Campaign for Liberty growing in numbers!

[galtgulch]

There will be a rally for Ron Paul next week in Minneapolis at which Ron Paul will announce the launch of his Campaign for Liberty.

Over 9,000 will attend the rally which is a three day event.

I told my wife that I am taking a week off and going to Minneapolis and her response was, "Oh no your're not!" So I will not be going myself.

I have been watching the tally on www.campaignforliberty.com website as it has grown every time I look. Now it is over 87,219 and they are trying to enlist 100,000 by next Tuesday.

One fellow posted the following on www.dailypaul.com for others to use to recruit people to the movement: This is not mine but I thought you all might be curious:

>>>"Recruiting for The Campaign For Liberty

Posted August 24th, 2008 by khaindel

In an effort to encourage people to join Ron Paul's Campaign For Liberty, I sent out the following to my address book. Some already belong and a few more joined.

Please consider doing something similar if you haven't already. September 1st will be here sooner than we realize.

Please feel free to cut and paste, copy or develop your own. Increased membership and awareness is extremely important at this time.

Content of my e-mail:

If you believe in respect for the Constitution,

the rule of law, individual liberty, sound money,

and a non interventionist foreign policy,

consider joining The Campaign for Liberty.

Will you join us?

The mission of the Campaign for Liberty is to promote and defend the great American principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a non interventionist foreign policy, by means of educational and political activity.

The Campaign for Liberty will carry out its mission through the following activities:

Gaining a foothold in political life at every level of government by expanding our precinct leader program.

Educating the electorate and lobbying against harmful or unconstitutional legislation.

Encouraging the formation of discussion groups and book clubs at the local level to help people learn more about our ideas.

Establishing a speakers bureau to give presentations around the country about the great principles we champion.

Developing materials for homeschooling families, to help them educate their children in history, sound economics, and related fields.

Featuring written as well as video commentaries on the news and issues of the day.

Additional efforts as time and resources allow.

Over the next few months we will be developing our program, organizing a team, and announcing new and exciting projects. Join now to get all of the latest updates and news!

Americans inherit from their ancestors a glorious tradition of freedom and resistance to oppression. Our country has long been admired by the rest of the world for her great example of liberty and prosperity – a light shining in the darkness of tyranny. But many Americans today are frustrated. The political choices they are offered give them no real choice at all. For all their talk of “change,” neither major political party as presently constituted challenges the status quo in any serious way. Neither treats the Constitution with anything but contempt. Neither offers any kind of change in monetary policy. Neither wants to make the reductions in government that our crushing debt burden demands. Neither talks about bringing American troops home not just from Iraq but from around the world. Our country is going bankrupt, and none of these sensible proposals are even on the table.

This destructive bipartisan consensus has suffocated American political life for many years. Anyone who tries to ask fundamental questions instead of cosmetic ones is ridiculed or ignored.

That is why the Campaign for Liberty was established: to highlight the neglected but common-sense principles we champion and reinsert them into the American political conversation.

The U.S. Constitution is at the heart of what the Campaign for Liberty stands for, since the very least we can demand of our government is fidelity to its own governing document. Claims that our Constitution was meant to be a “living document” that judges may interpret as they please are fraudulent, incompatible with republican government, and without foundation in the constitutional text or the thinking of the Framers. Thomas Jefferson spoke of binding our rulers down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution, and we are proud to follow in his distinguished lineage.

With our Founding Fathers, we also believe in a non interventionist foreign policy. Inspired by the old Robert Taft wing of the Republican Party, we are convinced that the American people cannot remain free and prosperous with 700 military bases around the world, troops in 130 countries, and a steady diet of war propaganda. Our military overstretch is undermining our national defense and bankrupting our country.

We believe that the free market, reviled by people who do not understand it, is the most just and humane economic system and the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known.

