A link to the Drudge Report today describes the popular street protests in Brazil as a “revolt against big government.” Oscar José Santos, a 19-year-old demonstrator, seems to confirm that sentiment. Yesterday, he told media “we are here because we hate the government. They do nothing for us.” Over a faltering welfare state, a rising cost of living, an economic slump, poor public services, and a $13.3 billion tax payer funded World Cup for 2014, this two week old wave of dissent has been described by some as a “revolution” echoing similar events in Turkey.
…the new Blue Republicans that is.
If you live in Maine, please don’t forget to join our growing chapter, chaired by Jeff Cash.
Like the Facebook page here for updates that will serve liberty – supporting candidates, events etc. – in your great state!
Having introduced @Tisha Casida as the Chairwoman of the Colorado Chapter of Blue Republican, I now have the pleasure of introducing @JEFF CASH as the Chairman of the MAINE Chapter of Blue Republican.
…. And as we all know, Maine did Ron Paul proud!
“Born and raised in rural Maine, I have been described as a man of many hats. I’m a father, a grandfather and a husband, an Air Force veteran, a former biomedical/genetic research technician, a career professional and supervisor in the Maine Criminal Justice field, a passionate outdoorsman and recreational shooter, an Oathkeeper and a lifelong defender of the Constitution and the principles of Liberty upon which our Republic was founded.
The spark from the Ron Paul movement helped to transform me from a political bystander to an active grassroots level participant and leader in the political process from the local municipal and county level through to serving as a delegate at our Maine State Convention in Augusta. The excitement and energy I shared with thousands of Mainers of every background during that incredible experience really made me pause and appreciate the strength that comes from that diversity. Respect for the individual and common ground coalition-building founded upon principles of freedom, the Constitution and personal liberties is what binds us together and personally inspires me to serve as Chair of the Maine Chapter of Blue Republican.”
Eleven years ago, when the Syrian Accountability Act was brought to the floor, a now familiar lone congressman objected to its passage.
“Mr. Chairman, I would like to express my strong opposition to this ill-conceived and ill-timed legislation. This bill will impose what is effectively a trade embargo against Syria and will force the severance of diplomatic and business ties between the United States and Syria. It will also significantly impede travel between the United States and Syria. Worse yet, the bill also provides essentially an open-ended authorization for the President to send U.S. taxpayer money to Syria should that country do what we are demanding in this bill.”
More from the congressional record = scroll to towards the bottom
Robin Koerner, our founder, recently gave this speech on the importance of love in political activism. While many people appreciated it, some did more so than others.
Here is Glenn Beck making a similar point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PlugRym4Rbo
“Forced to choose between allegiance to the flag and uniform, and loyalty to the ideals the flag is supposed to represent and the uniform is supposed to defend, they chose the latter.”
THEY ARE US.
Via The Young Turks:
“With a plot out of a Hollywood movie or a gripping Lifetime TV show, a mesmerizing drama of sex, power, frame-ups, planted drugs, and lies unfolded in real life in Georgia when two Murray County sheriff’s deputies recently pleaded guilty in federal court for their part in a scheme to send an innocent woman to prison.”
The innocent woman fell victim to what’s all too typical of our government’s trillion dollar war on drugs.
In a live chat earlier today, Edward Snowden answered questions from Twitter users with the #AskSnowden hashtag.
The number of signatures on We the People’s petition to pardon Edward Snowden has reached 82,000 signatures already, but will need another 17,000 by July 9th for an official White House response. You can sign the petition at this link.
And if not, why not??
You know how we’re not supposed to worry about govt. snooping because they’re only storing all possible data about our calls – rather than actually listening to what we say in them?? Turns out that was rubbish too.
The latest revelation is that they listen whenever they like.
“This is how democracy works,” said Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson on his first trip overseas. Just three weeks ago, he was appointed foreign minister to a recently elected Icelandic government.
Both major parties in their new government have campaigned against membership in the seemingly turbulent European Union. Now in office, they seem to be holding true to their campaign promises – a rare quality indeed of major parties this side of the Atlantic.
The COLORADO Chapter of the Blue Republicans was born today – and its chair will be none other than the awesome TISHA CASIDA, who ran as an Independent for Congress last year for her state’s 3rd CD, , and was endorsed by us
If it possible to be simultaneously proud and humbled, I am both to have Tisha as an official and executive Blue Republican.
Moreover, she will be running for Congress again!
Thank you Tisha. We are delighted to have you taking care of business in Colorado!
(Image based on original design by Jerzy Janiszewski, 1980)
The Founder of Blue Republican Polska, launching officially today, explains why our brand is needed in his native Poland.
