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What threatens the Ron Paul campaign the most – by Ernest Hancock
Written by Ernest Hancock Subject: Philosophy: LibertarianismWhat threatens the Ron Paul
campaign the most – by Ernest Hancock
The only organized threat to
the Ron Paul for POTUS effort is,… organization.
The Solution? - Freedom Baby,.. Yeah!
In this article I hope to
encourage others to abandon collectivist thought in their passionate support
for Ron Paul. To have the greatest influence on the reader I will provide some
information about myself, the origins of the Ron Paul Revolution, my opinions
about its success and what to watch for as validation of my claims.
In my personal life I have
been best served to avoid any centrally planned effort. But from an outsider,
that wouldn’t be obvious since I am associated with several high profile and
effective gatherings of minds and bodies. I am the publisher of the web news
and forum portal FreedomsPhoenix.com, the 38 year old Arizona Breakfast Club
had its stewardship passed to me a few years ago, it is also well known that I
am associated with the efforts of The Western Libertarian Alliance and
theLfactor when political campaigns I support are in need of some help. We are
coming up on our 8th year of the Freedom Summit, I have a radio talk show on
the local Air America
affiliate where I am the ‘Hard-Core/No-Compromise’ libertarian - "Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock" & Archive. But what is not
known by most is that not a single one of these successful freedom supporting efforts
have a ‘central committee’. Either they are operated as a business like the Freedom
Summit where the owners make the decisions in a free-market, or the business is
based on an open source model that encourages open participation with ultimate
control always clearly in the hands of the responsible individual, like
FreedomsPhoenix or a clearly stated philosophy as the only guiding hand.
This is how gatherings under the names of The Arizona Breakfast Club, Western
Libertarian Alliance, theLfactor and The Ron Paul Revolution operate and evolve..
I am 46 and was born in
1961. I have a fantastic wife that is very supportive and 4 children 17 – 21 of
whom I am very proud. (oh yeah, 2 small dogs). After 3 years of operating my
own small service business and Immediately after the birth of my youngest in
1989 a series of events that affected my father’s manufacturing business and
mine sent me on a path of discovery that took me on a personal quest for the
truth of things. I traveled, met with politicians, elected officials, bureaucrats,
lobbyist/con artists, patriots and activists. In less than a a few months I was
convinced that all of the evil that I was overwhelmed by was nothing more than
a simple bank robbery of galactic proportions. And all that was required to achieve
this looting was the acceptance of a central authority (in its many forms).
Since I am the sort to
Strike the Root of the problem I came to believe that the only obstacle to
total slavery was the people themselves. I began to focus on the election laws
in Arizona
and how they were crafted to eliminate dissent from campaigns exactly like Ron
Paul’s. From inside or outside the traditional political structure, the
ability of the people to have an impact on the government that claimed to rule
them was rapidly evaporating due the efforts of those with the power and
desire to eliminate one of the final hurdles to absolute access to all productivity.
Many would criticize me for
shooting too high and taking on targets too large. But all of my activism,
law suits, campaigns for office and other activities have been to document what
is happening and who/what is responsible. I knew it was in my best interest to document that I had
checked off all of the boxes presented me; “Did you call your
legislator/congressman, run for office, file a lawsuit, educate your neighbor
etc.?” Yep, yep and yep (a lot)
What made my efforts unique
to all of the others I experienced was what I learned from the libertarians I
kept coning into contact with in the early 90’s when I first dug in my heels
and was certain to get to the truth for the benefit of me and my family,… “There
are those that wish to be left alone, and there are those that will not leave
them alone”. It was clear
to me that this was the freedom we were promised in exchange for our support of
a coercive collective government that justified their existence by guaranteeing
the protection of this freedom.
Our Freedom Summit speakers
list will provide an idea of the individuals and groups of individuals that I
am the most supportive of (Ron Paul is certainly on this list,… twice)
I share this with you so you
understand that many consider me an experienced freedom activist that has been
paying attention for a long time. But my motivation for writing this article is
to warn you of what I see on the horizon as the largest threat to the Ron Paul
campaign,… organization.
