Up next in 10
Leading Volunteers Against Opposition 2011/03/16
Jun 5, 2025
Discussion at the Austin Constitution Meetup, March 16, 2011, at the North Village Branch Library, Austin, Texas, led by Jon Roland. Accompanied by PowerPoint available from http://files.meetup.com/1241525/volun_oppos.ppt
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all online look pretty good well good evening this is the March
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15th is the 15th yes it's 15th 16th it's the 16th uh
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2011 uh Meetup of the hustin Constitution meetup group I'm John
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Roland and what we're starting off with tonight is a presentation
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entitled leading volunteers against opposition now this is based upon a lot
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of existing material accumulated over many
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decades of uh stuff on leadership generally or management generally or uh
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uh volunteer organizations causes so forth but the I've modified this one to
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uh Focus particularly on the situation where there is
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opposition you know most of the others ignore sort of ignore opposition they're assuming that everybody's just sort of
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you know emerging into a open field that's
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already not already occupied or against which there are not already people
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contending so uh our situation though for the cause of
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constitutional compliance is that we definitely have
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opposition and it's not just ignorance or apathy or uh uh things of that sort
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but we have uh a huge body of what are sometimes called Reliance
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interests these are people organiz ations institutions and so
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forth that rely upon things the way they now are uh the bad laws the bad Court
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decisions all the things we object to have nevertheless created a
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constituency for continuing them and if we were to return to
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constitutional compliance at this stage we would be uh
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cutting a lot of those people out from their
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livelihoods uh just think for example about the prison industrial complex uh particularly the federal you
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know 95% of all federal criminal cases are
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unconstitutional if we were to uh enforce the constitution on that
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subject uh all those people would have to be let go the federal the prison officials would
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have to be let go uh now a lot of those prisoners could
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be retried under state laws which would be constitutional in
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most cases but the odds of the states being able to pick up the slack for that is
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pretty low and so it might mean a might ation
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of uh federal prison officials and law enforcement officials to the
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States but of course if we've seen in the present situation the states don't have the money to pick up a
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slack and the federal government doesn't have the money to give it to them so uh
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it would mean a scaling back of employment in an important area the same is true of a lot of other
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areas now it's sometimes argued that
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um government jobs don't really produce anything are there are that they don't
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really the government funding doesn't really create jobs well of course it
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does that's what most of these Reliance interests are devoted to government jobs
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and government contracts now the fact that the jobs may not make anything of lasting
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value is an issue uh you know a lot of them are just
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pushing paper around and they're not really building
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anything that's going to endure for at least 50 or 60 years or
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so uh of course some of them do they are government does do things like build Bridges and highways and so
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forth but uh most of what they proposed to spend money on now is not for that
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purpose uh most of it is simply either to provide pensions or uh health
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care which as mostly healthare for older
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sicker people who if uh healthc care were not provided
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might die sooner probably would die sooner most of them uh but it's a very high proportion
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of the medical money goes to extending life for less than a year
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so you know we we our hearts break when we contemplate cutting off medical care
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for people who are on their last legs but how much is it worth to society to
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keep someone alive only another year you know a few thousand sure a few
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million well maybe not so uh you know we have to make hard choices
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and that's what the Reliance interests are about and the Reliance interests are organized they take the form of unions
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not just uh public worker unions as we've seen recently in
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Wisconsin but uh also organizations of other kinds
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that represent occupational groups lawyers doctors uh almost every occupational
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group you can imagine has its own organization and of course government
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workers are the single greatest constituents for government
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programs if we were to cut back on federal spending we'd be laying most of
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those people off in fact if we were to cut back government spending as much as we need
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to to end the deficit we might be having to
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create unemployed rates of more than 40% now eventually those people could
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find other jobs as the economy rebounded but in the short term it would
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be disastrous so we have to face the fact that any large
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change of almost any kind is going to be disruptive and potentially so disruptive
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that it can cause a collapse of the economy U and yet we're in a situation
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where we also don't have the time to just phase out things like Social
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Security Medicare Medicaid government pensions and so forth uh ideally we
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should phase them out maybe 5% a year for 20 years but we apparently don't have 20
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years we may not even have one year so any way we go we're in
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trouble um and the recent events in
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Japan are sort of a metaphor for what we can face because what happens for
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example when uh uh the economy collapses and we can't
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pay nuclear workers or the security forces
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surrounding nuclear plants or the utility companies that provide
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them with water and electricity now
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probably those things would not be cut off for nuclear plants but they would certainly increase
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the odds of the Jeopardy of failure if only a few more things go
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wrong so uh imagine a worldwide
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economic collapse that causes most of the nuclear plants in the world to
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meltdown so we'd not only have an economic meltdown we'd have nuclear meltdowns we'd have agricultural
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meltdowns we'd have just about every kind of thing that we engage in melting
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down all within a matter of a few months or at maybe a couple
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years uh that really strains the ability of human society to
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respond I mean we can take care of a few of our neighbors but when it we're
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surrounded by a million people who are all in need of help it's becomes
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overwhelming so uh we're in a dire
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situation but one of the things that we are discussing this
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evening we since we don't have organized institutions trying to provide
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remedies because they don't know what to do or they're part of the problem we have to find ways of
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developing remedies ourselves it's up to us we can't depend on anyone else to do
