One of the arguments I hear quite often against the possibility of change and reform in the Republican Party is that the party is essentially owned by a corporatist elite class, controlled by what Teddy Roosevelt called the “malefactors of great wealth.” While the argument may have some validity in that corporate interests have invested heavily in the Republican Party, there is a fundamental illogic in assuming that this means that the liberty activist wing of the party can’t make great inroads and even initiate revolutionary change in the party.

The proponents of this argument use as their examples the efforts of the party to pursue policies beneficial to certain business interest groups, usually the oil industry. They point out that Republican support for the Keystone Pipeline and for expanded oil and natural gas exploration are motivated by the influence of powerful corporations or super-rich families like the Koch and Bush clans. Similarly, opposition to trade controls, union busting, lax immigration laws, deregulation of industries, opposing environmental regulation and favorable treatment of Wall Street – all Republican policy mainstays – all benefit corporate interests and the wealthy groups behind those corporations.

All true, and all entirely irrelevant to whether those powerful interests would allow a libertarian wing of the party to gain more influence, elect people to office and change the ideological emphasis of the party. The key thing to consider here is that these plutocratic interests are not motivated by ideology – money has no morality. They are motivated by the desire to make money and to be left alone by government in order to do so. They want the Republican Party to clear the path for them to achieve their goals. Traditionally they have done this by corrupting politicians, spending money on campaigns and on buying influence to get what they want. Therefore, what reason is there for them to oppose a political movement within the party which produces leaders and policies which are inherently more compatible with their interests?

Spending a bunch of money to buy off the corrupt quasi-socialist political hacks and religious ideologues who currently dominate the Republican Party is far more expensive than nurturing the rising generation of more libertarian political activists whose interests seem to dovetail rather nicely with those of the corporate class. One of the truths of libertarianism is that the same policies which benefit all people by expanding personal and economic liberty naturally also help business and the monied class by reducing the burdens and interference of government.

Pipelines? Free trade? A more open labor market? Access to natural resources? Less regulation? Elimination of corporate taxes? Liberty Republicans don’t need to be bribed to support these ideas, because they are fundamental principles of their ideological cannon.

Some wealthy interests clearly already realize this. The Koch family in particular seems to get it. They have been spending money for decades on educational programs for young libertarians, finding them jobs in politics, supporting political activist groups with a pro-liberty agenda, and even backing the campaigns of liberatarian-leaning Republicans. As for the evil and corrupting Bushes, if it gets them a pipeline don’t be surprised to see Jeb Bush hugging Ron Paul and starting to talk just like him in Tampa this fall.

So when dealing with the powers who are backing the party establishment, don’t assume that their allegiance can’t change. They don’t operate on personal loyalty or ideology. They just want results. All we have to do is convince them that we’re more naturally inclined to do the things they want done and that their aims and ours really aren’t in conflict. That could be all it takes to swing some of that money and support to our causes and candidates. Don’t think of the malefactors of great wealth as the enemy. Success breeds success. Think of their support as the prize the Liberty Movement wins if we show we can gain some ground in the Republican Party.

President Obama has stirred up a lot of controversy recently, after deciding to give “amnesty” to young illegal immigrants. So I’m going to give some food for thought. This issue has been one which pits the various factions within the Republican Party against each other. You have the liberty wing of the GOP–like myself–who want the market to be the primary force deciding immigration. You have the protectionist wing–old former Democrats who came to the party during the Reagan years but didn’t leave all of their big-government policies (and occasional bigotry) behind, and you have the establishment-types who are probably just trying to find the political winds and go with what’s popular. Also to consider, the large number of Hispanic Republicans at the convention, who are sick and tired of the games by those who seemingly want to choke Latin American immigration off completely.

At the Republican Party of Texas’ state convention in Ft. Worth a couple weeks ago, this ideological battle was clear and present. I was attending as an alternate for Brazos County and RLC Chair Dave Nalle was a delegate for Travis County. I won’t be going to Tampa but I’m proud to say that going to the convention allowed me to do two things I really wanted to do. Send some authentic small-government Republicans (including some Ron Paul supporters) to Tampa, and get some really dumb things removed from the state party platform during the drafting process. The end result was shocking to me at first but also gave me hope that the Republican Party is moving in the right direction. The liberty wing and the establishment united on one of the biggest hot-button issues: immigration.

During a minority report, delegates had the chance to voice opinions on the party platform before the final draft was taken to the floor–where delegates from all over the state would vote on it. Dave and I attended this session. It was small, as most of the people had left for dinner or their hotel rooms. It was around 8 PM. What I saw in the platform was an immigration plank that was very market friendly, attempting to make it easier for immigrants with the skills we need to get work visas. Work visas that may eventually lead to those immigrants becoming proud Americans. Well, the protectionists were having none of it, and they tried to get it struck down, using some of the most bogus arguments.

I testified in favor of it. Gave a brief bio of myself as the son of an immigrant and congratulated them on taking a market based approach. Immediately I was followed by some angry man who came off as a lunatic, claiming we’d become an overpopulated, poverty-stricken place like Mexico City. I wanted terribly to rebut him and put his “arguments” to shame, but we only got to speak once. Fortunately, a fellow Aggie was there to do a much better job than I did. His name was Jerry Patterson, and he will be running for Lt. Governor of Texas in 2014. Since I see no candidate emerging with better positions than him, he’s definitely getting my vote. The committee decided to keep the plank. Later, when the plank was being brought up before the at-large caucus, the protectionists lined up to testify against it, again calling the work visas “amnesty”. The establishment and the liberty wing loudly shouted “ay” as Chairman Munisteri issued a motion to move on to the next issue. The plank passed.

