A great deal has been written about the Ron Paul Revolution and how effectively people have used this common theme to advocate for the message of freedom that Ron Paul represents. But criticism of a logo by people that don’t support their favorite candidate’s name so closely associated with the word ‘revolution’ has been lost in an ocean of support for the idea that Ron Paul’s campaign _is_ a revolution.

 

I want to take this opportunity to address the minority of Ron Paul supporters that don’t feel that their traditional Republican values are being represented by a sea of Ron Paul Revolution signs.

 

Examining the wide ranging support of Ron Paul, by individuals that represent many different perspectives, will help us understand a lot about what is happening and why.

 

The earliest enthusiasm for Ron Paul’s campaign included activist libertarians and what are often referred to as small “L” libertarians. These philosophical libertarians include non-voters, activists and “just leave me alone” Americans that may be registered with another political party other than Libertarian for any one or combination of reasons. But they choose to identify themselves as ‘libertarian’. The large “L” Libertarians are often thought to be more focused on the growth and power of the Libertarian Party itself than the principles for which it was founded and were stunned into silence with Ron Paul’s announcement. Here in Arizona this is called Stieger’s Law,… “Whenever an organization of any type is created to promote, defend or advocate any cause,… sooner or later the organization becomes more important than the reason for which it was created”. Sam Stieger was a Republican US Congressman in the ‘70s that ran for governor as a Libertarian in 1982 here in Arizona, and was recently the past mayor of Prescott, Arizona until a stroke a few years ago.

 

With the stated goal of increasing party membership (more money/power etc.) a growing effort inside the Libertarian Party on a national level, and in many states, advocated for the softening of the libertarian platform and message so timid Libertarian Party candidates wouldn’t have to be embarrassed by being part of a political party that advocated the elimination of the IRS, The Federal Reserve, the US Department of Education, Foreign Aid, extraction from the United Nations, a return to the US Constitution etc. etc. etc. In July of 2006 there was a successful effort to strip the Libertarian Party of a great deal of its ‘offensive language’. What could not be changed without a 7/8ths vote was the primary mission statement about the LP’s “Opposition to the Cult of the Omnipotent State”,  but there was a great effort to do so.

 

 

Since the Libertarian Party had just abandoned most of the reasons for supporting it, many of the party’s members were easily supportive of the idea that a man of proven courage and experience would advocate without fear on the national stage the very principles and positions that had sent the LP into the fetal position.

 

Just as the Libertarian Party was created in response to the Republican Party’s abandonment of principle by the era of the Nixon Administration, the LP would now lose most of its gains to the campaign of a man that stood on a platform created by the US Constitution.

 

 

The US Constitution is not perfect and requires the eternal vigilance of Americans for it to function as a document in support of individual liberty. Anti-Federalist warned us of these imperfections and statesmen like Ron Paul are required for any chance of it functioning as promised.

 

Critics of the US Constitution included many of the names responsible for the moral arguments that justified the revolution against the most powerful empire on the face of the planet by a people that were considered to be very prosperous by most humans on the planet.

 

Among these are Patrick“Give me Liberty or Give me Death” Henry - Thomas “Common Sense” Paine - Thomas “Declaration of Independence” Jefferson - Samuel “Boston Tea Party” Adams, are some of the best known (learn that in public school did ‘ya?)

 

Regarding the US Constitution Patrick Henry made clear his opinion, “I smell a rat” Patrick Henry: Enemy of the State http://www.lewrockwell.com/mcmaken/mcmaken93.html

Thomas Jefferson knew what the new US Constitution was being used to accomplish and rallied support against it http://209.10.134.179/65/je/JeffersT.html 

“Jefferson next opposed Hamilton by declaring against his Bank of the United States scheme on the ground that the Constitution did not specifically authorize it, rejecting the doctrine of “implied powers,” invoked by Hamilton’s supporters. In both these encounters Hamilton, to Jefferson’s chagrin, emerged the victor.  Fearing a return to monarchist ideals, if not to actual monarchy, Jefferson became virtual leader of the Anti-Federalist forces. He drew to himself a group of like-minded men who began to call themselves Republicans—a group to which the present Democratic party traces its origin. An organization was developed, and the National Gazette, edited by Philip Freneau, was established (1791) to disseminate Republican sentiments.”

