AFR Mission Statement
Like a modern-day Cyclops with one eye and a stunted brain, our
Federal Government grows fatter and fatter every decade as it corrupts
the forces of freedom and the soundness of our money. Grunting and
belching, regimenting and taxing, spending and consuming with nary
a thought for tomorrow, this gargantuan beast has, in the span of
90 years, transformed a once productive marvel and manufacturing
leader of the world into a decadent debtor nation hell-bent to follow
Rome into the dustbin of history.
The levers of power that have allowed Gargantua to grow into such
a beast were given to it in 1913 with the enactment of the Federal
Reserve banking system and the progressive income tax. These two
institutions ushered in the two major evils of modern day politics:
1) fiat money, and 2) confiscatory taxation. In doing
so, they destroyed the idea of "limited government" that the Founders
had given us in 1787.
With FDR's confiscation of gold in 1933, the Federal Reserve acquired
the legal power to indiscriminently create fiat money and thus surreptitiously
rob Americans of their wealth through currency depreciation. When
Richard Nixon closed the international window for gold in 1971 on
foreign redemptions of dollars, he gave the Fed the power to then inflate
the currency at will, which gave Washington the capacity to rob
Americans of their wealth even faster.
The second lever of power, the progressive income tax, was equally
as dangerous if not more so. It gave to the our government the ability
to arbitrarily seize the earnings of productive Americans to buy
voter support from vast hordes of special interest groups.
Herein lies the death knell of our free republic. With the ability
to indiscriminately print paper money and confiscate our incomes,
the Federal Government has been able to grow exponentially over the
past century -- well beyond the strictly constrained power that
the Founding Fathers intended it to be.
Most libertarians and free-market conservatives agree that if we
are to stop this travesty of tyrannization over our lives, we must
challenge the two institutions that give Gargantua its power to grow
unabated. We must mount a relentless political attack against the
policies of fiat money and progressive taxation. The
merging of Big Government and Big Banking into a combine has, to
paraphrase William Jennings Bryan, crucified us on a cross of paper
and progressivity. And it will continue to do so until it is exposed
in a clear enough way to attract large numbers of voters.
Educating the populace about the Fed and the income tax through
conventional means, however, is an extremely laborious process. Our
problem today is that America is running out of time because of our
past excesses. We face a host of severe economic crises (massive
build up of government and private debt, bankruptcy of the social
security and medicare systems, peak oil, immigration overload, etc.).
In the next 10-15 years, these crises are going to be plowing through
our society like mack trucks tearing through a flower garden, out
of which will arise great pressure to further centralize the government
in Washington and suspend fundamental freedoms.
This is why some form of dictatorial government is becoming more
and more likely for our future. These crises are going to bring an
onslaught of regimental and redistributive government programs heaped
upon Americans. Huge increases in price inflation and taxes will
take place as the Federal Government tries to confront its massive
debt problems, meet its social security / medicare obligations, and
centralize the country's economic affairs under Washington's control.
Big Brother's bureaucracies will become more and more omnipresent,
more and more tyrannical in our lives. So we really do not have the
time to try and educate the American people through conventional
teacher-pupil interaction in the school system. We need to provide
the American people with a riveting crash course in what the sources
of Gargantua's power are, and how that power is connected to our
problems. We need to reach 100 million people in a matter of years,
not decades.
We submit that the means to such massive exposure is the formation
of a uniquely designed third political party. This is not to be just
another conventional third party, however. It is to be one that is dramatically
simplified. It will utilize an innovative strategy that will
rock the Demopublican political establishment to its roots and stop
the growth of the Leviathan cold. We will endeavor in this essay
to show how today's third parties on the political right can be transformed
into such an institution.
Impossible you say? How could a mere political party bring about
such a change when all third party movements of recent memory have
been such glaring failures? Wallace in '68, Anderson in '80, and
Perot in '92 and '96 all went down to resounding defeats at the polls.
And the Libertarian Party gets less than 1% of the vote.
The answer is that all third party challengers make one of two
very damaging mistakes that automatically doom them to defeat.
But avoid these two mistakes, and a credible political strategy
could be fashioned that would force Washington to alter its oppressive
control over our lives and our economy. It is a strategy that
could indeed stop the growth of the Leviathan and actually reverse
the evolution of statism back toward limited government.
