Mr. Shepard Goes To Washington…not a minute too soon!

I am writing this from the charming northwest Georgia town of Rome, not far from the old clock tower on the hill, the historic graveyard, and the statue of Romulus and Remus gifted by Mussolini.  I’m in an old hotel with exposed timber framing and old bricks exposed in the walls.  Cold chills like I’ve never experience before have just gone up my spine.  Not because of my charming surroundings, mind you.  No, I got my chills from Big Brother who had his hand on his gun, and had taken an interest in me.

You see, I was looking out my second-floor window toward what appeared to be a minor law enforcement situation on the river bank perhaps fifty yards away.  The offensive citizen was already under police control when another policeman, with his hand still on his gun and no-doubt still pumping adrenaline, turned from the scene and started walking toward his car.  He looked up at my window, saw me, and stopped walking.

He looked at me looking at him with his hand on his gun, and I wondered, for just a moment, if I might just get shot right then and there.  I also wondered if that thought crossed the mind of the flak-jacketed officer. 

I’m not sure how long we looked at each other; probably only three seconds or so.  I thought about turning away, or rolling down the window blind, but didn’t do it. 

I suppose he wondered what I was looking at…and what I saw. 

Maybe even he wondered why in the world he had his hand on his gun.  I saw no violence at all; I’m guessing the arrest had something to do with drugs, and the new prisoner didn’t seem to resist arrest.  Why was the officer’s hand on his gun?  Habit?  Attitude?  It seemed to me completely inappropriate, and that was not a comforting thought.

The officer did eventually stand down and got into his car.  In retrospect, I’m quite sure it was nothing but a lapse that the officer had his hand on his gun, and I’m betting he was just as shocked as I was, and a whole lot more embarrassed.  I’m sure nothing sinister happened, and that my sense of foreboding was just the result of a tiring day and the fact that I’d rather have been at home on my farm with my family.  I’m almost sure of that.  Almost.

Please understand.  I have great respect for policemen in general, and even more respect for many individual policemen I have known.  They’ve got a hard job.  And it’s only getting harder as more policemen are hired every day, and as politicians put them into adversarial roles against citizens.

I got chills because, even with all my fighting for liberty over the last 15 years, this was the first time I really saw in a very concrete, non-abstract way, what’s coming for the US of A.

It really doesn’t matter if McCain is “liberal,” or whether there is a closet “conservative” in him just waiting to come out.  It doesn’t matter whether Hillary or Barack tell us that “change” is a white woman, or that it’s really a black man.

No matter who of these “leaders” wins, your taxes will go up, spending will go up, our young will be fighting and dying somewhere, our ponzi-scheme Medicare/Social Security will continue sliding into red ink while the dollar becomes third-world paper, and your employer will look hard at whether you’re needed anymore.  No matter who wins, you’ll work harder and harder for less and less while the government takes more and more.

…Unless you change the way you vote.

There is really no question whether a white female fascist, or a black male fascist, is better than a white male fascist in restoring your rights as an American citizen under the U.S. Constitution.  They’re all the same under the skin, and none of them think you have any rights at all.  To each of them you are nothing but a tiny, replaceable part of the pedestal holding up their Great Golden Calf of State. 

…Unless you change the way you vote.The Land of the Free has the world’s highest percentage of citizens in prison.  The Home of the Brave has traded liberty for “security” while debt, foreclosure, bankruptcy, crime, murder, suicide and militarism notch up a little more every year.  Our nation will be ever-more about special deals for special people while ordinary folks find themselves ever-more under the ever-more watchful eye and ever-more itchy trigger-finger of Big Brother. 

…Unless you change the way you vote.

Of course there is always hope.  And in Indiana’s 7^th Congressional District, there is an extraordinarily easy way to boost that hope into a full-blown Revolution.  …A peaceful revolution, but a revolution nonetheless.

All that’s required is that you change the way you vote. 

Whoever wins the Special Election will be a congressman for only about 9 months.  Out of that nine months, congress will be in recess more than in session.  Whoever wins will be an endangered freshman, and will have only one vote in 435.  Even if voters were to elect a goat, no real harm could be done before another election will be held for the seat this coming November.

Here’s the pitch:

If 7^th District voters were to send the first Libertarian to Congress…my oh my…that would rock the Golden Calf! 

