Recently by Eric Peters: GM Is Watching You…

Ive had numerous responses to articles Ive written asking me, Ok, so whats the next step?

I respect your intelligence, so I wont say voting.

We have about as much real choice at the ballot box as a condemned prisoner has when offered the option of being gassed  or hung. It will not matter an iota what front man is (s)elected for the 2012 presidential run. Oh, and that front man will not be Ron Paul  precisely because Ron Paul would not be a front man. I am certain he knows this as well as I do. He is running only because it gives him a podium; helps to spread the word. But Dr. Paul (who unlike the many shysters with mail-order divinity degrees out there actually is a real doctor and so deserves the honorific) knows hes this eras Barry Goldwater  and just as likely to be elected president.

In the end, we will get exactly what weve been getting for at least the past 147 years: More government-corporate tag teaming. And the ones being tagged will be us.

So, what can we do?

There is still one mechanism with real teeth that we can use to effect real change  if we have the sense to use it:

The market.

More specifically, our preferences (for liberty) as expressed via our actions  our decisions to buy or not  in the marketplace. It is a force with more locked-up potential in it than an electoral juggernaut. A means by which the country could be transformed  peacefully  not in a generation, but in a matter of weeks or months.

Consider two examples Ive written about recently: GMs odious OnStar onboard Big Brother  and the similarly loathsome Submission Training travelers must endure at airports. GM and the insurance cartels and the law enforcement cartels (the same thing, really) want to be able to monitor you at all times and control you, too, via GPS implants in cars that automatically and instantaneously transmit data about your driving habits directly to the in box of the enforcement arms of the latter. The TSA wants not security, but submission  and not just at airports. Gate rape is just a trial run. Once broadly accepted, count on it being expanded to shopping malls, public buildings, maybe even sidewalks.

The key thing to grasp is that in both cases the tyrants (private and public) rely on our voluntary consent. There is no law  yet  that says we have to purchase a GM vehicle. There is no law  yet  that we have to fly. We still have a real choice. It may not be an easy choice (in the case of flying, which for some people may be the only way to get where theyre going) but the bottom line is we dont have to take it.

We can say no.

And if we did say no  and by we I mean just enough of us to hurt the bastards in the one soft spot they have, their pocketbooks  things would change all right. Can you imagine what the effect on GM would be if its sales suddenly dropped by 20 percent solely because that many otherwise-likely GM buyers decided (and said so, openly) that they were not going to buy a GM vehicle again until GM made OnStar optional  and quit trying to force it on every single person who buys a GM vehicle? How long do you suppose it would take for GM to take OnStar off the roster of standard features? (The same principle could be applied with equal effectiveness to annoying petty tyrannies such as the Seatbelt Fuhrer that many new cars now come with; and to many other things besides.)

Imagine if just 20 percent of prospective air travelers stopped flying  and made it clear that the only reason they decided not to buy a ticket was that they are not willing to play Submission Training at the gate. That they will not buy a ticket again  ever  until little kids and teenage girls and old people and everyone else who hasnt done a god-damned thing to merit it is left free to board the plane without being made to do more than present their ticket to the gate agent. (Even having to show ID is an outrageous affront to liberty; why is it anyones business but yours who you are? As recently the 1980s, we could fly without having to show our government-issued collars  our IDs  to the airline Sicherheitsdeinst. It ought to be that way again.)

If just 20 percent of us did this, the TSA and all the rest of it would be gone by Christmas. Long before the next president is (s)elected.

We could recover our liberty  our dignity as human beings. And the only vote involved would be the one we make with our dollars. The election could be held tomorrow, people.

It really is that easy.

So, much as I wish Ron Paul well and would be very pleased if he were to somehow beat the house and get on the ticket over that oleaginous cretin Mitt Romney or that even more dreadful recycled George W. Bush sleazing his way out of Texas, I doubt even that  or his even less likely election as the next president  would materially change anything.

But withdrawing our consent; declining to pay for our own enslavement  now that would accomplish miracles.

If only enough of us would realize it .

The Best of Eric Peters