Now, had I been given the opportunity to speak again on the issue, and in more detail, I would have said something along the following lines. I would have made the case for a market-based immigration policy. I would have explained to the clearly uninformed voter that our current immigration system of quotas and a ridiculously unnecessary level of federal bureaucracy is a remnant of the so-called progressive era. Progressivism is the very thing we Constitutionalists are [supposedly] trying to combat within the Republican Party.

So here’s some food for thought on why the current system is unacceptable, and why the market can solve this issue better than a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington. I’ll follow it up with my plan for an immigration overhaul: a simple, fair, merit-based system that would save the taxpayer billions of dollars and grow this economy exponentially.

First, lets talk illegals. There’s this notion that all of the 12 million illegals in American were merely border-hopping people with no respect for our laws. This is far from the truth.

A lot of the “illegals” are only so because of useless bureaucracy that originated not with the founding fathers but with progressives like Woodrow Wilson–a notorious bigot. To understand how things were prior to the progressive era, think prior to the 20th century. And just before the turn of the century there was a Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship that gives you a general idea about immigration policy before the federal government became the center of our lives it is today.

If you revisit the rationale behind the 1898 Supreme Court case US v. Wong Kim Ark, you find a realistic solution to the “anchor baby” problem, and you also put a bunch of the ridiculous birther propaganda about Senator Marco Rubio in the trash heap of conspiracy nonsense where it belongs.

The case ruled that a child born on American soil to immigrant parents who were “engaged in the procurement of non-diplomatic business” (i.e. worked in the private sector) and had established a domicile (homestead law, which varies from state to state) was a natural born citizen. Back then it was pretty much “work hard and obey the laws and you can stay”.

This is the approach we need to take as Republicans. It destroys the liberal media’s ability to smear us as racists. It exposes the Democrats for the hypocrites they are on the issue. But most important of all, it would create something that President Obama hasn’t. Tens of millions of new jobs!

Due to the bureaucracy it takes too damn long to become a citizen. My father immigrated to this country from Lebanon in the mid 1970s. He did not become a citizen until 1999. Some of this delay was due to the fact he was always working but in today’s America 20 years is probably the average length it takes from immigration to citizenship. That, to me, is just plain stupid! The bureaucracy also makes it too hard to get a green card. Take the case of a German man named Gunter. He is a restaurant owner in New Braunfels, TX. I met him last year at a Students for Liberty regional conference. He still has to leave the restaurant and return to Germany every few years and reapply for a visa because they have made it too difficult for him to get a green card. This man is a small-business owner, who obviously wishes to do business in a freer country than his own, and is being given the runaround by a bunch of gubment employees who I’m willing to bet have never created a real job in their lifetimes.

Gunter is just one example of many. We have all these high skill international students in our colleges. They outperform their American peers in science and engineering programs subsidized with our tax dollars, and what do we do? We make naturalization so difficult that they go back to their home countries and use the skills we taught them against us in the global market? How is that intelligent? They should be playing for team America. We are a country where the best in the world left their homelands to escape poverty and tyranny, and to embrace the free-enterprise system that has created more wealth and human advancement in a couple centuries than any other in the entire history of the world before in.

So I propose a new immigration system for the United States. A capitalist system.

Step 1: We reopen Ellis Island and centers like it all across the country.

That way we can actually account for the people that come into the country for national security purposes. We must still be stringent on immigrants from countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or from Gaza/West Bank, to make sure they are legitimate people seeking freedom from theocrats and not theocrats themselves coming to this country to commit terrorism. And trust me, virtually everyone would choose going through one of those processing centers to using a coyote. At least every honest person would. So at the same time it makes it easier to figure out who the good guys are. These centers should be able to provide immigrants with some advice on where to live, work, and possibly offer English speaking courses for those who need it.

Step 2: Create a new system of regulating immigration status that is based in merit and behavior.

Everyone who comes into the United States gets a five-year trial period. They would get a work visa. At the end of this 5 years if they will be examined. If they work in the private sector, and do not commit any violent or financial crimes–and I emphasize this because nobody should be deported for something like a traffic violation–and demonstrate reasonable English speaking skills, they will be awarded permanent residency in the United States. If they are convicted of a serious violent or financial crime they should be immediately deported. If the English speaking does not meet the standard they will not receive a green card, but can reapply for a temporary work visa. No need to kick them out over that. This will probably not be an issue as most immigrants will be encouraged to learn the language because they want to stay in this great country.

As for welfare use. We need to crack down on sanctuary cities. Government welfare should be denied to anyone who is not a permanent US resident or US citizen. Personally I would like to see the federal welfare state abolished, but I’m a realist and understand that this is at least 20 years away from happening. Private charity, religious or secular, should not be a factor in whether or not one is granted permanent residency. If a church or private organization wants to help an individual, that is purely at their discretion. Its their money!

Step 3: Reform the naturalization process in a manner that expedites it.

After receiving their green card, they enter another five year trial period. If during this trial period they continue to meet the criteria set for them in the first, work hard and obey the law, then at the end of that 5 year period they will be moved to the front of the line and naturalized as citizens of the United States.

Step 4: What to do about the illegals already here? Well obviously it would be financially impossible to deport them all. So here’s where President Obama actually had a point for once. Focus on the criminals. As for the others, the proper solution is that they must take the new route established. They must go to the back of the line in the new processing centers, and begin the first five-year trial period. For those that were brought here as children by parents, they’re really victims of human trafficking if you think about it. Provided they have no criminal records and work hard I see no reason why they should be deported. But they should still go through the new system.

5 years to permanent residency and 10 years to citizenship, its not a bad deal. But nobody is just going to be handed it. That would be amnesty. And amnesty is not the solution.

Now, I’m gonna get some responses to this. So, I’m going to preempt some of the typical ones I get.