Libertarian minded people
are often fond of the idea of spontaneous order. That from a desire to
accomplish something will spring many ideas and efforts from all
directions to accomplish a popular goal (or to oppose one). The Internet has
made this process much faster and more individualistic, and thereby much more
difficult to oppose.
In 1992 during the Ross
Perot explosion of individual activism I was asked to give many presentations
to groups of people that would meet regularly across Arizona in groups of 300 to 800 on a very
regular basis. My expertise was election laws. At the time I was on my way to
the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals with my challenge of 44 election
laws that were crafted to prevent such an effort. In fact the ability for an
independent presidential candidate to even have electors placed on the ballot
in Arizona
had been eliminated and the law had to be changed (it was). Even then I made it
very clear that my efforts to provide Ross Perot a place on the ballot was so
that I would be given the opportunity to _not_ vote for him (even in the early
days he made it clear that he was not a freedom supporting candidate). But what
I saw happen inside, what was to become the United We Stand organization, is clearly a warning to the Ron Paul effort 15
years later (and I’ll get to that later).
When the time is
right,
there will always be a Neo (Matrix reference), a Gandi, a Rosa Parks, a
Martin
Luther King Jr., a Ron Paul.
Circumstances eventually create fertile ground for revolutions of all
types and
sizes, and the one that is coming is a two fisted whopper. I never
believed that
the next ‘revolution’ would come all at once, but I did know that it
would come
overnight. What I mean by that last sentence is that the desire and
need for
change is obvious over a long period of time. But the individual
benefit of
taking action is often seen as not worth the effort to most,... until
one day that changes for many people all at once. This feeling is
reinforced
by the Media (formerly known as
mainstream). I’ve come to realize that the goals of the bad guys are
served
just as well by merely convincing you that while you may see through the lies,
no one else does and that the resulting vote totals are a reflection of that.
But now that the 18-24 year olds spend more time in front of their computers
sharing with each other directly than they do in front of the mind crafting
television, the mind of America is rapidly slipping away from those that have
been use to telling us what we think.
Web stats have been very
interesting in the presidential race. Ron Paul’s audience has been very low
when compared to the other candidates in the age groups between about 30 – 55 years
of age. I could guess about why, but the fact that Ron Paul kicks everyone else’s
butt in the 18-24 and 55+ age brackets is very interesting also (I’ll make some
comments on this information in another article someday).
These tech savy young people
have no need or desire for rules or controls placed upon them by the very
institutions that they know they are in opposition to. Nor do they have any
reason to adopt the mindset of collectivists in their support of the principles
of freedom best represented by Ron Paul. The vertical chains of command have no
use to an entire population brought up on direct communications with any and
everyone. Even more so now than ever before, the attempt to harness a movement
is the surest way to do it the most damage. The Ron Paul campaign’s inability
to get caught up with the explosion of individual activism has served the
campaign the most. A great article expanding on this concept was written by Butler Shaffer - Traditional, vertically-structured social systems are eroding.
The Ron Paul Revolution
is not under the control of anyone or anything. The reverse
LOVE in the Revolution logo was from a campaign
of mine in 2006 and I got the idea from a graphic I saw on the Internet
a year or more before that. I’ve also seen the same thing done with the
word REVOLT. The ‘Stencilia’ font is freeware created by a
font artist and has been the best font I’ve ever used for the making of
stenciled signs.
How the Ron Paul
Revolution
got its start was as natural and expected as the rising of the Sun.
When the
first news of Ron Paul’s willingness to run for POTUS was reported
after his
incorporating for the exploratory committee, I immediately made a call
to Kent Snyder to confirm the seriousness of Ron Paul’s
intentions made known only 18 hours prior. Informed that Ron Paul knew
exactly what he was up against and that the entire Paul family
was involved in the decision, and that Ron was certainly willing to
make the
effort if enough people demonstrated that the message of freedom would
be
supported, I knew what would happen. I had all the information I
needed, and
from that moment on I had no desire to be involved in any ‘official
campaign’
effort.
