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View Full Version : Peace & Sound Money Blimp - Last Ditch Chance for Libertarianism




Wolfgang Bohringer
09-06-2009, 11:54 PM
Posted by my old buddy Wally Hilliard at antiwar.com:

http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/09/04/john-v-walsh-3/#idc-container

Where were we Ron Paul libertarians when Cindy Sheehan needed us? We should have provided her with air support from our Peace & Sound Money blimp floating over Massachusetts Bay. But instead we were packing heat at health care hullabaloos and acting like the LP of the past 40 years trying not to scare conservatives.

Rand Paul and Peter Schiff should take all of their donations millions$, rent a Peace & Sound Money blimp, and have Cindy Sheehan lead a steadily growing ground attack following the blimp around as it taunts Obama, various Fed Reserve banks, military bases, etc.

John Walsh said something about the left depending on the libertarians and populist-anti-statist right to provide the passion to the anti-war and pro-individual rights causes.

But the libertarians and the anti-statist right have NEVER delivered. The most momentum we ever achieved on this was Ron Pauls 4 policies that he got Nader, McKinney, Baldwin, and Barr to agree to. That should have been a launching pad for a new anti-imperialist league movement, but Ron Paul and his movement have been sucked back into the left/right BS. If Rand Paul and Peter Schiff announce a Peace & Sound Money blimp, then the power of libertarian ideas might get a last ditch chance to be heard before its too late.

dr. hfn
09-07-2009, 12:17 AM
there needs to be a team whose sole objective is to make coalitions and keep them together, on an official level too.

jmdrake
09-07-2009, 06:11 AM
When I saw the thread title my first reaction was "Oh no! Not another blimp thread!" I supported the Ron Paul blimp but I don't think it delivered anything other than a few headlines. We needed more phone banking and door to door campaigning. I did some of that myself but not enough. And as an overall movement we CLEARLY didn't do enough actual talking to real people. I think part of this was the fear that some of us might speak our mind and scare of some sheep brained voter. Take the "sign waving" we did. Of course anything about 9/11 was off the table. But (locally anyway) it was decided not to hold antiwar signs, anti federal reserve signs, antitax signs, anti abortion signs or anything other than "Who is Ron Paul" or "Google Ron Paul". After the campaign was over there were still people coming up to me asking "So who is Ron Paul"?

As for the whole "work with the peace movement", God knows I tried. I joined the local peace meetup even before Ron Paul announced his historic run for office. Then DailyKOS.com launched this peemptive strike against Ron Paul.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/13/131540/47

The jackass who runs the local "peace meetup" picked up on it and our relationship went downhill from their. DailyKOS has launched a series of vile attacks.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=site%3ADailyKOS.com+Ron+Paul&aq=f&aqi=&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=d9ca629f83f82f8a

That's when I found out that some of these people are more interested in promoting socialism than they were in ending wars. I support Sheehan's efforts to highlight the left's hypocrisy on the antiwar front. I think we should take the antiwar, anti neocon message to the tea parties. At the same token it's the left that as abdicated its role in opposing the wars. We in the RPM are small in comparison. During the Bush years we protested him and were lumped in with the "looney left". Now we protest Obama and we're lumped in with the "racist right". Both the left and the right are hypocrites for only protesting when it's the other guy's president in office.

Wolfgang Bohringer
09-07-2009, 09:53 AM
Take the "sign waving" we did. Of course anything about 9/11 was off the table. But (locally anyway) it was decided not to hold antiwar signs, anti federal reserve signs, antitax signs, anti abortion signs or anything other than "Who is Ron Paul" or "Google Ron Paul"

Typical. This has been the pattern of just about every Libertarian Party candidate that ever got the least bit of notice the past 40 years.

Its the power of libertarian ideas themselves that cause the general public to find a libertarian candidate to be interesting and noticed at all. But then, when they get their big chance the libertarian candidates and their campaign "stategists" nearly ALWAYS hide their libertarian ideas and try to sound merely like right wingers.

