Leave the Organization of Hatreds to the Professionals

A recent Robert Higgs essay in the Independent Institute blog referred to a Henry Brooks Adams quote denigrating the nature of politics.  “Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”  How much more cynical could one be? It is intriguing though.  And, it may very well be true!

Politics is about destroying your opponent.  If you can’t destroy the opposition, then you are to weaken it as much as possible.  Compromise is unacceptable.  It’s a violation of one’s principles.  Compromise often leads to the fall of politicians who stray from the party creed.

In his essay, Higgs contrasts political transactions with economic transactions.  In economics, you rarely succeed by destroying your opponent.  That’s not the purpose of voluntary exchange.  In fact, commerce requires that both parties feel like they’ve won.  If one party is unhappy, then the exchange has failed.  Many social interactions mirror economics.  Other than games, sports, and war, politics may be the only human activity where destroying your opponent is necessary.

Robert Higgs wrote:

“Parties recruit followers by exploiting hatreds. Bureaucracies bulk up their power and budgets by artfully weaving hatreds into their mission statements and day-to-day procedures. Regulators take advantage of artificially heightened hatreds. Group identity is emphasized at every turn, and such tribal distinctions are tailor-made for the maintenance and increase of hatred among individual persons who might otherwise disregard the kinds of groupings that the politicians and their supporters emphasize ceaselessly.”

Perhaps this negativity is why so many people don’t like politics.  They don’t want to discuss it.  They don’t want it on their Facebook news feed.  They just don’t want to think about it.  It’s important work though, and good people need to stay in the game to steer us to a better course.

There is a way to be involved in politics while avoiding the organized hatred.  Promote positive ideas.  Promote a philosophy of liberty.  Believe in the inherent goodness of people.  Acknowledge the inherent value of your allies and of your opponents, but don’t compromise in the battle of ideas.

Since the very start of the Tea Party movement, I’ve felt that we were in a war of ideas, not personalities or politicians.  We have a positive message, one that believes in people, not political parties, government programs or organized hatred.  Unless we can win the minds of the American people, we cannot succeed.  We cannot win with cynicism and hatred.  As we enter this very important season of Presidential politics, promote your candidate by articulating the good ideas and the good character that he or she has.  Leave the organizing of the hatred to the professionals.

In Liberty,
Ken Mandile
SeniorFellow
Worcester Tea Party

 

…Then Dumb and Silent We may be Led

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

Benjamin Franklin, as Silence Dogood

2015 marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. These 54 lines of Latin were signed at Runnymede on June 15, 1215.  Today, we consider this document to be one of the foundations of our own Constitution.  At the time, it accomplished little for the people of 13th century England.  Within 6 weeks, it was voided, but it was never forgotten. 400 years later, the English used some of the ideas in the Magna Carta to recognize individual rights and less than 200 years after that, Jefferson and Madison scribed their own Great Charter.  The radical notions scribed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1215 and by our own radicals 560 years later, have been under attack since the ink dried.

Today, our First Amendment, particularly freedoms of speech and religion, are being viciously hacked away under the guise of political correctness.  On college campuses, supposedly the bastions of free thinking, students, professors, and guest speakers are being silenced out of fear that they may harm someone’s sensitivities.

It’s so bad, that even President Obama, who has hacked off huge parts of the Constitution himself, recently said;

“I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I gotta tell you I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.”

The sad thing is that it’s more than college students who are demanding coddling, its adults too.

Most contemporary democracies contain some form of speech protection, but ours is among the broadest.  We protect the most odious words, flag burning, offensive art, etc.  Many countries have settled on their own version of freedom of speech.  As much as I’d like to shut some people up, I realize that one day, I may the one being muffled.  It’s best to keep this freedom as broad as possible.  If we do not, then we will be leaving it to the courts and Congress to implement restrictions.  Once they start, the censorship will keep going.