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it and it does not work to just call for those in
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power to say fix the situation you know save us because they
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don't know what to do and most of the people whove been you
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know rallying and and demonstrating and all that they don't know what to do they
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have a general idea of what they're against but they don't know what to do in terms of a step by step by step
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programmatic solution CU they don't think think in those
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terms and there are very few people in this country in this world that do there are in a few specialized
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Fields Space Engineers can figure out how to send a man to the moon or perhaps
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to Mars uh petroleum Engineers can figure out how to build uh uh uh petroleum
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refineries and uh ship you know petroleum and tankers and do a various
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other things of that sort each one in his own specialized area can
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do programmatic systematic things that solve problems but what we're talking about
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now is a general problem that is beyond any one's
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specialty certainly economists are are not capable of dealing with it uh
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Financial experts are not very expert as we're discovering
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um we have a whole array of problems that no one understands and no one knows
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what to do with do about well somebody has to step in and
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come up with Solutions I'm trying to do that uh I'm having a little trouble
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getting anyone to listen uh there are only a few people who when they hear my
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proposals respond intelligently most just kind of glaze over or say that's too complicated
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that's too much work that's too difficult well all most almost everything that we
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have to do is complicated and difficult so you know if it were easy it
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would already have been done so we don't have the option of
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quick simple Direct easy solutions so whether we're ready or not
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it's up to us to come up with detail programmatic
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Solutions now the question is who to whom do we address these Solutions well the answer is unpaid
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volunteers because we don't have any money we're having to appeal to people
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who uh are earnest dedicated uh who want to do the right
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thing but how do we get them all on the same page all working in
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concert especially when we've got this real opposition some of it even back by guns
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who you know federal agents or state agents who
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will raid our homes in the night and you know drag us off and lock us up steal
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all our guns and do other things like that um so we do not have a u nice
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situation but we do have a duty the duty is to do what we can if
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it's not good enough then we all go together but uh our duty is our duty and
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we shouldn't worry about the odds so let's just
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consider uh this presentation here for a minute leading volunteers against
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opposition the problem is that we have or need volunteers but we don't have any money to pay them or even reimburse them
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um we're presuming that there's a clear course of action that they can
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do the goal is achievable with enough work by enough
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volunteers in other words we're not discussing a situation where it's totally hopeless for that the group that
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we have assembled um that means if we have a small group
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we're not talking about solving all the problems of the world we're talking
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about doing what is within the capabilities of that group within their
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resources but the work effort has a working deadline and there is active opposition
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not just inertia ignorance resistance to change or
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despair okay there are certain steps to prepare ER in the situation first is to research the
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problem we have to develop a deep understanding of what is going on if
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we're going to do anything about it then we need to develop a
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solution that's where the problems develop because uh it's often easy to
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get people to agree on problems but much more difficult to get them to agree on Solutions Solutions tend to be
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complicated at it uh you can present a problem in simple terms but Solutions
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are almost never simple okay then we need to develop
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plans of action to achieve the goal the solution that means we have a a a master
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solution but then we have a lot of little sub Solutions each step along the
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way is a is a subsolution then we need to develop arguments to
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recruit volunteers now in general volunteers are
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not going to be ready for every kind of argument that we can throw at them in many cases all they'll be able
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to do is to respond to the leader because they have confidence in the
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personality and trying to get them to really understand the problem or the
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solution may be beyond the state at which they are then to be
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found so you may have to inspire them to follow and you know you know just trust
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me that we know what we're doing of course that can lead to disaster because there are a lot of
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charismatic charlatans out there who have their own plans that are uh
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bogus that will lead to disaster and most people don't are not going to know how to tell the
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difference okay next we need to identify prospects now in the uh article I sent
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you a link to uh diffusion of Innovations uh it discusses
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that the problem with pushing any
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anything is you're what you're trying to do is get people to adopt something to make it their own to practice it do
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it and in general most people are not initially ready for
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that so he work was done at the University of
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Chicago in the 50s funded by uh large
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broadcasters television was becoming a factor then and they wanted to know what
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they could tell people potential advertisers about what would
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work to sell their products and services and of course their Hope was
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that this the scientists could tell them well you know throw enough money into advertising and people will flock to
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your products and services that's not what they found what they did find was that
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there's a small number of people who will adopt at an early stage
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any new innovation these are called early
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adopters and there's a second tier of adopters called secondary adopters
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naturally enough and their adoption is mainly conditioned
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not upon things like broadcast messages but upon the example of the early
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adopters in other words they are imitating their early adopters
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they see them they see their satisfaction with what they've adopted and they imitate
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them then there's a third tier of tertiary
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adopters they mainly imitate the secondary adopters and a quinary tier and after
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that you kind of diffuses into the general
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Society um it does not in general work to devote
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a lot of resources to directing your message at later stages of
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adoption before the first ones have adopted because it's just going to be a
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waste of money so what you want to try to do is to First identify the early
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adopters Target them then after they are providing the
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example to the secondary adopters uh direct your efforts at the
