Last Updated on Saturday November 9, 2024 04:23pm EST This series began near the end of May 2023, when I felt the need to start writing about how I felt the Libertarian Party had failed, and a new Classical Liberal party – not the same as the current Libertarian Party – was needed. The series stalled in early July, with The Hunt for Red October having been written in July, but not actually sent for publication until October, after Leave the Party, take the Canolli. I recommend reading based on the order of the articles on this page. May 2023 Is “retaking” the LP really the best solution? Forming a New Party The Question of Political Purity Tent City June 2023 MacArthur Versus Hooverville How the West was Lost Robert’s, the Political Weapon of Mass Destruction October 2023 Leave the Party, take the Cannoli The Hunt for Red October November 2024 Dallas vs Houston December 2024 Sticks and Stones
Month: October 2023
The Hunt for Red October
SPOILER ALERT: Love it or hate it, if you never watched this movie then go watch it before reading this! What can I say? I had to find a way to bring one of my favorite movies into this. The premise of the movie is quite simple: The USSR builds a super sub, designed to silently approach, attack and destroy the US swiftly and cleanly, ending the cold war. The Captain does not like what they are planning to have the October do and decides to defect. He assembles a hand picked crew of officers he believes will follow his lead and the sub makes its exit from port. Russia tells the US the captain is a rogue madman to get them to help destroy the sub. The hero (of course!) figures out the captain is not mad, opens his big mouth, and ends up chasing the sub part way around the world. Classic Sean Connery, along with some young actor who clearly demonstrated that he actually does know how to use a prop gun, contrary to his recent statements made after causing the death…well…we don’t need to go there. So what’s the point? Spies, intrigue, escape! And in the end, the “good guys” appear to have won. The liberty movement is in the middle of its own Hunt for Red October. The bad guys, who I will identify shortly, built a weapon. It escaped from them, and for decades they have fought to chase it down and destroy it. But who are the bad guys and were they always bad? In the movie, one could argue that some of the concepts that became the USSR and led to the Russian revolution might have had good intent. They were, after all, living under harsh conditions and the rule of a series of nasty hereditary rulers – the Russian Czars. But the leadership after the revolution in Russia was quickly overtaken and devolved into a corrupt and evil regime, often suppressing their people worse than the government they overthrew. Sound familiar? Our bad guy for the sake of this discussion is the political system of the United States. It was not always bad, but this is not 1787. The government is run by the power brokers within the political system, so I believe they are the real “bad guys”. Our country built a weapon called freedom. It has gotten away, and the political system has been attempting to capture and destroy it for years. Oppressive election laws and cooperation from the media in their attempt to silence all of us who call ourselves “Third Parties” are one of their main weapons. Just the fact that our government was originally designed to not have political parties – certainly not just two – disputes the claim, by both the left and right media, that we have a “two party system”. Obviously many of us involved in partisan politics don’t agree with each other’s ideas and proposed solutions. There are parties that I think are full of absolute lunatics. Their ideas are insane – at least in my opinion. I am sure they think the same of me, along with others who have the same beliefs I have. A few of them are clearly enemies of the liberty movement, and support increased suppression by the government. But this discussion is not about people opposing liberty. It is about the stupidity and ignorance within the liberty movement itself at this point in time. Ignorance on the part of party leaders who don’t shoot at the enemy but at their own allies. Stupidity on the part of people who blindly follow them. Is that harsh enough? Some of this is on one side, some of this is on the other — or I should say others. Everyone in the liberty movement should be an ally. We should all be fighting to find the submarine called Freedom to rescue it. Instead, some of us are chasing after it underwater, where we should be, while others sit on the surface flying their party sanctioned flags and shooting at anything that surfaces or even moves. Just as they were not all in one vessel attempting rescue in the movie, we do not all need to be in the same party. Different arguments are needed. Did the “good guys” just send out one ship? No. So why do we have one 50 year old party that attempts to deal with every aspect and every question of liberty? It is the ship on the surface, flying flags and shooting at its own people. The bottom is covered in barnacles and rust, and its wake is full of leaking oil and people jumping overboard. The Libertarian party needs to go into dry dock and either be scrapped or rebuild itself. Some seem to want to rebuild. Some of us who jumped want a newer vessel. A party built to show the public a message they might listen to. One running candidates who do not look and act insane in the public’s eyes. Red October is still out there, and we need to rescue it. But how do we build a better party?