We believe a majority of the American people genuinely wish to end
the relentless growth of government. They have just never been shown
WHY it must be done and HOW it can be done, in a clear plan that
makes logical sense. This essay will demonstrate the "why" and the "how."
Keep in mind that our goals are to stop the growth of the Federal
Government, and explain to 100 million voters why we must check the
dangerous power of the Federal Reserve and end the injustice of the
progressive income tax. Since our school system and our media are
controlled by the statist establishment, they will not teach the
necessity of such reform policies to our youth, nor broadcast their
necessity to the populace. So we must circumvent their statist bias.
We must go around the schools and the media in a dramatic manner,
in a way that will sensationalize our cause and galvanize tens of
millions of Americans. We must use a political campaign as a promotional
vehicle for our two pillars of reform.
In order to do this, we must break the monopoly that Demopublicans
have over the modern political scene. This will require those in
the freedom movement to open up their minds and start thinking outside
the box. It will require the incorporation of several profound changes
into the libertarian-conservative political mindset. The rest of
this essay will discuss these changes and how the growth of the Federal
Government can actually be stopped through what we at AFR call the "Two
Pillars Strategy."
The Two Pillars Strategy
Checking the dangerous power of the Federal Reserve and ending the
income tax are our first priorities if the runaway government freight
train is to be slowed to a stop. Such policy goals cannot be achieved
overnight, of course; they must be achieved in stages. But there
are two essential first steps that can be promoted through a political
campaign, that would end the capacity for the Federal Reserve and
the income tax to expand government.
These two steps are enactment of a "gold-oriented" monetary system
and passage of an "equal rate" income tax (i.e., a true flat tax).
If a majority of the American people are not ready at this time to
accept the importance of these two steps, they will become much more
receptive to them as the world economic crisis unfolds over the next
10-15 years. Let's examine these two pillars and why they are so
important.
Pillar # 1 -- A "Gold-Oriented" Monetary System.
It is accepted by all reputable economists today that central bank
expansion of the money supply at a faster rate than the economy's
production of goods and services is growing results in price inflation,
and if not checked, brings about runaway inflation. This is not a
new problem. Down through the centuries, tyrannical governments have
always succumbed to debasing the money that circulates in order to
attain more power.
In light of this, we need to ask ourselves what type of money can
a society possibly have when its government officials and federal
bankers can simply print that money at will? What level of stability
will there be for the prices and wages of that society? What level
of confidence in the future will there be among the people? What
value will there be left to the people's savings and pensions as
they enter middle age and their elderly years?
History clearly teaches us that no stable, prosperous country can
remain so very long if it leaves the control of its money supply
up to the machinations of corruptible men in power at the government's
Treasury and central bank. The temptation is simply too great for
such men to promote excessive expansion of the money supply in order
to create an illusion of prosperity so that the electorate will continue
to reward them with more power.
Such temptation began in America in 1913 the minute the ink was
dry on Congress' legal authorization of the Federal Reserve banking
system. It was then greatly expanded with Roosevelt's confiscation
of gold from Americans in 1933, along with his initiation of J.M
Keynes' "new economics." This led to the disastrous spending policies
and inflation-deflation cycles that we now endure. Ever since World
War II ended, Fed currency expansion has resulted in our economy
suffering from annual price inflations of 1-13%, all under the Keynesian "necessity" of
massive government spending and intervention into the economy.
The Fed's monetary policy under Republican and Democratic administrations
alike has always been to pump more credit (i.e., debt) into the system
because, according to Keynes and his academic progeny, this is the
only way to maintain a prosperous economy.
This assumes that the creation of fiat money and easy credit will
increase people's wealth without any harmful ramifications. This
assumption is false. Real wealth is created by men and women engaging
in productive enterprises -- planting and harvesting crops, running
efficient factories, conveying services to their fellow man, etc.
It cannot be created by government "injections of liquidity" into
the economy at a faster pace than producers are able to produce (which
is what Keynesian bankers and bureaucrats invariably end up doing).
All that comes about with such irrational economics is a boom-bust
economy in which inflationary periods and recessionary periods alternate
over and over until finally the credit / debt level becomes too overwhelming
for the people to tolerate. At this time, the country and its economy
must then go through a prolonged liquidation of such debt, i.e.,
a severe recession or depression of multi-year duration. (The reasons
for this are discussed in detail in our book, Breaking
the Demopublican Monopoly.)
