Archive for The N.C. Way

Three imperial edicts

Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on July 24th, 2010

by Sean Haugh

This is something written for Praxis for the People, briefly a neat Green zine from Asheville NC, five years ago this month:

The question is fascinating, “if (I could) pass any three pieces of legislation, without having to worry about the approval of Congress, what would they be?” I always associate legislation specifically with congress or the general assembly. I can relieve that contradiction by framing my answers not as legislation, but rather as executive orders, or even better, edicts.

So, as the Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico (my preferred title, after Emperor Norton), here are my first three proclamations:

1) I would abolish marriage licenses. To me, that’s the most offensive thing government does (short of killing people). At its root, it’s nothing but a state license to love - I am outraged, that they would think for a moment this is any of their business. Who and how people choose to love, well, I can hardly imagine a more personal matter. The marriage license is the lynchpin in government’s ability to define the family. The world would be a much happier place if families could simply define themselves.

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Building local name ID 101

Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on April 21st, 2010

by Sean Haugh

In a previous article, I advanced the notion that, “The key to winning elections is simply working harder. Get out and meet your neighbors, develop a record of community activism, and learn how to deflect any attack and stay on message.”

Whether you are running for President or Dogcatcher or anything in between, you are really running for Next Door Neighbor. The key to winning then is to be known as a good neighbor.

Your chances of winning office are vastly increased if people know who you are before you even file. So what can you do to make that happen?

There are several ways to build positive local name identification. While they are all good, you really only need to do one to establish yourself as someone doing good in the community. If local popularity is your goal, it is better to concentrate on one and do it very well than to dabble in each one.

Follow Your Passion and Call the Press

My favorite method is to Do Something about whatever concerns you the most. Don’t just complain that, say, teachers have to pay out of pocket for school supplies for their students. Start a collection drive, or start a fund to buy some, or just go to the office supply store and buy some on your own to donate.

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There is no other

Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on January 11th, 2010

by Sean Haugh

The first mistake any of us make in debate is forgetting that we are talking to or about another human being. It’s so very easy to do, and I am guilty of it just as much as anyone. That’s where arguments start to go south, where friendships are lost over matters of politics or religion, and where opportunities for alliances are missed.

The very essence of Libertarianism is that every person has the right to life, liberty and property. It’s a philosophy where a basic respect for all people is assumed. It is a wonderful expression of our basic principle if we put it on display when dealing with other people.

The first problem comes when we think of anybody else as the other. The first thought should be that they are human, just like us, and so probably driven by the same human needs and desires that also motivate us. As soon as we see people as being, first and foremost, something other than ourselves, we are able to treat them as less than a human being.

I learned a lot about this when I first ran for public office. In 1996 I ran for NC Commissioner of Insurance. I was fairly new to the party and wanted to help fill out the ballot any way I could. There were several campaign events where I got to mingle with the other candidates for these Council of State offices, incumbents and challengers alike.

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A Libertarian argument against the death penalty

Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on October 10th, 2009

by Sean Haugh

There are a whole lot of good reasons to be against the death penalty. I’m sure you’ve heard them all: it’s inhumane; it’s used disproportionately against the poor; we could be executing an innocent man; it’s expensive; it really doesn’t deter crime; and so on. But here’s one that maybe you haven’t thought of before.

The death penalty is just another outrageously overgrown government program.

You see, from a Libertarian perspective, it is the nature of government to grow until it’s simply out of control. Just about every government initiative starts out as a great idea. Of course we all want feed hungry children, make sure everyone has a solid roof over their heads, keep the environment clean. Libertarians share these compassionate human goals. We just question whether another government program is actually going to do anything to solve the problem.

In the beginning, a government program is a wonderful thing. It offers hope, and maybe even does have a positive impact on the people it’s designed to help. But before long, the program has changed into an institution. What is right and good no longer matters. The new incentive is to keep the program growing.

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Objective journalism: Good riddance

Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on September 26th, 2009

by Sean Haugh

Objective journalism is dying, and it can’t happen soon enough as far as I’m concerned. It was always a crock anyway. What once was a sweet noble lie attempting to serve the facts has become the open enemy of truth and knowledge. People are instinctively recognizing this and starting to take their business elsewhere.

People act as if objective journalism is the only kind of legitimate journalism that has ever existed, when in fact the notion is only about 100 years old. It used to be that all journalists wore their biases on their sleeves and let a supposedly discerning reader sift through it to find their own opinion. Did you ever wonder why several small town newspapers still have names like the Democrat or the Progressive? Because when they were founded, that was their explicit editorial and reporting policy.

Truly objective journalism has always been impossible. To achieve it, one would have to write impractically long accounts including every single relevant fact. Yet the TV news is only on for 30 or 60 minutes. The first decision any reporter has to make is what narrow set of facts to include and which must be set aside. And that’s just for one story. All the news that is fit to print is far more than can fit in a daily newspaper.

