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October 21, 2003

The New "Sons of Liberty"
by Nelson Hultberg

Study any account of the growth of America and one fact always jumps out at you -- the heroic self-determination of the men and women who shaped the events of our history. Throughout those sprawling colonial years to the trying times of the Revolution, and beyond to the boom towns of the West, the railroad age, Edison, Henry Ford and the roaring twenties, there is observable in the people of these eras an unrelenting sense of self-reliance and willingness to take risks. It is not a history of government social agendas with their inevitable concomitants of futility and despair. It is a history of adventurous, self-assured individuals in pursuit of great accomplishments, of personal daring and discovery -- a tale of the human spirit in quest of the ideal. The dominant figures that built this country were not leveling bureaucrats, but dynamic entrepreneurs, pioneers, scientists, inventors, immigrants -- bold, ingenious men willing to rise or fall on their own merits and the strength of their faith in a just Providence.

They fought a war with a ragged little army against a mighty empire, and won. They wrote a Constitution for all the ages, and crossed a vast and death dealing frontier with nothing but covered wagons and their own personal stamina. New inventions and miracles of production and an astonishing wealth, that staid men of Europe never dreamed possible, sprang from the fervor of their unbounded ambition. They turned useless prairies into golden wheat fields, their wagons into powerful locomotives, and a savage wilderness into a network of commerce and trade. Their tiny republic grew to be a colossus in face of a scornful Europe still mired in the Old World that couldn't conceive of why men were meant for liberty. Law was crowned as King, and all men were held to be equal before it. Government conveyed privilege vanished, and men pursued a life centered upon the individual for the first time in recorded history.

To such restless enterprising people, there was little on earth that was impossible. All they wanted was to be free, to keep what they produced, and to seek their destiny beyond the next horizon. They would work out their own security. "Just let us be free," they insisted.

It was thus that a whole new philosophy came to be through the first stirrings of these brave men and women. It was the philosophy of individualism, and it stood in direct contrast to the accepted beliefs of Europe, which taught men to seek security and subordinate themselves always to the dictates of the monarch, or the feudal lords, or whoever had the power of the state behind them. This new American philosophy declared that men were their own rulers, that they were endowed by their Creator with free will, that they were responsible for their own lives and possessed the power within them to overcome any obstacle. It was a philosophy that exploded across a whole continent with the most dazzling burst of hope and optimism mankind had ever seen. It transformed the world and turned life into an evolving, mobile force for good instead of the stagnant, autocratic ritual it had been for so much of human history.

For 125 years, Americans rigorously adhered to this remarkable idea of individualism, and as a result, their prosperity grew to unparalleled heights. Life was meaningful. Peace was the rule, men of good will abounded, and most important of all, the free creativity of sovereign beings was everywhere.

Beginning in the early 20th century, however, a great many Americans began to betray the individualist principles that had served them so well. And by the start of the 1930's, the old primitive concept of statism, dominant throughout the monarchist age in Europe, began to reemerge. America's free-market philosophy came under attack. Men and women were collectivized into chess pieces to be maneuvered by social engineers. Gold was deemed to be anachronistic; paper money a miracle salvation. The income tax, scorned by stalwart Americans for 150 years, became "acceptable policy" for modern times to feed burgeoning bureaucratic appetites.

As a result, our Federal Government has grown into a dreadful omnipresence as we begin the 21st century; life has become less and less meaningful; peace has become the exception; men of good will have shrunk from sight; and that ever so vital sovereignty of being has faded in face of the spreading ministrations of the welfare state.

The fundamental question we face now is: Can the philosophy of individualism, inaugurated by Jefferson, Smith and Locke, survive? Or is it to wither away under the ever-swelling shadow of a monster government and the womb to tomb security its social engineers are forcing upon us? Are we as a people to just passively accept being humble wards of the state and underlings to Washington's feudal lords who direct its encroachments, or do we still possess enough of that spirit that founded America to overthrow such trespassings upon the basic rights of man? Do we, as human beings, still value freedom; or is it really state regimentation that we seek down deep in some craven corner of our souls?