The Keynesian monetary philosophy of trying to increase demand with
increases of fiat money is what led to the runaway inflation of the
1970s and to the hallucinatory bubble economy of the 1990s. We are
now in the initial stages of a long curative unwinding of the extreme
economic dislocations and malinvestments that were brought about
by such fallacious policy.
Unless this unwinding is accompanied by genuine monetary reform,
we as a country are doomed, like Sisyphus rolling his stone up the
hill and down again for all of eternity, to merely repeating the
Keynesian fallacies. This means constant boom and bust cycles intermingled
with periodic depressionary collapses well into the future. The only
way to eliminate such instability and corruption is to establish
a monetary standard other than the whims of federal bankers and bureaucrats.
Throughout history that standard has always been gold.
Restoration of such a standard, however, will require revolutionary
thinking in the field of money and monetary theory. The original
gold standard's flaws have to be avoided. A plan must be devised
that can be phased in over time, a plan that allows the public to
become acclimated to the use of gold as money again. Fortunately
we have the works of several scholars with which to accomplish this
-- men such as Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Antal E. Fekete,
etc.
The all important theme then that needs to be impressed upon the
public is that we can no longer allow money to be arbitrarily created
by a cartel of political bankers in Washington. The money supply
and its growth must be divorced from the dictates of federal bureaucrats,
which will bring the problem of price inflation and its ruinous consequences
under control. This must be explained to voters.
Our goal must be to ultimately abolish the Federal Reserve's monopolistic
system of fiat money, replacing it with a gold-oriented monetary
system. For an example of how to do this, see Professor Antal Fekete's reform
plan for money and credit. He has designed a "parallel gold-coin
standard" to the Federal Reserve System that will phase fiat money
out and gold-oriented money in over a period of several decades,
which will give the people time to get used to the revolutionary
change.
Could a majority of voters grasp such intricacies and make a difference?
Not immediately, but eventually. As we will soon see, the "two pillars
strategy" becomes powerfully effective with only 15% of the voters
in agreement.
The developing inflationary / debt crisis that is now descending
upon all the world's industrial nations is going to discredit the
central banking concept because of the dangerous power it gives to
government bankers and bureaucrats. As we descend deeper into the
crisis, there will be a need for rational voices explaining why the
Fed's power over money creation must be radically reformed. As faith
in the old institutions breaks down, there will be more and more
Americans opening up their minds to the logic of "gold-oriented money." It
is then that we can legislate genuine monetary reform that checks
the arbitrary power of the Fed.
Most economists in our government and in our colleges today will
naturally attempt to deny the necessity of any kind of gold monetary
policy. They will go to great lengths to try and convince their audiences
that the economy's money supply must be fiat money, and it must be
continually inflated via the discretion of the Federal Reserve in
order to produce adequate economic growth. But this is totally
erroneous. America's economic growth during the 19th century was
spectacular, and there was no Federal Reserve pumping fiat money
into the system at all. For example, the chart below shows us the
CPI from 1800 to 2005.
The index of consumer prices decreased by 40%, from 51 to
30, between 1800 and 1913 (about 1/3 % per year). This was because
the money supply was tied to gold and couldn't be expanded arbitrarily
in excess of the growth of goods and services by the Fed. The reason
why is because gold must be manufactured slowly and steadily, while
paper can be printed easily and instantly -- hundreds of billions
overnight. As a result, there was no upward pressure on prices. [Statistics
from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, http://minneapolisfed.org/Research/data/us/calc/hist1800.cfm]
In contrast, today we no longer use gold as money, but paper printed
by the Federal Reserve as it sees fit. As a result, the Consumer
Price Index literally exploded, increasing by 1,850%, from
30 to 585, in the years 1913 to 2005. This was because the money
supply was created by Fed bureaucrats at a far faster rate than the
production of goods and services -- all of which should tell us quite
clearly that government money managers are not reliable and never
will be, and that a fiat money system that can be expanded at the
discretion of government bankers will never be stable. [Statistics
from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Ibid.]
