The Conservative Revolution

Please take a second to vote for your favorite candidate in the FreedomWorks GOP Presidential Straw Poll.

http://www.freedomworks.org/strawpoll/

FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey and President Matt Kibbe have written a great article on grassroots political movements in American history.

One of the best excerpts is this one:

Adams was the first American to recognize that “it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” In the early 1750s, Adams began recruiting activists to the cause of liberty, targeting men in taverns, and workers in the shipyards and shops of Boston. He also succeeded in recruiting wealthy businessmen like John Hancock to his cause because of the abusive trade and tax policies of the British government.

Samuel Adams’ tactics often involved anti-tax protests under the Liberty Tree, a large elm across from Boylston Market. Tax collectors were hung in effigy, and the Crown-appointed governor mocked. Adams also organized boycotts of British goods and town hall meetings at Faneuil Hall, packing the room with patriots so that Tory voices were not heard. Every new policy handed down by George III and the House of Commons was used to build the ranks of the Sons of Liberty. Taxes imposed by the Stamp act of 1765, trade duties created by the Townshend Acts – each was an excuse to rally new recruits to the cause of American independence.

We took our message out to the streets this week, and protested the labour unions and their support for “card check” legislation that would allow the union bosses to intimidate workers into joining unions.

I posted the video on the Freedom Talks Blog. The event was covered by Amanda Carpenter at TownHall.com too.

UPDATE: Apparently the Rush Limbaugh Show’s guest host today read from the TownHall.com article and quoted me. Pretty cool. Lots of my friends have been emailing and calling me. I have not heard the audio or read the transcript yet.

FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey is blogging over at Time.com’s Swampland.

He has been talking about retirement security, explaining why younger workers need personal accounts so we actually have a retirement when social security goes bankrupt.

Here is the video.

The full story is here.

Everyone agrees that the Virginia Tech shooting was a tragedy. The debate about what could have been done to prevent the crime, or future crimes has already begun.

John Lott has the best write-up of opinions that I tend to agree with. Here is his blog.

This shooting was in a “gun-free zone.” Stricter gun laws would not likely have prevented this or any other major gun crime. If one of the professors or students had been armed, they might have had a fighting chance to prevent some of the bloodshed. We will never know.

Every once in a while I take refuge in the following words of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged. Today, I testified in front of the Maryland Assembly and was appalled at what other people were saying. Collectivism is rampant in America today. If it were up to me, every high school would have a few copies of Atlas Shrugged. Here is a truncated version of John Galt’s speech on freedom and individuality. You can also listen to the audio of the entire speech here.

For twelve years you’ve been asking “Who is John Galt?” This is John Galt speaking. I’m the man who’s taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You’ve heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man’s sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you’ve demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You’ve sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you? Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your ‘brother-love’ morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won’t find them now, when you need them more than ever. We’re on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I’m telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason — that it was right to pursue one’s own happiness as one’s principal goal in life. I don’t consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else’s life. I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don’t force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man’s right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical. You’ve allowed such men to occupy positions of power in your world by preaching that all men are evil from the moment they’re born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please. The name of this absurdity is ‘original sin’. That’s impossible. That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. To call sin that which is outside man’s choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn’t come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man’s will is not free. And then there’s your ‘brother-love’ morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven’t earned it to accept it? If it’s virtuous to give, isn’t it then selfish to take? Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he’s keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab. You know that you can’t give away everything and starve yourself. You’ve forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it’s your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn’t built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth. Then it began apologizing for its greatness and began giving away its wealth, feeling guilty for having produced more than ikts neighbors. Twelve years ago, I saw what was wrong with the world and where the battle for Life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality and that my acceptance of that morality was its only power. I was the first of the men who refused to give up the pursuit of his own happiness in order to serve others. To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves, you have the chance to make the same choice. Examine your values and understand that you must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil. If you’ve understood what I’ve said, stop supporting your destroyers. Don’t accept their philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, and your love. Don’t exhaust yourself to help build the kind of world that you see around you now. In the name of the best within you, don’t sacrifice the world to those who will take away your happiness for it. The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath: I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.

Senator Hillary Clinton is in Iowa today at a town hall meeting in Des Moines. She just started her speech and is already bashing the current President, complaining that CEO’s get paid a lot of money and setting up the argument for Hillary Care, part two.

Clinton is scary. Not just because of her rhetoric (she hasn’t laid out any policy proposals yet) but because of her organizational skills and the way her staff is controlling the message. They are very good. The questions at the town hall seem to be planted. I wouldn’t expect anything less from the Clintons.

I am still waiting for someone to ask her about the war in Iraq, the entitlement crisis and immigration. Something tells me she will not address any of the really serious issues facing America.

Here is media coverage of her speech.

UPDATE: Hillary just called for universal health care. And just got a question about the war.

I posted our new FreedomWorks campus outreach program here.

We are doing most of our campus outreach by using Facebook, a networking site that is hugely popular with young people.

The link to my book is back online over at The Young Conservatives of Texas website. i am sorry that it was down for a while, but they were improving their website.

You can purchase a $10 signed copy of my book, The Conservative Revolution: How to Win the Battle for College Campuses by clicking here. The link will also remain on the blog in the “About” section.