Americans for a Free Republic

I believe the American people still possess the spirit that founded America. It is battered and hidden in the recesses of their minds, suppressed by decades of socialist/fascist propaganda in their schooling. It is difficult to detect. But it is still there, and it can be reawakened.

What is required, however, to bring about such a reawakening is a dramatic, revolutionary challenge to the Demopublican power structure that will explain to the American people the roots of our political-economic problems instead of glossing over their symptoms.

I have written about such a challenge in a recent article, "Gold Money and Equal Tax Rates," in which I propose the formation of a Third Party (the Liberty Party) to confront what the disgraceful Democrats and Republicans are doing to our country. But it is not to be a conventional Third Party; it is to be totally different from all those formed in the past. It is to be based upon two simple planks -- radical monetary reform and radical tax reform. It is to employ a unique strategy designed to avoid the two crucial mistakes of "marginalization" and "cloning" that all third parties fall victim to, and which doom them to automatic defeat. In my article, I also proposed forming an educational organization -- Americans for a Free Republic -- to promote such a cause.

Americans for a Free Republic (AFR) is now a reality, and we have a scintillating website up to spread our message. Our website is meant to be a RALLYING POINT around which all lovers of freedom throughout the world can coalesce. It is meant to be a revolutionary force that can gather together the talent, money, and ideas to challenge the black limousine crowd in Washington and finally end their monstrous Leviathan.

Visit our website http://www.afr.org and learn:

1) Why all political third parties fail.

2) How to correct the two major flaws that doom third parties to ineffectuality.

3) How our innovative strategy will dramatically revolutionize politics in America.

4) How gold money and equal tax rates are the weapons to bring this about.

5) How we can stop the growth of Big Government cold.

As noted above AFR's goal is educational; it is not to ACTUALLY FORM the Liberty Party. That will come later by the appropriate professionals and operatives skilled in such matters. We are only interested in educating people about the necessity of doing so along the lines of our innovative "two pillars strategy." We plan to build a massive constituency of prominent, influential, educated, rebellious Americans -- a vanguard to spread throughout the country, to do the actual selling of the idea of a Third Party based upon "gold money and equal tax rates." We wish to be the hub of the wheel that generates thousands of spokes (dedicated activists) that branch out and proselytize all the people in their respective spheres of influence.

Our site content is geared toward the intelligent reader and viewer. We don't wish to try and educate the masses. We wish to reach the intelligentsia of society, who then will sell their fellow intelligentsia. Once a sizeable portion of this group has been won over, the masses will follow.

Who are the intelligentsia? All those of you in this world who understand the power of ideas in the unfolding of history. You may be a teacher, a scholar, a pastor, an entrepreneur, a banker, a soldier, an artist, a publisher, a moviemaker, a laborer. But whatever your calling, the one common fabric you share is the understanding that ideas matter, that history moves toward the good because of RIGHT IDEAS, and that it moves toward evil because of WRONG IDEAS. It is fallacy and sophistry that are the main precursors to dictatorship.

This is the nature of all mass movements in history. This is how the American Revolution was launched. Only a small portion of the colonists were actually for independence from Britain at the time. But they were the intelligentsia -- influential, prominent, educated, and rebellious. They were leaders in their personal spheres of influence. Their cause began in the 1760's via Patrick Henry in Virginia along with Samuel Adams, John Hancock and the Sons of Liberty in Massachusetts. The Sons of Liberty got together every month or so in the local taverns of Boston, and then expanded their gathering in the early 1770's to Boston's famous Old South Meeting-house where thousands of fellow rebels joined to show their true colors to the Tories. Out of this came the Boston Tea Party in December of 1773, which led to Lexington and Concord -- "the shot heard around the world" -- and full-blown revolution. It was the Sons of Liberty acting as the hub of the wheel, and the intrepid spokes they established, that set the colonies on fire with the desire for independence from Britain. It was their provocative thinking and firebrand personalities that spread the idea of revolution throughout the land.