When the above figures are combined with other vital 19th century
statistics, we readily see that the Keynesian claim of "growth needing
inflation" is a fallacy. During the 19th century due to the dollar
being backed by gold, we enjoyed gently deflationary prices (the
beneficial kind of price deflation due to improvement in technology
and economies of scale), yet also rapid economic growth of all goods
and services. America's GDP increased over 500% in just the years
1870 to 1913, averaging 4.3% annual growth, and real wages
for the workingman tripled between the years 1849 and 1915. In comparison,
we average about 2.5% annual growth today, real wages are
totally stagnant, and we are plagued by inflationary prices brought
on by the Federal Reserve's relentless monetary expansion. [Figures
from The Statistical History of the United States from Colonial
Times to the Present, Fairfield Publishers, 1960, pp. 91, 141,
409, 413.]
The Keynesians' claim of massive monetary inflation being a requisite
for healthy economic growth is thus totally in error. So also is
their claim that only with government control over the currency and
banking system can we have "stability" in our economy. Growth will
take place very nicely without government control of the money supply;
and what's more, it will be real growth, not the frenzied,
speculative, boom-bust kind of growth our Great Society dreamers
have given us. As for stability, how can any logical observer of
the 20th century claim that the Fed's inflationary monetary policy
has given us stability? As the statistics show so clearly on the
above chart, the Fed's expansion of the money supply has grossly
debased the dollar and sent prices skyrocketing over the past 90
years. Yet the publicly announced reason for the Fed's creation in
1913 was that it would be the great "stabilizer" of the banking system
and our economy. Unfortunately it has brought us precisely the opposite.
In his classic, Economics In One Lesson,Henry Hazlitt, sums
up Keynes' inflation philosophy very well: "Like every other tax,
inflation acts to determine the individual and business policies
we are all forced to follow. It discourages all prudence and thrift.
It encourages squandering, gambling, reckless waste of all kinds.
It often makes it more profitable to speculate than to produce. It
tears apart the whole fabric of stable economic relationships. Its
inexcusable injustices drive men toward desperate remedies. It plants
the seeds of fascism and communism. It leads men to demand totalitarian
controls. It ends invariably in bitter disillusion and collapse." [Manor
Books, 1962, p. 124.]
The salvation of America lies in ending this inflation-deflation
cycle of wealth confiscation via currency debasement by the government
and its central bank. This will require the restoration of a "gold-oriented" monetary
system. The answer to so many of our problems would come if we
would just end the injurious monetary inflation of the Fed. Prices
of goods and services would stop relentlessly rising. Excessive labor
union demands would subside. Capital formation would increase. True
prosperity would result. Poverty would shrink at a faster pace. Yet
life would churn at a more moderate and predictable pace. The elderly
would be able to keep the security they worked for. Jobs would stop
leaving America for third world countries. And we could all get off
this infuriating treadmill of never quite catching up with our bills.
In general, life would again be stable, productive, and free rather
than the speculative, frenzied, Washington managed economy that has
evolved under the whip of collectivist-liberal ideology.
The next 10-15 years are going to bring great tumult to America,
but also great opportunity for the freedom movement. It is an opportunity,
however, that we need to start preparing for now. And such preparation
cannot be based upon the conventional third party politics that we
have seen over the past 30 years. We will need a fresh approach --
radical and innovative that is capable of reaching millions, not
thousands, of voters. The first pillar of that approach should be
a plan to enact a "gold-oriented" monetary system for our country
that prohibits Federal Reserve bureaucrats from expanding the money
supply at will.
Pillar #2 -- An "Equal Rate" Income Tax.
The fundamental principle of the Declaration of Independence, which
undergirds our political and legal systems in this country, is that
all citizens are to possess "equality under the law." Our whole concept
of rights is based upon their being equal for all citizens of the
Republic. This was the guiding star that spawned America and which
sustained her through the first 125 years of her existence. In 1913,
however, there took place a most shameful default on this concept
of "equal rights under the law" when our Supreme Court judges allowed
a progressive income tax to be enacted by an increasingly
socialist minded Congress.
The egalitarian vision of Karl Marx was beginning its invasion of
the U.S. Collectivist irrationality won the day, and it has dominated
us for the past 90 years, despite the fact that a progressive
rate tax is clearly unconstitutional.
The reason why a progressive rate tax is unconstitutional in America
is because different classes of society are assessed different
rates under such a system, which denies American citizens an
equal right to the disposal of their property (i.e., their income)
and thus denies them equal protection under the laws of the land.
