Snowflakes in Hell

It is possible to win people over with good arguments, and reasonable discourse.  See this over at LookingforLissa, and also the second part.  There’s an old saying that you can get a lot farther with honey, than you can by threatning to shoot people.  I hope Lissa finds who she’s looking for.

I said earlier in the day that if people really want to change the government, they can do it.  But it’s funny how dealing with an infestation of slimy politicians is a lot like dealing with lice.  We noticed the lice infestation in 1994, got some Kewll out, and applied it liberally.  For sure, we got rid of a lot of lice, but we forgot to rinse and repeat.  We need to get voters angry enough that they’ll not only throw the bastards out, but keep throwing them out until things change.  It takes multiple treatments to get rid of lice, and probably the same for politicians.

People know things need to change.  Polls show that Americans are very deeply displeased with their government, and for good reason.  Obama comes in and says that he’s the change we need.  Polls show people are skeptical of that.  Not skeptical enough for my comfort, but he’s not blowing away McCain.  At the root of the problem, is a population that’s largely disengaged itself from politics, and doesn’t really understand the source of their displeasure — they just know that things now pretty much suck. That should be rich soil in which to plant some seeds from the tree of liberty, but so far, it hasn’t been working.  The media is to blame for a lot of that, but based on my experience with the libertarian movement and in the gun movement, a lot of that blame lies with us.

Libertarians, particularly, are often more concerned about weeding out heretics than they are about building a movement.  It was a long and painful journey to arrive at that conclusion, but eventually I had to admit that Libertarians were spending too much time and energy arguing about what it means to be one, rather than trying to alter the political landscape to bring it closer to their terms.

It’s probably in our nature, because we are independent minded folks, to abhor collective action, but collective action is required in order to affect lasting political change.  You have to get out there and advocate for your point of view with people who might only vaguely agree with you.  You have to select a course of action that gets you closer to your goal, and build allies to get you there.  You may not like all of your fellow travelers.  Let me offer an example of it in the gun rights movement.

In my position against my Congressman, I’m pressing the fact that the bill he signed on to, HR1022, would essentially ban semi-automatic shotguns.  I focus on that because a lot of people own semi-automatic shotguns.  In fact, a lot of those people who own semi-automatic shotguns, wouldn’t care much for my AR-15, and might not think too poorly of a politician who advocated banning it.  But I focus the message on the shotgunners, because my only concern is that gun owners go into the voting booth and say “I’m not voting for Patrick Murphy, because he wants to ban my shotgun.”  The AR-15 guy will understand a Congressman coming after semi-auto shotguns will ban his AR-15 in a heartbeat.  If I can help defeat Murphy, and replace him with a real friend of gun owners, I don’t really care whether half the guys that helped me do it think the same way Jim Zumbo does.  In fact, it might just make that shotgunner think “Well, if they are going to label my shotgun an ‘assault weapon’ where’s it going to stop.”  Jim Zumbo was eventually persuaded too.

In affecting political change, I think it helps to have a big picture in mind, but you must choose your battles wisely.  No two battles will present you with the same set of allies.  That’s why I’m an advocate for not shutting people out of the movement for being insufficiently pure.  When it comes to grounding the movement, philosophy is very important, and we need philosophers.  But winning in politics requires making friends, so we also need to do that too.

War on Guns suggests there’s treachery afoot in regards to tonight’s show. I had the following conversation with Ahab on July 24th, which got saved in my IM logs (no nefariousness involved in the logging.  It helps me remember who to credit when people send me stuff by IM).  I asked Ahab if I could publish it, and he agreed:

10:52:50 PM Sebastian: I think you should do a show on radicalism in the gun rights movement
11:02:30 PM Ahab: We’re actually planning one
11:03:07 PM Ahab: It just seemed natural
11:03:41 PM Ahab: But we need some people to argue on the air about it
11:03:52 PM Sebastian: Kurt Hoffman
11:03:58 PM Sebastian: That would be my vote for the other side
11:07:22 PM Ahab: Oooh, that’s a good one
11:07:40 PM Ahab: I’ll email him to see if he’s available
11:07:51 PM Ahab: You want to be the moderate?
11:10:26 PM Sebastian: yeah
11:10:41 PM Sebastian: But you’re going to have to be the neutral moderator
11:11:13 PM Ahab: That would sort of be the point
11:11:22 PM Ahab: Plus, bonnie can help
11:11:53 PM Sebastian: I wouldn’t suggest like, a debate format
11:12:12 PM Ahab: No no - here’s what I’m thinking
11:12:36 PM Ahab: We have a rough script, and you guys get different questions and stuff
11:12:58 PM Sebastian: yeah
11:13:07 PM Sebastian: That’s the right way to do it I think

I’ll let folks judge for themselves whether our intent was to plot an intellectual ambush. Kurt was just an off the cuff suggestion.  I chose him because I viewed him as a good advocate for his side, and his entire involvement in the incident was above board.  That’s not to say there aren’t others who’s comments and discussion were above board, but Kurt was the first person who came to mind.  The only other discussion I’ve had with Ahab about the show was to see if he’d be willing to share the questions with both Kurt and I ahead of time, so we could be able to answer them without being all “uuuh… well… eeeh.” having to think on our feet.  Ahab’s response was that he actually wanted us to think on our feet, so he only shared a broad outline, with both of us.  Fair enough.  It’s his show.

I think Ahab can manage to put his differences aside, and lead the show in manner that’s fair to both sides.  I hope I’m not wrong about this, but I think it’ll work just fine.

So Bitter and I have some flyers we’ve made up, that we were looking to distribute. The one obstacle is that I’m not sure whether I’d be running afoul of campaign finance laws by doing so.  If you believe you live in a free country, where it’s perfectly lawful to use any electioneering speech you damned please to help defeat your Congressman, and replace him with someone who you feel will represent you better, you would be mistaken.  A quick perusal of federal campaign finance statutes will remove any notion of that very quickly.  This is not a system that’s designed to encourage participation of an active and engaged citizenry.  It’s a system designed to leave electioneering to professionals.  This is not a way to encourage a healthy Republic.  The sad part is, I think the people in power know this, and don’t care.  It helps them.

I’m pretty sure our fliers, which we would be distributing as private citizens, do not run afoul of finance regulations.  But you know, I’m not sure.  The fact that I signed up to be an Election Volunteer Coordinator with the NRA might complicate things.  I shouldn’t have to hire a lawyer to tell me whether or not I have free speech.  I am very tempted to put in lettering, underneath:

This Message was Approved by James Madison

It’s going to be very hard pulling the lever in the fall for that bastard McCain, who foisted much of this nonsense on us.  The only reason I can even begin to get by it, is because he had a lot of help in crafting this turd stew.  The recipe of this disaster might have brewed in McCain’s head, but it was Bush that added the corn, and Supreme Court that added the peanuts.  Mmm mmm.  It’s election year 2008, and we’re all going to have to take a big bite!

Kevin Baker has an uberpost he’s been working on for a few days on the great kerfuffle.  Go have a read.

UPDATE: Kevin closes with

Our job, then, is not to “Frighten the White People,” it’s to make them MAD. It’s to make them “pro-freedom, pro-individual, pro-principles.” It’s to educate them.

Which explains why I had such a harsh objection to the Letter ot the Editor.  Anything that makes it easier for the population to dismiss our message is not helpful, from my point of view.  The great thing about our system is, if you get enough people angry, you don’t need a revolution, because we can throw the bastards out in the voting booth.  We did it in 1994, but we didn’t follow through.  People need to get mad, and stay mad, until things really change.  That’s a tall order, and I share Kevin’s hope that it’s not too late.

I will be on Caleb and Squeaky’s live podcast show tonight at 11PM, where I will be engaging in epic battle with Kurt of Armed and Safe to the death!!! We will discover once and for all which side of the second amendment debate can survive in The Cage.

Either that, or we’re going to have a calm discussion centered around the great kerfuffle of last week, and I just said that to get you all to listen.  In fact, it’s going to be more a Q&A type deal rather than a debate, but it should be a pretty good discussion about the benefits and advantages or drawbacks and disadvantages of each type of advocacy. Tune in!