Ron Paul is kind of an exception. Sure, he's a politician, but he's got this pure and honest libertarian streak that often causes him to say nearly exactly what he thinks. So, his getting the chance to speak his mind in those few minutes that they let him have in those debates ignited a movement.

And then what did most of the movement and its strategists do with $30 million? They spent it just like the Libertarian Party has spent all the money they've ever raised: hiding their powerful ideas.

It was powerful ideas that inspired people to fly the blimp. But when it came time to put those ideas on the blimp's banner, they flinched.

In Iowa--the 1st caucus--instead of promoting the Peace and Sound Money ideas that got Ron Paul noticed, the strategists ran ads declaring war on unstamped/untaxed/untatooed/unchipped Mexicans. They were afraid to promote Ron Paul's real message, but they weren't afraid to sound like right wing bigots.


...part of this was the fear that some of us might speak our mind and scare off some sheep brained voter.

Exactly.

jmdrake
09-07-2009, 05:46 PM
Ok. Sounds like we agree on the need to get a coherent message out. And I suppose if the earlier blimp had actually said something it might have been worthwhile. I don't agree, however, with the proposition that it should be funded by Rand and Peter's "millions". For one thing neither of them have broken 1 million yet (let alone millions plural). For another the people who have donated already did so because they expected them to run a serious campaign in their own respective states. Diverting that money to a national "harass Obama over the war" campaign, as fun as that might be, wouldn't be ethical IMO since the original donors didn't sign on to that. Finally Schiff and Paul (Rand) have an actual chance of winning. If one or both of these men get sent to the senate they'll be able to spread their messages far more effectively than a blimp could.

Does that mean I'm totally against a blimp? Far from it. The last time the blimp came about as a grassroots effort. If such a grassroots effort was started again I would support it morally if not monetarily.

P.S. I totally agree that RP shifting to an "anti immigrant" campaign in Iowa was a dumb idea. He was already ahead of Tancredo who supposedly "owned" that issue. Clearly he wasn't going to get much traction out of trying to "out Tancredo - Tancredo".

dr. hfn
09-07-2009, 06:17 PM
Excellent thread and discussion going on here. I really think we need to gather up all the lessons we learned from 2008 and remember them for 2010 and 2012. I think our main goal should be to get liberty candidates elected and keep building our infastructure for 2012. I like the idea of a blimp but its sort of a waste of money right now...

Wolfgang Bohringer
09-07-2009, 10:57 PM
people who have donated already did so because...

Yes, a Peace & Sound Money blimp would have to be funded independently of those campaigns. But I think the important point that Wally makes is that its too bad that we had not learned from the past and weren't ready to jump into action to bring attention to Cindy Sheehan's Martha's Vineyard vigil. Obama and the entire left basically told her to "get lost." Its too bad that what's left of the Ron Paul movement didn't at least send boats with helium balloons.

Its still not too late to try to make something of the power of libertarian ideas. I read somewhere that Brend Trainor was organizing an anti-wars rally up in Reno this past weekend.

The interview with Counterpunch's John V Walsh is interesting:

http://antiwar.com/radio/

This is an opportunity for the libertarians to lead the anti-war movement and welcome back the lefties who were sincere, even though when many of those same lefties were leading the anti-war movement, they were not very welcoming to us.

Its interesting that David R Henderson reports that "Even in economics, I think she [Cindy Sheehan] got something right that even many economists don’t get right – she argued that people should be allowed to print their own scrip to use as money rather than being stuck with the Federal Reserve’s monopoly money."

http://original.antiwar.com/henderson/2009/09/06/an-evening-with-cindy-sheehan/

I've always thought that true leftists actually have a better chance than most conservatives at grasping how the money and banking system is a giant scam.

If we allow the health "care" town meetings to be the main debate, then we're allied with the same old conservatives who are too dim and evil to care about phony money financing of imperial wars. But if we boycott those meetings and make the issue Obama's bankrupt World Empire, then we have a chance to have people of slightly higher intelligence and character as allies.