How else does one preserve his life, enjoy his liberty and maintain
his property than through the production and the consumption of his
own income? If the State can take an arbitrary and unequal percentage
of our income because 51% of the people deem it desirable, then we
don't have much of a right to the use and disposal of our
property, do we? We have only the permission for that use
and disposal, and then only so long as we dutifully serve the reigning
majority (mobocracy) in the manner it deems desirable.
If we are to uphold the idea of all men possessing equal rights
under the law, then there can certainly be no justification for our
present progressive tax system. It is dictatorial and contrary to
everything for which America stands.
As the renowned Scottish economist J.R. McCulloch stated over 150
years ago, "The moment you abandon the cardinal principle of extracting
from all individuals the same proportion of their income or
of their property, you are at sea without a rudder or compass, and
there is no amount of injustice or folly you may not commit." [J.R.
McCulloch, Taxation and the Funding System, London, 1845,
pp. 141-143.]
Our own Thomas Jefferson astutely summed up such reasoning when
he wrote, "The true foundation of republican government is the equal
right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their
management." [Letter to S. Kercheval, 1816.]
Under our present system, the blindfolded Goddess of Justice has
been allowed to peek. "Tell me first who you are and what you earn," she
says, "then I will tell you how the tax laws apply to you." This
is privilege and arbitrary law, the harbingers of every tyranny throughout
history.
This then is the moral and philosophical case for abolishing the
progressive income tax. It is simply unjust, unconstitutional, illegal,
and dictatorial. But in addition to the philosophical case, there
is also a very powerful practical reason why ending this tax
is so important. This is because, with progressive rates ended, there
would no longer be any incentive for voters to try and gain their
life's status by relentlessly increasing government spending, i.e.,
by redistributing wealth from the pockets of their neighbors.
Most Americans do not understand it, but the major cause of explosive
government spending is our use of progressive tax rates to redistribute
wealth. This is because the progressive income tax permits large
constituencies of voters to pay zero taxes and equally large
constituencies to pay next to zero taxes. These two groups
comprise approximately 50% of today's adult population. Thus, a progressive
income tax spawns a "something for nothing" voter mindset that dominates
all elections.
[Source: "25% of the population pays zero taxes," Institute for
Policy Innovation in Dallas, UPI Impact, November 1997. And
the top 50% of Americans pay 96.03% of taxes, while the bottom 50%
pay only 3.97%. From Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income
Division, September 2002.]
When large groups of voters are allowed the privilege of paying
nothing and next to nothing in taxes, an irresponsible electorate
will inevitably evolve to demand a steady expansion of government
services. This is basic human nature and one of the cardinal laws
of economics. If government benefits are free (or nearly free),
demand for them will be infinite. Consequently, in every election
there is an automatic 50% base of voters who always favor those politicians
who propose increased government spending.
Overcoming this infinite demand for government spending will be
impossible until we genuinely reform the tax system and eliminate
its "something for nothing" aspect. This means ending ALL deductions,
special breaks, loopholes, and rate progressivity. This will
necessitate the adoption of a simple equal rate income tax (i.e.,
a genuine flat tax) that does not convey favors or exemptions to
anybody.
Since voters would then have to pay for all government subsidies
and pork barrel programs proportionately out of their own pockets,
they would lose their overwhelming desire for such subsidies and
programs. They would begin to favor politicians who advocate "reduction"of
government instead of its "constant expansion," because this is the
only way they could get their own taxes reduced and more freedom
into their lives. All kinds of Ron Pauls would begin to appear in
congressional elections every two years because the electorate would
demand it. But as long as voters pay zero taxes or next
to zero taxes, they will continue to favor politicians who offer
more programs and more pork every November at election time. An "equal
rate tax" is the only way to end the automatic expansion of government.
In other words, no one is to get special privileges. All citizens
must contribute to the system rather than leeching from the system.
Under a 10% flat tax, if a man earns $500,000 in a year, he would
pay $50,000 to fund the government. If he earns $50,000 annually,
he would pay $5,000. If he earns $5,000 annually, he would pay $500.
This way everyone has a stake in being a responsible citizen and
voting for the common good instead of trying to get something for
nothing by taking money from his neighbor. Such a tax would quickly
bring about a reduction of government, and as a result the 10% rate
could be lowered accordingly. We could probably have a flat tax of
5%-7% within a decade or two. Is it too much to ask a man who makes
$5,000 a year to pay $250-$350 to support the government that protects
his rights and preserves domestic order for he and his family?