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secondaries to reinforce the example of the primaries it
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can't succeed all by itself but it can amplify the the example of the primaries
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a little bit call people's attention to them in the same way with the tertiary
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and the quadrant areas so an ideal marketing campaign for any new product
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service idea religion or anything else is to start with the primary
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adopters then move your targets to the secondary then to the tertiary then to
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the quinary and so forth so it becomes a problem how do you
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identify those and that's an a large area of
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research in itself in generally speaking you can get a pretty good idea
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based upon what has been adopted
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previously uh if some new product or service
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catches on you can trace to see who bought first who bought second who
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bought third and fourth and so forth and if you examine these patterns
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you can begin to organize Society the economy really into
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adoption hierarchies adoption tiers now the same kinds of adoption
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tiers don't work for all kinds of Innovations uh religions will not in
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general follow the same pattern as let's say uh uh a new elect IC
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product so you have to uh on the other hand religions may follow a similar
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pattern to previous religions religions tend to spread that way too
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ideologies uh business practices all kinds of things tend to follow similar
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adoption patterns all right once you've
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identified your prospects figured out where it makes the most sense to allocate
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resources then you make your presentation and it's got to be good you
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got to uh close those early adopters because once you can get them
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on board everything becomes easier if you can't get those first ones then
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you've got a problem and particularly in something like
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causes you need to get commitments from people at each stage along the
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way uh commitments to buy it to use it to recommend it to their friends to help
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spread it and so forth uh and uh it's not enough just to get
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them to buy it if they might start using it but using it in sort of in secret nobody knows about it so they also have
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to be able to tell people so it's a a lot of things go into this kind of
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analysis okay on identifying prospects we first
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look for those with a history of activity and similar things then we look at those with some
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background of knowledge if you're trying to introduce a new a making model of
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car then you're likely to do better with those who know something about
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automotive technology uh you might sell a certain number of people just because it's
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pretty but the chances are the early adopters are going to be more impressed
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by things like horsepower and speed and uh various utilitarian factors
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handling uh so if you can identify those with a background of knowledge on which
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you can base your e efforts uh that's important and of course that's one
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reason why uh uh internet marketing is so effective why magazines have
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traditionally been more effective than let say newspapers because uh they tend to be
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things that are bought by people who are already better prepared to accept stuff
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are also better advertising vehicles
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um you're going to look for self-starters who don't require daily
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urging uh daily urging takes money takes effort takes
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time so ideally the first ones you're going to be approaching the early
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adopters are probably going to be people who only need to be shown
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once uh if they have to be shown very often then they're not really primary
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adopters are more likely to be secondaries uh you look for thing those
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who offer suggestions but not diversions now what that means is that
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it's positive uh constructive suggestions uh let's say somebody who
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sees a vehicle and says whoa wow that looks like something I might like but uh
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uh it would be it would be nice if it did something else and uh that provides you with
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either one of two answers it say well it just so happens it already does that or
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just so happens that uh we have an add-on that can allow it to do that or
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we've got something under development we can retrofit to it okay you don't want to tell them that
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that'll be the next year's model CU then they'll say oh I'll just wait till next
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year so similarly with other kinds of products Services ideas or so forth now
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with causes it's easier because they've offered suggestions on causes religions
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ideologies yuk often fix it right then and there and respond to their
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suggestions and if they offer a suggestion and you take it that makes
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them invested in it then they begin to feel it's theirs you also have to be careful of
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diversions because a lot of people would come up with ideas that really take you
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off the track and uh you have to be be careful
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of those steer them back to the main course or or they're just going to take
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you know themselves and perhaps their friends and neighbors off onto a whole different track that's not very helpful
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now we see that in our political activism all the time where we come up
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with a course of action and uh somebody comes up with uh well I think what we
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really ought to do is this and say I think I ought to form my own
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organization and uh you know I've got this bright idea and my idea will save
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the world and yours is nonsense well maybe he's right but the
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chances are he's not and he's just going to be taking people off onto a wild goose chase that uh
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doesn't benefit the cause or him or anyone else okay then we also need to identify
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those who may support the tactics even if not the goal
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uh people reach agreement on goals and tactics
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separately uh you can get people agree on the goal but disagreeing on the tactics who who become unable to work
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together on the other hand they may disagree about the goals but agree on the tactics and they can work together
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so you may be able to get people working together even though they are not in agreement on the ultimate goal they'll
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split up eventually but for the time being they are working together and who
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knows if they work together long enough maybe maybe they'll even Converge on the
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goals but initially it's of more importance to get people working
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together than to get them to agree on the the ultimate goals okay and finally you want
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prospects who want to make a positive difference uh who are not just uh
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looking for a herd to join or for a winner to pick or back
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but who uh feel that or who think that they don't want to do it unless they can
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save the world all by themselves you need people who are realistic you know mature enough to say
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well I can't save the world by myself but I can do something I can make a
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difference and those people can be put to
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work okay now the question is how do we approach prospects
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well of course we start with people we already know uh if you can't recruit your
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friends then who can you recruit now of course there's also the old saw well you know no man is a