 

The US Constitution was made far more acceptable to a very skeptical population by immediately adding 10 Amendments. 

 

This Bill of Rights was to make it very clear what the US Government was never to be allowed to do. These ‘Thou Shalt Nots’ of government allowed for the greatest expansion of real wealth the world had ever known. So much wealth in fact that it became an irresistible prize to those that knew how to make it theirs, using the controlled force of government.

 

 

 

Over a century later the link between the money in individual American’s pockets and valuable commodities was severed and allowed for the theft of its worth with the new ability of private bankers to create money from nothing. We should have a great deal of appreciation for men like Thomas Jefferson for their informing Americans about what was being attempted and educating an entire generation so that this country was given over a hundred years before the central bankers were able to begin the looting.

For decades we have been lead to believe that this information could never be turned into an issue that would be of interest to the American people during an election cycle. Even if that were true in the past it is no longer the case.

 

 

It was brought to my attention, by a man of considerable means at a Las Vegas Ron Paul Rally of hundreds, that the loudest cheering was for the elimination of the Federal Reserve via real money competition. Since then I have paid attention and noticed this to be consistent across the country.

 

I was so surprised to have support for the ending of the Iraq War coming in a close second to the elimination of the Federal Reserve, in arguably the most liberal town in the center of Iowa, that I was motivated to call my friend Aaron Russo to share with him how effective I think his movie “America: From Freedom to Fascism” has been.

 

 

I just learned a few hours ago that Aaron had died from his long battle with cancer. I’ve got to know Aaron much better over the last 4-5 years but had first contact with him back in early 1994 and followed his efforts ever since. He had several talents but was able to bring them all together for the greatest benefit to us all before his death and get to witness the effect firsthand. Aaron and I had a long phone conversation a few days before the Iowa Straw Poll a couple of weeks ago and I could tell that he wasn’t feeling well and had come to terms with the fact that he would soon pass on. But Aaron was very grateful to hear about my witnessing how much impact his movie had all over the country. He felt the overriding issue to most of America’s woes, the most cheered issue at Ron Paul speaking events,… was the elimination of the Federal Reserve.

 

I can’t yet imagine a ‘good’ death for myself. But to have the love and admiration of an entire generation, and likely many to come, for your contribution to liberty at time when it was sorely needed, known to you as you take your last conscious breath, has to be one of the better ones I can imagine.

 

Just before getting the news about Aaron, my wife forwarded me an e-mail from her very liberal democratic mother that detailed how she and my wife’s father were so moved by Aaron’s movie that she was motivated to look for libertarians to share it with. She did get a call back from a local Ron Paul supporter. Mr. Martin is a Republican and was very excited by the RonPaulRevolution DVD goodie bags that my mother-in-law gave him. The fact that he was a Republican was amusing to her since her oldest son watches way too much Fox News.

 

I’ve always liked and respected my wife’s family and they have been kind to me and knew us to be sincere about our philosophical beliefs for the past quarter century that we’ve known each other. But it is a relief to know that they are starting to share a common perspective with us. My oldest brother-in-law will come around sooner or later, he’s a smart guy. My other brother-in-law is an economist on Wall Street and is getting an up close and personal lesson so maybe we’ll have much more in common soon as well.

 

I suspect that this anecdote is a common one across the country between most libertarians that held to their beliefs and their extended families. And this is the best example I can personally provide of how American families are coming together under an increasingly understood philosophy of liberty.