As conservatives, we believe that civility is necessary to keep social order.  Good manners in speech should never be shoved aside to win an argument, to advance a political position or even as a means of pushing back against political correctness.  It’s ironic that today’s progressives are among the most vehement advocates for squelching offensive speech, while at the same time, spewing some of the most vile words to demean their opponents.  We shouldn’t stoop to their level.

Franklin knew that restricting speech was the tyrant’s way of dousing the flames of rebellion.  Free speech is necessary to transmit knowledge.  It is an essential part of being human, allowing us self-expression and allowing us to develop as individuals.  Most importantly, it allows for peaceful social change.  The potential for change is a threat to those who want to grow and project the power of the state. To paraphrase Franklin, those would overthrow our liberty depend on subduing the freeness of speech.  Many before us have defended against these attempts.  We are duty bound to continue to defend our right to speak our thoughts from all attacks.

In Liberty,
Ken Mandile
Senior Fellow
Worcester Tea Party

On Racism and the Murders at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound  to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality…. 

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr

For the past year, violence has sparked a renewed debate about the nature of racism in America.  Most Americans think of racism as a flaw of prior generations, as if bigotry no longer victimizes people of color.  Blatant and open discrimination and the words and jokes about minorities that once were freely used in polite conversation have been relegated to the hall of shame.  We understand that they are degrading and unacceptable in a society that is founded on the principle that all men are created equal.

While society has made great strides in erasing racism, it still festers, not only in old fashioned bigotry, but in a form that’s more insidious.

The horrific murders in a Charleston, South Carolina church earlier this month have once again brought racism and race relations to the forefront of conversations.  In the case of the Charleston shootings, a hate filled gunman exposed many Americans to a side of our country that most would prefer not to acknowledge.

The bigotry and hate of prior generations has withered to a great extent, but underneath, there are roots of it that will be hard to eradicate.   It’s not something the government can fix.  It needs to be fixed inside the communities that experience the struggle. It needs to be fixed in the hearts of those who continue to divide American by race and class.

Our conversations about race always seem to go off track.  Instead of talking about the racial hatred displayed by the murderer at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, we’re talking about the Confederate flag, psychotropic drugs, and gun rights.  Conversations about Michael Brown and Freddie Gray devolved into arguments about drugs and whether they were “thugs” or innocent victims.    We insist on finding blame instead of recognizing the nature and the effects of racism in 21st century America.

Lost in the fog of these arguments is the real plight of minority communities, the hard working people who get up every day to try to keep their family safe, warm, well fed, and housed in a community with good schools; Americans who dream of living the American Dream.  As with so many Americans, of all races and colors, this dream has been dimmed by opportunity-killing government policies.  The Tea Party movement has been talking about this from its inception, but that narrative doesn’t fit the theology of dependency that Washington thrives on.

One of the most pernicious forms of racism is the institutional racism practiced by the government.  George Bush referred to it as the “soft bigotry of low expectations”.  It is supported by a bureaucracy that refuses to allow people to live up to their full potential.  It’s not just a welfare system that splits fathers from families.  It’s a criminal justice system that labels millions of Americans as criminals, destroying whatever opportunity they may have had, just as they should be learning to be productive members of society.  It’s a public education system that fails over and over, denying families an opportunity to choose a better school.

The left tries to use the race issue to sell people on Marxist or Progressive ideology, ironically, ideologies that perpetuate our divisions.  While they blame capitalism and conservatism for perpetuating oppressive policies, the truth is that statists thrive on perpetuating these problems in order to sell their politics of division and envy.

What can we do to help minorities who suffer from effects of discriminatory practices, words, and policies?  First, become better listeners. Sometimes, there’s no need to argue, even when you disagree.  Ask questions.  Don’t get caught up in silly superfluous side issues.  Listen.  Hear.  You are going to hear a lot of stuff that you don’t like, but somewhere underneath the haze of mistrust is the truth.   Attend discussions on race.

Second, realize that we can and always will do better. Let’s not compare ourselves to other countries.  We are the best country on Earth for immigrants and for American born minorities.  No other country welcomes the diversity of cultures that bless us, but being the best of the bunch doesn’t mean that we are the best we can be.  We can do better, not because we have failed, but because we have a legacy of success.

