A continuing series of discussions of Mark Levin’s new book,

The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic

(Discussion #24 – No, not the hamburger chain)

When I turned on the Internet today, I was thinking of a brief exchange over at TheOtherMcCain a few days ago. After applying the choke, pulling the starter cord, and then throttling the Internet back to idle, I stood in uffish thought while watching the graphics slowly inflate…

So, where are the rallies?

Co-blogger Smitty asked this in the comments at TheOtherMcCain, and like a grain of sand in the eye, it stayed with me for a while. I mean, look around! The IRS is shutting down dissent (with 100% conservative groups targeted). You are losing your healthcare and people are dying from it. The borders are being thrown open and people are dying from it. Your home is losing value again, and your retirement is dying from it. More people are leaving the workforce. The President has arrogated the role of Congress to himself, and Daryl Issa’s committee to investigate all of Obama’s potential criminality is moving at a pace that makes continental drift look like an animated short.

So where are the rallies?

Have the Tea Party groups been effectively neutralized? Have the major rally speakers gone off the grid? With the exception of The ALGORE, we all know it’s cold outside. That tends to keep people from rallying there. But you have to plan rallies in advance, and the cold months are great for that. I’ve seen and heard nothing about any upcoming rallies featuring Allen West, Sarah Palin, Mike Lee, Scott Walker or any talk radio stars. So why is it so quiet? Is it that eerie jungle silence, just before the storm breaks? Or is it something more… menacing?

Well that makes me shiver. We can’t be there yet, can we?

To be fair, it’s not total silence. We’ve seen some minor rallies. A recent rally for Matt Bevin had a whopping 400 or so “Tea Party activists” (this is a news report, so maybe there were two-thousand, but I doubt it). Why doesn’t someone with a little pull organize a bigger rally for Bevin in advance? Get some media voices there. Michelle Malkin or a sitting Republican Governor, perhaps? No. We’ve gotten none of that.

Instead we have Ann Coulter and a few other folks claiming we really, really, really need those Republicans to win! I think she means Matt Bevin should quietly disappear from the stage.

If this is the prize, then winning isn’t the goal If this is the prize, then winning isn’t the goal

Which begs the question: Win what, exactly, Ann? I’m tired of winning the equivalent of those “Chinese” handcuffs that were the consolation prize at a carnival ring toss, when what we want to win is the giant, stuffed animal of economic and individual liberty.

With the exception of a handful of genuine Constitutionalists like Cruz, Lee, and Rand Paul (and a scurrilous handful of Democrats with the (R) after their names, like Graham, McCain, and Collins), Republicans have a raft of useless members of Congress that are little more than metronomes. And what exactly is the point of keeping two-hundred odd metronomes sitting in Congress, going back and forth like the poor, fat kid in a game of keep-away during recess? (Just kidding. They’re all fat kids now, according to the First Lady.)

The fact is, we’ve gone over the cliff already. We need more Steve King, Trey Gowdy, and Louie Gomert types in congress to rebuild this nation and restore liberty. Specifically, We, the People need them. We’re long past the point where We the People share much in common with You the Republicans. We owe Republicans a heaping helping of nothing .

But that’s not what I came to tell you about.







(Came to talk about the draft.)

I spent forty minutes looking for rally information on various search engines, and found very little that was current. Evidently Ted Cruz was given an award last week and there were over a thousand people present. I guess it wasn’t worth someone uploading a video. But that was no rally. It was a gala event.

This is the operational difference between the left and the right. Yes we all have day jobs and responsibilities and they don’t. Yes we’re busy and they aren’t. You’ve heard all the explanations. But face it, if you found out that Mark Levin and Ted Cruz, or Allen West and Michelle Malkin were going to be speaking at a big rally in Texas this coming June, and it was going to be outside, and thousands were encouraged to show up, some of you would be making plans to attend. Even better would be a march against abuse of the IRS by Democrats, for forcing paid federal employees to go after peaceful, law abiding citizens. (Some people who work for the federal government are not leftists, after all, so let’s not blame the rank-and-file agents at the IRS.)

But hey, if you also heard Mike Lee and Tim Scott were going to be speaking, you’d probably figure it was going to merit actual news coverage. (And forget all those other names, if Dana Loesh and Sarah Palin were to be featured speakers, every red-blooded, American male with a brain would show up, with their wives to chaperone.) Add a big, barbecue cookoff, and maybe get a decent band to show up, and you’d start feeling bad for missing such an event. You know you would! See, on the right, we may not have time to riot, but we always have time to party.

Responsibly.

For example, I know you remember the huge, tailgate party in Searchlight Nevada featuring Sarah Palin:

Everyone who attended that is like the people who got to say they were at Woodstock or the first Burning Man (without the fried brain cells and the crab lice infestation). I wish I had been there, even if it added to the fried brain cell quotient.