“Polish history offers enough examples of pain and tragedy in the struggle for liberty. After 1989, when the Communist regime fell, few people could remember living in a free country. But we at least thought that we could look forward to new times in hope. Unfortunately, most of the supposed free-market reforms were badly designed, and were in many instances suspected to be a cover for cronyism. Widespread disappointment in the reforms led people to look back to the “old good times”, driving the entire political spectrum toward statist, centralized solutions. Today, all Polish parties in parliament, representing a range of political concepts from the social democratic left to the Catholic conservative right, lean toward abandoning personal rights, giving more power to bureaucrats …and institutions that can “solve things”. This worrisome trend in Poland is the target of efforts of many liberty-loving organizations, economic experts and small non-parliamentarian parties, but as the continued trend toward totalitarian solutions shows, they are having little effect.”
“The unique Blue Republican approach of understanding can be a counterpoint to the kind of violent political debate that goes on today in Poland. The wide spectrum of political points of view in the Blue Republican community provide a perfect platform for bringing together many separated liberty-oriented organizations.”
Please LIKE Blue Republican Polska – and help them reach the threshold they need to capture the Facebook URL
Like them at https://www.facebook.com/BlueRepublicanPolska …
The Founder, Grzegorz Bieszczad, explains here why the Blue Republican brand is needed in Poland.
“Polish history offers enough examples of pain and tragedy in the struggle for liberty. After 1989, when the Communist regime fell, few people could remember living in a free country. But we at least thought that we could forward to new times in hope. Unfortunately, most of the supposed free-market reforms were badly designed, and were in many instances suspected to be a cover for cronyism. Widespread disappointment in the reforms led people to look back to the “old good times”, driving the entire political spectrum toward statist, centralized solutions. Today, all Polish parties in parliament, representing a range of political concepts from the social democratic left to the catholic conservative right, lean toward abandoning personal rights, giving more power to bureaucrats and institutions that can “solve things”. This worrisome trend in Poland is the target of efforts of many liberty-loving organizations, economic experts and small non-parliamentarian parties, but as the continued trend toward totalitarian solutions shows, they are having little effect.
“The unique Blue Republican approach of understanding can be a counterpoint to the kind of violent political debate that goes on today in Poland. The wide spectrum of political points of view in the Blue Republican community provides a perfect platform for bringing together many separated liberty-oriented organizations.”
Please LIKE Blue Republican Polska.
BLUE REPUBLICAN just went international!!!
These days, Rand Paul can often be heard saying that the Republican party needs to become competitive in “the West and New England,” and that the more libertarian brand of Republican politics that he represents will help make that possible.
In 2008, Democrats and Independents voted for Obama, believing that, in voting against Bush’s Republicans, they were voting against crony corporatism (remember Halliburton, corporate bailouts?), wars of choice (Iraq) and the take down of our civil rights (Patriot Act). Two years ago, a huge number of them realized that not only did their vote fail to stop any of these, but Obama was a kind of Bush-plus, extending and even deepening illiberal policy in all of these areas. As recent revelations about America’s massive surveillance state have revealed, they were right.
Many of these disillusioned Obama voters came to understand that the real problem was bigger than one party or the other, one president or another, but that, “the presuppositions of the system,” as Noam Chomsky call them, ensure that the state, under control of either party, consistently and increasingly acts at the expense of our basic individual liberties, Bill of Rights be damned. Thousands of these voters chose to stay true to their liberal principles by becoming (often for the first time in their lives) signed-up Republicans to support Ron Paul in his run for the presidency. In an article that I wrote at the time, I called them “Blue Republicans.” The article went viral and the term caught on, leading to the setting up of a Facebook group, the design and distribution of Blue Republican marketing materials aimed at liberals, and even all kinds of guerrilla marketing, such as the surreptitious hanging of banners over Californian freeways, and so on.
People flew to the USA from all around the world to hand out Blue Republican fliers in liberal parts of the country. Blue Republican became the largest coalition in support of Ron Paul’s campaign and I found myself giving in excess of 60 media interviews to explain the phenomenon that I had both named and promoted.
All that happened when “Blue Republican” was nothing more than a label, identified only with a core set of principles and a respectful, welcoming approach to spreading liberty. That the liberty movement had so comprehensively failed to have spoken to the liberty-curious on the soft Left was remarkable. That a single article, providing a political identity outside the Left-Right paradigm, could reach them was wonderful and extremely exciting.
Since the birth of Blue Republican, I have had the privilege of presenting on, and advocating for, individual liberty to myriad audiences. Many of them include educated, well-meaning people who are “Liberal-by-default,” which is a label that would have fitted me nicely for most of my life.
