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Same Mission; New Vision
The genesis of this website came in 2007 in support of Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign. While the campaign itself was not successful, it achieved more for liberty than anyone could have imagined. In 2009/2010 the site rallied behind Rand Paul to help him win a seat in the U.S. Senate. Ron Paul’s 2011/2012 campaign again provided new focus and new goals for the site. After Dr. Paul’s campaign ended and he retired from Congress, the movement, and site, did not have a clear direction forward except for the possibility of a Rand Paul 2016 presidential campaign -- which, obviously, came to pass with less than stellar results.
It can be argued that the contraction of liberty support for Rand’s 2016 campaign sent a message that our movement needed to regroup. While a strong liberty candidate may emerge in 2020 to help propel us, such an event is not guaranteed and is also a long way off. Whatever the case may be, sitting around and waiting for something to happen is not a good plan.
While the movement is bigger than any one person or website, we play a role in the big picture and see a need to refocus with a new vision that will aim for us to become a bigger worldly influence; to have more reason to be here and to have a reason to be involved.
The basis of our new vision is founded in the mindset of taking a more holistic approach to achieving our Mission with an aim to address the following:
• We do not have a clearly defined understanding of what needs to be done to achieve our goals.
• We can improve upon the way we organize and support projects.
• We do not have an effective means to aggregate community wisdom.
• We can be more proactive to achieve goals without dependence on an election campaign or other influences.
• We can improve upon the means of identifying and communicating value for potential efforts.
• We can be more proactive in our outreach, as a site.
• We can improve the level of discourse of the site.
• We can better utilize our forum assets.
• We can improve the site's internal structures and presentation.
What is Needed to Achieve Our Goals (base theory; long and skippable)
If one gives extensive thought to our Mission, one can identify four key dilemmas that we face:
1. What exactly is liberty?
2. Why should people support liberty?
3. How do we return to liberty?
4. How can we assure that liberty is preserved?
While point #1 may seem obvious enough, and there are some very clear elements we all agree with, there are constant battles within the liberty movement that show there are many points that are not very clear. Certainly the majority of people in our society don’t have a good grasp of the concepts. Many of these people could be said to have an ideological viewpoint of “We’re going to enslave you in order to keep you free”. So there are certainly a lot of questions on this issue.
Point #2 also seems dead obvious, but there are many subtle points, such that the reasons liberty is important get lost.
Point #3 is another key matter of concern and what has brought us together here. We’re trying to find ways back to liberty, which of course isn’t an easy problem to solve.
Not many people have given point #4 much consideration, in part since it’s not really applicable today, but it is nonetheless a matter of great significance and should have ramifications on what we are trying to achieve. Consider, if we went back to the late 1700s, what would we have done differently? If we were nostalgic and said “nothing”, thinking that everything was done right, then we should also consider what was done lead us to where we are today.
One lesson that I have identified is that there are two key points that are needed to preserve liberty: effective organization and a knowledgeable populace. The need for these two is inversely proportional to preserve liberty. Suppose the entirety of a populace has a clear understand of liberty -- why it should be supported and how it can be preserved -- then they could live happily under a dictator, since, if the dictator ever got out of line, their apparatus of enforcement and control would instantly dissolve and they would be removed from power. Of course, this level of understanding across the board isn’t too likely -- which is why structures that separate power have value.
Ultimately, however, even within an ideal society with a power system as far from a dictatorship as possible, it will eventually turn into a ruthless dictatorship or oligarchy if the populace loses its understanding of the concept of liberty, why it’s important and how to defend it.
In this way, to preserve liberty a society needs the right combination of an educated populace -- and the right amount of defense against an uneducated populace -- with effective organizational structures. This is true for any degree of organizational effectiveness and education; there just needs to be enough of the two to preserve liberty. This highlights the problems we have today, as we have lost the sum total needed to preserve liberty.
From this it should be clear that to preserve liberty we would do best to have the optimal organizational structures and assure the populace stays fully educated on an ongoing basis. Consider that an organizational structure’s only purpose could be to drive the populace to liberty through education.
In considering how to educate the populace, there are several points to consider. First, there are two groups of people: those who have bought in on the concepts of liberty and those who have not. For those who already subscribe to the ideas of liberty, for liberty to be preserved there has to be an accumulated body of knowledge which acts as a guiding point of what liberty is, why it is important and how to defend it. Extensive educational material is also needed to make the information consumable.
Less obvious key points on defending liberty include how to maintain a well adjusted population. Preservation of liberty requires educated, healthy, financially sound people who know how to defend themselves, how to be self-sufficient, how to make wise judgments and more. All of this knowledge and material must be passed down and refined from generation to generation.
