Judge Nap at the Ron Paul BBQ

How about Freedom Watch take over that slimeball Hannitys time slot!

"The price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance"- Thomas Jefferson

If we're going to win we have to convert lots of people who, back then, were thinking things other than "pure fundamentalist Ron Paulism". They will become our allies.

And they will become our allies first on one issue, then another, then another - because that's how human minds work. Many will never be our allies on ALL issues. And that's fine: As long as we have ENOUGH allies on EACH issue of importance, we win.

During the election season the doubling time of conversion to Ron Paul's message was running about three months. At any given moment half the people working FOR Ron were people who had been unconvinced or working AGAINST him three months earlier.

IMHO Glen Beck is one of those people who, back then, was against us on some issues that he considered overriding (though even then he agreed with enough to bring Ron onto his show, while the rest of the media were alternating between gang-ignore and gang-ridicule). But since then he's recognized that issues on which we agree are more important and he's come around on more issues. He's one of the people who were once against us and are now allied with us on some important points. As such he's ahead of the curve. Expect him to convert on more issues. And expect a lot more like him to come along later.

WELCOME them.

The factions that tend to fight the hardest are those which ALMOST agree on everything. This is because social pressure to conform runs wild when the pressured individual has a like-minded support group and doesn't knuckle under - so those pressuring him escalate. Thus are born faction fights, holy wars, gang wars, and so on.

But we pride ourselves on rationality and love of freedom in our dealings with other people. To be consistent we should suppress this urge to treat someone who looks ALMOST like us as a corrupting heritic suitable for burning at the stake.

Letting other people do things you don't like is the price of freedom.

Our fellow-travelers and new converts won't be with us on every issue. That's FINE. If SOME of the active opposition think we're a monolith of brainwashed clones and make decisions based on a few of our allies' "deviant behavior", that's fine too. It will make them more confused and discredit them when other listeners discover that the rest of us are NOT like they were led to expect.

WE'll keep the message clear. And people like Glen Beck can help us get the message OUT - at least partly by arguing against other parts of it in public and giving us a strawman we'd otherwise have to invent. (Meanwhile, such debates are likely to swing interviewers like Glen to our point of view on more of the issues. Win-Win.)