Third, Do not cede the civil rights issue to those who don’t understand the nature of liberty; those who think that liberty can only be earned if you fit into the right identity group.  We understand that every person is born free.  This is a message that proclaims that we will not allow Americans to be divided by race, color, gender, and class any longer.  We are not “tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism”.

By advocating for principles of liberty articulated by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Monroe, and by Booker T. Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Frederick Douglass, we can be allies in rooting out the vestiges of racism and bigotry.  This is how we can best honor the memories of the Charleston victims.

In liberty,
Ken Mandile
Senior Fellow
Worcester Tea Party

Graduation Day for Citizens

 

“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out…  but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law.  Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.   What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and other Essays,

 

Many of us are unnerved by the rioting that we see in Baltimore and in the past year in Ferguson.  We are disgusted by the lack of respect for the law and by the destruction of private and public property.  At the same time, conservatives can and do acknowledge the grievances of those who are unjustly targeted by the police and anyone else in who abuses their power.  How do we reconcile the need for reform against the need to maintain social order and respect for the law?

The essence of conservatism is a respect for the past and for what exists today and what we shall hand to future generations as good stewards.   It is a respect for the ideas and institutions that were developed and gifted to us.   But, in some instances, the past can act like an anchor to progress.  We must be careful not to give it authority over us that is undeserved, especially so when public institutions become agents of injustice.

Edmund Burke is considered to be the first person to articulate the modern political philosophy of conservatism.  His late 18th century writings delve into the importance of preserving our links to the past.  Burke was a supporter of the American Revolution, but he saw the destructive French Revolution as a threat to civil order.  He carried on a very public and nasty debate with another Tea Party favorite, Thomas Paine.

Burke defended conservatism against the threat of radical Enlightenment liberalism.  He believed that this upstart philosophy would wipe away the old order and centuries of social progress.  He saw the existing civil society, social norms, and political order as the result of many generations of development.  The wisdom of each successive generation built on and improved on the gifts of the past.  Burke felt that the each generation owed it to future generations to act as good stewards of these gifts.

Burke was no stick in the mud though.  He defined conservatism as a philosophy of reform.  He believed that change should be slow and deliberate, so that it would not damage the good that had been done by prior generations. Burke’s conservatism was not static, it was evolutionary.

Fifty years after Edmund Burke’s death, Henry David Thoreau wrote his essays on civil disobedience. His philosophy on civil disobedience was conservative in its nature, but radical in it words.  If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out… , a very Burkean idea.  On the other hand, he only had so much patience: …but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law.  Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.

I’ve heard, since the beginning of the Tea Party movement, talk of rebellion and resistance.  It never seemed to spark a revolution though.  As frustrated as we feel with the evil of our out of control government, we have yet to be the counter-friction necessary to stop the injustice of the machine of government.  This isn’t because we don’t care enough.  It’s because we love our country so much that we are not ready to destroy the civil order that protects us from anarchy and much worse forms of injustice.

We can be allies with all those that seek to uproot injustice.  While we share that goal, we oppose their chosen methods.   Patience, conviction, and persistence will eventually wear out our rusty clunker government and its injustices that we now suffer.   It’s quite a behemoth though.   It’s taken decades to build.  It will take decades to dismantle.   Ours movement is based upon a philosophy of slow and deliberate reform.  This patience is a virtue that will reward us with a stronger and freer country.  In the end, a social order strengthened by the test of time will be victorious in the contest of ideas.

In liberty,
Ken Mandile
Senior Fellow
Worcester Tea Party

Earth Day for Conservatives

Earth Day for Conservatives

 

“Society…is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; 

a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.