Your phone doesn’t ring just goes to voicemail
Losing family can be difficult. Correction: is usually difficult. I remember exactly where I was on the day before Christmas Day in 1995, when I heard that my father had had a heart attack. My mother and sister did not understand why I had to hang around until the 26th before I could leave Charleston and head to Philadelphia. There were things that had to be taken care of, or employees would not be paid at the end of the week. It may have sounded cruel to them, but I had to make sure that if I was gone for a while — which I was — I would not be hurting others. Needless to say, I did not get back to Charleston until after the first of January. I also remember exactly where I was on Valentine’s Day in 2005, when my sister called to say that our mother had just died. The details of that day have been written about elsewhere, so I won’t bother to repeat them other than to say that that day changed the direction of my life significantly. I was born in 1957. My father was born in 1912 and my mother in 1916. His father was born sometime in the late 1850s. And his grandfather died in the retreat from Brandywine. My mother‘s family is even longer. In her mother’s branch, I am only eight generations from the founding of the Rhode Island colony in the early 1600s. Five of my ancestors are in the same cemetery on a hill in New Jersey, covering a span of exactly 250 years. I was there once, about 50 years ago. The point of all this is that people usually live a long time in my family. So growing up, all my grandparents, most of whom lived into the 80s or 90s, were already dead. Funerals were not something I was used to attending. I am pretty sure that the only one I ever went to was my father’s. And although my mother died in 2005, my sister and I talked for years about burying her where she wanted to go, but we never got around to it. Too many federal laws would’ve been broken to coordinate it easily. Unfortunately, her family cemetery is on a wooded hill in the middle of a federal park on land that they stole from our family. But again, another story! In the spring of 2022 I had a heart attack. It was supposed to kill me, but it didn’t. About that time, my sister started getting ill. But she did not tell me because she thought it would get me upset. Of course we all know it is the exact opposite and I would’ve been less upset if I had known what was going on instead of having to search and call hospitals for literally weeks trying to find her when her phone kept saying that it was out of the service area. I can say this about the hospitals in the Philadelphia area: they will not even tell you if someone has ever been a patient, but they will be very polite about it. It doesn’t matter how much identifying information you can give, they won’t answer questions. But fortunately one of them accidentally gave me clues, and I eventually found her. Somehow I managed to get in touch with my brother-in-law, who has a habit of changing his cell phone number every year or two, as did my sister. She was in and out of hospitals all fall. They even had her in the University of Pennsylvania hospital for a while. It was something called EBV-associated A-plastic anemia. I had to look it up. Her body slowly ate itself to death. I don’t know much about blood platelet counts, but I know that they are supposed to be in something like the millions. Her’s got down to one. That is a numeric one, not 1 million. Then zero. She suffered a long and painful death, possibly more painful for her husband and daughter, who had to watch. I never made it up there to see her. She died on January 11, 2023. I have many memories of her when we were growing up. Some good, some bad, but many still vivid. We talked a lot on the phone the last few months of her life. We talked about some of her memories as a child and some of mine. Some that she told me I could not possibly have remembered but that I could clearly articulate to her amazement. We probably talked more in the fall of last year than we had across the previous 40 years combined, when she would always call me on my birthday, and I usually, but not always, on hers. I remember very clearly as a small child, probably either three or four years old, sitting down on the couch, with my sister sitting facing me on some sort of foot rest that was there. Our mother had told her to teach me to read, so she did. Which is why, to this day, I can still read upside down and backwards faster than most people can read forward. Yes, she taught me to read facing me not next to me. An accidental skill that I took advantage of for decades in the business world. Isn’t it amazing how often somebody will just leave a piece of paper on the desk in front of them while they are talking to you, not realizing that you can read every word without them really realizing it? My sister gave me that skill. The 8th of September would’ve been Margaret Louise [Flood] Mattox’s 68th birthday. I will certainly admit that I was affected, starting a few days before, and lasting more than a week. I still have the last text message I sent to her on December 20 of last year: Your phone doesn’t ring just goes to voicemail But I also have a
The Good, The Bad, and the Non-Partisan