AFR hopes to become today's Sons of Liberty, to convince the American people to abandon the despotic Demopublican policies of PAPER MONEY and PROGRESSIVE TAXES -- to restore gold backing to our currency and eventually abolish all forms of income taxation. This is to be done through an innovative Third Party strategy that will force the enactment of radical monetary and tax reform. The New Sons of Liberty will come from every walk of life; but the inspiration that will bring them together will be their love of liberty and a resolute refusal to kowtow to the contemptible shams of Demopublicanism.

Actually AFR is not laying the groundwork for a Third Party, but for a Second Party. We mean to adamantly challenge the statist establishment in America (which is the one-party monopoly of Demopublicanism). There are several million potential AFR patriots out there -- highly intelligent and desirous of "doing the right thing" in life. All of these patriots are leaders in their workplaces, their communities, their churches, their myriad spheres of influence. Perhaps you the reader are one of them. AFR's goal is to convince you that the right thing to do is to withdraw your sanction of Gargantua's welfare state. Our website http://www.afr.org hopefully will become a modern version of Boston's Old South Meeting-house where all members of AFR can coalesce to renew their spirit, to use as a recruitment tool for others to join the fight just as the original Patriots did in the years leading up to 1776. Once the country's intelligentsia has been won over to our cause, then the masses will follow and the Demopublican regime will crumble like the Berlin Wall.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said that, "A man must become a part of the action and passion of his times, lest he be judged not to have lived." The goals of AFR will thrust its members squarely into the action and passion of our times, which we feel are destined to become the most tumultuous to descend upon our nation since its beginning. We seek the doers, the dissidents, the contrarians to join our hub and build a New Sons of Liberty for the 21st century. There are still numerous Berlin Walls to bring down.

We are far from a majority in America today, but as Samuel Adams told his fellows in 1773 in the build-up to the Boston Tea Party, "It does not take a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." Herein lies the goal of AFR. We intend to set brushfires of freedom throughout America. We intend to spread those brushfires until the flames and heat of resistance are so intense that Washington's tyrannical elites can no longer continue their usurpation of our rights. While the Clintons, Bushes, Rubins, Cheneys and Rumsfelds of today's America are different in method, they are basically the same in principle to Mikhail Gorbachev and Nicolae Ceausescu of yesterday's Russia and Romania. AFR intends to see that such Washington elites meet the same fate as their communist counterparts. While we do not intend to duplicate the Romanians treatment of Ceausescu, we certainly intend to duplicate the Russians' refutation of the weasel-tyrant Gorbachev. And we mean to extend such refutation to all future Demopublicans.

The AFR View of Government

Our Republic, as originally conceived, was meant to allow men to live their lives as sovereign beings, to trade peacefully, and to interact voluntarily in the absence of government control. To accomplish this, the Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution that described precisely in what areas the government was going to utilize its power. For the first time in history, government was to be strictly limited by law. Its use of police and legislative coercion was not to be open to the tyrannical whims of kings, or the arbitrary meddlings of planners, or the mass desires of the majority. Government was to do only what was delegated to it and nothing more. It was to defend the country, preserve the peace, and provide on the state and local level those few public services that free individuals in a marketplace cannot functionally handle.

As we are now painfully aware, however, it was not a perfectly construc­ted system, for there were certain powers granted to the government that should never have been granted, and the Constitution that was created to limit such powers possessed various loopholes and vague terminology that allowed the demagogic to circumvent its limitations and swell the coercive power of the state. But it was a magnificent beginning. Our Constitution was, and still is in conception and meaning, the greatest single political work in the history of man.