We believe with Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and F.A. Hayek that central banking distorts economic decision making and misleads entrepreneurs into making unsound investments. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks’ interference with interest rates sets the stage for economic downturns. And the central bank’s ability to create money out of thin air transfers wealth from the most vulnerable to those with political pull, since it is the latter who receive the new money before the price increases it brings in its wake have yet occurred. For economic and moral reasons, therefore, we join the great twentieth-century economists in opposing the Federal Reserve System, which has reduced the value of the dollar by 95 percent since it began in 1913.

We oppose the dehumanizing assumption that all issues that divide us must be settled at the federal level and forced on every American community, whether by activist judges, a power-hungry executive, or a meddling Congress. We believe in the humane alternative of local self-government, as called for in our Constitution.

We oppose the transfer of American sovereignty to supranational organizations in which the American people possess no elected representatives. Such compromises of our country’s independence run counter to the principles of the American Revolution, which was fought on behalf of self-government and local control. Most of these organizations have a terrible track record even on their own terms: how much poverty have the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund actually alleviated, for example? The peoples of the world can interact with each other just fine in the absence of bureaucratic intermediaries that undermine their sovereignty.

We believe that freedom is an indivisible whole, and that it includes not only economic liberty but civil liberties and privacy rights as well, all of which are historic rights that our civilization has cherished from time immemorial.

Our stances on other issues can be deduced from these general principles.

Our country is ailing. That is the bad news. The good news is that the remedy is so simple and attractive: a return to the principles our Founders taught us. Respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, individual liberty, sound money, and a non interventionist foreign policy constitute the foundation of the Campaign for Liberty.

Will you join us?

www.campaignforliberty.com

"<<<

I assume these folks are not clones of Ron Paul and it appears their hearts are in the right place. How open to listening to reason remains to be seen. I for one will immerse myself within their number and report back.

galt

[Selene]

Galt:

So what.

We have 300 million folks in this country.

Sorry dude, you are loosing me.

Adam

[galtgulch]

Galt:

So what.

We have 300 million folks in this country.

Sorry dude, you are loosing me.

Adam

You know, once upon a time I was quite naive. I didn't identify with either political party and didn't know the left from the right. Then one day I observed an argument between three other gentlemen at work over lunch. One suggested that man is his brother's keeper! In response another fellow said, "No man's need constitutes an obligation on the part of another man to fulfill his need!"

That was my introduction to Objectivism!

After the dust settled, I asked the fellow something which he took to be to prove what he had said. He and I maintained eye contact as he proceeded to say that the statement was not self evident and that in order to derive it we would have to agree on certain laws of logic and certain basic premises which were self evident.

He said that Existence exists and that meant there is an objective reality which exists independently of our being conscious of it. He said there are no contradictions in the universe. That a contradiction would be an entity which exists which does not exist. He said an entity possesses an identity which is the sum of its attributes. A contradiction would be an entity which possesses an attribute which it does not possess. He concluded that since the universe is the sum of all the entities which exist, whether we know of their existence or not, and since there could be no contradiction with regard to the existence of an entity or with regard to its identity, that there are no contradictions in the universe!

Then he mentioned the other axiomatic, self evident concept, Consciousness. He said that human beings are defined by the possession of a volitional, conceptual consciousness. Because we are born with no conceptual knowledge of what our physical, psychological or social needs are and have to act in order to survive, we must be free to act on our own judgment, free from physical force.

He said that the concept of rights bridges from the realm of ethics to politics and that rights are meaningful because humans have the choice to think or not to think on the conceptual level and that all of our actions proceed from the thinking which we have or haven't done.

He said all interactions among men must be by mutual consent since they each have the same fundamental rights, the right to their own life, the right to freedom of action, the right to the use and disposal of our own productive effort. We can delegate our right to self defense to the government but force can only be used in retaliation against those who initiate it.

He wouldn't let me interrupt him while he said all the above as if it were a sacred geometric proof.

When he was done, my response was to say, "How come it is not the front page headline in the New York Times?"

He laughed and recommended that I read Atlas Shrugged which I had never heard of before.