Another key element to sustain liberty would be teaching critical thinking which enables one to identify the dilution of material.
For individuals who are not yet in line with the liberty concepts, there need to be outreach campaigns to connect with them and introduce them to pro-liberty educational material.
The Liberty Blueprint
From the previous analysis we can see the following elements are needed to achieve and sustain liberty:
1. Educational guide points on the definition of liberty.
2. Educational guide points on why people should support liberty.
3. Educational guide points on how to defend liberty.
4. Educational programs to teach what liberty is, why it’s important and how to defend it.
5. a) Outreach to connect our educational programs to new people. b) Execution of the programs.
6. a) Strategies and plans on returning to liberty. b) Execution of the plans.
7. a) Organizational structure plans needed to preserve liberty. b) Execution of the plans.
Each of these elements needs to be developed and continuously refined. Again, this is the Liberty Blueprint to achieve and sustain liberty which also equally applies to all elements of our Mission.
The Plan
In the new era of the site, we will address the issues as follows:
Issue: We do not have a clearly defined understanding of what needs to be done to achieve our goals.
New Vision: The Liberty Blueprint will help drive the site into the new era.
Issue: We can improve upon the way we organize and support projects.
New Vision: The site has developed what is being called the Mission Advancement Framework (MAF), which was recently introduced here: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...ite-initiative!
This will be used to help identify specific efforts to undertake for each of the seven steps above. It is also designed to help provide a win/win format that best leverages the site's assets.
Issue: We do not have an effective means to aggregate community wisdom.
New Vision: The first project of the MAF is already underway with the development of the Foundational Knowledgebase. The first goal of the Foundational Knowledgebase will ultimately cover the Liberty Blueprint elements of #1, #2, #3, #6a, #7a.
A key outcome of this effort is to develop the tools to help people think and live better. This point is fundamental to our new vision.
Issue: We can be more proactive to achieve goals without dependence on an election campaign or other influences.
New Vision: Our internal efforts to develop the Foundational Knowledge Base are the start of proactive goals. We will engage in more as the members' demands and site resources allow. Many programs and concepts have already been developed.
Issue: We can improve upon the means of identifying and communicating value for potential efforts.
New Vision: The MAF is designed to help resolve these issues for general purpose projects. For electoral efforts, our newly enhanced Candidate Evaluation system will help us identify value for support.
Issue: We can be more proactive in our outreach, as a site.
New Vision: The site will not sit dormant in a corner of the internet; we will extend effort to better promote it in very specific ways for very specific purposes.
Issue: We can improve the level of discourse of the site.
New Vision: We have recently overhauled our Community Guidelines with a focus on improving the level of discourse. We have started to strongly enforce them and will continue to do so. With a new vision and a new purpose, we have new reason to seek improvements.
Issue: We can better utilize our forum assets.
New Vision: The site’s structure and forum layout will be refined to fit our new direction.
Issue: We can improve the site's internal structures and presentation.
New Vision: The site has recently been overhauled. The default look and now offers additional new color schemes. We have added a handful of new features that improve the user experience, such as profanity filtering and user quote notifications. Numerous additional changes will be forthcoming, including a branding update, per the section below.
Branding Change
In support of the new era and to illustrate our objective of providing educational guides, the site’s secondary branding of “Liberty Forest” will soon be replaced with a new brand, “The Guide Point”. As part of this we have secured the domain name theguidepoint.com. The branding change will also help support an expanded scope of tactical efforts that we will use to support our Mission.
Brand Development
As The Guide Point name on its own does not convey specific values or Mission elements, it will often be used in conjunction with a tagline and some keywords that drive home what we are about. We will have a collection of taglines which include “A clear path in an unclear world.”, “The epicenter of free thought.” and “The greatest assembly of free and independent thinkers the world has ever seen.” are some current considerations.
The keywords will be designed to reflect our community values, what we offer and our Mission. Keywords will generally be used in sets. We may have a collection of keyword sets that we can use for different purposes. One example is “Insight * Success * Wisdom *Fellowship * Peace * Liberty * Justice * Honest Markets”. In some cases, keywords will be combined with our primary branding to help illustrating points, such as “Liberty Guide Point” and the like.
State of the Movement; Where do we go from here? (Personal commentary - skippable)
“The movement is dead.”; “People are burned out.”; “We’ve tried, we’ve failed.”; “We haven’t accomplished much.” This is some of the defeatism that is being passed around the liberty movement, and while I can sympathize to a degree, it’s not going to change our situation; we need a better plan.