Should it not then be our goal as a people to restore the original American philosophy that valued freedom so highly and then set about to perfect it where it was flawed? Is it not then our job to reduce the tyrannical power of our government and once again allow men to live, trade and interact as they see fit? If freedom is right and just for men to possess, why on earth are we tolerating a government that will not allow us to be free? Why are we enduring a bloated and arrogant bureaucracy that takes over half our earnings every year and refuses to let us make our own choices in life? Why are we allowing social engineers in Washington to dictate how our businesses are to be run, where our children are to go to school, what prices we are to charge, what wages we are to offer, who we are to employ, who we are to associate with, what type of charities we are to support, what type of products we are to make and sell, what we are to consume, how and when we are to retire, what is in our best interests, and what is not in our best interests? Are we sons of the heroes of '76 who pledged their lives and noble honor for the right to live as indepen­dent men, or are we naught but modern day vassals to be formed and cared for by condescending bureaucrats?

Can anyone imagine the Yankee traders of the 19th century allowing OSHA agents to inspect their clipper ships to inform them that their safety precautions for putting out to sea were not up to code? Would Jim Bridger, Sam Houston, the prairie farmers, the cattle barons and all the rest of the men that tamed the west, have allowed their congress­men to confiscate the huge percentages of income we now tolerate so sub­serviently? How far does one suppose a bureaucrat would have gotten if he had tried to tell the old stage coach drivers that they must wear seat belts at all times while on the trail? What would the fiery Patrick Henry or the robustious Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys be doing in face of the onslaught of state welfarism that our "brave new worlders" are sniveling so for today? Would not our ancestors be up in arms in face of the legislative indignities that our politicians are perpetrating upon us everywhere?

If we as modern day Americans do not possess the spirit and the moral fiber to face life on our own merits as our forefathers did, then what kind of life have we really lived? If we do not possess the courage to want freedom, and to fight for it as the Founders of this nation so heroically did, then what kind of men and women are we? And if we are not to have the right to freedom, what possible vestige of meaning can we then hope to find in our journey through this world?

Where in the laws of our civilization is it said that humans are not supposed to be free? Where is it said, with any resort to reason or justice or honor, that freedom is to be a part time thing, to be planned and programmed by an all-powerful bureaucracy? Freedom cannot be portioned out by government officials in arbitrary doses in order to build what the statist mentalities call a Great Society. It cannot be extended and then retracted, promised and then betrayed as the Demopublicans are doing. Men's wealth is not Washington's to hand out as it pleases to vocal minorities. Rights are not playthings to be maneuvered according to public opinion polls. In America, freedom is supposed to be INDIVISABLE. All men are supposed to possess an equal right to freedom, and thus all men must be protected, treated and taxed equally by the government whether they live in a penthouse or in a shanty, whether they are black or white or green, whether they are tycoons or janitors, geniuses or morons, heroes or hoboes.

Alll dictatorships and authoritarian societies that we see thriving in this world today came to power by proclaiming their right to redistribute the productivity of the people against their wishes, and to define freedom as the governing elite sees fit -- all in order to erect a Great Planned Society. America has been adopting the identical philosophy of such tyran­nies because her people have been clamoring for more government redistribution of men's earnings. Yet now that their lives are no longer theirs to live as they wish, these same people lament the fact that government is too intrusive, too big, to all perva­sive, and that their liberty is no longer respected.

Sooner or later we must come to grips with the fact that government is our primary threat to freedom. We cannot be a free country with a growing arbitrary government. If we are to be a free (and thus a just) country, we must restore the strictly limited government envisioned by the Founders.

Such a limitation requires a strong breed of man, however, with a quality of character and nobility of soul. It requires the willingness to get from life only what one gives to life. There can be no egalitarian government programs in the dreams of free men -- only the exhilarating lure of a life that justly rewards our strengths and punishes our weaknesses -- only a grand and sprawling market­place with the opportunity to pursue the glories that entice our passions amidst the raucous goldfields of human progress.