After I had read Atlas I went on to read The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and then bought The Objectivist Newsletter.

At some point there were about 20,000 subscribers to the Objectivist Newsletter. I recall figuring that if the number doubled each year that in ten years there would be over ten million Objectivists. Well that hasn't happened yet and it is fifty years later!

These things take time.

I know that today a gentleman who owns a 6 million dollar in sales business came to my house to enter a contract with me to do some work for me. After we discussed the business in detail and shook hands on it, he began to talk about the election. He had seen my Ron Paul lawn sign out by the mailbox. We chatted for awhile. My wife went into the house and got him a few paperback copies including Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and For the New Intellectual.

He will give me his business card with his email address and I will send him a list of websites such as this one, Reason, Foundation for Economic Education, Future of Freedom Foundation, CATO, Mises, Laissez-faire books, etc.

If the torch is not passed enough then the prevailing mystic altruist collectivist philosophy will continue to prevail. We are in a battle for freedom or control of man's mind in a war of ideologies whether we like it or not. I thought Objectivists ought to take advantage of the movement which has been ignited by the Ron Paul campaign. Of course none of us is obligated to do so. If you have better things to do by all means be loyal to your highest values. Hopefully freedom and maintaining a Constitutional Republic and free market Capitalism is somewhere on your list.

galt

[howenlink]

I too have been uplifted by Ron Paul and the Campaign for Liberty this year. It has been two decades since I first read Atlas Shrugged, and I consider myself an Objectivist. And, I can no longer remain silent while this socialist/fascist two-party system destroys our country.

Unfortunately, my Objectivist friends have not taken up this cause, a fact that I find very disturbing.

The founding fathers did not have philosophy 100% correct when they gave us the US Constitution and the freest, most prosperous country in history. Yet they recognized the value of it.

So what if I am fighting side by side with Libertarians, John Birchers, and conservative Republicans? Is it not worth fighting for?

If you think you will live long enough to "educate" everyone on the virtues of selfishness, do you think you will still be living in a free county when you accomplish your goal?

Would it harm your cause to mingle with other libertarians to spread your message of philosophy and their message of freedom?

[kiaer.ts]

Ron Paul is much better than Cats! I'm going to vote for him over and over...

(5 Atlas points for the first person who can explain the allusion.)

[galtgulch]

I too have been uplifted by Ron Paul and the Campaign for Liberty this year. It has been two decades since I first read Atlas Shrugged, and I consider myself an Objectivist. And, I can no longer remain silent while this socialist/fascist two-party system destroys our country.

Unfortunately, my Objectivist friends have not taken up this cause, a fact that I find very disturbing.

The founding fathers did not have philosophy 100% correct when they gave us the US Constitution and the freest, most prosperous country in history. Yet they recognized the value of it.

So what if I am fighting side by side with Libertarians, John Birchers, and conservative Republicans? Is it not worth fighting for?

If you think you will live long enough to "educate" everyone on the virtues of selfishness, do you think you will still be living in a free county when you accomplish your goal?

Would it harm your cause to mingle with other libertarians to spread your message of philosophy and their message of freedom?

Welcome to OL!

Have you joined the www.campaignforliberty.com movement. Approaching 99,530 and counting! It was launched by Ron Paul and has a number of purposes. One is to enable us all to keep in touch while we spread the word and pass the torch. Another is to support candidates over the coming years who are running I suppose as Ron Paul Republicans. I don't think there is any expectation of ideological purity.

Still I think it is a forum to try to enlighten those who are involved and try to educate them to hold more rational positions. They do seem to have certain core agreements about the limits set in the Constitution, non intervention in foreign policy and abolition of the income tax and the IRS here at home.

I don't expect miracles naturally but hopefully there will be progress in the direction of more freedom and less government but something tells me it will get worse before it gets better!

Wm

[howenlink]

In addition to joining Campaign for Liberty, I attended the Rally for the Republic events this week in Minnesota. How I'd have liked to see a Objectivist booth among the others. It was a huge missed opportunity to promote Rand's philosophy.