Imagine the shock and horror in the major party offices when suddenly some new guy from an ignored party breaches their wall and enters the halls of power?  Imagine the blow to their funding and power structure of corporate donors, lobbyists and smoky-room party bosses when an outsider gains a seat in Congress!  Imagine the shift in media coverage, estimation of election odds and opinions about the gullibility of voters should voters demonstrate that they really have had it up to here!

Now, I know Libertarian candidate Sean Shepard very well, and I know he actually is the best candidate in the field.  But assume for a moment that he’s no different from the others, and is really just some bloke from some party that should never get inside the Great Beltway.

Are you following me here?  Can you understand what his win would mean to The Powers That Be?  Can you imagine the look in the eye of every demorepublicrat leader, contributor and power broker in the nation should Sean Shepard become the Congressman from Indiana’s 7^th District?

Wow.

Maybe you just have to have met the nation’s “leaders” to understand what I’m dreaming.  Perhaps you’d have to have run for office yourself to see just what sort and degree of power is concentrated into “the system” of lobbyists, power brokers, unions and other “special interest groups,” and what that does to policy.

But if you can even imagine the corruption that exists in DC, then imagine blowing a hole right through the middle of it for even 9 months. 

Just nine months.  Think about it.  Think about it hard.

I wish I weren’t traveling now.  I wish I were in Indiana to work night and day to do what I could to make it happen.

I want every politician…and every policeman to know that citizens really are in charge here, and that it’s the way things are supposed to be here.  I want everyone who’d call himself a “leader” to fear that we no longer want leaders…that we want servants, and we demand this now.

My oh my what a dream.  Please do what you can to make it happen.

…Hello?

Every day, in every airport in this country, everybody gets searched without a warrant.  Property is often seized without any warrant.  It’s pretty easy to see that the Constitution was never amended to make this legal. 

It is very specifically and clearly illegal, in fact, for government to do this to us.

Every day, people are denied their freedom of speech in pulpits, in areas not designated as “free speech zones,” in political campaigns, in private activities related to political campaigns, in business, and, of course, in airports. 

The Constitution was never amended to make this legal, either.  This is also very specifically and clearly illegal by the well-understood words of the Constitution for the United States.

Every day, flak-jacketed cops arrest, and even kill people for “crimes” that don’t exist in any constitution anywhere in this nation.  Most of the authority our “authorities” wield to kill, imprison, fine and seize was never authorized by any constitution; and it’s therefore, by definition, unauthorized, unconstitutional and illegal.

So, in clear violation of law, but by obvious practice by armed agents of our politicians, you have have been denied freedom of speech, religion, assembly, petition, due process, property, and self defense.  You have no freedoms at all, really.  You have only illusions that last for only as long as our politicians feel charitable, and for as long as whatever liberties they allow just don’t matter to them.

We already have the world’s highest percentage of citizens in prison, and most “felons” got there by coerced plea.  No nation has ever been so monitored, wiretapped and regulated in every area from the things you consume (or, mostly can’t consume), what you can learn and from whom, health options, what you can do, say, and with whom you can associate…or refuse to associate.

…You think this is about giving up liberty for security? 

Ha.

We had far more liberty when Russia had spies and agents everywhere in our country, and had a thousand warheads pointed right at our heads.  We still call Wahhabi Saudis our allies; and we don’t worry about all the nations who’ve threatened us with nuclear missiles proven capable of reaching us.  Our borders are still wide open, and our crime rates are a hundred times higher now than in 1900, when citizens could own machine guns without a license.

And, of course, the famous freedoms we’re now giving away were earned by uppity, self-reliant colonists in an unconquered land; with the world’s superpower breathing down their neck and about to burn down Washington, D.C.

Those people knew the price and value of liberty.

Freedom is security.  It always has been.  Giving it away is self-destruction.

So …when are we going to wake up? 

If you’re reading this, I’m betting that you’re not the problem. 

But when are your neighbors going to change the way they vote?

What will it take?  What can we still afford to lose?

There is hope in the unassuming form of Ron Paul.  Of all major party presidential candidates currently running, he’s the only one who’d honor the Oath of Office.  He’s the only one, in fact, running for the constitutional office of President of the United States of America.  He’s the only one who’d be the “cop of the constitution” that is not only badly needed now, but is, after all, what the job is supposed to be all about.

He’s the only one.

But you’d better get off your duff and support him right now. 

Because all those who oppose your rights oppose his candidacy.

You have easy choices now. 

What comes next may be a whole lot harder.