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prophet in his own country so sometimes you do have to go beyond your circle of
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acquaintances just because people are not ready to hear the message from you
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you're too familiar and you know ordinary and not impressive enough to
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them they they might have known you when you were little kids together so uh uh
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you know you have you have to pick your audience
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carefully okay it may make sense to publish to a wide
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audience if you don't know who the prospects are uh it may make some sense to spread
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a netwide and Hope catch a few you never know who is liable to turn
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up now you don't want to spend too much of an effort doing that and obviously if
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you spend a lot of time and effort casting a netwide and you get very few
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people uh responding then you may need to drop
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back and reconsider your approach um you need to make presentations
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existing groups generally speaking people who are likely to be active are already active
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chances are those who are ready to become organized already
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organized they just may be in a different group doing other things but you can sometimes take
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advantage of that either people who are already have a background of being
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active and organized who can transfer their skills and their interest to other
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you know causes or who can even bring their whole group with
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them uh getting back to the concept of
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diffusion of Innovations and the uh tears of
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adoption you want to take each person to the extent possible as far as is he or
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she is ready to go at each encounter don't try to take them all the way to
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the end in one step very few people move all the way to
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the end in one step if you look around you if you consider yourself and your own
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involvment the chances are that you didn't take get here in one step you probably took a little step
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then you encouraged to take another step and another step and another step and over a period of time you move forward
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forward forward until you got to where you are now and if somebody had tried to push
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you too far too fast at twoo at a too early stage before you were ready for it
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it might have turned you off so uh you have to figure
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out how far people were are willing and able to go what it takes to take them
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that far then break off and come back later
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so you have to schedule your encounters with people which can be tricky if you
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the large numbers of them it's just like trying to sell U door too encyclopedias
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say um they may not be ready to buy to clothes on the first time you visit them
34:48
but uh you plant the seed and you say may I come back again in two weeks says
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okay sure you come back in two weeks maybe you take a little bit fur further maybe after a third or fourth visit you
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can close and make the sale chances are if it's more than five
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or six visits it's not going to be worth it they're probably not going to buy so
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you have to figure how again how you're going to allocate your resources
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there um as you're
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proceeding ask each person to commit some definite amount and kind of
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effort one of the things I like to do at meetings like this is to hand out paper
35:35
and an envelopes and tell people write a letter to your state legislature write a letter
35:42
to your Congressman uh it's not much but it's a little it's it's something and if you
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can get used to doing one small thing then you can do another small thing and another small thing and after a while
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you develop a momentum you're doing bigger and bigger and bigger things until you're fully
36:03
involved now you you don't want to you know say you know go out and uh get this
36:10
Constitutional Amendment adopted that's too much okay writing a letter is something
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they can do making a phone call sending a fact uh so start out with small efforts
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and build up now there are several motivational types
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that we need to look to First there is what we might call the
36:37
achievement professionalism type the second is the influence
36:42
recognition type and the third is affiliation altruism
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type now these are sort of nebulous Concepts and uh people don't necessarily
36:54
fall neatly into one or the other of these but that there tends to be uh some
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people tend to be more of one than another and depending on which they are more of it may change the approach you
37:10
want to take to them the achievement professionalism types are those who uh want to get
37:19
something done they take pride in accomplishment uh they see something
37:26
they can do and they are looking forward to the satisfaction they can get from
37:32
getting it done the influence recognition types are
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those who uh like to influence others and like
37:43
to be recognized for their efforts they tend to be more her or group
37:50
oriented uh these are people that uh uh particularly respond well to pats
37:58
on the back to praise to uh be being given uh influential positions within
38:05
the effort and so forth then there's the affiliation altruism
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group who genuinely want to help people and who want to feel that they're
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helping people even if they don't get any recognition for it
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uh even if there's not a definite uh mil Stone of
38:34
success it's just a feeling that they're moving forward that they build they're
38:39
building uh relationships that they're doing helping people move along that's satisfying to
38:51
them now let's look at the achievement motivated
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further they respond to recognition that challenges their skills and learns new
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ones that quantifies their success that offers tangible
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rewards that tells others of their achievements that is connected to jobs
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with clearly defined goals that recognizes them to the general public and that recognizes them
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to Affiliated groups the power influence motivated
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respond to recognition that can be used to persuade or recruit others to to the
39:36
cause can be used to broaden Public's knowledge quantify specific
39:42
accomplishments have opportunity to interact with players Pro names an achievement in
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their honor provides recognition by top people and allows them to be promoted and to
39:56
direct others now you'll notice a pattern here there's some
40:02
overlap but in each case it's responding to recognition that recognition is key
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here then the affiliation motivated respond to recognition that
40:16
provides appreciation from person's helped provides a symbol identifying
40:21
them with success offers social opportunities provides appreciation from
40:27
those they admire recognizes their efforts to their peers and is fun with
40:38
others now what are some motivators well first of all positive
40:45
feedback if you're doing well tell them so and if they make a
40:51
mistake uh say well you could have done that a little bit better but do it in private don't criticizing being the
40:59
presence of others uh and always make it positive always says well that's you know you did
41:06
you did fine except that you could have done a little bit better in this way and this way and this
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way um another motivator regular rewards and
41:19
recognition um you don't want the rewards to be too far too few and far
41:26
between uh uh on the other hand if they're too frequent they lose their meaning so you know monthly might be
41:34
good weekly might be good yearly is probably too infrequent daily is
41:39
probably too frequent you need to figure out what it works for for each group and
41:44
each effort um the motivator is to send to meetings
41:52
of similarly committed persons um a lot of these conferences
41:58
that everybody sees advertised are really motivational and one of the things you
42:06
do with them is not so much go there to learn how to solve problems you may send
42:12
somebody there that you want to motivate by sending him there so he can hobnob
42:18
with you know other key players and they may not have a a clue about a solution
42:24
among them but if they can get them stirred up and come back ready to do
42:31
something and of course you then you have to tell them what to do but you know he haven't he hasn't learned at the
42:36
conference but still it's a uh it's a motivational
42:43
Factor uh a motivator is to provide training
42:49
clear tasks with short-term gains uh you might have a long-term goal
42:54
but you want to break it up into short term goals uh in a game like football the