As far as I can tell, Objectivists object to Ron Paul on the issues of Foreign Policy and Abortion. On Foreign Policy, may I suggest that you read The Creature from Jekyll Island about the Federal Reserve. Michael Kelly has made a related post. Once you understand how banking works in America, you will understand why the government wants us all scared of terrorists and Islamic Fundamentalists. It's all about giving money--your money--to banks and governments who have not earned it. Bombing Iran is not about defending our country.

Regarding abortion, while I favor a woman's choice, I understand there is a spectrum involved here. To make an analogy, are people truly adults when they turn 18? No. Some teenagers are mature sooner, and others die in their twenties as a result of never growing up. Ron Paul's position is that the issue of Abortion should be left up to the states to decide. Ron Paul is far more against Big Government than he is against Abortion. And he is a physician who is entitled to his professional opinion about when life begins. You think life begins in the last trimester or at birth; he thinks it begins sooner.

I challenge any Objectivist to tell me an Objectivist who has promoted free-market capitalism more this year than Ron Paul?

[Selene]

Galt:

I just received this e-mail from the campaign....

Friends,

Dr. Paul will hold a major press conference Wednesday, September 10th at 10:00 am at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Because of the importance of the event, we have rented their ballroom, which will have room for about 200 supporters.

This announcement promises to be one for the ages and have as deep impact on this and future elections. Your presence to cheer on Dr. Paul and add your energy and excitement to the day would be greatly appreciated.

If you are able to attend, due to limited seating, your response is requested. Please RSVP to ronpaulrsvp@gmail.com.

In Liberty,

Jesse Benton

[Selene]

In case the link does not work, I included the text. I cannot imagine what Dr. Paul and Bob Barr could possibly want to share a stage with a psychotic, Communist, racist like Cynthia McKinney for!

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail...ndidates_c.html

Ron Paul

Third Party Candidates to Converge on Press Club Weds.

By Garance Franke-Ruta

The National Press Club will be awash in third-party and movement presidential candidates tomorrow, as former GOP contender Ron Paul, Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin and independent candidate Ralph Nader all converge on the building in downtown Washington, D.C.

At the presser, to be held at 10 a.m., Paul will "announce his intentions for the fall presidential election and will be accompanied by several special guests," according to a statement from a Paul spokesman. One of those special guests will be Nader, who in 2000 ran for the presidency on the Green Party ticket and who this year is running as an independent. McKinney, the former Georgia congresswoman who is this year's Green Party choice, will also be there, as will the Constitution Party's Baldwin.

Paul was the force behind the gathering of third-party leaders, along with Nader. "Him and Ralph had a phone call a couple months back, talked about it and basically there's, like, a huge convergence between libertarians from the right and liberals from the left," explained Paul spokesman Toby Heaps. When it comes to civil rights and civil liberties issues, libertarians and liberals are "smack dab on the same page, which is a different page from Democrats and Republicans," he said.

Up for discussion will be "the plight of third parties and the way they've been marginalized within the two party system," said Nader for President spokesman Marc Abizeid.

Former Georgia congressman Barr will appear separately at noon for a "major campaign announcement," according to the Bob Barr 2008 campaign.

Adam

[Chris Grieb]

I agree with Adam.

I had some hopes for the Barr campaign but now I believe it will not do much better than previous LP campaigns. I have seen no TV ads, heard no radio ads.

Barr will be on a little over forty state ballots not the fifty that Ed Clark achieved.

I must add that agree with the poster's description of Ms McKinney. Her leaving Congress was a small but good step forward for that body.

[Selene]

Yes Chris. I watched the entire Libertarian Convention on C-Span and the multi millionaire and Barr were going to launch this "massive" campaign right after Labor Day. This was not going to be the same old tedious Libertarian campaign. They were right, it is worse.

