RNC Recap Part 2: Leadership Summit, RNC Session 1, Nation Celebration

I should be working or studying right now, but all these government “bailouts” have me so riled up that I can’t be productive. I mean, does no one oppose the nationalization of our entire financial system? Where the hell is even the debate?! We’ve spent the last several years looking down our collective political noses at Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, but the Fed bailouts of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and now AIG dwarf anything even attempted by other modern socialist regimes. Oh, and isn’t it curious that Lehman Brothers isn’t able to get a deal made, but Merrill Lynch is? Maybe not so curious when you remember that our treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, is a former colleague of Merrill’s CEO!

Ok, before I get too carried away, here’s part 2 of the RNC Recap:

On Monday morning Toby and I attended breakfast with the Oklahoma Delegation. We were graced with a rather impressive speaking line-up. It included Utah governor, Jon Huntsman, the secretary of veterans’ affairs, the secretary of the interior, one of John McCain's prison mates in Hanoi, and one of McCain’s sons, Andy, among others.

After breakfast we headed over to see if we could get into the Campaign for Liberty’s Leadership Summit. It was an invitation only function, and we hadn’t been invited, but we thought we’d give it a shot. We brought Charles Key along with us for some extra clout. The volunteers at the registration table wouldn’t let us in, but we were able to bootleg some credentials from Kaye and Les to get in.

It turned out that it wasn’t really worth the trouble. The Leadership Summit was set up to unveil the Campaign for Liberty’s mission, vision, and organizational structure to select leaders from each state. When we entered, John Tate was laying out the goals and strategies that C4L plans to pursue. The problem was that he was constantly being interrupted with inane questions from the floor (which evidently is true to form for libertarian meetings according to Doug Wead).

There were about 600 people in the room with a couple of microphones from which to ask questions, all of which had lines of variously disaffected constituents. Some were peeved about the selection of state coordinators. Some thought the C4L wasn’t libertarian enough. Others wanted to remind everyone of how hard they’d worked, and that they didn’t want their existing organization to be forgotten.

If there’s one thing that bugs me to no end, it’s a bunch of self-centered blowhards needlessly dragging out a meeting with their petty complaints and juvenile questions. Maybe if they’d shut up for a few minutes and let the presentation go on, they’d get their answer without having to waste everyone else’s time! I have to commend John Tate for masterfully and graciously handling all the questions and comments.

The fact was that C4L wasn’t really ready yet to be launched at the time of the convention. The basic message was, “Here’s what we’re going for. You’re free to join us or not. Either way, we hope we’ll be able to work as allies when the time comes.” The Campaign for Liberty’s full launch is currently set for October 1^st.

Since it didn’t seem like sticking around was going to be very productive, Toby and I headed back to the hotel, so he could take the shuttle to the first session of the Republican National Convention. Monday was originally scheduled to have an afternoon and an evening session, but the evening was canceled due to Hurricane Gustav.

I wasn’t able to attend the Monday afternoon session (I was taking Ellany and Taytem to meet some friends in Madison, WI, where they were staying the rest of the week), so I’ll have to leave it to Toby to give you the rundown. As far as I know, it just consisted of business matters, such as the committee reports, other than surprise appearances by Laura Bush and Cindy McCain. When I met everyone (the RP’ers) back at the hotel, they seemed pretty depressed. I understood why after I attended the RNC sessions on Wednesday and Thursday.

But Monday was not completely lost. After all we still had the Ron Paul Nation Celebration, the outdoor concert that served as the warm-up for Tuesday’s Rally for the Republic.

We arrived just as Mark Scibilia was ending his set. It was cool to see thousands of patriots from across the country gathered on a football field to celebrate Ron Paul and liberty. It was also our first chance to see our non-delegate Ron Paul comrades from Oklahoma.

Next up on stage was Aimee Allen, the internet sensation and writer/performer of the Ron Paul Revolution Theme Song, which she had to encore at the end of her set due to the crowd’s enthusiastic demands. After local country star Rockie Lynn performed, Ron Paul took the stage and charged up the crowd with his usual blend of common sense populism and principled, constitutional radicalism.