43:02
long-term goal is winning the game the secondary goal is to get the next
43:07
touchdown or field goal and the tertiary uh goal is to move the ball far
43:18
enough down the field to get the next down so you break up the larger task
43:23
into smaller ones and you have successes along the way that you're striving for
43:29
and if you get enough short-term successes that that leads to longer term successes and so
43:36
forth but uh another motivator is to be available to
43:41
them uh it's very hard to motivate people if the motivator is never
43:47
there if people are left to Mill around and they don't know what to do so
43:54
uh a leader has to be right on top of the situation talking to people daily
44:00
you know he can't get him himself get involved in operational things in most
44:06
cases if he's the organization's best writer best
44:11
speaker uh best intellectual uh uh
44:18
Creator he probably shouldn't be in a leadership position because he is needed
44:24
for other things uh he needs other people to get
44:29
out there and keeps the keep the trops the troops moving he you should concentrate on what
44:35
he does best uh if he has to play that role as
44:40
well then it's going to be less effective at providing the uh Gris for
44:46
the meal of the effort so again it becomes a uh tradeoffs that have to be
44:52
taken into account okay another Moor motivator is free food and fun now if you don't have
44:59
money you can do po potluck but uh there needs to be a social Dimension
45:07
people need to have fun doing the doing things together if every meeting is a
45:13
grim uh rendition of the disasters of the previous week well eventually people
45:22
are going to drop out they don't want to be stay in an
45:27
effort that has no good news and it's not really that fun to be
45:33
with people you know if you have a bunch of activists who really don't like each
45:39
other very much they're not going to be as effective as people who do whereas if
45:45
they start developing warm personal relationships then they become a team they become a
45:51
tribe uh it's just like in the military you ask most guys why go into battle you
45:58
know risk their lives they will tell you it's not they might have started out to
46:04
some degree being for his country but after a while it becomes for his
46:09
buddies the personal relationship he develops with other members of his small
46:16
local organization becomes more important as a motivator than the larger goal that he
46:22
might have started with then
46:27
uh another motivator is to appoint those committed to
46:33
volunteers um you need to find and recruit at an early stage those who
46:39
really like volunteers and working with them if your uh lieutenants do not like
46:47
volunteers they don't like getting them to do things then they're not going to
46:52
be very effective they should be put to work doing something else
46:57
uh so you need a certain number of people who are people people to be your lieutenants and to
47:04
deal with the volunteers okay now we get into
47:11
obstacles it's part I promised you at the beginning one key obstacle is the goal
47:18
is distant and complex that's the big
47:24
killer constitutional complt liance is a distant complex
47:32
goal there's no way around it uh the Constitution is a design for a long-term
47:41
solution it's for dealing with the needs of society over the course of
47:48
Millennia you know literally the Constitution was designed to keep the country going for thousands of
47:55
years so a lot of lot of the things that people want to do to violate it seem
48:01
like good ideas in the short term they it may be enough to justify violating the Constitution they almost never
48:09
are but they lose track of the long-term goal in focusing on the short term and
48:18
most of the incentives we have every day all around us is to focus on the short
48:23
term and lose sight of the long term and as anyone who's tried uh uh
48:30
engaging let's say something as simple as a male fundraiser sending out pieces of mail
48:37
ordinary mail as I used to do to try to raise
48:42
money now a lot of you have heard this story about how most of the money for
48:49
fundraising campaigns goes to the fundraisers well that's
48:55
true if a a a mail out brings in 5% more
49:01
than it costs is considered a success if you get a one or 2% response
49:07
rate that's success it's not so much that the money goes to the uh Mailing
49:16
Service way it kind of does but it's mostly not to salaries it's mostly to printing Postage and so
49:23
forth um so uh with the in the era of the
49:28
internet we have less expensive Communications but it's also
49:33
Communications that are easier to ignore people get in the habit of ignoring
49:39
emails whereas they would pay attention to physical postal
49:45
mail uh but my experience and of that experience of
49:51
others the fundraising campaigns I help put on made money
49:57
when the letter only talked about problems heart disease cancer you know
50:03
polio any of the things like that however as soon as they started
50:09
talking about Solutions this vaccine or that operation or that procedure lost
50:18
money so what does that tell us problems sell more easily than Solutions because
50:24
Solutions require people to think and once they start thinking they lose the
50:29
moment that might motivate them to put a check in the
50:35
mail um this is a problem with human beings generally and it's a it's a tough
50:41
one no easy solutions here okay another obstacle is no clear
50:47
easy path forward uh that's certainly true with constitutional
50:54
compliance um the there are clear paths forward I've set forth a lot of them at
51:01
constitution.org but easy no you know everybody wants to glim on
51:08
to something simple direct and obvious I remember the old Reform
51:15
Party uh now the tea party you know they're all continuations of the same
51:21
you know cultural tradition and uh they generally knew what they were against but they couldn't
51:28
agree on what they were for for because they were unable to sit down and work
51:34
out Clear stepbystep programmatic
51:39
Solutions whenever anybody tried to do that one would become would do it and uh
51:45
or start to do it none of them really got any very far uh and become so invested in his
51:51
idea that he just can't imagine anybody else would have another idea that's any good
51:57
another one does the same thing another one does the same thing before you knew it they're all going off in different
52:02
directions and not accomplishing anything
52:09
so another kind of diversion of obstacle are what I call
52:16
diversions um one of course is alternate activities um in any given cause the
52:24
odds are there are other organizations ations other efforts you know all
52:29
claiming to be working for the same goal but not in
52:35
concert and yet they if they seem to be more appealing to your people those
52:42
people may go off and join them instead and again nothing much gets
52:49
done another kind of diversion is a phenomenon we can see in
52:55
biology called displacement
53:01
behavior um it was originally
53:07
observed in such situations as uh fish
53:13
competing maybe for a mate a male loses out in a contest for a
53:20
female with a bigger fish and being
53:27
frustrated he starts hitting his head against a rock now you say why would a h fish hit
53:33
his head against The Rock well they actually do that some of them and what we're seeing is an effort
53:43
to relieve tension by doing something that's totally
53:49
irrational that serves no useful purpose that all it does is relieve
53:55
tension so human beings do this kind of thing
54:01
too uh they engage in displacement activity uh they do something useless
54:07
because they don't know they're frustrated at doing something
54:13
useful um another kind of diversion is simply distractions of all kinds
54:19
entertainments movies televisions football games uh you know somebody
54:26
popping out phone calls uh distractions somebody old friend stops
54:31
by um there's no end to distractions and most people did not
54:37
develop a good very good habits of controlling their susceptibility to
54:44
them okay now the next major obstacle is
54:51
misinformation now our opponents are good at that uh uh if there's true information
54:58
out there that supports our cause in most cases they can't conceal
55:03
it but they can flood the field with all kinds of misinformation so that you don't know
55:10
what's right uh you just if so so bury the truth and
55:17
enough lies and no people can't tell the difference now of course you the
55:24
opposition is not the only one spreading misinformation a lot of earnest
55:30
activists do the same thing they hear somebody that somebody said that somebody said something you know rumors
55:38
spread uh people come up with their own cockamamy ideas uh you know one thing leads to
55:44
another and before you know it uh something is spreading that's not true get everybody going off in the
55:51
wrong direction and course finally a major obstacle or personal
55:58
challenges uh death in the family an illness uh an accident loss of a
56:05
job um a lawsuit a criminal charge all kinds of things can uh divert people
56:13
from From Any Given cause or
56:19
activity okay what do we do when the goal is
56:24
distant well here's where we need to develop inspirational
56:30
techniques Reinhold neber the great Theologian and philosopher once said nothing that is worth doing can be
56:38
achieved in our lifetime therefore we must be saved by
56:43
hope nothing we do however virtuous can be accomplished
56:49
alone therefore we are saved by love no virtuous Act is quite as is
56:56
virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or Foe as it is from our
57:02
standpoint therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is
57:10
forgiveness this is something and others messages like it that need to be repeated
57:16
often because ultimately what we're engaged in in any given cause any given activity is a kind
57:24
of religion uh it's is similar in many respects if
57:31
not most respects to any other kind of conventional religion but it involves the same kind
57:38
of inspiration and sometimes of course it's blended with conventional
57:45
religion now when the goal is
57:52
complex what do we do all real political reforms are complex and
58:00
obscure if it were easy to understand if it were simple chances are it's already
58:06
in use and maybe has been for hundreds or thousands of years what remains to be done is almost
58:13
always complex usually difficult to understand
58:18
even by the experts uh it can be difficult to
58:24
discern it you know in the complex complexity of everything that surrounds
58:31
it uh when the goal is complex it is not necessary to fully understand to
58:39
act ultimately we don't never really fully understand the world in which we live or
58:47
act uh we have to make educated guesses we have to have develop models that make
58:54
sense uh but they can't be too simple if they're too simple they're
59:01
problem is certainly wrong prob maybe some charlatan idea of a snake
59:07
oil so we have to be aware of snake oil in all of its
59:13
forms when the goal is complex we need to support those who best
59:18
understand the chances are it's not the
59:24
Patriot shyer or uh charlatan who's trying to sell
59:30