This is the all-important element in the Two Pillars Strategy,
the linchpin to set in motion the phasing out of the Leviathan.
All voters must pay proportionally out of their own pockets for
their government services. No political activism favoring freedom
will ever succeed until this element is set in place.
Can such a true equal-rate tax win the support of a majority of
American voters? No, at this time, it could not. But as we will soon
see, our goal is not to win 51% of the voters. Our goal is to win
only 15% of the voters and make it into the debates to act as a powerful
counter vision to the insanity of the Demopublicans.
We believe 15% of the American people today would support a true
equal rate income tax. This is because it would not only stop the
growth of government, it would effectively reverse the culture of
spending in Washington and begin a steady reduction of government.
And once government spending is reduced to a level that could be
financed by a 5%-7% flat income tax, then the system could easily
be converted to a consumption tax. This would allow us to abolish
the IRS and collect a small national sales tax through the state
sales tax agencies already in place.
A national sales tax is classified as an excise tax, which makes
it constitutionally legitimate. Accompanying our shift to a consumption
tax would be a constitutional amendment repealing the Sixteenth Amendment
and forbidding Congress to tax income in any way. This would end
the Federal Government's ability to confiscate our property with
authoritarian agencies such as the IRS.
Therefore, our second pillar of reform must be to end the policy
of progressive taxation and its something-for-nothing mindset that
is stultifying our nation.
These then are our two paramount goals: 1) Enact a gold-oriented
monetary system, and 2) enact an equal rate tax system. These are
the TWO PILLARS that must be used to form the foundation of any credible
political challenge of the Demopublican establishment.
To those objectors who say that American voters cannot understand
such issues, that the necessity for honest money and equal tax rates
could never be communicated to an electorate that thinks in simple
sound bites, we offer Ross Perot's use of charts and TV to educate
the voters in the '92 election. His economics were misguided, but
his methodology was effective. He scared the hell out of the establishment.
Yes, we know! The Libertarian Party has been trying to "educate
the voters" for years in hopes of reforming our political system,
and look where it's gotten them. Their problem is that they are making
one of the two disastrous fundamental mistakes, which doom all third
parties to failure.
The Two Fundamental Third Party Mistakes
Ross Perot's Reform Party, The Libertarian Party, and the Constitution
Party (formerly the U.S. Taxpayer's Party) have appeared at times
to be a start toward genuine political reformation. But all three
have failed to gain adequate support because they have structured
themselves upon one or the other of two basic flaws: 1) Marginalization
and 2) Cloning.
1) Marginalization is the flaw of the Libertarian and Constitution
Parties. This takes place because these two parties both have ideal
visions of the way that society should be politically organized,
and they attempt to implement their visions all at once through the
political process. They ignore the fact that politics is a game of incrementalism,
that it is not an arena in which an "ideal society" can suddenly
be voted into place. Because they try to do this, they are perceived
by the public as not living in the real world.
For example, when asked what tax policy they advocate for the country,
libertarians reply that the income tax should be totally abolished
and government should be stripped down to a minimal state that can
exist upon excise taxes and tariffs. Now this is a beautiful vision
of a truly limited government. It would be wonderful to have an America
like that. But this is not a credible political platform to be gained
through a political campaign; it is rather an "ideal" that could
be approached in 50 years or so. The members of the Constitution
Party respond in the same way. Both of these parties wish to instantly
implement their visions of the ideal in total. There is no acceptance
of the need for incrementalism that all of politics is based upon.
As a result, both of these parties are marginalized as foolishly
utopian. They end up getting at best 1% of the vote every year. They
remain obscure fringe voices. No national media pursue them, no big
money flows into their coffers, and most importantly they are never
invited to the televised debates.
The solace that their members fall back upon is that at least they
are functioning as an educational organization to spread the ideas
of freedom to the electorate. But even that function is pretty meager,
for only sparse audiences of curious spectators and hard core loyalists
ever show up at their confabs. In other words, since they have no
national media pursuing them, and since they never get invited to
the debates, they really don't do much educating of the electorate.
The bottom line is that because they campaign on instant idealization,
they become "marginalized" and fail.
2) Cloning is the flaw of groups like the Reform Party that
Ross Perot founded (and also John Anderson's independent candidacy
in 1980). Because of its desire for immediately winning the Presidency,
the Reform Party ended up becoming nothing but a Demopublican clone.