 

 

My experiences as a liberty activist in the political process has provided me the confidence to act with several simple truths to guide my actions. One of those is that I am firmly of the opinion that the vast majority of people in America are good. At the very least they desire to do what they believe to be good. In most cases I can rely on logic and reason to produce an understanding of how they were deceived into supporting what turned out to be bad. Often the emotional response is delayed. But sooner or later most people develop a true and deep distrust and distaste for those that lied to them.

 

I believe that this has always been happening but it was not until the ability to communicate outside the controlled mass media have we been able to understand how much effort had been invested in keeping individual Americans separated from each other by placing each of us into as many small groups as possible. Being an individual that wishes to simply be left alone and is willing to support a philosophy of government that was created for the purpose to make certain that peaceful people were left alone, puts us into an alliance of thought that is too dangerous to those that ‘will not leave us alone’.

 

The law has evolved into separating Genders, Religions, Races, State Determined Intelligence, Physical Abilities, Sexual Orientation, Age etc. It has got to the point that we can understand how it would be possible for an 89 year old gay black Hindu female in a wheel chair at a Mensa meeting would be the only person receiving some government related benefit tailored just for that one individual in the USA (citizen or not :)

 

The idea that the smallest minority is a single individual who’s right to be left alone is the prime directive of any valid government is now alien to many. But this was the primary motivation for relatively prosperous people to wage a full blown revolution against the most powerful force in the known universe at the time. Their idea was to create a government that derives its justification for its existence from the individuals that created it to protect their individual rights,… not be the primary violator of them. The evolution of our government has resulted in a collectivist state with the primary objective of sustaining itself so that benefits can be split among the ‘favored’ entities now in control,… and it isn’t ‘We the People’.

 

 

I share these random trains of thought to provide the reader with some of the things that shape my personal perspective regarding each of our futures and why I am so sensitive to the methods used to oppose this collective of ‘special interest’ that have abandoned the primary duty to protect the rights of each individual.

 

Immediately after learning that an individual with a proven record spanning over decades was willing to represent the founding principles of this country (not a warmed over shadow version of it) my family and several friends were “all in”. We knew that we could ‘Declare our Independence’ and begin a Revolution based on our love of liberty and our families. Our past experiences had taught us how to do it, that it was way past time, and that the chance for a peaceful solution to our monumental problems should be seized with great passion in an all out effort to avoid what many of us feared would be the result of the eventual and certain collapse of our economy.

 

The choice of the r3VOLution logo was due to the emotional impact it had on each of us the moment each individual was exposed to it.

 

 

I saw this particular idea on the Internet over a year and a half ago and used it for a local race here in Arizona on only a few hundred stickers. The logo filled otherwise unused space in the layout of other stickers and a sign design that I used as my primary message in my race for Secretary of State here in Arizona, “Still Voting” that was a campaign to highlight the fraud of Computer Voting.

 Newspaper poll after the election - "most popular campaign sign"

 

So while the r3VOLution artwork got a very small exposure in the 2006 election cycle, there was enough real life feedback to know the impact and understanding of how this would happen…

 

 

But it was never our intent to “brand” the campaign. As the campaign matures you can expect more investment by the Ron Paul campaign into “tagging” the campaign with what they want to see visible at various functions. With nothing available from the campaign for individuals to demonstrate their support it is very easy to see how the RonPaulRevolution would become so visible. Our intent was to make it clear what we knew this campaign to be. Political philosophy has made a full revolution and returned us to an understanding of the founding principles of this country with first hand knowledge now of what happens when those principles are abandoned.

 

Ron Paul himself was the first to understand the concept and has embraced the “revolution” at every stop with the first words out of his mouth demonstrating an understanding of what is happening and being happy to be part of the ‘r3VOLution’.

 

Patrick Henry – “We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth... For my part, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it.” – “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.”

