Below is the speech I wrote for LRP’s grassroots training that took place last Sunday. I got some good reviews, so I thought I’d post it.
Readers, please keep in mind a few things:
-I did not present this verbatim, and never intended to. I ad-libbed parts of my speech, if anything this was to serve as a guide.
-This was to be presented to a liberty-minded group of political activists, so I wrote it that way. At some point, I’d like to revisit and expand upon this subject matter in a more general way, but for that day’s purposes, I stuck to how my subject matter related to advancing the cause of liberty.
-The subject matter at hand is infinitely complicated, and I’m almost ashamed that I tried to express it in speech format, much less in under half an hour. Again, I plan on expanding on what I’ve said here. If anything, my speech was meant to spark interest in what I was talking about.
-I used the word “Love” entirely too often, in my opinion. The word is overused these days, and mostly refers to things other than what I consider “love”. For the purposes of this speech, when I say “love” I’m referring to either the absence of fear, or “stewardship”(as Darryl Drumright described it to me after my speech), or both.
I hope you enjoy reading this speech as much as I enjoyed giving it. Thanks to the Liberty Restoration Project for putting on last weekends wonderful events, and to Catherine especially for housing my poor ass all weekend.
Critiques are not only welcome, but encouraged!
-Josh Carter
“You won’t hear me talking about a lot of issues today. You won’t hear me telling you what bills to support or oppose or how to go door to door. I will not be performing a skit today. What I will be talking about, what I will attempt to describe, is the fire inside me that makes me go, that demands that I take action, that burns through walls of fear and lights the way in the dark places.
Such things are hard to describe, so bear with me. Like I said, I won’t be talking much politics, instead I want to talk about the ways I’ve made some progress in advancing the cause of liberty, and to describe that, first I must describe some of the obstacles to the success of liberty and peace.
So, it seems we’ve got a struggle of mindsets on our hands…. On one extreme we have those that wish to be absolutely free; those that wish to self-govern; those that believe that where true liberty exists, peace and prosperity will follow closely by.
On the other hand, we have those of us who think that central planning and control is the cure for our societal woes; those that see the average human as unfit to make one’s own decisions; those that believe coercion can bring peace, and we’ve got everything in between.
Now, the thing is, from what I see, there are people on both sides that think one way and feel the other. What I mean by that is I’ve seen plenty of people who would identify themselves as liberal or maybe even socialist, but when I look at them I see someone that holds some very libertarian beliefs, but they will deny it to the bitter end. By the same token, I’ve met people that call themselves “libertarian” or “liberty-minded” that strike me as rather fascist.
Now, this is a strange obstacle. It causes plenty of unnecessary misunderstandings, and the consequences are real, but they are hard to spot, and harder to define, and the solutions are difficult to even fathom. I could go on for hours about the ins and outs of it all, but today I want to focus on the idea of someone supporting the nuts and bolts of why liberty and freedom work, but without truly holding them in your heart.
This has several manifestations. Maybe we try to administer our concept of “freedom”, attempting to force it on others in a grand display of hypocrisy. This always gets us nowhere, how could one force someone to be free? One cannot, but the idea that you can comes from the fear of others being free. The same people that want their own personal freedom can sometimes judge others as unworthy of the same liberty.
Others want to be free, but they are afraid of it. Consciously or not, freedom scares them. They live life codependent on the people around them, not truly living an individual life.
The list goes on, but the common theme is fear. This fear, like any fear, is a prison, and an obstacle to happiness.
One subject that I want to get into is apathy and defeatism. To stand up for one’s self is taboo, to speak out is looked at as dangerous, and it’s no surprise. Our leaders don’t seem to like dissent. A friend of mine from Phelps County told me once, “Josh, there may be old rebels, and there may be bold rebels, but there are no old, bold rebels.” And she’s right.
Of course, some are jailed or killed, but I think a good many simply burn themselves out. They are swallowed up by a sense that they won’t get anywhere, that their fight is hopeless—that harassment and ridicule will be the only rewards for their efforts. All their love and ability is shrouded by this fear, this hopelessness.
Eventually, we get to the point where we say to ourselves: what’s so bad about apathy? Who can help it in times like these? We say to ourselves: Who will help me, who will carry this burden for me? Without this help, surely there is little chance that I can make a difference. Without someone to guide me, how could I possibly find my way? I’m just one drop in a sea of humanity, what could I possibly effect?
