09-04-2009, 06:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-04-2009, 10:53 PM by Bruce Clemens.)
Hi, all.
I am pleased I found this forum. I have spent the last year sort of wandering in the wilderness…I used to have a podcast on iTunes that was very popular among “small ‘L’ libertarians.” Those are the folks who are idealogues about freedom, personal ownership and are basically anarchists in the best sense of the word. I still see myself as one of them, and I have learned to reconcile that with my increasing revulsion for the political process. My podcast was called “Radio Free Liberty”. I used the psuedonym Cato Craft. It’s still out there (thanks to my loving daughter who keeps renewing the domain…I would have scrapped it some time back) at www.radiofreeliberty.com .
The thing is, almost everything I said was predicated on the idea that we can change things through the political process…I thought that if enough of us who believe in freedom got together and voted the right way, we could bring this country back to where it belongs. Stupidly, I thought that the only thing between us and our freedom was a majority at the polls. But my disillusionment with politics becomes almost palpable in the later episodes. I began to realize that you can vote yourself free about as well as you can spend yourself rich.
I stopped my podcast abruptly after I realized that politics is NOT an option. I did a program on WTC 7. It was the first time I had learned of the collapse of the “Third Tower” and the implications it leads to. Boy, did I get blasted. I can’t understand how so many of my “libertarian” listeners who seemed to have such a deep distrust of government could possibly have such an angry reaction to my questioning of the Government’s position on 9-11. I got emails accusing me of offending the victim’s families, of being duped by “conspiracy theorists”, and of just being an idiot. I had lots of folks pull their funding of my podcast…people who readily accepted my position on free markets, government lunacy,Homeland Security, and the fact that we are on our own in this world.
Well, now I know…my listeners were not interested in the truth. Most of them wanted to be reinforced in a paradigm of a world that allowed them to believe that votes count and public servants try to do the right thing. And if they are presented with irrefutable facts that blow away that paradigm, their reaction is to try to destroy the messenger.
So what now? I don’t know…other than to continue to try to promote the truth. Thanks to you all for what you are doing. I will enjoy hanging out here and learning everything I can. I hope to actually contribute some day.
Best,
Bruce (Cato)
I am pleased I found this forum. I have spent the last year sort of wandering in the wilderness…I used to have a podcast on iTunes that was very popular among “small ‘L’ libertarians.” Those are the folks who are idealogues about freedom, personal ownership and are basically anarchists in the best sense of the word. I still see myself as one of them, and I have learned to reconcile that with my increasing revulsion for the political process. My podcast was called “Radio Free Liberty”. I used the psuedonym Cato Craft. It’s still out there (thanks to my loving daughter who keeps renewing the domain…I would have scrapped it some time back) at www.radiofreeliberty.com .
The thing is, almost everything I said was predicated on the idea that we can change things through the political process…I thought that if enough of us who believe in freedom got together and voted the right way, we could bring this country back to where it belongs. Stupidly, I thought that the only thing between us and our freedom was a majority at the polls. But my disillusionment with politics becomes almost palpable in the later episodes. I began to realize that you can vote yourself free about as well as you can spend yourself rich.
I stopped my podcast abruptly after I realized that politics is NOT an option. I did a program on WTC 7. It was the first time I had learned of the collapse of the “Third Tower” and the implications it leads to. Boy, did I get blasted. I can’t understand how so many of my “libertarian” listeners who seemed to have such a deep distrust of government could possibly have such an angry reaction to my questioning of the Government’s position on 9-11. I got emails accusing me of offending the victim’s families, of being duped by “conspiracy theorists”, and of just being an idiot. I had lots of folks pull their funding of my podcast…people who readily accepted my position on free markets, government lunacy,Homeland Security, and the fact that we are on our own in this world.
Well, now I know…my listeners were not interested in the truth. Most of them wanted to be reinforced in a paradigm of a world that allowed them to believe that votes count and public servants try to do the right thing. And if they are presented with irrefutable facts that blow away that paradigm, their reaction is to try to destroy the messenger.
So what now? I don’t know…other than to continue to try to promote the truth. Thanks to you all for what you are doing. I will enjoy hanging out here and learning everything I can. I hope to actually contribute some day.
Best,
Bruce (Cato)