Reveal Your Inner Virtue

In the long march toward liberty it is sometimes difficult to see how we get from where we are today, with everything we know regulated in some fashion by the federal government, to where we want to be. Over at Western Rifle Shooters Association, we find a plea for secessionist sentiment. Read the post and especially the comments. Where are you? These are the sorts of conversations that should be held at the Liberty Summit, it is the purpose for the Liberty Summit.

Either you are serious about this liberty thing, or you are not. You are either struggling with your conscience, or you are blowing smoke. I don't mean that anyone who has not made the decision to stand up for liberty is blowing smoke, I am suggesting that if you are at the point in your life where you realize that you need to make a stand, but are struggling with "how" to do that and what will work and where the line is drawn, then you have a long way to go to get to the "action" part of that equation.

Maybe you don't believe in any of this, that the parasite society has taken such hold that there is no avenue that offers the sort of liberty we once knew. Consider that a good 97% of those engaged in the Revolutionary War felt the same way. Are you then suggesting that those held under the iron hand of the Soviet Union were powerless? Are you suggesting that Mubarak had too tight of a grip on Egypt, or that Quadaffi had too tight of a grip on Libya? What are you saying by abstaining from the engagement of ideas?

Working in the oil field I see all manner of hemming and hawing about the environment, as if there is a way that an oil company is somehow going to "win over" the environmentalists. They would do better by appealing directly to the public and call bs on the caterwalling of the environmentalist group, point out what they are doing to protect their operations from affecting the environment adversely as a matter of duty to their fellow Americans, not as some lame attempt to keep the protesters from their corporate offices.

All around us are examples of inaction. We are the people who make the nation run. We are the workers, the middle-management, the lawyers, the business owners who daily create the weapons with which we are being clubbed about the head. We are, to some degree, either morons or cowards. No, no one wants to make some statement that could get them put into jail as an isolated conservative nut with ties to the Tea Party, or Mike Vanderboegh and his infamous book. That is the club they will use and because we have never done a dang thing about it, they use it often.

I don't know what will happen to me as a result of something said at the summit that will place me in some sort of conspiracy, or terrorist plot. I don't really care. I should, I have a daughter who is looking to go to college next year. I have debts that I still need to pay. I have a promising career that is just now getting going and will supply me with a great deal of money and time as things progress. And yes, I too struggle with how and when I make a move to secure liberty to myself and my posterity. Right now my daughter wants tuition more than liberty. Right now I want to give her tuition more than liberty, but the motion of the world does not turn on my convenience.

There is a time to stand up, to take the chance to come together and openly discuss that which must be discussed, debated and even vehemently argued over. Lately Mike Vanderboegh visited the Liberty Summit website and refused to have anything to do with it due to some attendees with which he takes exception. All right, I respect that, even if I don't agree with it.

It is the time for the true advocates of liberty to take that chance, risk that encounter, accept that some of those who attend will not feel the same way you do, or will go about it in a way that you don't condone. In Mike's case, he would rather keep his distance from people whom he considers to be less than honorable. Again, I do not agree with his assessment, but it is his assessment and I just wish he would put that aside and recognize that if liberty is to be attained, it will have to be fought for, sometimes at the shoulder of someone you don't trust.

Likewise, I will be inviting First Amendment advocates with whom most of us might disagree and the same for the Fourth Amendment advocates. The hope is that somewhere amid the hoped for engagements we recognize that none of us will achieve the liberty we seek without the aid of the others. That either liberty becomes a rallying cry for all of the injustices of the current police-state (and I use that term with caution, but what is your fear if you fail to comply? It is that they will first fine, you. When that fine is not paid, they will send the police around to either accept your fine or imprison you. What happens when you throw cardboard into the "used oil" bin at the local recycling center? It could mean jail as an ultimate outcome of failure to comply).

Let's have the conversations necessary to forge some cross-currents to our separate movements. Let them recoil in horror at your suggestion of action, but let them hear it. Is there a way? Is there some avenue that even if they disagree with one group's methods, would they not support the outcome? That is the tough one to come to grips with.

As for myself and some of you, it is difficult to know when to act and what to do as that action. Is it to decide to peacefully and politically "invade" a state and transform it into something that will accommodate our agenda toward liberty? Is it building on momentum already begun in this area and to throw our weight behind it? I have chosen the Liberty Summit as my first action toward that goal. It is not my first action intended to achieve liberty, but my first action in the determined struggle toward the goal with or without political support.

There was a moment in time when I believed that my goal could be accomplished politically. I no longer feel that is true. If liberty is to be attained it can only be attained through direct action of one sort or another. Steps must be taken, if for no other reason than to be ready for the crash that is inevitable. Or do you really believe that the European debt crisis can be solved by the US backed IMF to loan money borrowed from China to pay the debt of Greece, Italy and Spain? Really?

So what happens when that ecnomic crisis occurs? Will we be like the Arab Spring and rearrange our society to fit our desires, or will we let the collectivists and anti-capitalists step into that void? We know they are ready. They have support in every quarter of American society and bankrolled ironically by those wealthy who are being directly targeted. Oh, the elite have a plan to take that momentum directed at them and U-turn it onto us, I recognize that, but from the objective point of view it makes no sense, which is exactly why they will be able to do it.

All of this unless we act now to take the steps that bring us to that point, where we have consolidated sentiment toward liberty and away from the collectivists and anti-capitalists. What happens when we declare our opposition to the current system? What happens when we blame that on the true culprits, the regulators and adminsitrators of the bureaucracy. Will there be enough who in their gut know we are right and turn their sentiments to us? The history books are full of such opportunities and had the right thing taken place the horrible things would not have taken place.

I know it is an over-used quote, but here it goes: the only thing evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing. It is our virtue, our honor that could win out, but not if we keep it secret and hidden under the covers to protect it.