Black Crawling Systems Archive Release 1.0/Black Crawling Systems Archive Release 1.0 (L0pht Heavy Industries, Inc.)(1997).ISO/tezcat/Constitution/Strategy_For_Liberty.txt

Text File | 1996-07-08 | 14KB | 258 lines

From the Radio Free Michigan archives

ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot

If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to
[e-mail].
------------------------------------------------
I get a fun read called the RRR: Rothbard-Rockwell Report.
The Rockwell part is Llewellyn H Rockwell, Jr who has written
some very good essays that Karl Platt has posted.  Their address
is Box 4091, Burlingame CA 94011.  It costs $49 a year.  The author
of their following article is Murray Rothbard, the other partner
in the report.

A New Strategy for Liberty

American political life has experienced a veritable transformation.
As usually happens when we are in the midst of a radical social change,
we are barely aware that anything is happening, much less its full
scope and dimension.  In the words of Bob Dylan taunting the hated
bourgeoisie in the 1960's: "You don't know what's happening, do you,
Mr Jones?" Except that now the tables have been turned, and "Mr Jones"
is the comfortably ensconced member of the liberal and Beltway elite
ruling this country.

The great and inspiring new development is that, for the first time in
many a moon, a genuine grassroots right-wing people's movement is
emerging throughtout the country.  This is a very different story from
Official Conservative and Libertarian movement that we have known all
too well for many years: A movement where well-funded periodicals,
think tanks, and "public-interest" law firms, snugly (and smugly)
established mostly inside the Beltway, set down the Line unchallenged
for the subservient folks in the hinterlands.

Funding for these outfits comes mostly from big foundations and corporate
donors; the role of the masses "out there" throughout the country is to
touch their forelock and kick in with the rest of the dough.  Often
these Beltway organizations exist only as a direct-mail fundraising
machines with the usual panel of celebrities on their letterheads:
the function of donations is to pay the salaries and to finance
luxurious housing for these institutions.

Those Beltway organizations that are really active in conducting indirect
lobbying on behalf of gradual, marginal reforms hoping to push Congress
or the Executive one centimeter to the right; the more important function,
however, is to grant their major donors one of the great prizes of
Official Washington:  access to leading politicians and bureaucrats.

The published reports of these outfits are mainly designed not to advance
The Cause, but to demonstate to their donors the fact of such access:
hence countless pictures of thinktank executives shaking hands with
Senator Dole, Alan Greenspan, or whomever.

The major purpose of the conferences held by these institutions is not
to advance the truth of the free market in the public arena, but to
demonstrate, once again, to the major donors that they are capable
of bringing in Greenspan or Dole to attend their functions.

The stated excuse of these outfits many of whom still claim abstact
devotion to high libertarian or conservative principle, is that the
reason for their location inside the beltway and for devoting their
energies to minor and negligible reforms is that this in the only
way they can gain respectability in Washington.

But that, of course, is precisely the problem: Change the word
"respectability" to "access," and the point becomes all too clear.
For a long time, these Washington organizaitons have not been part
of the solution, however gradual of minor; they have been part of
the problem: the denomination of American life by Washington.

This sort of movement has been necessarily top-down, although many
of these outfits like to think of themselves as grassroots: the
grassroots Americans, however, live to serve the power elite, and the
power elite lives to curry favor and access with Leviathan.  That is
why Samuel Francis's metaphor is so apt about the Beltway conservative
meeting inside a phone booth.

But in recent months, something brand new has happened.  A grassroots,
right-wing populist movement has been springing up all over the country,
a movement that has no connection whatever to Official Conservative
elites.  Having no connection, the Beltway conservatives can have no
control over this new right-wing uprising among the people.

Since it is a genuine grassroots movement, it is necessarily fragmented,
unsystematic, and a bit chaotic.  Also, since the dominant liberal
media don't want to hear about it, and the Offic1ial Conservative
movement is frightened of it, we hear very little of its activities.

While at this early state the movement may be confused and inchoate, it
has one magnificent quality which gives it great intensity and abiding
strength: a deep and bitter hatred of the despotism executed over us
in so many hundreds of ways by the central government; hatred of
politicians, of bureaucrats, and of Washington, D.C.

Note that this intense hatred, this reaction, this "backlash" against
the drive toward collectivism, is necessarily and totally out of synch
with the Beltway strategy of Official Conservative and Big-Government
Libertarian organizations.  Among the growing ranks of these grassroots
rebels, that entire strategy and way of life is anathema.  These heartland
rebels are close to the sprit, not of blow-dried Beltway thinktankers,
but of the patriots of the American Revolution.

They, in contrast even to the Reaganauts, are genuine revolutionaries;
they are ready and willing to tell Washington, in no uncertain terms
to buzz off.  To these new American rebels, the ability to sip martinis
with Bob Dole constitutes a heavy liability, not an asset.  To these
great people, having "access" to tyrants means that you are aiding and
abetting tyrants.

The recent revolutionary activities have been manifold and widespread.
Since we lack complete information, none of us knows their full extent.
Probably the first task of right-wing populist intellectuals is to find
out what is going on, to get an idea of the full extent of this glorious
phenomenon.

Some of these activities are as follows: an erupting "county militia"
movement, in which, for example, entire counties are sworn-in as part of
a militia so that they clearly come under the rubric of the Second Amendment
and the right to bear arms; an associated and extensive civil disobedience
by county sheriffs to the hated and despotic Brady bill; a Tenth Amendment
movement: for example, both houses of the Colorado legislature have passed
a resolution empowering the governonr to call out the National Guard to
block federal activities that violate the Tenth Amendment.