Earlier in the week I was sitting here at my desk, working on some code, when there was suddenly a knock on the door. No, it wasn’t Santa Claus, it was something better. I went over the door and asked who it was. The response came back: “this is Mike Gastin and I’m running for city council”. I immediately asked him to hang on a minute while I found a shirt. A minute or so later, I opened the door, and no, it was not Mormons pretending to be running for city Council to try to hand me pamphlets, it was an actual candidate! He introduced himself, and we talked for a bit. We actually ended up talking for 20 or 30 minutes, and I am amazed that he talked to me at all since I realized after he left that I am a month overdue for a haircut and I don’t believe I’ve shaved since August. He told me a little bit about himself, and why he is running, and I asked him some questions – geared to determine if he really was a non-politician as he claimed. Charleston has too many career politicians at the local level, so it was refreshing to find out that he was sincere. We talked a bit more about the issues facing our district, and I even asked him to say one good and one bad thing about all of his opponents and about the candidates for Mayor. He was able to identify good and bad things about each of the candidates, which told me that he would be able to work with a mayor that did not necessarily agree with everything he thought should be done. At one point he mentioned that someone had put me on his list as someone he needed to talk to, which explains why he was knocking on my door on a Wednesday morning at 10 or 11 o’clock, when most people are not home. The person who put me on his list knew I would be home. I was extremely pleased with his knowledge of the critical issues, and after he left, I also did a little research into his résumé. He is certainly not running to get a paycheck. I can’t imagine that he would be doing it to try to start a “political career”. So a local citizen, running for office to try to get a job done. I don’t want to make this sound satirical, but it is almost out of a Jimmy Stewart movie. The question of course is whether he can win over a two term incumbent that I only hear from when he tries to say hello as I walk into the polling place every four years. Constituent services? Not in most city council member’s vocabulary. But I believe it might be in Mr. Gastin’s. I was impressed enough that I actually decided that I am going to vote this November, and I told him that I would spread the word that I had actually met somebody who could answer my questions – and for those of you that don’t know me, most politicians run for the hills when I start asking questions. Now we get to the interesting part: it is a non-partisan race. I did not ask him his party affiliation, and when he thought I was going to ask him he immediately interjected that he wasn’t going to say – that it is a non-partisan race and party labels are not discussed. So, who do I tell? We all know the truth about local politics. Even though it is non-partisan, people in the back rooms of the Republican party, and the Democratic party know who the candidates are. The Greens would as well. I have been out of the libertarian party for over three years now, so I tried to look up who to contact locally. It would be easier to find a Maytag repair man in Alaska. Eventually, I called someone in another part of the state, and was told he believed that the Mises caucus had taken over the local county party, and that all they cared about was mises minutia and trying to figure out how to vote for Trump or RFK Jr. I have no idea if that is true, but that is what my friend thinks is going on. But this is a non-partisan election, as many are. My friend and I talked about a couple of other non-partisan races he knows of in Georgia that he is hoping will succeed. The mayoral race is non-partisan here in Charleston, as is city Council. So there really isn’t anything a minor party could do, other than spread the word that there is at least one candidate worth considering. I am certainly not saying that there are no other candidates to consider, but when I see people running, some with the same last name as their parent that held the seat, I have little doubt that they are just trying to extend political dynasties. And what would a minor party do anyway? Well, they can influence elections. In Charleston county, the sum total of the minor party votes is frequently greater than the difference between the two other party candidates. In other words, support from minor parties and independents is still important. Of course, most minor parties are going to be even more stringent with verifying that a non-partisan candidate passes a purity test before even considering support. That is why they are failing. Rather than find someone you can agree with on three out of five issues, they will only support someone that agrees with them on five out of five. It doesn’t matter what the five are. If they disagree, forget it. The end result is that most non-partisan candidates get treated exactly like Eli Wallach in the final scene of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In the end, they are left with their hands and feet tied, standing
Leave the Party, take the Cannoli