 As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, 

it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, 

but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

Edmund Burke, Reflections,

 

 

 

     Edmund Burke lived just prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution, but the words of the founder of conservatism remain as true as the day he wrote them.  Conservatives see themselves as part of nature.  We value the natural and man made treasures handed down by our ancestors.   We see ourselves as caretakers of the order of society and nature that have been carefully developed over time.  Included in this respect for the existing order is respect for the Earth.     Despite the common wisdom, there is no divergence between true environmentalism and classical conservatism.  The divergence is really between progressive environmentalism, which is really a disguise for Marxist economics, and real action to protect the environment.  So much of what we call environmentalism is really hatred for human advancement and an unthinking acceptance of nonsensical myth. 

     Today’s society has been fooled into accepting feel good-knee jerk efforts to “save the planet”.  Simple things like paper bags vs. plastic bags vs. reusable cloth bags go unquestioned.  The idea that not printing out an email will somehow save the planet is accepted as common sense, when it really has zero effect on the environment.  Recycling is accepted as good citizenship, without a thought to the wasted time, energy, and resources needed to reprocess our trash.  Renewable energy is given a pass for the multiple ways that it endangers the planet.  Electric cars (“coal burning cars”) give owners the sense that they have a pious superiority over the gun toting pick up truck driver.  It just isn’t politically correct to question the science behind the manufacturing process of green cars, solar panels, and windmills.

     Go through any northern liberal urban area and you will see how big government has scared our planet.  Trash filled wastelands, tarnished by unsightly public housing and government offices, weed filled highways and neglected infrastructure make huge areas of our country ugly and unnatural.    Look at almost any mega-environmental disaster, from the destruction of the Aral Sea by the Soviets, the Three Gorges Dam by the Chinese, the multitude of military wastelands generated by the U.S. government, the waste of water resources in the U.S. West, and we see that big government is the biggest threat to our planet. 

    The growth of capitalism,  social order brought about by unleashing individual liberty, and the squashing of monarchy, oligarchy, and despotism have allowed humankind to advance in ways never seen in the many thousands of years of organized society.  Fossil fuel freed us from the pollution of dung and wood fuel.  It gave us the ability to travel and relocate and communicate in ways that were unimagined 200 years ago.  Yes, we had a period of waste and uncaring pollution, but now, the free market is what is making our air and water cleaner.   Don’t let the progressives fool you into thinking otherwise.

     Conservatives should support thoughtful conservation of resources.  We are but caretakers of the planet.  The gift of wondrous natural beauty and treasure was passed onto us by those who came before.   We have a duty to leave our planet cleaner than we found it so that future generations can enjoy it.  As Edmund Burke said, “it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

Choosing Words

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

George Orwell

In  “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell said  “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. ”   In corrupting the use of words, our competitors are able to disrupt the common sense of the citizenry.   “Social justice” is one good example of such corruption.  You’d have to be very cold hearted to oppose something called social justice, so what’s wrong with social justice?  Well, to begin with, and end with, it has nothing to do with justice.  By throwing together two good words and using them in a way that deceives the listener, the anti-liberty crowd has been able to fool the uninformed.

 

One of the main purposes of the Tea Party Movement is to convey the message of liberty.  To do so, we need to be careful about the words we choose, but more importantly, we need to point out the misuse of words by those who look to steal our freedom.   “Liberal” and “conservative” are two perfectly good words that have been corrupted.  Tea Partiers make the error of using the word “liberal” as an insult, when it should be compliment.  We have ceded this word to those who blasphemy it’s real meaning.

 

The left has a habit of changing the language when it stops working for them.  “Global Warming” seemed scary enough, until it didn’t work for them anymore.  They were forced to switch to the less scary phrase “Climate Change.”

 

Remember how a few decades ago, poverty was such a big concern?  We don’t hear so much about poverty anymore because the worldwide poverty rate has unexpectedly plummeted.  The lowest 10th percentile income earner in the U.S. enjoys an economic lifestyle that is better that almost every other country on earth.  What are the progressives to do if poverty is plummeting?  Let’s change the word.  Now poverty becomes “income inequality.”  All inequality is bad, isn’t it?  So income inequality must also be bad.  If income equality is bad, then one could make the case that income redistribution is good.  We lose just by accepting the phrase “income inequality.”