The left will call it ‘fascist’ for the English-language requirement. Anyone who is familiar with my views knows I’m as far from fascist as Kim Kardashian is from the Blessed Virgin Mary. English should have been made the official language a long time ago I don’t understand why it isn’t. Multikulti has failed miserably in Europe. I recommend reading Bruce Bawer’s books While Europe Slept and Surrender. I have no intention of chasing away foreign culture. I took two years of Spanish in high school and one year of Japanese in college and am currently teaching myself the latter and plan on doing the same with the former once I have the time. My father speaks Arabic and French. That’s what makes America great. Immigrants like my father bring the best of what the old country has to offer (usually in the form of cuisine or music), but unlike the lawless Islamic enclaves in European cities Bawer documents, they don’t bring the authoritarian ideologies with them, that’s why they left!

It makes it easier on immigrants when they are able to communicate with natural born citizens rather than having to search for people from their own country. The language barrier tends to break down over generations as their children learn English but it seems more efficient to me if it is expedited. There will always be Korea Towns and Little Italys. But segregation was repealed and tossed into the ash heap of history half a century ago, yet America today still has a defacto segregation. We don’t need to be living in white neighborhoods or black neighborhoods or Hispanic neighborhoods we need to be living in American neighborhoods.

Encouraging English speaking skills (notice I didn’t even say reading/writing, as most Americans struggle with grammar) as a manner to expedite the path to ones citizenship merely tests their mettle as to how badly they want to be a part of America as a whole and not just as a “minority”. It opens more doors to them in terms of career advancement, which of course leads to more money. And its not going to be an arduous task, as many of them will likely be learning it already as ESL students or employees working alongside Americans if they didn’t know some coming in.

Then of course the protectionists claim things like “overpopulation” and “they’re gonna take the jobs Americans need”. No, they won’t. In fact, we actually have people leaving the US because there aren’t jobs for them. There is NOT an overpopulation problem in the country. For those of you who think there is I have merely one thing to say to you: Have you ever been to Nebraska?

Okay, maybe I have more than one thing to say. There is no overpopulation problem, only a population density problem. In fact, if the entire population of the world, which is approaching 7 billion people was spread out into one area with the population density of New York City it would fill an area about the size of Texas. If it was as dense as Houston, it wouldn’t even fill the continental United States.

Overpopulation only becomes a problem with the presence of a welfare state. And it is the welfare state that needs to be reigned in. By requiring immigrants to work (or use private charity) and cutting them off from welfare programs, they are not a drag on the taxpayer; they become taxpayers. The welfare behemoth is going to take years to reign in and if we don’t start now we will suffer a Greece-like debt crisis before decade’s end. But as it relates to immigrants its not nearly as difficult an issue as it is relating to citizens.

Hard working people sustain themselves and should not be barred from becoming citizens provided they obey the laws. They should be welcomed with open arms. They will create jobs, create tax revenue, grow the economy and shrink the budget deficit. Its the criminals and the moochers that are the problem and they should be sent home. We have too many Americans that fall into those categories.

If these immigrants “take your job” its because you didn’t work hard enough to defeat them. Sorry bro, but that’s how capitalism works, the best win.

So lets recap.

5 years to a green card, 10 years to citizenship. And all I’m asking is that they work hard and stay out of trouble? This is the immigration policy that will allow the GOP to seize control of the issue from the Democrats permanently. It gives us two things: the reduction of federal bureaucracy conservatives want, and the opportunity to join the free-enterprise system that immigrants want.

Hey Mitt, think about it!

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Aaron Alghawi obtained a B.S. in Economics from Texas A&M University in 2012. He is a national board member and Director of Student Outreach for the Republican Liberty Caucus.

At the Texas Republican convention, while a lot of eyes were focused on the efforts of Ron Paul supporters to become part of the national delegation, the more interesting fight for many Liberty Republicans was over the platform and what it might say about the future character of the Republican Party. Because Texas is the most Republican state in the union: and has such a large presence at the national convention, our platform is looked to as a guide when setting policy for the national party.

I was involved in the platform fight long before arriving at the convention as a delegate. I was an outspoken critic of the 2010 platform, having written several widely read articles critical of its contents and spearheaded a publicity campaign for the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas which targeted the divisive social issues sectiion and had led to interviews in state and national media. Months in advance I created a working group of people with similar concerns which produced and distributed a dozen pro-liberty platform resolutions, including a proposal to limit the length and specificity of the platform. We also wrote an alternative platform to be introduced from the floor if the final platform proved to be unacceptable. Prior to our county convention I contacted all of our county chairmen and SREC members with an email urging them to appoint reformers to their local and statewide platform committees. In the weeks leading up to the convention I also lobbied the members of the platform committee directly by email and wrote an article suggesting key areas where the platform could be improved.

I used every resource at my command to influence the process, from direct appeals to media pressure to threats of an embarrassing floor fight. I knew it was working when anti-reform insiders who actually liked the abominable 2010 platform began to get paranoid and started talking publicly about a conspiracy to destroy it.

All of this work had three main objectives. First, to generally shorten and simplify the platform. Second, to eliminate as many of the anti-gay planks as possible. Third, to reduce the section on foreign policy to a simple statement of principles without specific planks on policy towards other nations. These goals were not intended to address every problem in the platform, but focused on targets which were particularly offensive and also easy to argue against.

In the process of developing this effort I had made contact with sympathetic members of the platform committee and was in touch with them by text message during their meetings and deliberations and saw draft sections of the platform and provided input outside of the normal process of testimony at hearings. I did attend the hearings, but ended up having to testify only once in person, though I also had confederates giving testimony.