 

The most visible support for Ron Paul on the Internet and in the streets has come from those new to the political process. They are mostly young and not on the lists of pollsters that seek their opinion. On this past trip around the country I came to realize what the common denominator was for support of Ron Paul and the r3VOLution,… it was exposure to the truth. Those born after 1980 would come into puberty along with the maturing of the Internet in the mid 90’s. The ability to push the “truth button” immediately stripped away the monopoly of access to the next generation’s minds. Older supporters shared the same demand for truth.

 

The Mandatory Indoctrination Youth Camps (public schools), government licensed and ultimately controlled Mass Media, and even Churches could no longer be counted on to produce obedient supporters of The State. The evolution of ‘controls’ to maintain the Matrix would add tools such as Computer Voting and State supported “FEAR” of  (fill in the blank) to increase the ‘Mind Fog’ required to keep the American people from rising up in a focused effort to shed themselves of the parasites the Declaration of Independence http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm clearly detailed for us.

 

But these types of individuals that understood what has happened to this country and why, were the first to embrace the r3VOLution because it most closely represented the emotions that they felt. Good people with love in their hearts were not willing to allow their future and the futures of their loved ones to be sacrificed for the benefit of others. The stripping of their individual rights was experienced daily and they had become unwilling servants to an insatiable beast that was ‘eating out their substance’.

 

 

The perspective I’ve shared above can help many understand why the r3VOLution is so popular. Those few that are not so supportive that have shared their opinions with me personally haven’t been very articulate in their opposition. After lengthy discussions the best I can come up with is that the general feeling is that the mass media won’t be supportive of a candidate associated with the word ‘revolution’. When I remind them of the popularity of the Reagan Revolution or the Republican Revolution of 1994 they don’t seem to make a connection,… and I agree. The RonPaulRevolution is genuine and not a Madison Avenue marketing campaign that was parroted by the party’s functionaries, and that is what scares them.

 

A few times I was asked what the backward ‘LOVE” means, “I just don’t get it, I just don’t get it” (which really meant, ‘I just don’t like it’). One man asked if it was suppose to be a ‘subjective thing’ where he was supposed to come up with his own meaning of the logo. The few times that I’ve had these conversations I have tried to get their initial impression and what it meant to them, just to see if they even knew. This “ink blot’ sort of question always drew a blank response. I don’t even know what that revealed about them. The best response I have is to say, “Well, I didn’t think a silhouette of an AK-47 would have produced the emotion I think best describes the feeling behind the support for Ron Paul’s message”, said with a smile.

 

Now that I have had time to think about it and have paid attention to the activities chosen by these people in their efforts to support Ron Paul, I think I can better comment on some of the common traits that those in opposition to the r3VOLution have. One of the most prominent is that they are very concerned about what the media has to say. The words coming out of a Fox News anchor is more important to them than to most of the supporters from other presidential campaigns I’ve met. And a negative comment on their local talk radio station will haunt them endlessly. Add to this the treatment they receive from local GOP officers at Republican functions that they have always enjoyed in the past and they are devastated.

 

Intellectually most Republicans are easy converts to the Ron Paul presidential campaign, but they have been so invested into the social structure that the GOP has created around supporting The Party that it is very easy to weaken their resolve. Acceptance and even admiration for their support of Ron Paul is very important to many. The fact that they seek it from people and institutions whose opinions should matter the least comes from a lack of experience. Even over a period of a few days as large planned events would draw closer it was clear that they were coming to understand just how corrupt the system was at the most local level and that a r3VOLution was exactly what was required.

 

Some have even suggested that the r3VOLution has served its purpose of getting Ron Paul the recognition he deserves and that its time has passed. They argue that people should be encouraged to adopt more traditional forms of demonstrating their support. I’m not sure what that would be but the RonPaulRevolution was never about a particular way to do anything. The goal was to create an atmosphere of ‘anything goes’. Too often we were asked ‘permission’ to do something. We were very clear about our encouragement of them doing anything that they wanted.