 

At this month’s Worcester Tea Party meeting, we heard two speakers on Agenda 21.  The very next day, I saw the agenda for next week’s meeting of my town’s Board of Selectmen.  I saw the phrases “International Property Maintenance Code”, “Master Plan Implementation”, and “Revised Water Conservation Language”.  Immediately, bells went off in my head.  I knew that they were using corrupted words that sounded perfectly well-meaning so that they could be used to advance an ideology that disputes private property rights.

 

The words of liberty, as articulated by our classical liberal founders, ring true in the ears of almost every American.  It is only those who seek to deceive by twisting good words into bad that we need to fear. They are charlatans who will lead people down a disastrous path.

 

Be careful in the words that you  choose.  Be honest.  Don’t deceive in the way our competitors do.  When you are speaking the truth about the value of liberty, you do not have to grovel in the gutter of euphemistic deception.

 

In liberty,
Ken Mandile
Matt O’Brien

There is a time for everything, a time to be silent and a time to speak.

On Thursday, we hosted a viewing of Michelle Malkin’s Rocky Mountain Heist at our January meeting.   The movie exposes how the wealthy left was able to seize power in Colorado.   The “Colorado Plan” wasn’t just a strategy to win a few seats in the state legislature.   It was a brutal and thuggish plot to wipe conservatives and moderates from every office in the state.   Rocky Mountain Heist discussed how four wealthy Progressives were able to pool their money to build a political machine unlike any before it.

The Colorado Plan was so successful, that it is now being replicated,  state by state, to weaken the Republic.

The good news is that there are many forces opposing this quiet revolution.   It’s also good that we have resources like this movie to inform us about the threats that we face.  This “intelligence” is an important tool in resisting the latte liberals who oppose liberty.

Even greater news is that we are already starting to see the collapse of the Colorado Plan.  As the Progressives took over, their ideas were put to the test and, as expected, they failed.

The Tea Party movement doesn’t enjoy the luxury of having wealthy benefactors.  Our one luxury is a set of principles that have been tested by time, principles that have made America great.

As individuals, we can do our part to elect leaders who honestly believe in these principles of  limited constitutional government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility, but our most important goal is to teach the beauty of living free.  Wealthy Progressives will always be able to buy an election now and then.   We should expose them when they do, but their wins will be short lived if we dedicate ourselves to keeping the idea of liberty alive.   That is a challenging, honorable, and important task.  It is one that cannot be stopped by wealthy leftists who try to put chains on us.   In this new year, live free, speak freely, and have faith that liberty will always win.
In Liberty,
Ken Mandile 

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!

A recent article in the Mail Online reported on a study showing that people who hold “extremist” political views were healthier than people with moderate or centrist views.   The study found that both far right and far left leaners were more active, exercised more, and spent less time sitting than those with little interest in politics.   Those people in the middle are not just figuratively sitting on the fence.    They are literally sitting on their butts.

I don’t like the term that the article used to describe politically active people: “extremist”.   I surely don’t feel like an extremist.   If anything, I think that my views are pretty mainstream.

What earned us the smear of “extremists”?   It’s meant to be an insult, to tie activists to some kind of lunacy because we don’t conform to state mandated thought.

We are not wishy-washy and obedient non-thinkers.   Most of us have a philosophical foundation for our view of the world and we’re willing to act on it.   We are not willing to compromise our values for feel good outcomes.   We don’t like spineless hypocrites who have no principles to stand on.   We know that our “place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat”.

So, in making your New Year’s resolutions, pledge yourself to continue to exercise your power as a citizen activist.   It’s good for your country and it’s good for your health.

In Liberty,
Ken Mandile

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

 
Now the election is passed and we have learned of a new scandal emanating from MIT professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber.  By now you’ve seen one of the many videos of Professor Gruber saying how the American voters are stupid, how voters do not understand basic economics, and how this provided great advantage to them as they came up with deceptions worked into the Obamacare.