While the Libertarians project too much radicalness, the Reform Party
projected no radicalness. They ended up with no substantive differences
ideologically between themselves and the Demopublicans. Because they
wanted to win right away, they had to offer only more of the same
statist pabulum of their opponents. They were thus reduced to running
on the notion that they would somehow govern the monster welfare
state better because they would bring "better personnel" to Washington.
Their experts and bureaucrats would supposedly do a more professional
job of confiscating our money and throwing it down the ratholes of
political boondoggles. Needless to say, this did not excite the electorate
who didn't see the need for still another big government party. The
bottom line is that because the Reform Party campaigned on a platform
designed for instant victory, it became nothing but a clone and failed.
These are the two crucial mistakes that any third party challenge
of the establishment must avoid. If a third party wishes to become
viable and succeed, it must offer radical enough change to separate
itself from the Demopublicans, but not so radical that it becomes
marginalized like the Libertarian and Constitution Parties are. What
needs to be done is to form one party (let's call it the Free
American Party) that will submerge all the egos of the participants
involved and structure itself around the Two Pillars Strategy.
Here is the significance of this kind of approach: By keeping its
radicalness to a minimum, e.g. advocacy of honest money and equal
tax rates (accompanied by a couple of hot button secondary issues
such as "cracking down on illegal immigration" and "establishing
a non-interventionist foreign policy") with the remainder of its
platform conventional welfare-state policy, the Free American Party
could acquire big league status. And with big league status would
come major contributions of money.
If the Free American Party would nominate an articulate candidate
with gravitas to head the ticket, it could garner 15% of the vote,
which would qualify it for the debates every year and bring national
media to hang out on its front doorstep, which would bring in even
more money. It would then have a national podium to disseminate its
ideas out to 100 million voters, which would scare the knickers off
of the Demopublicans. As a result, it wouldn't be too long before
Demopublicans would be offering their own gold monetary plan and
their own equal rate tax. If they didn't, I believe that the nation's
voters would increase their support every year for the Free American
Party until either the Demopublicans relented and enacted the two
pillars into law, or the Free American Party achieved parity with
the Demopublicans and actually won on election day. Either way, the
Free American Party would win because its two pillars would be implemented.
With implementation of the two pillars, big government would die,
and freedom would be reborn.
Thus a third party does not have to win office to win its cause!
But it does have to avoid the two pitfalls of marginalization and
becoming a clone, and it has to gain entrance into the debates. Once
this is done, American politics would be dramatically opened up to
the ideasof freedom and limited government. As things stand now,
such ideas are not even discussed because all the present third parties
succumb to either marginalization or cloning. Consequently such parties
never become potent enough threats to motivate the Demopublicans
to alter their policies.
So a most important tenet of the Free American Party is that
we don't try to win our cause by winning the White House immediately
and taking over the government. Such a goal for the libertarian-conservative
message in America is unrealistic at this time in history. But
we can win in another way. We can win by getting into the National
TV Election Debates and establishing a counter vision to the Demopublicans'
statist vision.
This means the National-Election debates that take place
every election year in October. These three debates are televized
to 80-100 million voters on the major networks, while Regional-Nomination debates
are televized to only 10-20 million voters on the cable channels
throughout the year prior. The National Election debates are all-important,
for they legitimize and give credibility to a candidate. They are
absolutely essential if a candidate and a party are to have a chance
to affect policy and change the role of government in America. Getting
into the "regional-nomination" debates with ten other candidates
does not do the trick. One simply must qualify for the "national-election" debates
if he or she is to influence the nation in a substantive way.
Statism is running rampant throughout the world primarily because
there is no counter vision being effectively presented to the voters
at election time that will demonstrate both the necessity and the
means of gaining control of government growth. This is because the
Republicans and Democrats have merged into ONE PARTY with one message
of government expansion every year. Once their monopoly of ideas
is broken, however, then the counter vision of freedom can be presented
to the people. And if history is any judge, people always choose
freedom if given the choice of freedom. What is needed is to present
the people with a choice between big government and small government,
i.e., between serfdom and freedom in a rational, workable way that
does not sound utopian. This has never been done in the past 100
years.