The platform committee was under the leadership of Tom Mechler who I would describe as state chairman Steve Munisteri’s right hand man, a choice which tipped me off early that I and my group were not the only ones with a plan to influence the platform. Sitting in the audience at the committee meetings it quickly became clear that the other organized effort was coming from an element of the party leadership headed up by Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a long-time ally of the Republican Liberty Caucus, who was pushing a comprehensive immigration reform plank to replace the entire section on immigration in the platform with a single, coherent plan. Their goal did not conflict with ours and between their influence and our activism we were more effective than expected.

Our first success came when Mechler split the platform committee out into subcommittees for each section of the platform and specifically instructed them to trim down the verbiage and resolve inconsistencies. I assume this was done to protect the new immigration plank with a hand-picked subcommittee, but it also meant smaller groups looking at each section, with more autonomy and room for individual initiative. The revisions which came out of this process were excellent. The overall wordcount was cut by almost 40% and while not many full planks were cut, secondary clauses which contained controversial content were cut aggressively.

At the start of the process there were 8 anti-gay planks and almost 30 foreign policy planks on specific countries. By the final committee meeting this was down to three anti-gay planks and the only country specifically mentioned under foreign policy was Israel. Along the way bad bits in other sections also got the axe, including much of the language supporting creationism. Planks equating homosexuality with pedophilia, condemning gay scoutmasters and opposing gay adoption were among those we had targeted which had been removed. In the original draft of the family values section which came out of the subcommittee a particularly ridiculous plank expressing support for the Texas law criminalizing sodomy which was struck down by the supreme court several years ago had been removed, but it was put back into the platform by the committee at large.

At the final session of the committee I had planned to come to add my voice to those testifying in support of Jerry Patterson’s immigration reform plank, but on discovering the reintroduction of the sodomy plank I left immigration to an associate and got on the list to speak on the sodomy issue. In my three minutes at the microphone I argued for a general softening of the language on gay issues and specifically pointed out that the sodomy law had been struck down by a Republican Supreme Court mostly appointed by presidents from Texas and that if we believe in the Constitution and the rule of law as stated elsewhere in the platform then it was ridiculous to demand that our legislature attempt to override the highest federal court on a constitutional issue. I saw a lot of smiles and nods from the committee and was not surprised to learn several hours later that the committee had followed my advice and again removed the sodomy plank. Most other arguments before the committee were not as successful. Attempts to remove or weaken the new immigration section were not well received, nor were attempts to restore the old foreign policy planks, with the exception of a brief statement in support of Taiwan.

That wasn’t the end of the fight. The platform still had to go to the floor of the convention where it could be challenged and modified by any delegate who stood in line to speak at one of six microphones and could stir up enough support for his position. Unlike previous years the floor debate for the platform was scheduled on Friday, rather than at the close of the convention on Saturday, so there was potentially plenty of time for a fight over controversial planks on the convention floor.

When the platform committee report was presented to the general session of the convention, long lines immediately formed at all of the microphones. As I learned while standing in line, there were three groups of people at the microphones: nativists who wanted to reinstate the 2010 anti-immigration language to the platform, outraged religious right activists who wanted to put the anti-gay language back in the platform and agents of the group that framed the new immigration section planted there to make arguments in support of it. I was there to counter anyone trying to bring up the social policy issues, but as it turned out my efforts were unnecessary. It became fairly clear that supporters of the new immigration plank had a well-formed plan and all I had to do was go along for the ride.

I don’t mean to suggest that anything happened which was not entirely above board. The Chairman made sure that people got equal time to speak on both sides of any issue which was raised. But beyond that it was fairly clear that the situation was being carefully orchestrated. Although immigration was the last item in the platform, the Chairman agreed with a request to take it out of order and examine it first. He then heard motions which were basically complaints about the section which were masquerading as points of information. Supporters were given equal time to defend the immigration plank, including Land Commissioner Patterson who spoke from one of the floor microphones. Back and forth about immigration went on, with several suggestions for changes, including replacing the whole thing with the 2010 wording, being voted down on voice votes. Then, much to everyone’s surprise there was a motion from the floor to close debate and vote on the platform as a whole, and suddenly with about 60 people waiting in line to make motions on the platform, the whole thing passed and it was over.

The intent, clearly planned carefully by the party Chairman, the head of the Platform Committee and the backers of the immigration plank, was to make absolutely sure that the platform passed with their plank in place and unchanged, regardless of what else in the platform their strategy left unchanged. So because of their efforts dozens of anti-gay activists were left fuming on the floor while the platform passed with most of the anti-gay planks edited out. It was a surprise victory which fell into our laps, and while there remain two problem planks in the family values section, we got more change than I had ever realistically expected.

That personal victory aside and without minimizing the progress made on social issues, the really important result of this process was the immigration plank which ended up in the platform. Chairman Munisteri made very clear that he expected our platform to be looked at closely at the national convention, and that Texas ought to have a strong voice in setting national immigration policy for the Republican Party. To that end, what Commissioner Patterson crafted is something the nation has been begging for, an authentic, balanced and comprehensive plan for dealing with all aspects of immigration, and one which a national campaign can be run on.

The immigration plan includes provisions for border security, for limiting the access of immigrants to public welfare and services and a proposal for a robust guest worker program with a modern system for monitoring workers to make sure that immigrants can find jobs and industries which need temporary immigrant labor can find workers legally. It also does this while explicitly avoiding draconian penalties for businesses, punitive measures against those currently in the country illegally and any form of national ID system for citizens like E-Verify. It is very much a “square deal” in the best Republican tradition, looking out for the interests of all the parties involved, including native workers, immigrants, taxpayers and businesses.

