices of the LPM, probably as a distinct project; job one is layout of the entire range of local governing bodies statewide by county: including city and township councils, village boards, zoning boards, planning committees, even school boards.
  • Each LPM affiliate appoints an affiliate LLAN coordinator; if an affiliate has more than one county, each county will have a LLAN coordinator, as well as the affiliate coordinator. Ideally, the coordinators are separate persons. The affiliate coordinators report to a statewide coordinator, who is the individual responsible for nonaffiliated-LPM regions in the state.
  • Basic starter process: someone notifies the LPM they are interested and want to help, aka be a volunteer.
    1. The LPM response coordinator sends them a packet describing the LP and LPM, also indicating any active campaigns in need of volunteers or whether the LPM itself has any v-work available. If none, the response coordinator refers the volunteer to the LLAN coordinator for the affiliate where volunteer resides.
    2. The LLAN affiliate coordinator takes information from volunteer and sends list of local governing bodies that govern the political subdivision in which volunteer resides or is interested. Asks volunteer to be either a ‘watcher’ or a ‘doer.’
    3. Assuming volunteer agrees, affiliate coordinator ‘signs him/her up’ in a process TBD, but obviously the key thing is to monitor the subdivision activity—all political subdivisions have open meeting rules (I think)—or become involved and report back.
    4. Volunteer reports back to proper LLAN coordinator, who reports to affiliate coordinator, who reports to state coordinator. In practice the LLAN has a state Website to which structured posts will be made by the volunteer watcher or doer. Posts will be brief and simple with contact for more information.
  • Note: LLAN can and probably will also include county-level watchers/doers. It also needs to have a watchful presence in the state courts and the federal courts as well. This may be a wrinkle, but keeping track of the counties themselves and the courts is extremely important business. Also, I suppose we need a state government watchdog group since the state sanctions the political subdivisions.
  • In practice the LLAN (smartphone-enabled) state Website will represent the living, breathing LLAN, and it will become a source of data and of people who can and presumably will become effective leaders in their communities, eventually at the state level. In general, of course, the volunteers, if they do become candidates, will be Libertarian candidates or, if nonpartisan, liberty inclined.

So those are the fundamentals of the LLAN as I see them at this point. We rapidly grow the number of Libertarians watching and doing in their political subdivisions, hoping to build a wide consensus of knowledgeable people toward ending the depredations of the state, thus enabling all people to live without fear or aggression. Even if the idea does not take off, we have more people who learn about the who and how of their local governments… the better to form them into noncoercive self-governing bodies. This is the clear direction: the New Paradigm, the People’s Paradigm.

This is the beginning of the process to ‘develop a grassroots network of self-government.’ The very next step is to socialize this among key individuals in the LPM, actually, the procedure and graphic need to be refined to a more granular level. Also, an example scenario with a real municipality—perhaps my own city of Novi, Michigan—needs to be composed for illustrative purposes.

Finally, the LLAN terminology must be enhanced and the concept marketed in stages, first socialized among the existing leadership, making a few iterations incorporating changes, then a rollout. As a practical matter, I’ll wager that the existing Libertarian Party structure in every state remains trapped in unworkable ‘hows,’ membership stagnates, high-quality candidacies fail to materialize. Why? Because we do not have a strategy that works toward a coherent goal, gives volunteers clear performance objectives and training, or edifies the party leadership—who also stagnate, either from lassitude or trying to do too much as a supervolunteer (spinning one’s wheels) in isolation.

As with any other so-called brilliant idea, it needs selling.

Item 5B: Working and Playing with Others

I’ll end with this observation and recommendation: the LP/LPM needs to continually foster alliances with positive movements in our Satyagraha (truth) and various proliberty organizations. For example the LPM/LP must as a minimum:

  • pass resolutions to investigate by grand jury criminal or corrupt behavior at all levels of government
  • support and endorse state Nullification of unconstitutional federal edicts
  • join forces with—at least by voice or resolution—organizations such as the Tenth Amendment Center, the Campaign for Liberty, Americans for Prosperity, Marijuana Policy Project, NORML, People against the NDAA (PANDA), and many others
  • actively support resistance to numerous government-enabled programs that harm or poison people against their will or trespass on their persons: e.g. smart meters, climate engineering, CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), Obamacare, Obama-Ed (Common Core)
  • work to end militarization and federalization of police forces

In the multimodal fight for liberty, each organization must recognize its key role and perform that role in exemplary fashion. The LP/LPM can show the way toward grassroots networks of self-government leading to the end of coercive government across the board. But only if we embrace and cultivate fleets of active working individuals who take responsibility for learning about their own political environment, steadily moving that environment toward liberty, and sharing their growing body of knowledge with thousands of SunFLOWerothers doing the same thing.

Many hands make light work… and are necessary to guide humanity on the perilous journey through the imminent Paradigm Shift.

[1] I’m a big advocate of eliminating sexism from language, but free humans just doesn’t sound right. Clearly, in this context a free man can be a woman.



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