 

As long time political activists we knew that good ideas flourish and bad ideas  evaporate when individuals are left alone. However, when committees, or boards, or panels are created to spend other people’s money and direct their efforts, you can count on a bad idea being subsidized long past the time it is obvious to most that it should never have been started.

 

With students returning to class, at every educational level, I expect that we’ll see a new wave of RPR efforts. I also expect that a new slogan will catch fire and will be added to the mix. I have no idea what it might be, but history has shown that the American people are very creative. I hope it will be even more popular than the RPR logo and that RPRevolutionaries will use all effective tools to spread the message of liberty, and support for the man that has championed the cause.

 

As a reward for reading all of this I am sharing with you the first news of an event you are certain to find of interest.

 

 

The Freedom Summit is an annual event in the Fall every year since 2001. The Freedom Summit has featured Ron Paul as a speaker twice in the past and our attendees have been very supportive of his efforts from the beginning. In fact it was several of these people that were responsible for the initial funding of the Ron Paul Revolution efforts immediately after learning about Ron Paul’s intentions in January of 2007.

 

This year the Freedom Summit www.FreedomSummit.com will integrate its efforts with the RonPaulRevolution and hold the event in Los Angeles as soon as the weekend of September 29th 2007. I travel to California this next Weds. to finalize site selection and dates.

 

The date will not be earlier but later weekends are possible. The latest weekend possible will be Veterans Day 3 day weekend in mid November but the goal is to have this event as soon as possible. Normally I wouldn’t even bring this event to your attention for at least another 2 weeks but these things have a way of making their way into cyberspace on their own once we start coordination with others.

 

Speakers are already being lined up but the main focus of this event is to highlight all of the activity around the country and to provide an opportunity for everyone to have their ideas and projects featured. Workshops on the production of campaign material in all forms will be constantly ongoing. Classes in video editing and posting will certainly be popular. Networking with people around the country AND THE WORLD will be unavoidable. Hundreds of square feet will be made available for the display of attendee’s artwork. CDs featuring all of the work the RPR has accumulated will be made available to all attendees. DVDs, Graphics files, apparel, equipment, techniques and the enthusiasm of hundreds of street activists will mark the beginning of an explosion of activism in California that is in great need.

 

This event is totally outside of the official Ron Paul campaign for President. But there is a desire from the campaign that they are able to share important information with the gathering so that the opportunities in California are maximized. Depending on the scheduling of the event we may have Ron Paul participate himself. But we are very understanding of the demands for his time,… we’ll keep you informed.

 

The theme of the RPR Summit is, “Yes!”.

 

I am very supportive of the idea that every individual should be encouraged to express their support for Ron Paul. And just because I may not share your perspective, hundreds or even millions of others may. No idea will be judged. But neither should anyone else be expected to support it. What you’ll experience at the RPR Freedom Summit are hundreds of people willing to help their fellow freedom fighters learn how to express themselves using many low and high tech methods that have creativity as their common factor. If you’ve ever felt like working for freedom meant that you had to be in the employ of a freedom slave master telling you that in order to earn your freedom you had to put aside what you wanted to do and do what you were told,… then this is an event you’ll love.

 

Freedom Summits in the past have averaged about $175 each but we are sensitive to the resource levels of the young and street activists for freedom. So instead of one set price that includes lunches, dinners and special events that add a great deal to our costs, we will do our best to keep the entire event as cheap as possible for the maximum participation.

 

The RonPaulRevolution has been traveling the country sparking activity as best we can. We are now encouraging all of those that have benefited from each other’s efforts to focus a bit of their attention on the importance of the California primary. The more this issue is discussed the more we’ll understand why.

 

As a special bonus for reading this far I share an idea from an activist at a university in Texas,… “Spray On Chalk” in various colors. I know some of you already have their imaginations swirling : )

 

Ernest Hancock
Publisher - FreedomsPhoenix

co-Founder - FreedomSummit

RPRevolutionary