First my apologies to Kenneth Davis for not responding to his question of me at the convention yesterday. I must admit it caught me off guard and, at first, I thought it was rhetorical. As he asked others I got to thinking about the question and here is my response.
First off, Rodger Paxton set the goal for our district of quadrupling our membership. Rodger cannot do this on his own. Rodger and Jessica are fine folks and have the drive that will lead this party into the future, but to ask them to shoulder this burden while the rest of us sit idly by is neither fair nor practical. It will take everyone in our district working together to reach that goal. I don’t know how many dues paying members are in our district, and to be honest it is irrelevant, but I do know one, me. So what I must do is find four new members. If we can all just find four new members we will quadruple our membership and attain that goal. When you look at the overall numbers, quadrupling them may seem daunting. If taken, however, in the singular it becomes a much easier task to achieve. As David Pangrac so aptly put it, we need to all “grab the rope and pull”.
Getting four new members sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well to do that you have to have a plan of action. They won’t come to your door and ask to be members, nor will they just drop out of the sky. I will have to actively seek them out. I found out from Larry Weisenbach (and later confirmed with Rodger Paxton) that my home town and county had a substantial Libertarian vote count in the last election PLUS a pretty hefty vote for Ron Paul during the Republican primary. That is where I will start. I just have to get that information into a database and start mining for gold. I also know several people who have, vocally at least, voiced support for the tea party movement (or at least some of it’s defining principles). I think that Mr. Root laid the groundwork for how to best approach those individuals so one thing I will request is the video of his speech. I’m really no good at note taking so what I have is *very* incomplete. If I could get hold of the video I could learn the approaches he described to use as a “salve” to help smooth over some of the rougher “talking points”.
Now, what am I going to do, besides what I have described above, for the LPoAR overall? Folks, as was said time and time again, money is the grease that keeps the gears moving. Without money the LPoAR will die regardless of how much work any of us put into it. So, starting with the convention, I plan on donating to the LPoAR on a monthly basis. It won’t be much but I will give what I can. There again if we all do this it won’t take a whole lot from each of us. If each member just gave $10 per month that would mean thousands of dollars in the party coffers at the end of the year. I spend nearly that much on a single burger meal at a local fast food restaurant. I firmly believe that the ideals espoused by the Libertarian Party are the principles that will SAVE THIS COUNTRY. If we continue down the path that THE SYSTEM, in place now, has laid before us I can see no other destination but the destruction of the principles for which our founders fought and died and which, I believe, we all hold dear. Isn’t keeping that hope alive worth $10 a month?
These are the things that I plan on doing. I’m not trying to say this is what we should all be doing, for I can only decide for myself what course of action I can take to help achieve the goals of the party. I hope I didn’t get to “preachy” but I have very firm convictions about certain things and as Jessica Paxton says, “It just makes sense”.
Also, it doesn’t matter if you are a “constitutional scholar” or if you can quote Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises or even if you know who any of these people are! Liberty, less taxes, smaller government, less intrusion by THE SYSTEM into our daily lives and our pocketbooks and government intrusion into our family lives and how we raise/teach our children are universal principles that anyone can understand, regardless if they can quote Article X, Section Y of the Constitution or whether it was Thomas Jefferson or Jefferson Davis that said such and such to Lord So-n-so in a letter dated 18hundredwhatever. Honestly, most folks don’t give a hoot in hell about what Thomas Jefferson said 200 years ago because it isn’t relevant to them. Speak from your heart about what you understand and say it with truth and conviction and people will hear what you say. Plain and simple we have to use the WIIFM principle, What’s In It For ME! Unless people see how they are going to benefit we are just so much more political noise. We may be small in size now, but I honestly believe that our core principles resonate with people but we must let the people know where we stand and how our core principles affect them.
Now, having said all that about not needing to be able to quote historical figures, I will leave you with a quote from Samuel Adams. I refer to this quote often when I feel like I can’t do anything because I’m just one, or one of a small group, and nobody will listen to me. That, because I have the “minority opinion” about certain things, we are fighting a loosing battle.
It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.
We don’t need to have the majority behind us, all we have to do is be willing to set some brush fires and get people to thinking. Oh, and money!
