The Republican Party is lost to massive statism, and it is time to seek our political salvation elsewhere. We at AFR have been sounding this alarm for several years now. Because of the vice grip that liberals and neoconservatives have over our major parties, what is needed is a fully independent political campaign that challenges their Demopublican monopoly in the way that Ross Perot did. Thus we are forming the National Independent Party for 2016.
Many readers write to us about the "pros and cons of such a venture" and naturally voice their concern about its possible results. There are two main objections put forth. What follows are answers to each of them:
1) The number one objection encountered is that all we will do with an independent challenge to the Democrats and Republicans is to guarantee election of the Democrat candidate, which would certainly not be good for America. But a Democrat win will only take place if we fail to muster a decent vote tally. If we design the right strategy and platform and recruit a nationally prominent candidate with gravitas (such as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, etc.), then all we need is 37 percent of the vote. That wins in a three man race.
AFR's Four Pillars of Reform for our tax, monetary, immigration, and foreign policy systems is the right platform. The above three candidates (along with several others) possess the necessary prominence and gravitas. And 37 percent actually underestimates things. Half the electorate will vigorously support the Four Pillars of Reform. Thus when a prominent candidate such as Cruz or Walker is factored in, 45-50 percent of the vote is a very realistic figure to expect. No Democrat will be elected with our plan. Those who fear this are not thinking clearly.
The "Impregnability" of the Ruling Class
2) The second major objection to the idea of challenging the Demopublican elites in Washington is that it's a colossal waste of time and energy. Even if such a challenge could be built to respectability, it will attract only naive Pollyannas who have no idea of the immensity of the forces that are entrenched against them. The country is in the hands of powerful cartels of corporate-banking-bureaucratic interests that will ruthlessly suppress our efforts. The ruling class in America will wipe us out of existence before we make even small inroads into their game of fiat money and confiscatory taxes. Individuals can't make a difference in face of such a monster machine of corporate-statism.
I fully realize the strength of the ruling establishment and the odds that a challenge like this is up against. But I see overwhelming challenge as rampant throughout history. I see that all progress in forming better, freer societies only comes about because there are certain people in this world (the Thomas Jeffersons and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns) who just don't allow immense power structures to bother them or dissuade them.
Why? Because of a very dynamic force that all tyrannical systems lack, and all rational revolutionaries possess - moral truth! This is what brings the most powerful of tyrannies down. No matter how much monetary or regulatory control they possess, no matter how ruthless they are - they are always vulnerable in face of men and women who are in possession of truth and willing to take a moral stand against overwhelming odds. Moral truth connected to unbending human will is what eventually destroys the most entrenched of evil. That's what we have on our side. We just have to design the right strategy to implement it. There are countless Americans out there with the "can do" spirit that originally built this country. They're just waiting for the right mix of political savvy and passion to come along and sweep them up into a crusade.
In 1776, the Tories timidly hid behind closed doors where it was safe and popular. They wallowed in pessimism and lamented that nothing could be done. The British were too strong. Why make a big fuss? But the rebels - men like Samuel Adams and John Hancock, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere - would have none of it. They possessed only a rag-tag army, but they knew they had moral truth on their side, and that the British Gargantua would fall precisely because of that.
Entrenched authority has to justify itself morally and philosophically. And that is something that today's Demopublican elites cannot do. They are terribly vulnerable. They are rotted from within. They are ripe for a challenge just as the Soviet Politburo was ripe. And they can be brought down. It might take a decade to do it. But someone has to start the ball rolling somewhere.
Throughout history whenever tyranny threatens, there are those who hang back in resignation, and there are those who say - Let's take the fight to these tyrants, and even if we lose, at least we'll know that we fought on the side of truth, rather than settling for the comforts of craven apathy.
More than Lip Service
The nature of our choice can be explained with a recent example from history. The Vichy government of France and its collaborators quietly tolerated the Nazis in 1940. Yet DeGaulle and a small group of partisans went underground and refused to accept the superior power of the German army. They had no idea whether they could win or not. They only knew that they could not live as collaborators. They had to take the fight to the tyrants, and even if they lost, at least they knew they would be aligning themselves with the forces of truth and freedom. That is the only attitude that will save America. And it will take more than lip service, more than bland Republican caucuses. It will require courageous, activist, "outside the box" commitment. We need gallant Rebels, not compliant Tories.
Great deeds are accomplished only by those who are impervious to "power structures" and "ruling establishments." History is determined by vibrant men of the mind with the will to bend the social forces they find around them rather than be bent by them. History does not make us, as the collectivists so falsely claim. We make history. Men and women of great moral conviction formed our nation, and it is only such men and women again who can save her.
Because of the crisis now unfolding, the people will soon be clamoring for some radical voices to lead them. So when the knock comes on your door to ask for your commitment, I hope that you, the reader, will be preparing yourself to join the fight with conviction and gusto instead of dwelling on how entrenched the Darth Vaders of the Potomac are. It is far better to fight, even if we lose, than to give up and allow the forces of evil to win by default.
Our trumpet call must be the words of Thomas Hughes: "Man was sent into this earth for the express purpose of fighting - of uncompromising and unending fighting with body, intellect, spirit, against whomsoever and whatsoever causeth or maketh a lie. The first requisite of life is courage or manfulness, gained through conflict with evil - for without such conflict there can be no perfection of character....[W]e are born into a state of war; with falsehood and disease, and wrong and misery in a thousand forms lying all around us, and the voice within calling on us to take our stand as men in the eternal battle against them."
Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas, and serves as the Director of Americans for a Free Republic. An educational organization founded to promote sound money and fair taxation. He is the author of a soon to be released book, The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values.