A word of advice to anyone trying to write in the modern world: don’t ever take a weekend vacation where they don’t let you talk politics or religion. It throws you off pace. But while I was on this weekend retreat at the end of June, I did manage to sneak in a few minutes on my iPad catching the news. I quickly switched back to baseball when someone came into the living room. It was one of the countless Saturday morning political commentary shows. The hosts all have unpronounceable names, so while I channel surf a lot, I tend to listen to the one with the Philadelphia accent. It brings back memories. On this particular Saturday morning, there was a story about a “secret” meeting between Washington insiders in the Democratic and Republican parties having met earlier that week to discuss ways to stop “no labels” from running a candidate and somehow allowing Trump to be re-elected. The discussion centered around whether this was the election cycle where a strong, third-party or independent candidate could finally have impact. The guest vehemently denied this possibility. More recent events, some covered on Independent Political Report, center around fears of the Green Party’s candidate, as well as this group they call “no labels“. Interestingly, there was no mention of fear of Libertarians or other “third-parties”. Why not? Unfortunately, we all know the answer to that question. Agree or disagree with the current state of their party, no one disputes the fact that regardless of the candidate, the LP never seems to get anywhere. Neither do the Greens, although one could argue that both parties have had candidates in recent cycles that helped tip the scale one way or the other between donkeys and elephants. But is tipping the scale the goal? We never talk about the squeaky voiced, short guy with the funny ears, who ran twice in the 90s. What made him different — besides money of course? He had a message. Something about a conspiracy by the then current president to mess up his daughter’s wedding or something crazy like that. A precursor of the craziness the country went through the last two election cycles when someone even nuttier actually managed to get elected. So does this mean that for a “third-party” to make a difference it has to run a complete whack job? I hope not. Of course “insiders“ will tell you that the presidential campaign is meaningless. That all it does is get you ballot access in certain states. That the really important races are at the local level. Of course, that is true. But eventually presidential elections will mean something if a smaller party begins to succeed. Until then, parties just have to continue running politically credible candidates, who all “die on the sword” to try to advance their message. To their credit, all the presidential candidates I have worked with believed their mission was extending ballot access and helping downstream candidates. Most of the others I interacted with had similar goals. That is why antics at the national level, such as candidates for president wearing masks, Civil War uniforms, or boots on their head, only do damage to whatever that party is trying to accomplish. Flamboyant party leaders also distract from a credible appearance. All of this adds to a continuing decrease in coverage of parties and their candidates by the media. When I joined the libertarian party in 2005, I started going to national conventions. At the 2006 convention, I met several people who stated they were running in 2008, including Dr Phillies. They were all respectable looking, with rational issues. My recollection is that almost everyone at the 2008 convention made solid presentations. By 2020, the tables were turned. There were several credible candidates, but the whack jobs were in abundance. Those of us around the country who believe that local elections are what you win first would’ve been embarrassed, and lost credibility at the local level, by several of the potential national candidates. As we all know, a lot of the good dedicated leadership of the LP has either left, is being forced out, or in some cases is plotting taking the party back over from the usurpers. Look at what the Libertarian Party of Colorado recently did. I have no idea about election laws in their state, but if a party did that in South Carolina, state law enforcement would probably be raiding their meetings, and making arrests due to violation of state law regarding parties colluding together. Usurpers acting completely mad. But regardless of whether it is legal or not, openly colluding – or suggesting collusion – with another party is disgusting. At some point you have to decide whether the ethical infrastructure of the organization has crossed the line of corruption to a point where it is no longer salvageable. So where am I going with this? And why, after pretty much “retiring“ and just sitting back, and observing for the past nearly 3 years, am I making noise again? I have watched two parties fail that I have been involved in. First, the Republican Party in the 1990s. And now the Libertarian Party. Both abandoned their mission. Both abandoned their ethics. Not everyone. But enough of the leadership to cause the direction to change. So I decided to get back in the game. There is a lot of work to do. Fortunately, I found a group of ethical and dedicated people, and there will be a new national classical liberal party. From what I have heard rumors of, there may actually be several groups that end up launching. And the next week, I was even told by someone that she had heard on a podcast that I and the editor of 3PW were working together to create a national party. That one shocked me so much that I almost fell over laughing. Are they that scared? Would a secret cabal led by Dr Phillies and myself be their