As we were packing up and leaving, several of us from Oklahoma were interviewed by an online news site called Gnooze. Here's the footage:

RNC Recap Part 1: Politics School and Meeting Ron Paul

I apologize to everyone that this has been so long in coming. I didn’t realize just how busy we would be while at the national convention. Most nights we ended up with about 3-4 hours of sleep. And for both Toby and me, missing a week of work meant that piles of projects were waiting when we returned. Our time in Minneapolis Saint Paul was at turns exciting, adventurous, exhausting, boring, fun, depressing, infuriating, and motivating. I will try to recap as best I can over the next couple of days. Here’s part 1:

We (Toby, me, my wife, Ellany, and my daughter, Taytem) hit the road August 30^th, Saturday morning, drove all day, and arrived in St. Paul 13 hours later.

Since we had worked in the grassroots of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, we were excited about the slate of events planned by the Campaign for Liberty, which is the ongoing organization that will carry on the legacy of Ron Paul’s rEVOLution.

The Campaign for Liberty’s events started at noon on Sunday with their all-day Real Politics Training School. This turned out to be well worth our time as we joined 600 other students to learn invaluable lessons on the systems and techniques of effective grassroots political activism.

Mike Rothfeld taught us about the different paths to power: direct and indirect. He told us about the weaknesses of the theory that we can educate everyone into right thinking. We learned that politics is not about vapid theories. Rather it takes concrete actions in real time to effect political change.

We learned that politicians are people who have subjected their humanity to their ambition. Mike joked (sort of) that we don’t need to worry about witnessing to politicians since they don’t have souls anyway. Since they are ruled by their ambition, their actions can be reduced to Pavlovian responses to pleasure and pain granted and inflicted by those of us on the indirect path to power.

We learned that to achieve real political change, we must not fall prey to the access trap, but rather pursue grassroots mobilization and confrontation. The keys are to withstand their threats, resist their bribes of access, and never lose sight of the long-term goal while pursuing victory in the short-term. That point was driven home with an unexpected visit and word of encouragement from none other than Ron Paul. It was exciting to see and hear him in person for the first time.

We learned many other great methods of communication, marketing, fundraising, and winning elections. I believe we will be holding some special meetups in the next couple of months so we can all learn these important lessons that will make us much more effective grassroots activists. I encourage everyone to keep an eye out and try to attend, because the only way we will ever begin to address the huge mess of American politics at the national level is by taking our cities, counties, districts, and states for Liberty first!

We actually had to miss out on the last Politics School session, but it was for good reason: The C4L was hosting a special reception for the delegates and alternates and their spouses with Ron Paul himself! By the time Ron entered, the room was packed and he was immediately surrounded by delegates eager to meet him and get a picture. It took quite a while to work our way through the crowd, but I finally had my chance to shake his hand.

I was also lucky enough to get him to autograph my copy of his book The Revolution: A Manifesto as well as the hat that had signaled our supporters to vote for me at the district convention. It was so great to finally get to meet the man we had worked so hard to elect, and who has been such a humble and fearless defender of Liberty. As a huge bonus we also got to meet Barry Gold water Jr., one of Dr. Paul’s longtime allies.

After patiently greeting everyone, Ron stepped to the mic to share a few words. I will post the video soon.

The week hadn’t even officially started yet, and we were already having an amazing experience.

We have so many more exciting and shocking stories to share with you, so be sure to check back often!

-RR Team

We are as mad as hell and we’re not going to take this anymore!!!

Hey Revolution Road trip readers! Wanted to let all you patient waiters out there that the revolution has begun!!! We need to let you know that since we have been here we have been equipped with the tools necessary to do the business of freedom. We have been given the knowledge necessary to fill in those gaps that have hindered some of our previous effectiveness and we will come back leaner and meaner.