Within moments the next year
and a half of my family’s time had been mapped out. I knew that many of my
activist friends would eagerly be involved as well. And we immediately knew
what was needed most. It had to be very clear to the media that they were not
going to be able to block communications. The Internet is a very effective tool
but taking the effort to the street was a requirement so that it was clear that
the Media formerly known as
MainStream were to be portrayed as irrelevant as much as possible. Kingmaker media was going to be bypassed and the
rigged polling of the past would be exposed. Phrases such as, “Newspapers are
soooo last century” would be promoted and proved as often as possible.
With so many new people
across the political spectrum expected to participate, we decided to raise
enough money to take over abandoned space along the business destroying ‘Light
Rail Project’ here in Phoenix
that is another example of government gone crazy in the name of Corporate
Welfare. 3000 square feet for $500 a month was a great deal for a place to work
in comfort. We only desired 4 weeks use but had to lease for at least 8 weeks
to convince the property owner. After utilities, rent, insurance, equipment and
initial supplies to get started, the total for this demonstration project was
about $3000 with deposits etc. We raised this in a day from amoung ourselves and
within 2 weeks of a decision to act we were in production.
We needed the $3000 for
comfort and speed for high production to demonstrate how a large American city
could be blitzed with the Ron Paul Revolution for very little. We also wanted
to document how the same thing could be done in your garage for almost nothing.
YouTube how to videos and a
RonPaulRevolution.com website was created to help spread the Revolution and
inspire other ideas. We knew that the word “Revolution” would be uncomfortable
to many but we also knew it best described what was going to happen. We would
only respond to any criticism by saying, “You can say Revolution all you want,.. as long as
you say it with ‘LOVE’”.
My main goal wasn’t to “tag”
the campaign with a slogan, it was to expand the envelope of imagination. I
wanted to make certain that a feeling of ‘anything is possible/allowed’ was
felt by those I knew it would have a very powerful impact on,… those that knew
we needed a revolution,… a peaceful and fun one.
The explosion of creativity
that we wanted to inspire and document was our main goal in the first few
months of the campaign to support the freedom that Ron Paul represented. Once
this was accomplished we could focus on our efforts to assist others that
needed our help and had demonstrated their desire and ability to make use of
it. We provided download links for the Font, instructional and inspirational
videos, supply lists, promotion of other techniques and ideas, demonstrations
and documentation of other people making use of the information being shared (I’ll
share the new ‘Big Idea’ later in this post)
The official campaign effort
to support Ron Paul certainly has its uses and the focus on important
information for the nomination of Ron Paul should be the top priority in the
opinion of many. But I have a message of warning to those that need it as well
as a message of hope to those that will benefit from it.
The best way to
cripple a
movement is to try to control it. The perception that there are
individuals in
positions of authority that have the power to tell others “NO” is very
detrimental to a movement that has at its core the support of freedom.
But I do understand the importance of having a volunteer force that is
ready to help ensure Ron Paul has the people in place to get the
nomination of a party deep inside the political process. But many are
not suited for this restricting work and all are served more
efficiently if those interested in such internal politics are left
alone to do the required work. But the encouragement of the efforts of
others to spread the word and enjoy themselves in the process is a must
for when their numbers and enthusiasm is critical to the campaign. If
we are all aware of what needs to be done and can learn how to not
interfere with others doing what they want then all will be best served.
I remember well the
troubles
inside the Ross Perot effort that eventually evolved into lawsuits and
many
other distractions over the question of who had the power to tell
others what
they would be able to do with their own time and money. I quickly
developed the
opinion that a bad idea is dealt with best by the free-market of ideas.