This story becomes even more convoluted as reporters quoting Professor Gruber are quoted in other reporters stories, which were in turn quoted by the White House to justify the complexities of Obamacare.  It is so tangled a knot of lies that any attempt to understand it makes one’s head spin.  This deliberate fog of deception propelled then House Speaker Nancy Pelois to infamously say: “We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.”

We in the Tea Party Movement have always trusted in the morality and the wisdom of our fellow Americans.  We have faith in our republic.  But we know that there are limitations to the democratic process.  Voters can only judge when they have all the facts plainly before them.  The role of the Media is to inform the American voters so they can make wise choices.  As of late we have found the media to be unreliable in this sacred duty.  When politicians and technocrats lie to the American people about the issues and no one in the media will speak the truth, is it no wonder that voters cannot make wise choices.

The Tea Party Movement is a movement based on the values of education and truth.  Our movement believes these virtues will establish lasting political change.  Policies of lies and deceit have no true advantage; policies of lies and deceit are doomed to fail because the truth cannot be hidden.

George Washington was famous for never having told a lie.  He also told us that “99% of failures come from men that make many excuses.”  Our nation needs to return to the virtues of men like George Washington.

This newsletter will be heavy with links to many of the reports about what has gone on with the Obamacare and what is going on with Professor Gruber from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

We need to be careful whom we place trust in.  We are all concerned about polyester suited used-car salesmen selling a lemon when should be much more concerned about well polished political consultants shackling us with failed policies that fill the pockets of their donors and ensure the reelection of lying politicians.

The Worcester Tea Party is proud of the part we played in sharing these facts with the public.  We will tirelessly continue to do this work; it is the core reason for the Worcester Tea Party.  But it is also true that these things have a cost so we encourage you that if you find this to be of value to please make a monetary donation to the Worcester Tea Party.  With your very generous support I am confident we will continue to be able to make a difference in our Commonwealth and in our nation.

That difference is more critical now than ever before as we see our worst fears about these policies coming to fruition and the burdens of these policies being forced on our children for generations to come.

In Liberty,
Matt O’Brien
Chief Evangelist
 

The freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards

“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.”

 


It wasn’t that long ago that many of us were happily oblivious to the world beyond our families and our jobs. Some of us were involved in politics by being loyal to a political party. A few of us were always involved in the battle against the tyranny that has degraded our freedoms. In an ideal world, most people should be able to spend their lives in the first group, blissfully ignorant of what the government is doing. In fact, for most of our history, the government was not a factor in the average citizen’s life. That time has passed though. It is unlikely that we will ever again be able to take leave from our vigilance in defense of our liberties.

 
We have been drawn into this cause of liberty because of a sense of responsibility to our ancestors who, as Sam Adams said, “purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood”. More importantly though, we have a responsibility to ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and to future generations.
We are blessed that we can fight this cause without the violence that our ancestors needed to use. Our opponents are not taking arms against us, but they have cheated us of our liberties “by the artifices of designing men”.
 
Our opponents cannot use reason and logic against us. They have no principles upon which their beliefs are based. Statists only value envy, greed, and power. In desperation, they use vile words, nasty rhetoric, and outright lies. We have been proven to be better equipped than they are though. We have the words and actions of our founders. We have the reason of natural rights. We have the greatest document for freedom in the history of mankind, the United States Constitution. They will continue to attack each of these. In fact, they have already done much damage to the Constitution, but in the march of history, liberty always advances.
 
We need your help, not only to defend against the attacks from our opponents, but also to spread the message of liberty. It’s not enough to just respond to those who will never understand. We need to win the hearts and minds of our friends and neighbors by showing them that they are being cheated out of the treasure of their labor and of the basic rights that they were born with. Please consider getting more active in our cause, whether it is through our organization or one of the many others that are allied with us. “The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”
 
In Liberty,
John Niewicki
Matt O’Brien
Ken Mandile