Therefore the all important goal is to get 15% in the polls and
gain admission into the National-Election debates, which will give
the Free American Party access to 100 million voters with its powerful
pillars of reform -- honest money and equal tax rates.
Once in these debates, our cause would proceed dramatically. The
Demopublican candidates would have to defend on nationwide TV their
tyrannical policies of fiat money inflation and progressive taxation
while the country is deteriorating all around them.
Once in the debates, could the Free American Party candidate then
sell a majority of the electorate on the necessity to enact the Two
Pillars into law? Not at first, but eventually it could be done with
persistence and clear explanations.
It is in times of great crisis that men and women are most open
to radical new policies as answers to their problems. Well, the next
10-15 years are going to be increasingly dominated by economic and
political crises (ruinous government debt and deficits, social security
and medicare bankruptcy, peak oil, immigration overload, severe recessions
and stagflation, etc.), perhaps some of the worst in our history.
And you can bet the collectivists will be demagoging their nostrums
to the voters in an effort to stampede them into accepting more government
control over their lives. We will need to counter their avalanche
of statist economic proposals with a rational program for the reduction
of government control.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats will ever move toward LESS government
unless they are confronted with a credible third party that poses
a threat to their rule by bringing the truth to 100 million voters
in dramatic style. But such a competitor can only come into existence
if it simplifies its platform and avoids the two flaws of marginalization
and cloning. Thus far, libertarians and conservatives have remained
oblivious to this necessity. Hopefully they will come to see the
error of their ways. America's existence as a free nation is going
to depend upon getting a true free-market voice into the debates
and onto TV in a prominent way. If this does not happen, the Demopublicans
will exploit the coming bad times to further entrench their policies
of massive government centralization. Without a credible third party
in the race, dictatorship looms over the horizon.
Restructuring and Unification
The freedom movement is now a powerful philosophical force in America,
but it is a force that needs an effective political party to speak
for it. What the Demopublican power brokers fear most is a real grassroots
freedom party that does not make the mistakes of "marginalization" and "cloning." The
Demopublicans subconsciously sense that millions of Americans would
explode in righteous wrath and loyalty to such a party.
To sum all this up, we need a grand unification of all third parties
in the U.S. that value free-enterprise and limited government. Libertarians,
Constitutionalists, American-Independents, Patriots, and Reformers
need to come together. We need to quit playing the game as amusing
larks, media curiosities, and footnotes in history. Make one party
and base it on the two pillars of honest money and equal tax rates.
Accompany the two primary pillars with a couple of hot button issues
such as "cracking down on illegal immigration" and "establishing
a non-interventionist foreign policy." Then structure the rest of
the platform upon conventional Demopublican fare.
This is most important! The Free American Party cannot threaten
voters with the dissolution of the welfare state. It cannot sound
like Harry Browne. Its message must simply be that we have to check
the explosive growth of government in order to bring back sanity
to our country, and that this will require policies of "honest money
and equal tax rates" to be enacted. This is the only way to obtain
the 15% necessary to get into the National Election Debates, which
is the only way for a candidate and a party to become sufficiently
influential in the voters minds.
Such a party (if led by the right candidate) would have a powerful,
galvanizing appeal, which would allow it to bring in major money and
capture 15% of the vote, then 25%, then 35% and eventually victory
in a three-man race. The fear that would rise up in the establishment
crowd would be heart pounding. Their corrupt game of buying votes
through debasement of the currency and confiscatory taxation would
be over.
Millions of voters would rally around such a cause. At least 15%
of the American people are thoroughly fed up and firmly committed
to the monetary and tax reform pillars. They want a prudent, rational
program that will offer them freedom, order and justice in their
lives. They want a party that will end Gargantua's relentless expansion
and domination of our society.
The time has come to form a third party that actually has the ability
to make a difference. We could inject the two greatest issues of
our day -- honest money and equal tax rates -- into
the living rooms of 100 million Americans every election year. This
beats all to hell the quaint little gatherings in front of a few
faithful followers that present third party efforts achieve. This
would be big time, TV oriented, major league politics. It would rock
the nation, it would make history, and most importantly, it would
stop the growth of the Leviathan cold.
Help Spread the Word
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Thank you for your attention; we hope to hear from you. These are
grave times that will only get worse as government grows bigger.
Help us to reverse this insidious destruction of our country and
restore the Constitutional system that the Founding Fathers gave
to America.