Here’s the thing: the left makes a show out of everything. It’s a matter of style over substance for them because any substance they have is purely accidental. The right is constantly fighting substance overload on all of the major issues because we can back up our positions with history, economic data, legal precedent, the moral position, and Constitutional authority for the policies we back. The arguments among people on the right are legendary for this reason. But very few people on the right know how to make a show out of policy presentations. Our production values are weak.

Thus, even when rallies are happening, we rarely know about them until after they are over and someone puts up a horrible, shaky, “smartphone” video. (And when the rallies occur, they are often poorly set-up, since conservatives and Republicans fail to contract with great sound reinforcement pros and great video pros. You have seen me harping on that problem before, but seriously, Tea Party: Clair Brothers. Look them up. Learn what they do.) Still…

Where are the rallies?

We quickly formulated a response to Smitty’s Inquiry, based on the concept that Obama’s serial depredations have placed us all in a state of disarray. We’re off balance, and fighting to keep home and hearth safe. It’s hard to rally when you’re worried about being arrested for the crime of following the Constitution. Further, the fecklessness of Ann Coulter’s “winning” Republicans (This just in: Issa’s committee has asked for some records from someplace, again, because they didn’t get them the first six times they asked for them. Progress!) means that an awful lot of us have given up on trying to rally around Republicans.

Those are the excuses we came up with on short notice. I suspect you’ll find them unsatisfying.

At some point, if we don’t stop the acceleration toward totalitarianism, we’re going to be facing a Venezuela situation. Whether the catalyst is the illegal alien problem or election fraud, or some other impeachable offense being left on the table by John Boehner remains to be seen. Then the rallies will be spontaneous (like combustion), and a lot of people will be arrested (or worse). We cannot afford to let things get that far out of hand. We need to make our presence known.

This is one reason why the Article Five Convention process is so very important. If we can’t find any Republicans to rally around, and we can’t seem to turn out to march or protest (remember the trucker protest “fizzle”—do we score one for fear of big government? You decide), then we had better be working on a solution to the problems we face. And the solution is to restore power to the states, and pass Amendments that directly rein in the federal leviathan. This Great Awakening is unfolding in real time, and you are there.

I have proposed a slow, ongoing, virtual rally at the ArticleFiveProcess website, which is all expressed via the “heat map.” Lighting that map up is like attending a rally, since it shows you that progress is being made. It also serves notice to the world that this Convention will happen, and no one can stop it.

Over the next few months, we’re going to be adding to the ArticleFiveProcess website. One feature will be the addition of heat map-related changes to include states that have already passed resolutions. Activity is picking up in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Arizona. We already have Indiana and Virginia out in front. Things are happening, despite the lack of visible rallies.

I know the typical answer to someone who jumps up to yell “somebody do something!” is to put them in charge. But this is bigger than one person, no matter how organized. We need to serve notice that activism is necessary. But we also need to be prepared, each of us, to get involved. Over the next few months you’re going to see an increase in fundraising appeals and notices of rallies, townhalls, and events. We can’t be everywhere, so we must be very selective.

Send contributions only to conservatives and strong Constitutionalists. Attend only rallies for the same. Discourage activism on behalf of the RNC, and encourage your neighbors to support Restoration.

For the time-challenged and the cash-challenged, there is still much you can do to show that we are advancing. Please take the time to learn about the Article Five Convention process, and either join with organized activist groups (see ConventionOfStates for how) or spend a few minutes on your own to call or write your own, local state representative.

Then, please take a few moments to update the scoreboard at the ArticleFiveProcess site, so we can light up that heat map.

I’ll leave you with a video by Ulysses Arn of former Illinois Representative Joe Walsh, commenting on the Article Five Convention during a townhall meeting early this month:

Previously:

Discussion #23 – Because the Internet, that’s why

Discussion #22 – Just the Video

Discussion #21 – Frequently Asked Questions

Discussion #20 – Nullification: don’t do an image search!

Discussion #19 – The Kooks and Neoconfederates Edition

Discussion #18 – #Shutuppery

Discussion #17 – Why All The Lies?

Discussion #16 – A Few Quick Notes

Discussion #15: Our Cities: The Real Misery Index

Discussion #14: The Missing Balance and the Many Applications

Discussion #13: Activism, and the Scope of the Problem

Discussion #12: Cutting Back The Bureaucracy

Discussion #11: ArticleFiveProcess site news

Discussion #10: The Article Five process is how we go on offense

Discussion #9: the filthy habit of continuing resolutions

Discussion #8: Naysayers

Discussion #7: Tracking Our Progress

Discussion #6: Amendments on Spending and Taxes

Discussion #5: How much power do the states have?

Discussion #4: What If They Hijack the Convention?

Discussion #3: An Invitation to Our Friends on the Left

Discussion #2: Run Away!

Discussion #1: Zombie Doctrine, Tactics, and the Liberty Amendments