With Romney as the nominee we have to expect that the Republican Party will move back towards a more pro-business, small government agenda. Attracting independent voters, small business owners and hispanic voters will be a key component of any winning strategy for the GOP, and a well-conceived position on immigration which satisfies the needs of businesses and the hispanic community to see immigrants treated fairly will be a major asset.

It seems clear that the “fix was in” for this immigration plan at the Texas convention. If this was done with the cooperation and support of the Romney campaign then that is a very promising sign that they will be taking a smart stand on this key issue. If the Romney camp was not involved, they would be wise to pay attention to the opportunity to pick up a good idea from the most Republican state in the union, a state with the longest border in the nation and a wealth of experience in immigration policy.

Remember the 4th Amendment? How does a remote controlled drone knock on your door and present a search warrant?

The answer is that it can’t.

In the name of security our government at the federal, state and local level, has launched another assault on oiur 4th Amendment rights by authorizing the use of military style drones to monitor the activities of civilians with no warrants and no due process of law. With penetrating scanning technology these drones can watch you and listen to your conversations through the walls of your house and even read your email remotely without you even being aware that you are under surveillance, all of this without any kind of Constitutionally required due process of law – no hearing, no charges, no search warrant. Under the PATRIOT Act that drone might as well be sitting in your living room or bedroom, invading every private aspect of your life.

Senator Rand Paul has introduced the Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act (S. 3287) which would require a legal warrant issued by a judge before drones were used for any purpose other than patrolling the borders or pursuing known terrorism suspects. It would keep drones from engaging in preemptive surveillance or broadly tasked data gathering missions as proposed in the PATRIOT Act. It would protect you and other law abiding citizens from being monitored by drones for nothing more than the convenience and curiosity of the NSA or local law enforcement.

Read more about the bill in The Hill and please use our convenient tool below to write your Senators today and ask them to join on as sponsors.

You may remember all the work we did last December to try to stop the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act because of provisions it contained which allowed for the indefinite detention of US citizens by the military in violation of due process and posse comitatus. Supporters of that act tried to hide the offending parts of the bill by changing the section numbers and they denied the intent and the significance of the wording of the problem sections, and they managed to pass it through the House and Senate despite the heroic efforts of leaders like Rep. Justin Amash and Sen. Rand Paul.

Today we have a rare second chance to fix that mistake.

The proof that we were right about the NDAA became conclusive this week. The Federal District Court in New York granted a temporary injunction against the use of the provisions in the bill which allow for indefinite military detention. Apparently the legal experts on the federal bench read the language the same way that we and dozens of pro-liberty groups did. The problem is that the injunction is only temporary.

The permanent solution to this problem is the Smith-Amash amendment (HR4192) which is being debated in the House right now. It will remove the sections from the bill which allow indefinite military detention of our citizens and guarantee the right to a trial and due process. It’s buried among other amendments to the NDAA, some of which make a pretense of fixing this problem, but none of them actually remove military detention from the bill except the Smith-Amash amendment.

The challenge here is that the vote on the Smith-Amash amendment will take place some time Friday, so we need to take action right now. Use our tool to email your Congressman and tell them you want them to stand up for liberty and the Constitution and pass the only amendment which genuinely fixes the problems with the NDAA.

Make sure to customize the language of the email to make it unique and in your own words.

On Thursday the House of Representatives is expected to begin debate on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), leading to a vote next week. This is yet another bill similar to SOPA which is designed to limit privacy and individual liberty on the internet. Now is the time to take action to let them know you don’t want the government accessing and sharing your email and personal data.

CISPA would massively reduce the privacy and security of your online communications and personal data. It would give government agencies and many private companies access to your personal communications and financial information and would allow government security agencies like the National Security Agency unprecedented power to access your data including medical records, private emails and financial information – all without a warrant, oversight by any court or due process of law.

This access to your records would require no misbehavior on your part, not even an accusation of terrorism or criminal activity and it would take place without your knowledge or any opportunity to protect your information or your privacy interests.  That information could then be passed on to private companies or other agencies or used against you with no real rules or restrictions on who could access it or what hands it would end up in.

The Republican Liberty Caucus  joined with other concerned groups like the Liberty Coalition and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to promote “Stop Cyber Spying Week” last week, but now the real push is on to break down support for CISPA and send it to the legislative shredder as we did with SOPA a few months ago.

We urge you to email your representative  in Congress and urge them to oppose CISPA and keep government agencies out of our private online data and communications.

I’m in the middle of serving as a member of my county Republican party’s Nominations Committee and have also performed a similar function on my county party’s Vacancy Committee.  I thought it might be helpful to share some of my experience and offer some simple advice for Republican Liberty Caucus members and other liberty activists who have to go before a committee in order to be selected as a delegate to their State Republican Convention.  The rules and procedures for this are not the same in every state, but the human dynamics and the general parameters of the experience are likely to be similar.  Ultimately it’s all about showing a level of commitment to the party and the process and you can do that by sticking by these five simple guidelines.

Rule #1 – Don’t be nervous or scared.

Some people find the interview process intimidating.  Just remember that you’re not being singled out. Everyone has to go through it and despite the perception that it may be a tool of the elite designed to expose you and weed you out, that’s not really what it’s all about. Although there may be some people on your committee whose goal is to keep Ron Paul supporters or Liberty Republicans in general off the list of state convention delegates, there are also likely to be people on the committee who are sympathetic or at least neutral.  For the most part they will be earnestly trying to do their job, which is not to keep people out, but to find people to qualify to go to the convention whether they agree with them or not.

Rule #2 – Be committed to the process.