Barr is barely pulling 3-4% in Georgia! My dead Irish Setter could pull those numbers.

Add to that, the "fact" that Dr. Paul allegedly had tons of money in reserve and what have we seen - nothing.

Therefore, I have to conclude that, even though they may be innocent charlatans, they are charlatans.

So, unfortunately, I will be pulling the lever for McCain and the incredibly refreshing future President of the United States, Sarah "Barracuda" Palin. I am incredibly impressed with her. She has more raw courage than "Plugs" Biden, the empty suited chosen one, the Socialist Messiah, O'Bama and the war hero McCain.

Adam

[BaalChatzaf]

So, unfortunately, I will be pulling the lever for McCain and the incredibly refreshing future President of the United States, Sarah "Barracuda" Palin. I am incredibly impressed with her. She has more raw courage than "Plugs" Biden, the empty suited chosen one, the Socialist Messiah, O'Bama and the war hero McCain.

Adam

And Sarah, the Frontier Woman packs heat and races her huskies accross the frozen north. What I admire about her is she took the situation of her sixteen year old daughter, preggers AND unmarried in stride. Not only that she saw the positive aspects of the situation. Sarah said that her daughter's situation will help her grow up fast.

She is a substantial women and saftig* to a just right degree.

Oh be still, my beating heart!

Ba'al Chatzaf

*saftig. Yiddish for fleshy but not fat.

[Roger Bissell]

So, unfortunately, I will be pulling the lever for McCain and the incredibly refreshing future President of the United States, Sarah "Barracuda" Palin. I am incredibly impressed with her. She has more raw courage than "Plugs" Biden, the empty suited chosen one, the Socialist Messiah, O'Bama and the war hero McCain.

Adam

And Sarah, the Frontier Woman packs heat and races her huskies accross the frozen north. What I admire about her is she took the situation of her sixteen year old daughter, preggers AND unmarried in stride. Not only that she saw the positive aspects of the situation. Sarah said that her daughter's situation will help her grow up fast.

She is a substantial women and saftig* to a just right degree.

Oh be still, my beating heart!

Ba'al Chatzaf

*saftig. Yiddish for fleshy but not fat.

Ba'al, you sound smitten!

You have almost convinced me to cast ~my~ vote for Babraham Lincoln aka "the pit bull with lipstick."

REB

[Chris Grieb]

Because of the failure of Barr campaign to get on the ballot and because I like Sarah Palin I will vote for McCain-Palin. McCain's election will be a gamble but I know we will have another JC*. *Jimmy Carter. This time it will not be hostages at an embassy but a mushroom cloud over an American city.

I know there are some OL readers who the idea of a mushroom cloud over an American city makes them all sweaty.

[algernonsidney]

I predicted a few months ago that Bob Barr will not get more than 800,000 votes. I am more and more inclined not to vote for him. Wayne Allyn Root is a total embarrassment to the party.

I may end drawing cards between Nader, McKinney, and Baldwin. It depends on who gets on the ballot. It won't matter in Texas anyway.

[algernonsidney]

Unfortunately, my Objectivist friends have not taken up this cause, a fact that I find very disturbing.

It says a great deal about the current state of the Objectivist movement. Chris Matthew Sciabarra once commented to me that the movement is going "down the tubes."

I often wonder why I still keep coming to boards like this one. I would like to believe that all the good people have not left the Objectivist movement. The garbage has definitely stuck around. There's plenty of it that isn't part of ARI.

If you want to see a lot of garbage, go over to a board called "Rebirth of Reason."

I have found a few exceptional people. They have been worth keeping.

[Brant Gaede]

Unfortunately, my Objectivist friends have not taken up this cause, a fact that I find very disturbing.

It says a great deal about the current state of the Objectivist movement. Chris Matthew Sciabarra once commented to me that the movement is going "down the tubes."

I often wonder why I still keep coming to boards like this one. I would like to believe that all the good people have not left the Objectivist movement. The garbage has definitely stuck around. There's plenty of it that isn't part of ARI.