So what can we really do? What should we do? What have we done wrong? There is no one person who can answer that, but I will offer my viewpoint.
One key to our success, and how we should look at focusing our efforts, is to work to control the things that we can control. We cannot control how people vote, we cannot dictate commands to the media, we cannot control what the Federal Reserve does, so we shouldn’t lose hope when efforts to do so fail. There are some things that we can control, and to take a broad view, I see the following as a blueprint to thrive:
• Work to have a happy, successful and fulling life, regardless of the geopolitical situation. A positive life outcome is not only paramount in its own regard, it is also necessary for you to be a strong contributor toward our Mission.
• Prepare for hard times. With massive national debt, world conflict and social strife on the rise, the long-term outlook doesn’t seem favorable. We can’t control what is to come, but we can be prepared for what may.
• Contribute to our movement as you can.
So what makes sense to do as a movement? Too many efforts to try to control what we can’t control are contributing to burn-out, as they aren’t working. While there are certainly many side benefits to supporting failed campaigns, focusing more efforts on building what we can build should not be undervalued. For example, in building the Foundational Knowledgebase, every piece of effort is designed to have a permanent, lasting effect. Liberty can be rebuilt piece by piece, brick by brick. Working on efforts we can’t fully control is akin to building a brick house on sand without using mortar -- we can make progress, but we cannot count on success.
Right now, I say we need to focus on our building techniques and find the right place to build before we try to build another house. In this way, we can contribute to efforts we know will have lasting value, which overcomes the defeatism.
This is what I personally will be doing, I’ll be building the Foundational Knowledgebase, brick by brick, for as long as it takes. I am dedicated to it as my efforts will have lasting value and every day's effort can be built upon. It can make a different once it achieves critical mass.
How You Can Help - Support Opportunities
If you are serious about your concerns for the future, if you are serious about our Mission, if you like what you see with our new vision, you will want to help be a part of the solution.
There are numerous open ended opportunities to help, including:
• The refinement of the Mission Advancement Framework, defined here:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...ment-Framework
• The development of the Foundational Knowledgebase. For more information, see this list of threads:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/tags.ph...+Knowledgebase
• There is still work to be done to develop optimal styling, logos and imaging around the new branding. Anyone who is skilled in the arts of marketing, brand development, Photoshop or the like and interested in helping us advance the site and our Mission, please PM.
• Donations provide fuel for our engines, the more we get the more we can accomplish. Our contribute page provides membership / donation links:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/content...014-Contribute
If you have ideas for additional projects, let’s talk.
A New Era; A New Drive
Our shift into a new era is part of a long-term strategic move that has been in the works for quite some time. The changes give us a fundamental new purpose. They help solidify a direction, give reason for people to join in and new energy for the site. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed the changes to the site that have already been made.
Our Site: A Holistic View
As a site, we now have or are working toward:
• A well defined Mission.
• A knowledge base that will fully characterize what we stand for to all..
• A blueprint of how to achieve our Mission.
• A framework (MAF) to support projects within the blueprint.
• A knowledge base to characterize the best tactics to use for our projects.
• A defined set of Community Values.
• A defined set of Community Guidelines.
• A formal system to evaluate and grade candidates and public officials.
• A public forum to discuss current events, political viewpoints, and how to find success and to organize efforts.
Even with all of this, there are still some key pieces missing. Perhaps you can identify them.
Why the Chosen Name
There are many factors that go into selecting a brand or website name. As plans to move the site into a new era started to come together, it was acknowledged that fresh secondary branding was needed. Significant effort went into considering this branding. What would the perfect pro-liberty website be called? What was available?
To be certain, no branding is going to be perfect, nothing is going to make everyone happy, but we are very pleased with the selected branding, which satisfies all of our requirements, including:
• Reflects the added direction that the site is moving to, a site to help people think and live better.
• Reflect our leadership in thought and philosophy.
• Reasonably professional (compared to theblaze.com and others)
• Original, doesn’t conflict with others.
• Open ended branding, not tied to just one point or thing.
• Doesn’t alienate members based on a philosophical viewpoint (we’re not "red", “conservative” or "right").
• Not political sounding.
• Doesn’t use the word “liberty” – which doesn’t have broad appeal and is too specific.
• It’s a .com
• Wasn’t expensive.
• Is easy to say and rolls off the tongue well.
• Is easy to remember and spell with no ambiguity in the domain name. There are no questions if it is with an “s”, etc.
• No serious trademark issues.
I understand it generally takes some time to acclimate to a name, and that change won’t resonate with everyone. We are still very excited about the change, hopeful that it appeals to our members and that they can see its value in moving our Mission forward in a new era.
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