The
desire to prevent a ‘bad idea’ creates an unintended consequence of
preventing innovation. What is most damaging is the death of the
spirit of activism and the enthusiasm an individual has in the
promotion of
their own idea. It needs to be stated here that there was not universal
support
for the RonPaulRevolution effort and had we been part of the “official
campaign”
it would not have been chosen as anything the campaign would have
supported.
In
a video, taken by one of the Phoenix activists
that went to Utah
to help with their GOP state convention last week, was an older gentleman being critical of the RPR signs and that it
made it seem that Ron Paul ‘loved’ Revolution. While the fine points of this
observation could have been debated for hours, the campaign manager, Lew Moore,
simply looked at the sign against the wall and said, “The campaign has nothing
to do with that”,... :)
The ability to limit
anything that has anything to do with Ron Paul to the words coming out
of his
own mouth/pen/votes leaves very little for the opposition to take hold
of.
Mistakes and the poor judgment of individuals making a mess of their
effort to
do what they thought was of benefit to Ron Paul’s effort will be
examined and a
lesson for others, but the damage that can be done the campaign is very
minimal, while the damage done in an effort to prevent such mistakes
would be devastating to a campaign like Ron Paul's.
In a campaign for
individual freedom we can expect to
learn that this philosophy is embraced by the campaign and learn to
adapt. Many of us are experienced with other efforts that have a
totally different feel and structure. But what you have witnessed so
far is the product of a totally "FREE" campaign. Young people that have
yet to be conditioned to ask for permission, don't even understand the
concept of seeking approval. And I don't see any net benefit of trying
to change them.
For those that have entered
the effort to support Ron Paul through “official channels” and have felt
limited, I encourage you to continue your support on your own. You will become
very frustrated if your efforts are focused to steer an entire campaign's
direction from the inside of a structure that has already made up its mind
about what the answer is to the question, “what can I do to help?”. If you
already know what excites you and you have a talent for communication then follow the
example of the thousands of other people. Not being part of any effort that
is larger than themselves or maybe a few friends excited about demonstrating
their support in creative ways for Ron Paul and his message is often much more fun and satisfying to many.
I want to thank the person
that emailed us the following idea.
Coroplast is a great
material for making the stencils, but Ron Paul supporters in New Hampshire have demonstrated the ability
to use paper to produce the same end effect. Other material such as cardboard and
even plywood has been used as well but the Coroplast has been the most universally
supported for multiple uses. The sign material itself can be almost anything
that can be stenciled on. Cardboard, Tyvek, Coroplast, Vinyl, Paper etc. But
the Big Idea we are
now excited about will raise the bar in the friendly competition between
Revolutionaries across the country.
It was suggested by someone
(from Utah I
think) that the large 14 foot by 48 foot billboard vinyl used for billboards
has to go somewhere. We checked and found that the subcontractors for
Clearchannel (first Dupont’s Tyvek and now Clearchannel :) have their own little side business ‘releasing’
(selling for beer money I guess), these used vinyl signs. If I were to take
them in bulk and return the PVC core they are rolled up on, then I could
have this vinyl (with a clean white back side) for $15. This unRipable material
weighs about 60 lbs. a sign and can be hauled up a mountain by some eager
activists bent on making a statement, or floated on a river or lake for a great
Youtube video, or hung from a building rooftop at just the right moment for TV
coverage or to please a crowd. What is the likely use for most of the vinyl
after we take care of our egos and our friendly competition with other RPR
groups to be the most,… most something, will be to cut the vinyl into smaller
sizes. This vinyl is 1/3 the cost of the Tyvek banners we have been making.
With grommets and paint our cost per 4’ x 9’ banner just got to less than $1.
We just bought and picked up
26 rolls for $300….
The Imagination Spins
1 Comments in Response to What threatens the Ron Paul campaign the most – by Ernest Hancock
".....you ARE the campaign....."
Ron Paul to supporters at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona 6/16/07