some get rich quick solution or some easy way of for to win in court or you
59:37
know some way to make the law the judge do what you want or make the laws not
59:43
apply to you or any of this other stuff that's
59:49
nonsense those people don't understand anything the people who understand will
59:54
in general be highly highly highly educated and intelligent
1:00:00
people they will not be your next door neighbor unless you know you live in a
1:00:06
research Community or something so uh you need to look to
1:00:13
those who know the most about everything or anything uh don't believe or accept the
1:00:22
ideas of uneducated people you need to take one small step at a
1:00:30
time this is important uh in many cases the
1:00:36
complexity uh dissipates to some degree as you get closer to the goal As you
1:00:43
move forward the one St small step at a time
1:00:48
may take you through the forest until you can see the clearing at the other
1:00:54
side you might be confused by the trees as
1:01:00
you in the early stages but uh you can begin to see your way through uh as you
1:01:08
take step by step by step and if it turns out you're headed in the wrong direction maybe you can turn take a
1:01:14
different direction so we can learn as we proceed
1:01:20
and we have to in almost every case which means we have to be prepared to change our PL
1:01:26
our plans of action are working plans that are may be good for to get
1:01:33
started but chances are they're going to have to be changed along the way you know the old military saving saying is
1:01:40
that no plan survives contact with the Enemy uh same is true in any other C any
1:01:49
cause uh you have to be prepared to act quickly respond quickly to changing
1:01:55
situations and of course when the goal is complex
1:02:01
we may pick up others along the way you know as you're taking your steps as
1:02:06
you're learning uh other people may be learning as well or you may be helping
1:02:12
them to learn so people who may not have been fully on board may join
1:02:18
you you know that's what Jon of Arc used to do you know when she was fighting for
1:02:23
her country for France she started out with a small band of
1:02:30
volunteers and as she proceeded and as she began to want to win victories more
1:02:35
and more people rallied to her Banner until she had a whole Army behind
1:02:40
her so uh and she was an is an inspiring figure and by the way for her time
1:02:48
probably one of the best military strategist in history so even though she was
1:02:54
illiterate uh she had a certain amount of natural talent and she had the ability to
1:03:00
inspire and most of the inspiration was of people who didn't understand what she
1:03:05
was doing they just wanted to be to follow
1:03:12
her now we get to opposition um what do the opposition
1:03:20
have going for them first of all they've captured most decision makers and players
1:03:27
in other words most people in government in business in labor in the religious
1:03:34
institutions charitable institutions foundations uh just about everything you
1:03:40
can think of are already on the other side they may not like being
1:03:47
there but the CH odds are that's the only place they can make a
1:03:53
living and if you you know there's a old concept uh due to a guy named Leon
1:04:00
finger of cognitive dissonance that if you do something you
1:04:09
your beliefs your thinking tend to change to agree with what you actually
1:04:17
do now we saw that in the uh uh uh
1:04:23
killing by the Nazis of Jews and slaves and Gypsies and other people in Europe
1:04:30
during World War II with the wardens the the people
1:04:36
holding the prisoners um they may not have believed
1:04:41
in what they were doing but by being forced to do it and
1:04:47
yielding to the pressure to do it eventually they came to think that what they were doing was
1:04:54
right they didn't start out thinking it was right but by the time they did it long enough they did think it was
1:05:02
right and we see that pattern over and over again so it can be real problems
1:05:08
sometimes getting people who are locked into a system to step back and see if
1:05:14
what they're doing for what it really is uh the opposition has cut off most
1:05:21
approaches and opportunities I'm f a point out that we
1:05:27
haven't lost our rights we haven't lost our remedies but we've lost easy access to
1:05:34
our remedies in other words they placed them Out Of Reach made them too expensive too
1:05:40
difficult too complicated they've put up too many Gatekeepers too many obstacles until the
1:05:46
point we've gotten to the point where it's very difficult to achieve Justice in court or in any kind of
1:05:53
administrative proceeding uh in any kind of legislative body you the obstacles
1:06:00
you know are just
1:06:07
Monumental um the opposition has deprived us of resources and skilled
1:06:13
people besides capturing most of those skilled people for their
1:06:19
side uh they keep us so busy just trying to make a living they took say took so
1:06:25
much of our money in taxes or the High Cost of Living the other things of that
1:06:31
sort that we have very little left to devote to any
1:06:36
cause you know I I make fundraising efforts all the time on behalf of the
1:06:42
Constitution society and other uh likeminded organizations do the
1:06:48
same and unfortunately most of the people who support our efforts don't have any money some of them once did but
1:06:56
don't no longer do and if you examine their life stories
1:07:03
Case by case you'll find that in most cases they they were once in a better
1:07:10
position than they are now and the opposition was played a large role in
1:07:15
putting them in the bad position they're in now so if you want to uh you
1:07:24
know take the win out of the sales of dissidents and critics and
1:07:30
opposition just uh make sure that they all lose their jobs me I have had experience of uh
1:07:38
people behind the scenes causing me to lose jobs uh a few words here a few words
1:07:44
there to a a client and uh you know suddenly I don't work there
1:07:49
anymore so it's it's been a familiar pattern uh
1:07:58
now what else does the opposition do well it it funds agents of provocation
1:08:04
and distraction remember a lot of those charlatans I told you about earlier that
1:08:10
spreading misinformation and quick fixes and all that I'm reasonably sure that a
1:08:17
lot of those guys are being handled or even paid by the
1:08:24
opposition they have too much money to work with not to be getting it from
1:08:31
someone other than their scams um I've been in a lot of
1:08:38
gatherings where there seem to be people just swoop in out of the from nowhere to
1:08:46
distract us to uh provoke us to try to get us to engage in violence to do all
1:08:54
kinds of things they come up with all these weird you know wacky ideas they try to sell us on
1:09:02
uh sometimes they almost succeed sometimes they do succeed uh these are not
1:09:10
accidents uh the opposition has a small army of people they employ to do that
1:09:17
the most common technique they use is to charge someone with a crime and say okay
1:09:22
we won't prosecute you but you have to work for us or they say well maybe prosecute your
1:09:30
wife your child you know somebody else that you care about but you've got to work for us so that's how they get
1:09:37
people to work for them to achieve um the opposition has spread
1:09:44
propaganda and misinformation uh they do that in many ways in many
1:09:49
forms uh I encountered it after the Oklahoma
1:09:55
City Bombing when uh suddenly on television there are all these people trying to
1:10:02
blame the event on two things the militia movement and talk
1:10:09
radio and uh so I got to work carrying my a
1:10:15
different message to the media and I knew how to do that I have previous experience in contacting media and
1:10:23
telling them our story or any given cause and I found myself visiting the
1:10:30
same media either slightly before or slightly after these uh fla I call them uh were
1:10:40
spreading the other side of the story in other words it wasn't just spreading you
1:10:46
know by osmosis these were guys actually hired to go out and talk to members of the
1:10:53
media with their missive information and it led to a funny story
1:11:00
because uh I was uh uh once heard back from a producer at one of the media
1:11:08
Outlets that I had contacted and I got there before the
1:11:15
opposition flat got there and the producer told me
1:11:20
privately that her boss had told this flat
1:11:26
act well Mr Roland of the militia movement has already spoken to us about
1:11:32
that in his story is more convincing than yours what I learned is that the people
1:11:39
they send out to do this kind of thing are not necessarily the best and
1:11:44
brightest uh we can beat them if we know what would what we're doing a lot of
1:11:51
them are just do nothing to stay on message and keep repeating the the same crap over and over and over again they
1:11:58
don't know how to think for themselves they don't know how to think on their feet they don't know how to formulate an
1:12:03
argument all they had to know how to do is follow a
1:12:09
script now the opposition has also suppressed
1:12:14
our leaders and our messages uh there are many ways have done that from Prosecuting them
1:12:21
criminally to causing them to lose their jobs to you know perhaps causing
1:12:27
accidents you know there are all sorts of ways of doing that but uh they do do
1:12:34
it um and it's something we need to plan on and be ready
1:12:41
for and the thing to realize about the
1:12:47
opposition it's easy to blame everything on malevolent
1:12:54
individuals we tend to see the opposition as a bunch of Darth
1:13:00
Vaders well I spent enough time years actually in the centers of
1:13:07
power and they are mostly not bad people
1:13:12
most of them think of themselves as good guys uh they're largely wrong but they
1:13:18
think of themselves that way and but what they're doing most of
1:13:25
them are simply making the best of the situation in which they find themselves and the system in which they
1:13:33
find themselves provides the structure the incentives the motivation for
1:13:40
everyone involved to do what they do if you replaced all the individuals
1:13:47
today tomorrow The Replacements would start behaving the same
1:13:52
way so it's not just a matter now that there is an element of a few rotten
1:13:58
apples spoiling the barrel that phenomenon certainly is is a real
1:14:04
phenomenon but once the whole Barrel is
1:14:10
spoiled sometimes all you can do is burn the barrel you know you you can't you can
1:14:18
throw out all the apples you can try to clean it out disinfect it but some but
1:14:24
sometimes they're just the the barrel is gone it's can't it's not not
1:14:29
salvageable so what we need to be looking for primarily is structural and
1:14:36
procedural Solutions we can't depend on just replacing individuals with better
1:14:43
ones uh particularly when we can't replace them all at once um
1:14:50
so the structural and procedural Solutions however tend to to be more
1:14:56
complicated uh it's the the feedback looks be very complicated so that it's
1:15:02
not always easy to tell what CH structural or procedural changes have to
1:15:07
be made or what their consequences will be now what do we do when the public
1:15:16
won't learn or think um in the founding era people were