In the movie Network, Howard Beale was a TV news anchor that had, had enough. “No one has to tell us things are bad, we know things are bad!” This sentiment is one that is deep within all of us and know what needs to change and instead of getting complacent you need to get mad. Let me be clear, I don’t mean that you need to be upset, not that you need to be uncomfortable. I don’t mean that you need to feel challenged or tense. You need to get mad and not just mad but mad as hell. We have got to go out and make change, and it’s more apparent now than ever before.

This week we have practiced freedom and witnessed tyranny. We built bridges and our opponents burned them down. We have seen people tear gassed and beaten. We have seen soldiers and CIA, big party tyrants and local despots. But most of all we have seen the fire of freedom burning in the eyes and hearts of people that will not shrink back. We have heard the great call to liberate minds and dispute the idea that liberty cannot be obtained. We WILL obtain it. WE WILL ACHIEVE IT. WE’RE AS MAD AS HELL AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!

Stay tuned in as we recap the events of this week and hopefully plug-in some video that you all can see as well.

Rare Churchill Quote

I found this interesting quote from Winston Churchill, made to New York Enquirer editor William Griffen in August, 1936:

America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn’t entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these ‘isms’ wouldn’t to-day be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives.

I think Churchill is one of the greatest enigmas in modern history. It's weird to see such a solid case for non-interventionism from such an interventionist.

For further enlightenment, I highly recommend reading Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker. It's my second favorite book of all time.

Progress Report

Thank you so much to everyone who is making the trip to Minneapolis possible for the Revolution Roadtrippers! We have had two successful car washes, and our ChipIn donations are also coming along nicely. A great big THANK YOU! goes out to Curry Insurance and Falcone Deli & Pizza for lending us their water and parking lots.

We had an Oklahoma Delegation meeting this weekend where we picked up our delegate pins, so we will be sending those out soon to our $50+ contributors! We also learned that we will be keeping very busy throughout the convention week with various events and receptions, so there will be plenty of news to keep you coming back to the blog.

Till then,
RR Team

"Peace" as a Theme for the Convention?

I recently received an email update from the Republican National Convention announcing the convention's themes to be Service, Reform, Prosperity, and Peace.

Wait a minute...(sound of tires screeching to a halt)...Peace? As a theme of the Republican National Convention? Where we'll be "nominating" John "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" McCain?

I wish I could be pleasantly surprised at such a development. But instead I find myself feeling disgusted that such a noble, righteous concept as peace could be so disgraced by the war-starved neocons who control the Republican Party.

We can debate about the various merits and detriments of particular wars and conflicts, but one thing should be logically and morally clear: one cannot advocate peace and aggressive "preventive" war at the same time; they are mutually exclusive concepts. Peace can never be achieved by the means of violence, just as honesty cannot be achieved by the means of deception, and love cannot be achieved by the means of hate. So what's it going to be fellow Republicans?

It amazes me the extent to which people are willing to deceive themselves. Do the organizing directors of the convention really believe in "peace" being a theme of the Republicans' 2008 campaign? Or have they just astutely co-opted the concept after seeing the passionate response to Ron Paul's anti-war platform among disaffected Republican voters? It sickens me to think about all the cheering we're going to hear at the convention when our leaders advocate continuing foreign war and domestic rights violations in the supposed pursuit of "freedom", "security", and "peace."

The one bright spot I see in "Peace" being a convention theme is that it shows that if we the people will care enough to make some noise over important issues, our leaders at some point must listen and adhere to our wishes, even if it is only for political expediency. And hopefully it gives delegates like me and other Revolution Roadtrippers more of a chance to talk about what peace really means, and how we'll never have freedom and prosperity without it.

Car Wash for Liberty

The Revolution Roadtrip team (Lukus and Toby) will be putting on a car wash fund raiser this Saturday, August 16th, from 10am to 6pm at 415 W. 15th Street in Edmond (here's a map). If you'd like to get your car washed, or help wash cars, or wave signs, or just say "hi", we'd love to see your smiling faces! Feel free to come late, leave early, whatever you need to do, we would just like everyone who can to join our effort. Contact Lukus (splintrecords@hotmail.com, 371-2574) for more details if you have any questions. We'll see you there!