A society of freedom is not for the timorous in search of the static life. It is a vast, evolving carnival of ideological ferment and shooting star discoveries -- where blockade runners defy tyrants, sodbusters grow up to be Presidents, and drop out inventors startle mankind with entrepreneurial exploits never before conceived. It is a poetic, existential pageant of burgeoning factories and hullabaloo towns steeped in sultry glimmers of pulsating humanity and sirenic romance ripening on the vines of quiet human courage. It is a providential kaleidoscope of chance, and fate, and the excruciating salvation of being able to stump the countryside for twenty years to finally realize one's aspirations. It is a perilous Eldorado journey by stalwart men of ability, who know no such word as fail and are willing to gamble their precious youth on liberating gifts they intend to build for their fellow men. It is a hell-bent-for-leather life where those born to risk garner mastodonic prizes, but where all levels of men are raised up by the daring of these sodbusters, and glory seekers, and gun running roman­tics, and shooting star inventors.

Such a grand and sprawling marketplace will by necessity be filled with chaotic failure as well as riveting success, grim adversity as well as graceful comfort, and crushing disappointment as well as sublime happiness. It will hardly be perfect -- such a gaudy visionary society of heroic dreams and backbreaking toil -- for men themselves can never be perfect. But it will be infinitely richer in spirit, and material, and joy, and common decency than the drab oppressive anthill society we see forming around us today.

This is freedom defined, and its restoration is the mission of AFR. It's a tough demanding gift, this thing called freedom, which is why so many today choose to distort its essence in shameless sophistry. But if there is to be hearty and meaningful life for men on this earth, there must first be freedom unadorned and clear. This is a timeless law of our existence -- never to be tampered with.

Pillars of Truth

The political and philosophical principles that spawned America are not transitory. They do not somehow melt away with the age of computers and high technology. Ideas of this stature never fade; it is men's will that wanes. If we are stumbling down the path to decay and authoritarian government, it is because we have deserted the wisdom that first formed us.

AFR is an effort to recapture that wisdom and show that there do exist some pillars of truth around which to build our lives. Not all is fleeting, incomprehensible, and perverse. Our modern world does not have to be a mass bureaucratized world where demagogic politicians and oligarchic judges dictate the conditions under which we are to live. It can be a free and beautiful world where we determine those conditions ourselves by the choices we make and the good we create in the marketplace of manly endeavor. But only if we regain our reason, only if we come to realize that individuals must be sacred and governments must be servants -- for our times and tomorrow's times as well as those of our ancestors.

AFR's message is simple and forthright: We must cease with the irrelevant bickering over liberal-conservative picayune that makes up modern day political dialogue, and we must restore gold money and fair taxation to our land. Only in this way can we end the government's unlawful violation of our rights to LIFE, LIBERTY, and PROPERTY. Only then will we be taking a step toward that ideal we all are searching so for.

The American people are getting conned by slick, political authoritarians who are attempting to smuggle our country into a one-world dictatorship. The purpose of AFR is to unveil some of that con and to enlighten our fellows about what must be done to stop the tyrannical drift that afflicts us. AFR is for the independent of spirit, everywhere in every walk of life, who refuse to live in subservience to governmental elites in far away Washington.

For all those men and women who still value the original legacy that our Founders bestowed upon us, for those strong minded Americans of this dawning generation who are not about to relinquish the world to the squalid intellectuality of collectivism, there is a choice to be made and a great battle to be fought. Our cause is about that choice and that battle. The stakes have never been higher in our entire history. Come join us at the AFR Meeting-house http://www.afr.org. Help us to defeat the dark forces taking over our lives. Help us to restore the shining city on the hill that Jefferson and the Founders so brilliantly envisioned.

Nelson Hultberg
Americans for a Free Republic

Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Executive Director of Americans for a Free Republic www .afr.org. His articles have appeared in such publications as The Dallas Morning News, Insight, The Freeman, Liberty, and The Social Critic, as well as numerous Internet sites. He is the author of Why We Must Abolish The Income Tax And The IRS (1997) and Breaking the Demopublican Monopoly(2004). He is presently finishing a book on political-economic philosophy entitled The Golden Mean: The Case for Libertarian Politics and Conservative Values.

Copyright © 2004-2008 Americans for a Free Republic

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