The main qualification for being a delegate is your willingness to show up and participate in the process.  Many of the questions a Nominations Committee will ask are likely to be geared towards determining whether your commitment is solely to a particular candidate or to the process which your local and state conventions are part of .  They want to make sure that if you are made a delegate you will participate fully by showing up, participating in debate and voting.  What they really do not want to see is people who are likely to become discouraged and give up if their favorite candidate is not nominated or if they feel you have no interest in anything that will be going on at the convention except the nomination process.  When they ask you why you want to be a delegate tell them that you want to have a voice in the party and don’t just talk about one aspect or issue or candidate.

Rule #3 – Be prepared and qualified.

Another thing the committee will be looking for is your level of political awareness or involvement.  They don’t want to send clueless political neophytes higher in the system than they are qualified to go and this is a reasonable concern on their part.  State delegate positions are positions of responsibility and they are in some demand and committee members are perfectly correct in believing that people with no political experience and no depth of involvement shouldn’t be given those positions.  If you’ve just joined the Republican Party and the only candidate you know by name is Ron Paul, don’t even go in front of the committee, or at least educate yourself before you do.  If you go there unprepared you will irritate them and make them more hostile to the next guy to come along.  Inform yourself about other major races in your area.  Know the names of other candidates for lower offices you might vote for in the election.  Know a couple of mainstream issues you can say something about.  At the very least be prepared to object to Obamacare or say something nasty about Eric Holder and be able to name the Republicans running in your Congressional District or for Senate in your state. An hour spent on Google News can make you look relatively well informed.

Rule #4 – Be involved.

This isn’t something you can do on short notice, but if you are in this for the long haul (as you should be) then having a history of involvement with the party is one sure way to get to be a delegate.  Join a local Republican club.  Donate to your county party.  Work for a local candidate or two making phonecalls or block walking.  There are good candidates running in every state.  Find one and get involved.  You can also be an activist on local or national political issues. If you can talk about this kind of involvement they’ll definitely warm up to you.  If you have a family history of being involved with the party bring that up.  It can’t hurt.  Don’t be afraid to toot your own horn.

Rule #5 – Don’t lie. People can tell when you’re lying.

If you have met committee members before and they know something about your positions, don’t come into the committee and suddenly express completely different beliefs.  If you’re a known Paul supporter then don’t hide that fact. Instead make a good argument for why you’d be a good delegate anyway.  Rather than misrepresenting yourself, focus on your other good qualities.  And if you don’t like the establishment candidate, just say so.  Don’t hem and haw and try to conceal your true beliefs.  Ultimately do say that you’ll at least reluctantly support whoever the nominee is. And if you can’t do that honestly then you actually are not qualified to be a delegate.  You don’t have to like him or be loyal to him or even actively campaign for him, but you do have to express support for the process and its results.  You’d want them to support your candidate if he’s nominated and you should be honest enough to do the same if someone else is nominated.

Good and Bad Ron Paul Supporters

There seems to be a trend that establishment Republicans have identified a divide between “good” Ron Paul supporters and “bad” Ron Paul supporters. It also tends to be true that those who are identified as “good” also have the qualities which are likely to make them members of the Republican Liberty Caucus.  In most cases a Nominations Committee will be comfortable sending the “good” Ron Paul supporters on as delegates, but be deathly afraid of their more radical comrades.

The key defining characteristic of the “bad” Ron Paul supporter is that it is obvious that their interests are extremely narrow.  All they care about is getting Ron Paul elected and perhaps the specific issues for which he is most known and most intensely supported.  To the average Republican they are perceived as outsiders trying to subvert the party and the process.   As a Liberty Republican who is involved in the delegate selection process I cringe when certain candidates for nomination come to be interviewed, because they are so utterly clueless.  They come in with this air of arrogance thinking that their high level of commitment to Ron Paul is all the qualification they should need, when that’s really not at all what the party is looking for.  To you it may all be about Ron Paul, but to those who make the decisions it is about being a useful and involved participant in the party.  If your only interest in the party or the process or even politics is to advance Ron Paul then you are not going to be nominated as a delegate and probably shouldn’t be.

The “good” Ron Paul supporter is identified easily as well, because they will have some higher level of political involvement.  Most typically when they come to the committee they can explain what they are concerned about why they aren’t satisfied with current political conditions or leadership, including their objections to the GOP establishment, and they can make clear that they support Ron Paul because they think that he is the best answer to the problems while making it clear that it is reform and better government they are after even if it turns out that they have to achieve it by some other means maybe not involving Ron Paul.  Commitment to a broader cause which is compatible with Republican principles will be respected even if it comes with support for Ron Paul as part of the package.

Some Obvious Dos and Don’ts

You can never go wrong attacking Obama and his administration.  Even if you also have problems with the political insiders of the GOP, you can find common ground with any Republican if you remind them that you can’t stand Obama or his policies or the Democratic Party in general.  Unions, Eric Holder, Nancy Pelosi and the leftist media are good targets too.  If you don’t revile Obama and the Democratic leadership at least a little bit more than even the worst corrupt Republican elitists then you’re not paying attention and you’re probably not qualified to be a delegate.  Remember that everything Bush did wrong, Obama has done at a higher cost and on a larger scale.  If you spend a lot of time talking about shared enemies there’s less time for them to ask you more difficult questions.

One of the obvious things they may ask you is whether you will “support the Republican nominee regardless of who it is.” This is an inevitable question and you ought to be prepared for it.  There is a good answer and if you cannot make it honestly, then don’t bother to show up.  The answer is “while I’m not happy with the most likely nominee, I still think he’s better than Obama and if those are my two choices I’ll vote for the Republican nominee.”  If you can’t truthfully say that then you should not be a delegate.  And remember, it cuts both ways.  If they expect you to support their nominee then you have an equal right to expect them to support your nominee if he wins.