And there are similar efforts in every other state.

The committee of the 50 States, a states' rights group, has been resurrected
to push the Ultimate Resolution, proclaiming the dissolution of the federal
government when the national debt reaches $6 trillion [I thought it was
$7 trillion?].  The committee is headed by the magnificent and venerable
J Bracken Lee, former Mayor of Salt Lake City and Governor of Utah. Lee,
who would not be called a staunch paleo-libertarian, repeatedly throughout
his career called for abolition of the income tax, and end to the Federal
Reserve, and withdrawal from the United Nations, and the elimination of
all foreign aid.

[...]

The growing land-rights movement, fighting the confiscation of private
property by federal agencies in cahoots with environmentalists, is active
in the East as well as in the West.

Finally, permeating all sectors of this variegated right-wing
movement, there is a healthy and intense abhorrence of the Federal
Reserve.  These heartlanders may not know precisely what they want
done in the field of money, but, happily, they are very firm on
what they don't like.  In wanting to sweep away the Fed they are
right on the mark.  Can you imagine wat these folks would think of
a libertarian outfit that glories in its ability to hobnob with
_Greenspan_?

Now, however, the Beltway strategy is absurd in the short as well
as the long run.  There is a new mood in America, a lasting change
of heart among the conservative masses.  As the Marxists used to
say, "the masses are in motion," and our first task is to stay with
them and try to help their movement be more systematic.

No longer are the conservative masses content to send checks to the
biggies in Washington who, in retrun for their donations, will tell
them what to think.  No longer are they bowing to their betters who
can assure them access to the Corridors of Power.  Bless them,
these heartland rebels don't want access; they want to sweep the
whole Moloch away.

Where does this marvelous and burgeioning new spirit come from?
There was an obvious foreshadowing in the anti-politics and anti-
Washington mood of 1992.  An example is the Perot movement,
the major virtue of which was the spirit of the rank-and-file
militants, who were looking for some sort of anti-Washington Change.
But that doesn't go very far in explaining the new mass movement.

No, it seems clear that the trigger for the emergence of this
brand-new movement has been the total loathing welling up in
America for President and Mrs. Clinton, their persons, their lives,
their Cabinet, their entire rotten crew.  In all my life, I have
never seen such a wide-spread and intense hatred for any President,
or indeed for any politician.

Unlike the attacks on poor Joe McCarthy, this is not a hatred
whipped up by the elites.  Quite the contrary, the liberal elites
are desperately trying to cover for Clinton, and are bewildered and
appalled by the entire phenomenon.  In a recent column, Thomas
Sowell noted the perplexity of the media, and replied, in effect,
that the reason the Clintons are widely "perceived" as power-hungry
sleazes is because they _are_ power hungry sleazes.

Thus the movement erupted in reaction to all the objectively
loathsome attributes of the Clintons and their associates - the
stream of lies, evasions, crookery, sex scandals, and frantic
attempts to run all of our lives.  But quickly the hatred of the
personal attributes of Clinton spilled over to his programs, to his
ideology.  Thus we had the most powerful "nuclear fusion" in all of
politics: the intense blending of the personal and ideological.
The growing realization of the socialist tryanny involved in all of
Clinton's programs - a realization that finally cut through the
rhetorical fog of the "Mr. New Democrat" - joined with and was
greatly multiplied by the loathing for Clinton the man.

During the 1992 elections, some of us worried that a Clinton
administration, in addition to being bad for America and for
liberty, would also cripple the right-wing movement strategically.
For the usual pattern has been that Democratic administrations are
"good" for Beltway organizations because the conservative hearland
gets scared and pours money into their coffers.  In that way a
Clinton administration would unfortunately strengthen the
conservative and libertarian Beltway elites that have long been
dominating and ruining the right-wing movement.

To some extend, this has of course happpened; but more important is
a new phenomenon that none of us predicted; that Clinton and his
crew would be so monstrous, so blatant, so objectively hateful,
that it would drive into being from below a new and burgeoning real
right-wing movement that hates all of Washington, whether the
actual rulers or the Official Conservatives and Libertarians who
bend the knee in behalf of access and possible piddling reform.

Given this, what is the proper strategy for liberty?  The first
thing is for any conservative or free-market group or institution
to be principled, radical, and fervently anti-Washington, and to
avoid like the plague Beltway-itis, either in form or content.  That
is, to denounce rather than cultivate the Corridors of Power, and
to call for principled and radical change rather than marginal
reform, change that is clearly anti-Washington and anti-federal
power.

Such proposals and programs should be designed, not for the eyes
and ears of Beltway power, but to educate, inspire, and guide the
extraordinarily sound instincts of the new grassroots movement.  We
are entering an era in which happily the principled position is
evidently the proper strategy.  More than ever before principle and
strategy are fused in behalf of the victory of liberty.

A second necessary task is informational:  we can't hope to provide
any guidance to this marvelous new movement until we, and the
various parts of the movement, find out what is going on.  To help,
we will feature a monthly report on "The Masses in Motion."

After the movement finds itself and discovers its dimensions, there
will be other tasks: to help the movement find more coherence, and
fulfill its magnificent potential for overthrowing the malignant
elites that rule over us.  Increasingly, as these elites strive to
crush us, it is no exaggeration to paraphrase the rallying cry of
our former chief enemy:  We have America to win; We have nothing to
lose but our chains!
--------------------
------------------------------------------------
(This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the
Radio Free Michigan archives by the archive maintainer.


All files are ZIP archives for fast download.

 E-mail [e-mail])