If you want to see a lot of garbage, go over to a board called "Rebirth of Reason."

I have found a few exceptional people. They have been worth keeping.

You had nearly 1200 posts on R of R, then Joe Rowlands stuck you in Dissent on Sept. 4. I'm surprised you lasted so long considering Joe's paternalism. It's not very attractive of you to bring your bad feelings over here because of what happened over there.

--Brant

Edited September 10, 2008 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Chris,

To be clear, OL is a place to discuss Objectivism and related matters. It is not a place to save the world from sundry orgies nor is it a place for one group to trounce another in forum duels or lynchings.

I am sorry you had a bad time of it at RoR, but that does not really compare well with OL other than Objectivism being a theme. The whole orientation around here is geared toward another purpose: self-enlightenment and wisdom through intelligent discussions and goodwill. (This is the case at RoR, also, but to a lesser degree. The stated focus there is on activism and forming a group of people who essentially agree with each other.) Expect people here to agree and/or disagree with you as individuals, not as members of any movement.

Michael

[Selene]

Folks:

http://www.ronpaulforpresident2008.com/news/

Bob "the Bore" Barr, one of the ugliest individuals to ever occupy the top of any ticket, did not even show up and canceled at the last minute because "...it wasn't worth it...", basically drove the final stake into a "party" that was on life support.

R.I.P. Libertarian Party. In the late 60's and early 70's, when we were first organizing the Party in NY State, we achieved a permanent ballot line, but like most "movements", Objectivism included, all the petty egos attempt to become big "macha's" [<Ba'al - spelling?] in a small puddle and destroy it from within.

Sad. However, Sarah "Barracuda" is sure easy to "listen" to lol!

Her speech to the convention was in the top four speeches that I have ever heard at a convention, the other three beeing Goldwater's 1963 speech at the Cow Palace in San Francisco and both of the Ronald Wilson Reagan speeches.

I hope this last link works, even though it is photo shopped, it is quite amusing and it is always good to leave them laughing. Ba'al can use it as a pinup!

Adam

[Selene]

Sorry about that!

http://us.mc320.mail.yahoo.com/mc/showMess...SMWfNwHi2xnBeHo,

[BaalChatzaf]

, Objectivism included, all the petty egos attempt to become big "macha's" [<Ba'al - spelling?] in a small puddle and destroy it from within.

Macher which is German/Yiddish for doer or operator. So a Macher is a big Operator in some organization. I am the last person in the world to denigrate egotism, but sometimes egotism has a Dark Side and can be very bad for a cause or an organization. When a ship is upon a stormy sea, who or what is more important? The ship or the captain?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Chris Grieb]

Captain Queeg, Ahab, and Smith thought it was the captain.

[Selene]

Ba'al, thanks, I did know how to spell it as soon as I saw the "r". A question, my goyem curiosity, is it one macher and two machers?

Chris and Ba'al, as I have probably mentioned before, I did my Master's thesis on the Objectivist movement. Unfortunately, I could see that cancerous false egoism emerging in the mid to late 60's and that is when I took the amazing philosophy with me and walked away from NBI because it was obvious what type of cancer was about to metastasize and spread through the Objectivist body politic. I was very sad, but I still had the philosophy which I never abandoned and it has stood me in good stead for 5 decades.

In fact, the two times in my life when I made nearly fatal mistakes were when I did the opposite of what I knew was morally correct.

Yes, the dark side invariably leads to a disconnected person, standing on a bridge in a monsoon rolling little steel balls in their hand, eyes awash in psychotic fear.

You have to admit Chris, Bogie was brilliant in that film.

Adam

[Dragonfly]

Ba'al, thanks, I did know how to spell it as soon as I saw the "r". A question, my goyem curiosity, is it one macher and two machers?

The plural of the German word "Macher" is also "Macher": ein Macher, zwei Macher.

[Selene]

Thank you Dragonfly, that was my suspicion.