The “Blue Republican” group is set apart from other liberty-oriented groups by being less interested in winning philosophical purity contests than with winning supporters for Liberty, on the understanding that the most valuable principles are those that make a practical difference. My archive of writing seeks to find common ground with people who don’t yet identify with the liberty movement, to develop a civil discourse that helps them see how some of the ideas, policies and politicians that they typically support frustrate their liberal principles, when those principles are properly and consistently understood. Blue Republican is not so much concerned with pushing a libertarian orthodoxy (which is bound to fail and always has), but with helping all people, and especially those who regard themselves as broadly Liberal, see how so many of our prevailing political assumptions are wrong.
The Blue Republican seal says “Principle Before Party.” There’s a big market for that sentiment nowadays. Millions of Americans are already primed to reject the idea that the Left or the Right is the problem and that the Right or the Left is the solution — but many of them haven’t been exposed to an alternative account of our politics that promotes liberty without pushing an entire worldview that represents a paradigm shift too large for them to accept. Blue Republican fills that niche.
The rise of Blue Republican has been concurrent with the recent remaking of the GOP from the inside by extremely enthusiastic liberty activists. This process is well underway and arguably the most exciting thing in American politics today. These (mostly young) activists are pro-peace, anti-corporatism, and pro-love, and they don’t get their ideas only from the media and professors who can’t help but teach what they were taught in the big-state progressive era of the ’60s and ’70s. These new Republicans are, in other words, driven by many of the things that many Democrats believe have been far too absent from the Republican party for far too long, and are more absent from the Democratic party than they have been for a long time.
These new Republicans also include the GOP’s recent intake of more libertarian politicians, such as Rand Paul and Justin Amash. The media apply the old paradigm when they say things like “Rand Paul is left of Obama on civil rights/foreign policy, but he’s to the right of the GOP on regulation and taxation.” Much more accurate would be to say that on the real axis of Liberty vs. Tyranny, both the established Left and Right are toward the latter end while Rand et al. are toward the former. But old paradigms are sticky. Blue Republicans, along with others, are un-sticking them.
Non-neoconservatives in the West and New England have plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the GOP. The party proselytized for small government and freedom on the one hand, while sponsoring war, and the growth of government in a direction that has often appeared driven by a positively illiberal, often religious, ideology, on the other. If the GOP is going to have any value as a vehicle for liberty in the Blue states, it will be necessary to get non-dogmatic liberals not to throw out their liberal principles, but to see how their principles have not been well served by the old Progressive one-size fits-all programs delivered by a State that continually concentrates power at the expense of individual liberty.
In support of a liberty-driven Republican Party, a Libertarian Party that is also being remade by a more energetic, youthful and pragmatic executive, Independent candidates and even, if they exist, Democratic candidates who share our values, Blue Republican is to establish chapters throughout the country with the goal of reaching the liberty-curious, especially in “bluer” cities, counties and states. We will not be scared to use the vocabulary of social democrats to explain to social democrats why the growing and increasingly intrusive State on which they have depended has, in nearly every case, produced outcomes at odds with their good intentions. In short, Blue Republicans are interested in finding the common ground between liberals and (classical) liberalism from which to bring the former on a journey toward the latter.
The chapters will be set up by successful applicants who demonstrate an understanding of both the philosophy and the flavor of the brand. Through their chapters, they will be able to bring to bear the weight of the Blue Republican “political franchise” in support of local candidates for anything from school board up to governor; liberty and peace-oriented events, and other groups who share our principles. (Already this year, and before this effort was launched, we have been approached by a Gubernatorial candidate and even European activists for official endorsements and support. The California chapter is already being established) Blue Republican represents a ready-made channel for political marketing and outreach for liberty-driven candidates in Blue districts, regardless of the party with which they are affiliated.
Any liberty Republican who were to run for President in 2016 could do no better than have the Blue Republicans campaign for his most important ideas in precisely those places where his party has not been taken seriously for decades. He would have a doubly hard task. On the one hand, he must break down the Left/Right paradigm in the minds of the voters to an extent that allows them to see the real dichotomy of U.S. politics (liberty vs. tyranny), while, on the other, he must find a way to appeal to those who remain caught in the old paradigm and lean Democrat without upsetting his Conservative base as a Republican.
Blue Republican, with its chapters throughout Blue states, will be able to offer a powerful strategic option as it can make the liberal case for Republican liberty candidates while allowing those same candidates to distance themselves from views that would, if overtly embraced, perturb the conservative base that such candidates would need to win with the support of their party’s apparatchiks.
If any readers would like to be part of the Blue Republican effort to become a force in American politics by building the left flanks of liberty candidates, Republican or otherwise, for offices, high and low, around the nation, they are invited to join us. The task is a huge one, and the stakes are even greater, and we need all the help we can get.