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I like fair trade because it’s tasty

Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on July 19th, 2009

by Sean Haugh

That’s a line from a song by Rev. Billy & the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir.  It refers to “fair trade” coffee, where the relationship between growers and consumers is more direct.  It’s a novel idea of the left, using free market principles to raise the quality of life for everyone at both ends of the transaction.

That particular line grabs me because it directly expresses why I prefer such business practices.  This was never a matter of political correctness for me.  It’s simply how I’ve always lived as a consumer.  I’m willing to pay a little bit more for a higher quality product.  The fact that more of my $1.75 for a large cup of morning coffee goes to the growers is an added bonus.

Conversely, I hate Starbucks just as much as my leftist friends, although for a different reason.  I don’t begrudge them their success.  The fact that there seems to be a Starbucks within my line of sight no matter where I stand in America is only a minor aesthetic irritation to me.

No, Starbucks earns my ire because it’s a terrible product.  They deliberately burn their coffee to ensure it tastes the same no matter where you are.  How they managed to convince people that burnt coffee is of higher quality remains well beyond my comprehension.

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Will no one stand up to the corruption on the LNC?

Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on July 14th, 2009

by Sean Haugh

Below is an item I asked to be submitted for the agenda of the upcoming meeting of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC).  I tried to do this quietly and through normal channels, but sadly have been rebuffed.  Following that will be some follow up correspondence on the matter and a long overdue correction of some of my past reporting, including an apology to Regional Representative Stewart Flood for implying he had behaved inappropriately.

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First, the original request itself:

This is a request from Sean Haugh to have an item placed on the agenda for the July meeting of the Libertarian National Committee in St. Louis.

In a memo to the LNC dated 4/21/2009, Treasurer Aaron Starr spun a very lengthy tall tale in an attempt to justify purging At-Large Representative Lee Wrights from the Committee.  In that memo, Starr committed several acts which must be addressed directly by this Committee, in order to protect the integrity of the Party which Starr so blithely damaged.

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Embrace the chaos

Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on June 7th, 2009

by Sean Haugh

I’ve had a number of very powerful blessings in my life.  Near the top of the list is that I had some essential ideas pretty much figured out by age 8.

The true blessing is not that I was so smart.  What’s good about it is I never let the world change that child’s understanding.  We grasp so much when we are young and haven’t been told yet how to interpret our experience.  It takes years of schooling to convince us to buy into some more artificial world view.

I remember how profound it was when I realized my place in the universe.  It’s pretty darn small, and the universe is really quite vast.  It occurred to me that as one person on one planet in one galaxy, among numberless people on numberless planets in an infinite universe, it would be impossible from that vantage point to understand everything.

So I let it go.  Not needing to know and understand everything is the most liberating notion that ever entered my pretty little head.

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Formal Complaint re: LP Monday Message: Who is Joel Boniek?

Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on May 5th, 2009

by Sean Haugh 

Members of the Libertarian National Committee:

This is a formal complaint.  I would like to have a public response to it from the LNC.

When I left as your Political Director on December 18, 2008, we had 209 elected Libertarians currently serving in office across the country.  Why is it that our office keeps telling me about what Republicans are doing in office?  Why are we advertising to our own membership for our competition when we have over 200 people in similar situations who can tell us about what Libertarians are doing in office?

How could anyone in their right mind find a reason in this message to donate to the Libertarian Party?  If it told people to donate money to the Republican Party, it would be a consistent message.  We need our national staff to not advertise for the Republican Party, but instead to focus their efforts on advertising for the Libertarian Party, Libertarian elected officeholders and Libertarian candidates only.

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What Tea Parties are and are not

Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on April 22nd, 2009

by Sean Haugh

The Tea Party movement is so much more, and so much less, than what all the politicians and media pundits want it to be.  Our system of government and those who live in that political world have drifted so far away from America that they are incapable of recognizing what is really happening.

It is simply this: a rapidly growing number of Americans are fed up.  That’s it.  Nothing more, and nothing less.

We’re fed up with politicians whose only answer to our problems is to try to spend our way out of them.  We’re fed up with corporate fat cats who fly in individual private jets to collect billions of our dollars in bailout money.  We’re fed up with this notion that we have to give up our privacy and our freedoms to feel secure.

We have had it up to here with politicians and corporations trying to run every aspect of our lives for their benefit.  All we ever wanted was to run our own lives for the benefit of ourselves and our families.

We’re not just fed up.  We’ve woken up.  We realized that the politicians have stopped spending our money and started spending our children’s money, our grandchildren’s money, and probably even our great-grandchildren’s money.  Every parent wants their child to have it better than they did.  You politicians should realize that once we got wise to this, we wouldn’t like it one bit.

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