Try to avoid desecrating the sacred cows.  If you are strongly anti-war, just try to stay away from the subject.  While many establishment Republicans are coming around on issues of national defense, it’s an area which is too contentious and too complex to argue out in a committee meeting.  Don’t lie about it, but consider ducking out with a statement like “I’m more concerned with domestic policy right now when our country is going to hell in a handbasket.”  If you are pro-choice, don’t bring it up.  Before the rise of Ron Paul, abortion was the litmus test question in these interviews.  It’s a difficult issue to deflect on, so do everything you can to avoid it.  Also try to avoid the topic of Israel.  They don’t understand Ron Paul’s stand on it and they won’t understand yours.  l shouldn’t have to say it, but don’t mention 9/11 truth or any other popular conspiracy theories.  No matter what you believe or how strongly you believe it, that’s an argument you don’t want to raise at all and which will only brand you as a nut.

Remember that even Republicans who are not committed to liberty the way that we are do usually have some level of belief in the same broad principles of limited government and individual rights.  They may not always act rationally on those beliefs and they may back the wrong leaders a lot of the time, but they will still usually respect your commitment to the principles the party was founded on if you remind them that they are Republican ideas with a long history in the party and not just the views of radicals and Ron Paul supporters.  Look for common ground and common concerns and focus on them. Your interview with the Nominations Committee is sort of like a small-scale political campaign and you need to sell yourself as someone who will represent the interests of all Republican voters and of the party if you are selected as a delegate.

The commitment to liberty is a lifelong commitment.  It’s not about one election or one candidate.  It’s a movement which may take years to succeed.  If you are committed to the movement and to that process of changing the Republican Party and our political system, then you ought to be prepared for the similar commitment necessary to be an effective delegate, representing not just the party but the Liberty Movement at your state and eventually at the national convention.  As a delegate you are serving the party and its members first and your own interests second.  At the same time, never forget that the best service you can do the party is to help it live up to the high principles on which it was founded.  This is what it means to be a Liberty Republican.

There seems to be a determined chorus coming from Republican party leaders and insiders pushing the idea that it’s time for Rick Santorum to get out of the primary race and arguing the inevitability of a Romney victory. The strategy now seems to be to just discourage Republican voters, telling them Romney is going to win so there’s no point in even looking for alternatives. It’s a desperate kind of strategy which might lead to many Republicans staying home in November..

The lead cheerleader for throwing in the towel and giving it all to Romney seems to be Karl Rove who is likely to be acting as a flak for the establishment, describing Santorum as a desperate, fading candidate.

Rove may be right about the hopelessness of Santorum’s campaign. The latest poll shows him losing his own home state of Pennsylvania to Romney, and prospects are not good for him in many of the major remaining states. But the inevitability of a Santorum defeat is not the inevitability of a Romney win, no matter how much the insiders climbing on his bandwagon want it to be.

The problem is that despite the hopeful claims Rove is making, the delegate math just doesn’t support his theory of inevitability, and the ongoing chorus of big name endorsements doesn’t seem to be helping Romney much either, since the same concerns which have alienated much of the party from Romney also make them unresponsive to establishment leaders.

Take a look at the numbers. There are 1089 delegates to be assigned in the remaining primaries. To reach the magic number of 1144 Romney needs 588 more delegates. That’s 53.9% of the remaining delegates. That seems achievable. By the accepted estimates Romney has averaged 60% of the delegates so far. In theory, if that trend continues, he will eventually end up with 653 more delegates for a total of 1231, 42 more than he needs.

The problem with this theory is that it assumes that delegate estimates largely based on the initial popular vote in past primaries are accurate. Yet in most of those states there is only a very rough relationship between the popular vote and how delegates are assigned. Delegates are actually chosen through arcane hierarchies of caucuses and conventions which give an advantage to candidates with strong grassroots support, which is Romney’s weak point.

While most media estimates put Ron Paul’s delegate count at around 30-50 delegates, there are reliable reports from a number of states that Paul has far more delegates than most estimates give him – by as many as 70 or more at this point. Despite shameful attempts to manipulate the system it appears that states whose delegates were credited to Romney are actually going in part or total to Paul. Not enough to win Paul the nomination, but enough to deny Romney the inevitability of his victory.

In fact, the actual delegate totals from most of the states where the elections ended months ago, won’t actually be final until later this summer, and in the meantime only Paul has people on the ground working in every state to advance his interests and increase his delegate count. They are chipping away at the other candidates and when real, final delegate numbers are revealed it seems quite likely that Romney will be much shorter of the mark than anyone realizes.

To a large extent the goal of all of the players except for Romney is to avoid a first-ballot win. If they can get to the convention with no clear winner, then deals can be made and votes can be changed on later ballots and there will be concessions to be won by someone. Romney may indeed end up being the nominee, but no one wants him to get there too easily. And in the end it’s quite likely that the big payoff will be to Ron Paul, because if he has enough delegates to get Romney to 1144, then a deal with him would be much more attractive and require fewer hard to swallow concessions than a deal with one of the other candidates.

The purpose of the “inevitability strategy” is to avoid the outcome of a convention where deals have to be made. Deals benefit the grassroots. They mean safeguards and accountability and concessions to groups which don’t like the party establishment much at all. It’s a strategy which might give Obama the win in November, but those who are pushing it would rather keep control of a losing minority party than make concessions and give up some of their control to what they see as barbarians pounding at the gate, though others may see them as a hopeful future for an aging and increasingly irrelevant party.

This article appeared in somewhat different form in Blogcritics Magazine.

As early as Tuesday afternoon, the House of Representatives is likely to vote on H.R. 1433 (PDF), the Private Property Rights Protection Act. This important act is designed to discourage the abuse of eminent domain power by municipalities by withholding federal funds if they exceed their reasonable authority and seize property for reasons other than genuine civic need.