1:15:23
eager to learn John Adams once said that an illiterate man is as rare as an
1:15:29
earthquake or plague uh almost everybody was literate
1:15:35
well they didn't have a lot of they didn't have public schools as we know them how did we people become so
1:15:40
literate well the answer is they were determined to learn and if you're determined to learn you
1:15:46
will uh we don't need public schools that people were really want to
1:15:52
learn uh public schools are just uh you know an attempt to fix a lacks of a
1:15:58
lack of motivation on the part of kids to teach themselves I mean I didn't depend on
1:16:04
schools to learn I was years ahead of my classmates um would have probably
1:16:12
learned as much or more if I hadn't gone to school at all but I was determined to
1:16:19
learn and what we need to do is to get people to be determined to learn and
1:16:25
they're in a culture that does not encourage that so what do we do when the public is
1:16:32
distracted by unimportant things you can call them generically circuses from the old uh Latin
1:16:39
expression pet censes bread and circuses that was a formula used by the
1:16:46
Roman emperors to keep the people of Rome Placid so they wouldn't throw them
1:16:54
out uh they provided them with free or
1:16:59
lowcost subsidized bread and uh they kept them entertained
1:17:04
with public spectacles and that's the way they kept
1:17:10
control well today uh most circuses are not put on by the government except unless you count
1:17:18
Wars but uh the private sectors does an excellent job of doing it by
1:17:23
itself and so what do we do when the public are afraid of losing what they think they
1:17:31
have uh what we encounter a lot is uh you approach somebody maybe he's got a
1:17:37
job he's got a pension you know he's got a house a business and uh they might be afraid of
1:17:46
losing something but they're also afraid of losing a lot
1:17:51
more and people you know the old song says Freedom's just another word
1:17:58
for Nothing Left to Lose well for a lot of people until they
1:18:03
lose everything they're not in a frame of mind to become
1:18:10
active um a certain amount of prosperity makes
1:18:17
people unwilling to act because they're afraid of losing what they have well the
1:18:22
fact is that we're about everybody's about lose everything anyway so uh the
1:18:28
people don't want to face that fact but uh sooner or later they will and then
1:18:35
we'll have have a different situation okay another thing what do we
1:18:42
do when the public wants to to Ghost Dance Now what do I mean by ghost
1:18:47
dancing ghost dancing is a form of displacement behavior that I mentioned earlier you remember the old story about
1:18:55
the Indians up in uh the Northwest Idaho
1:19:02
Montana uh they developed a religious belief that if they just danced around
1:19:09
that the white man's bullets couldn't kill them so they were invoking their gods
1:19:14
their deities their their beliefs and try to achieve a religious State of Mind
1:19:19
whatever you would call call it through dance and and that if they did they
1:19:25
would make them immune well they got
1:19:31
slaughtered and the same thing happens to people uh in other
1:19:36
areas um people will fasten on an unsound
1:19:43
belief thinking that he will protect them when he won't uh this is a classic form of
1:19:52
pathological behavior that is is very difficult to fight against especially
1:19:57
once it sets in next what do we do when the public
1:20:02
refus to be led and insist on their own programs well sometimes all you all you
1:20:08
can do is just let them go off on their own and fail and maybe after they fail they'll come around and be more
1:20:17
receptive uh what do they do if what do you do if the public lacks basic
1:20:22
understanding and critical skills I mean we've got the problem now you know we didn't have in the founding era
1:20:30
that so many people read at such a low level and are unable to write at an
1:20:36
advanced level uh they lack the basic mathematical skills to
1:20:43
evaluate what is and is not scientifically
1:20:48
sound um Americans is you uh education is not
1:20:55
just to help people do a job it's to help people make sound decisions in
1:21:01
their everyday lives you know you don't just study the Sciences so that you can use the
1:21:08
Sciences to in your work you study it so you can make Intelligent Decisions about
1:21:15
what products and services to buy you know how to invest your money uh what
1:21:20
candidates to vote for uh you know where to go on your vacation you know there are thousands and
1:21:26
thousands of decisions that you will make better if you are educated many
1:21:32
many many different fields so education is broadly useful
1:21:38
for every area of life whether you realize it or not and most people Unfortunately they don't realize it
1:21:45
we've become so focused on education as vocational in nature the Preparing
1:21:50
People for work but we've loost lost sight of the real purpose of education
1:21:55
which is prepare good citizens and then finally what do we do
1:22:01
when the public prefer hopelessness and other excuses uh there's a tendency for people
1:22:09
to say oh the situation is hopeless uh therefore I don't have to do anything
1:22:14
you know uh you know it provides them with an excuse for doing
1:22:20
something for not doing something for not doing anything
1:22:25
um well there are no excuses uh we are in trouble uh it
1:22:32
excuses won't help you it might make you feel a little bit better in the short
1:22:38
term but you know it's not going to save you you have to act whether you know
1:22:45
what to do whether there's hope you know regardless you've just got to
1:22:53
proceed George Washington said it best uh on the final day of the
1:23:01
Constitutional Convention September 17
1:23:07
1787 a lot of the delegates were discouraged they weren't satisfied with
1:23:12
the Constitution they had just drafted a lot of them thought it was too complicated they people wouldn't accept
1:23:19
it you know they or if it was accepted that it would fail
1:23:26
uh but George Washington said these words let us raise a standard to which
1:23:33
the wise and the honest can repair the event is in the hands of
1:23:40
God now what did he mean by that in those few words George
1:23:46
Washington summarized his Central ethic and that of
1:23:53
most of the other Founders it was the ethic of
1:24:04
virtue he was saying that we are not responsible for outcomes only for making our best
1:24:11
efforts to do our duty and he identified virtue as the F
1:24:19
Foundation but of course ver virt it's virtuous to do one's duty
1:24:25
some ethical systems make Duty primary but they don't tell you where the I
1:24:32
understanding what your duty is comes from and the founders recognize that
1:24:39
virtue is more fundamental because you need virtue to figure out what your duty
1:24:47
is so that ends my presentation for right now uh and the floor is open to
1:24:59
questions so where do we go from here what do we do what's the clear course of action that was identified
1:25:04
early following up on that well a clear course of action we've
1:25:11
got right now is is is nullification right now we have a lame
1:25:18
brain bill that's been introduced in the state legislature
1:25:25
by Leo Burman it is too late to file any more
1:25:31
bills it's going to come up pretty soon for a hearing I will be testifying and when I
1:25:39
do what I will testify is that the bill as written should be
1:25:47
rejected but more importantly it needs to be amended it's not too late to make
1:25:53
amendments that's right and the amendment I call for is really more of a
1:25:58
substitution it's replace the whole thing well about the only thing it would have in common would keep the
1:26:05
number but uh it's basically my nullification
1:26:10
proposal and what I could use would be people joining me I'll put out the word
1:26:15
when the time come I get the exact time and day to join me in testifying all to
1:26:22
the same effect if we can get enough people all you know lining up all
1:26:27
supporting my position it can make a difference it just did recently Burman
1:26:34
also introduced the bill to impose a fee on you know to get on the ballot for
1:26:42
third parties he was going to want us to pay $750 or more to get on the
1:26:49
ballot and we testified against that and he withdrew it
1:26:56
so of course we withdrew it because there was opposition on the committee what we need to do now is to
1:27:03
say well nullification is a good idea but not this plan not this bill but you
1:27:11
can amend it and here's how to amend it and I'll I'll hand it hand out the proposal that may not
1:27:18
work even if it works past the committee it may not be get you know adopted by
1:27:25
the legislature or it might be vetoed by the governor although I have some reason
1:27:30
to think he might like it but uh we have to do what we can and you
1:27:37
guys can help particularly those of you who have a job or a non-job that you can take off
1:27:44
during the day which me unfortunately I do have
1:27:50
vacation coming up uh in April I think so if it calls in within my vacation
1:27:55
time I can possibly help them do you know what the date was yet or don't know yet I'll put out the word on the would
1:28:01
you anti the group and everybody else a matter of days or a matter of weeks or months uh within three four days
1:28:07
probably oh very soon very soon yeah oh good probably a get
1:28:15
off anyway do do what you can if nothing else send letters or phone calls or
1:28:20
faxes or whatever you can do I got the first notice of that from Pat and I before I closed that email I
1:28:30
already found the names and got to the web pages and sent the emails to my yeah
1:28:37
reps and then I picked one of the guys on the committee in I forget which one
1:28:43
think I think I tried to pick the chairman of the committee and I said stop this C
1:28:50
yep well another thing we need to do is oppose this guy's proposal for a constitutional
1:28:57
convention the whole there's a whole bunch of legislation most of it is just bad that we need to oppose but some of
1:29:04
it could be fixed and I'm always in favor of fixing things if somebody started something
1:29:11
that needs to be fixed it's a lot easier than trying to get it started yeah
1:29:16
because they've already whatever they've done they've broken that shell and they've got something so yeah that makes
1:29:23
sense so um what's your assessment of Leo burman's uh um bill that he introduced I
1:29:32
you anticipate that he's just misguided or I mean he's typically pretty open to
1:29:37
the you know for lack of a better world the Patriot CA yeah I think he just is a
1:29:43
few bricks short and somebody just gave him a is it actually called a notification yeah he he's a nice old guy
1:29:50
but uh facilities to yeah he doesn't think through these things I think he
1:29:57
can be persuaded he told me that he would vote for my proposal if somebody else introduced it but now what we need
1:30:04
to do is to tell them no what you're doing needs to be replaced with this but where did he get the text or his from
1:30:10
the 10th Amendment Center OH is their standard proposal there are two there are two
1:30:17
competing groups that are introducing legislation and state legislatures the
1:30:23