This is an important protection for private property rights which have been weakened in this area by the growing practice of seizing land for the use of businesses and other interests who have political influence with local government. This bill to some degree counters the misapplication of the law in the notorious Kelo vs. New London decision in New Hampshire.

It is vitally important that you act today to email or call your Representative now and stay in touch for when the bill moves on to the Senate in the near future. An earlier version passed the House in 2005 but was blocked in the Senate.

For more information on this legislation read this article in the Washington Times.

There are legitimate uses for eminent domain, like building roads and schools, but taking property from citizens with no legal recourse and giving it to businesses for commercial development is an unacceptable abuse of the power and far too often the product of cronyism within local government. Please take action now to support H.R. 1433 and stop eminent domain abuse.

Use the form below to send an email.  It’s always a good idea to modify or replace the standard text with your own words, especially specific references to problems in your local area.

With his surge in the polls I’ve been trying to get a handle on the philosophy of Newt Gingrich, and after finally seeing signs which should have been obvious all along and confirming them with a bit of research, I realized what I should have caught on to long ago, that Newt Gingrich is a Robert Heinlein Republican.

Like many in my generation I grew up reading Robert Heinlein’s Science Fiction novels almost religiously. Heinlein’s dystopian vision of the future and his romantic obsession with man as superman was enormously appealing to a teenager growing up in the space age. The Heinlein man could perfect himself and conquer the universe singlehanded by sheer determination and willpower. Heinlein’s theme was the triumph of the individual over time in Methuselah’s Children, over space in The Man Who Sold the Moon, over conventional morality in Stranger in a Strange Land and over the governments of lesser men in Farnham’s Freehold. Heinlein’s political philosophy of Rational Anarchism is summed up by the Professor Bernardo de la Paz in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:

“In terms of morals there is no such thing as a ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free, because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything that I do.”

Heinlein’s muscular, militaristic individualism carried with it a deliberate intention from the very first to influence politics. After World War II Heinlein experimented with direct involvement in politics, served in elective party office in California and ultimately campaigned for Goldwater in 1964 and may have ghostwritten ads and speeches for his presidential campaign. In this period Heinlein had a friendship and rivalry with fellow writer L. Ron Hubbard. They supposedly had a long standing bet to see who could start a religion which would change society. Hubbard’s answer to this challenge was the creation of Scientology. Heinlein’s answer came through his writing and the ideas expressed in some of his bestselling novels of the late 1960s and its ultimate product seems to be Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich has admitted to being a Heinlein fan and his own fiction has a clear Heinlein influence. Gingrich is also friends with and has collaborated with Science Fiction author and former Reagan era technology adviser Jerry Pournelle, who sees himself as the heir to Heinlein’s ideas and literary tradition. Pournelle was a protege of influential neolibertarian thinker Russell Kirk, and has written extensively on politics from a neolibertarian perspective. Neolibertarianism is a branch of libertarianism which fits the Heinlein model quite closely. It at least partially deemphasizes the principle of non-coercion and places a strong emphasis on individual liberty, disdaining bureaucratic government and elevating the military to a near iconic status. The world envisioned in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers is very much the world of the neolibertarian movement.

Gingrich has clearly taken the Heinlein ideology to heart on many levels. His serial infidelity and request that his wife engage in an open relationship are pure Heinlein. Heinlein was an avowed libertine who practiced open marriage and advocated total sexual liberation and rejection of conventional morality as a recurrent theme in much of his writing. Gingrich’s obsession with colonizing the moon is also straight out of Heinlein’s work. Some of Heinlein’s most influential writing centers around the colonization and development of the moon in books like The Man Who Sold the Moon and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  Gingrich’s hostility towards bureaucracy, flaunting of the conventional political process and love of innovation for its own sake are pure Heinlein.  His egotism and obsessive character are also straight out of Heinlein.  Gingrich himself has much in common with megalomaniacal developer Delos D. Harriman in <i>The Man Who Sold the Moon</i>, though Gingrich seems not to understand that the self-destructive Harriman was intended more as an anti-hero than a role model.

Many observers of the libertarian end of the political spectrum see Heinlein’s vision and the ideas of the neolibertarians as the “ugly” side of libertarianism.  Disconnected from social morality and focused on the responsibility of the individual to himself and not to society, it can lead to views which verge on being an oxymoronic kind of libertarian fascism.  Ironically, this aggressive subset of the generally much more innocuous libertarian movement seems to have much greater political marketability.

To a generation of middle-aged voters who grew up on Heinlein and the writers he influenced, the Gingrich message and the Gingrich style have a real resonance.  You can see this in how Gingrich has successfully positioned himself as the defiant individualist in his challenging of the media establishment and how easily voters have been convinced to dismiss his unconventional personal life.  The fully realized individual is above conventional morality and is not accountable to anyone but himself.  The more Gingrich defies those who would judge him the more he proves that he is the kind of individualistic superman which Heinlein’s writing has convinced us that we all ought to be.  We identify with Gingrich and live vicariously through him, more like a literary character than a real human being.

In embracing the Heinleinian model of an anti-statesman Gingrich seems to have actually struck a thread with a public which is very unhappy with the conventional political establishment.  Even though he himself was part of that establishment for many years, he has thrown himself into the role of the outcast returning in triumph to exact vengeance on his detractors, a mythic archetype which is widespread in legend and literature and manifests in Heinlein’s work repeatedly.  Gingrich is the hero returned from exile.  He is Valentine Michael Smith and Thorby Baslim and Lazarus Long rolled into one unlikely package.  The unanswered question is whether Gingrich has the shortcomings of a mortal man or the inevitable victorious destiny of a literary character.

This article appeared in slightly different form on Blogcritics Magazine