10th Amendment Center is one group and the other is an outfit called the US
1:30:28
Patriot Union well the 10th Amendment Center is typically pretty solid material right
1:30:36
so they dep their presentation of the problem is and have historical
1:30:43
background but their legislative Solutions are ridiculous
1:30:50
okay and I keep telling them that and I think some of them are showing signs of beginning to realize that I'm right but
1:30:58
it's so problem that once they put something out there they don't want to admit that it's a bad idea i' say well
1:31:04
you don't have to admit it's a bad idea just add my proposal to these others but would say well trouble is if
1:31:10
people look at them side by side they're going to realize that the first ones are bad ideas and the US Patriot Union is uh
1:31:18
really arrogant and obuse I mean they're you know all but call me you know an you enemy of the
1:31:26
country do when I tried to prop tell them that their idea was a bad
1:31:31
one well actually their idea is closer to mine than the 10th Amendment Center
1:31:36
is but they have all these flaws built into it you know it it looks like they
1:31:43
borrow some of my language but then screwed it up as so it was an effort to head me off
1:31:52
with a a bad idea and I get that impression in talking to
1:32:00
them those just that's what kind of thing the opposition
1:32:08
does but again their stuff could be fixed well we need to get in in
1:32:13
Tennessee and uh Idaho and Arizona and
1:32:19
various other states where one or the other of the two groups have in is
1:32:25
stough um I know we've talked about this before but did you just say that you not
1:32:32
in favor of a constitutional convention you want to fight it yeah I'm against
1:32:38
it so you're taking the position of the what legue of Women Voters and JBS word
1:32:45
and such Why are you against it I mean I've made the case many times well I'm
1:32:51
for it so I guess we can have a fight but I think at this
1:32:57
point I mean we're sinking and it's going to sink so we may as well do it
1:33:04
and secondly I I see no scenario where any bad ideas can be ratified by three4
1:33:10
of the states so I don't understand the concern I've never understood well the problem is try to
1:33:16
imagine how would a constitutional convention be convened and who would
1:33:22
attend it would not be People Like
1:33:28
Us the most likely scenario would to would be you can be
1:33:34
seen by imagining taking the Republican National Convention in a Democratic
1:33:39
National Convention having them meet together in the same Hall at the same time and having those guys try to work
1:33:46
out a some amendments to the Constitution I mean they can't even uh
1:33:53
work out of platforms okay so the worst case scenario they come up with a page
1:33:59
two page 10 pages full of garbage what's the risk well the risk is I we might
1:34:04
actually get you know balanced budget amendments and some other things one thing a balanced budget amendment is
1:34:11
another bad idea there's no way to write a balanced budget amendment that can
1:34:16
work um so that that's another one of those
1:34:22
distractions the way you deal with the with the money problem is to do away with the OD
1:34:29
currency you do away with the OD currency then that takes care of the Federal Reserve it takes care of
1:34:35
balancing the budget everything else Falls in place okay well maybe they could propose um getting rid of the fiat
1:34:41
currency I mean there's got to be a few things that could be done well that make come out of it that would POS it's not
1:34:48
going to come out of Constitutional Convention it's going to come out of people in each state developing specific
1:34:56
proposals taking them to their state legislators having the state legislatur
1:35:01
adopt a resolution urging Congress to adopt this exact
1:35:08
language in Congress seeing so many states asking them to adopt this exact
1:35:16
language that they adopted and send it back to the States for ratification with no
1:35:22
changes in other words we the reformers have to
1:35:29
formulate the language we cannot leave it to others particularly the kind of
1:35:34
people who would attend any such of a convention it won't be us it won't be
1:35:40
the experts the Constitutional Convention would just be an exercise
1:35:45
in chaos sure and just be a waste of time that we don't need people how it
1:35:53
would succeed would be the people who are the most devious y to bring some kind of a plan
1:36:01
to where whatever idea they have would Prevail and yeah and in fact there's a a
1:36:09
uh movement that's been more or less in place for almost 50 years now to do just
1:36:20
that I mean they've even drafted a a replacement Constitution it's basically on uses a
1:36:27
parliamentary system sort of like a written Constitution but for you know Britain or
1:36:34
other parliamentary uh republics we basically Parliament is
1:36:41
supreme there's no Bill of Rights uh uh Parliament chooses the executive
1:36:49
it chooses the Judiciary everything is in Parliament it's one big
1:36:55
oligarchy yeah that's but again there's no risk if if if three4 of the states
1:37:00
aren't going to ratify it I mean all bad ideas the process Itself by by having ratification already solves that that
1:37:08
conern you cannot depend so uh you cannot depend on these same interest
1:37:14
groups not to get in there in each state and sway the state
1:37:20
legislator which is what's going on now yeah it's already happening so this is this approach is
1:37:27
just it's too dangerous it's a best a distraction there's no way that it can
1:37:34
be helpful there I said it again and again
1:37:41
and again do not leave to others the job of writing reform
1:37:46
proposals we have to write them we cannot depend on anyone else to
1:37:53
do that that I have I have written a whole bunch of
1:37:59
amendments I have yet I have presented them to a lot of people I say okay try to find find some fault with
1:38:07
these only a few people have looked to them seriously and nobody can find any fault with them they agree John it's
1:38:14
right on you it's is perfect it's no room for improvement and after a conversation
1:38:21
some around even I find room for improvement but and they didn't but
1:38:26
uh uh I've done the work now what we need is be people to buy into
1:38:33
that and if we even got a you know two or three of those amendments uh proposed by state
1:38:41
legislature to Congress and then proposed back to the state legislatures
1:38:47
I mean every everyone would make a huge difference don't have to adopt them all
1:38:53
I I admit there are too many of them but uh unfortunately the situation is such
1:39:00
that we're going to have to do a lot of them Randy Barnett started out with
1:39:06
10 and they they didn't go anywhere because they really really weren't that well written and uh then he tried to reduce
1:39:14
it to one and that was lame you can't do it with one
1:39:20
um you have to do it just like you do with with any contractual relationship
1:39:26
when the original contract wasn't written very well you had to get in and
1:39:31
renegotiate and and fix or clar you probably clarify the points of
1:39:37
ambiguity clawed by Clause by Clause by clause and very often a you you start
1:39:45
with a two-page contract you want wind up with a 20page contract but there's no way to avoid
1:39:51
that that's what you have to do so we start out with a four page
1:39:57
Constitution we might wind up with a 400 page Constitution if that's what it takes that's what we have to
1:40:06
do a lot of people will reject that because they say GE this is going to start looking like the tax
1:40:13
code and why because they don't read enough of
1:40:20
yeah but even if the amendments are not adopted simply pushing them getting them
1:40:26
close to adoption would have a tremendous beneficial effect it can it can serve to focus our
1:40:34
entire efforts but we're not even get going to get to the point where we can propose
1:40:39
amendments until we do make progress on nullification we have to get states to
1:40:46
resist Federal efforts to put the whole country in a frame of mind where it
1:40:51
begins thinking in terms of amendments so it's sort of a large two-step
1:41:01
process that's something that would be very subtle but it would
1:41:07
shift the playing field only
1:41:13
to open the door to yeah and I just don't find a lot of
1:41:21
people thinking in these terms we I need more people that
1:41:30
do um that's why the PE party was so successful because it was getting people's reactions people was giving
1:41:37
people things they could react to yeah and that's that gave him something to do in
1:41:42
the moment but yeah it's not really and of course now the guys they've elected
1:41:48
to congress are in the position of having been elected to be against things
1:41:54
but they don't know how to develop constructive
1:41:59
Solutions so there's there's still missing the the uh the creative
1:42:05
intellectual component in all of that the ability and willingness to
1:42:11
develop detailed complex stepbystep you know
1:42:16
Solutions and it has to start here at our level it's not going to happen in
1:42:21
Congress it's not going to happen in some you know bureaucratic agency it's not going to happen in you know the
1:42:29
courts you just explain part of why that is the way it is other than the basic
1:42:35
self-preservation mode and people want things to stay the way they are so inur is a wonderful thing but the people who
1:42:41
function in that environment don't have the intellect to come up with the changes so
1:42:48
they have to be willing to follow somebody who does right and they have to know how to recognize those people and
1:42:54
that's that recog ability to recognize requires an understanding that is deficient in that part of the population
1:43:02
yeah and that means changing out the whole Barrel oh M Leo the risk of changing out
1:43:10
the whole Barrel is are enough of us bright enough and
1:43:15
have we vetted all of the new apples M are we just going to put in all the
1:43:21
people that are going to destroy us yeah who's going to make the railroads
1:43:26
run yeah well anyway we need to aband in
1:43:32
our position here library is about to close
1:43:39
uh I hope you've enjoyed all this worth the wait good said
1:43:50
slides let me ask a dumb question
1:43:55
you got yourself on video I've got a friend in South
1:44:02
Carolina who is boots on the ground for this kind of
1:44:08
stuff his current focus is fair tax but he's
1:44:17
his he's already headed in this direction he just he thinks he's flying
1:44:23
the fair tax flag at the moment but he's totally fed up with everything else you we've we've known each other
1:44:30
been this way for years how do I share that video with him well I'm going
1:44:37
to put it online he can review it okay now I'll be sending out
1:44:43
a a link to it and the message to the group I've looked for a couple other
1:44:50
ones and it's like I there something I didn't understand or
1:44:55
something I failed to ask or there was a couple other ones I was thinking about looking at like this one in particular
1:45:01
I've already told him I sent him a couple of the links that OB what is it
1:45:07
obur obit obit or dictum obit or dictum
1:45:14
yeah and I just sent him the link
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