We find it easier, then, to just blend in with the crowd, and try to make the best out of our caged existence. As long as I get my paycheck and my sitcoms and my McDonald’s, who really cares what else goes on, right? It is neither my fault nor my problem if my government does things that I don’t approve of, because once you give up control of your own way, you have no responsibility for what happens, kinda comforting, right?
We’re surrounded by the notion that there is no need to express real individuality, the processed, quality-controlled, candy-coated stuff, is much easier swallow, thank you very much. Real individuality is only for those who have earned it, like movie stars, rock stars, rappers, sports “heroes”, and all our favorite reality TV characters. For us, we get to imitate their greatness and try to see ourselves in them, and endlessly hope to one day be like them.
Well, if this is your way of thinking, I’ve got some bad news for you. Furthermore, if you are looking for a better way of living, I’ve got some really GOOD news for you. But first the bad news.
The Bad News is that probably none of us will ever win a Nobel Prize or be on MTV Cribs or hit a home run in a major league ballgame. The Bad News is that to identify with and try to be someone else, is to lose your way. There’s a reason they call it your life, you know. It’s because when you let someone else dictate how you “should” be, you turn your back on the idea that you were born perfect, to be perfectly the human being you were made to be.
See, the dirty little secret that those who would control you don’t want you to know is that you are responsible for the world around you whether you outwardly participate in it or not. Many wish to avoid “rocking the boat”. But I assure you, inaction and submission have some quite serious and real impacts on the world around you, and the consequences you hope to avoid by playing along are nothing compared to repercussions of sloth.
I’m sure I don’t have to explain to anyone here the dangers of incremental encroachments on liberty, but they illustrate my point beautifully, and it’s been said before, so here I paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: When we are willing to give up, yes, a little, tiny bit of our personal liberty, so that we can feel secure in our social setting, we will lose both the liberty to be ourselves and the feeling of security in being ourselves, and rightfully so!
I’m not going to stand here today and pretend like this is an easy concept to adopt, however. We just be ourselves, and everything works out, and there’s no pain or discomfort, right? Yeah, not so much. There certainly are some complications to this idea.
The desire to “fit in” cannot be ignored, first off. It is a strong compulsion, and is hammered into our beings from a young age from all angles, but I do not find it to be inherent. If it were, youthful angst would be a very different beast. Certainly, children look to their parent’s for approval, but the healthy child takes it no further than a friendship level, but more on that later.
The fact of the matter is that many of us feel this so-called “need” to belong to something. We require other’s approval for our own happiness, we let ourselves be tugged around by strings others give us and the more we fear the person on the other end, the more tightly we hold the string.
Of course, nobody wants to call it fear. Most call it passion, hate, even love or simply “business”. Justify it however you like, the fact remains that it is fear, plain and simple. Fear of what others think. How silly is that? Being afraid of an opinion. Bah.
But for many of us it’s not just the fear of ridicule or being ostracized, it’s the rush they get from others’ approval. This can be even more dangerous, as this emotion is rooted in the same fear, but it masquerades itself as pride, and passes in most circles as self-esteem. But every time we seek that rush, we ensure a later depression, when reality changes around us and we are still clinging wantonly to our social addictions.
And last but not least of the complications I want to mention is complacency. We say “well, it’s not that bad,” and frequently, it’s not. Most times standing up for what’s right doesn’t seem worth the trouble if you only look at the short term consequences. And in this, complacency can be one of the most dangerous traps to fall into, because it is the foundation that incrementalism is built upon.
Think about it: if there was a severe enough backlash every time the government stepped outside its moral bounds in the most minute and seemingly harmless way, could we have ever gotten to where we are today? But how do we first accomplish that, then subsequently maintain such vigilance? What virtue is it that can keep the spirit of liberty alive in the hearts of We the People? Is there such a thing?
Well, my friends, I am here today to tell you that there is such a light at the end of this tunnel, and I call it awareness. Think about that word for a second: AWARENESS. What does that mean to you? To me, the key to success in life—no matter what your goals are—is absolute awareness of everything going on both inside and around you. Your fears, desires, ambitions, the repulsions and attractions you feel for others, and the effects they have on you and your actions.
And I’m not talking about being informed or educated. Don’t get me wrong, book smarts and keeping up with current events are both important, but at best, they make up 25% of what is needed for functional humanity. The rest is awareness.
To be truly free, one must be aware. Without awareness of our emotions, the actions they lead to, and the consequences of those actions, we are flailing away in the dark, condemning ourselves to a life of hit-and-miss, we will never be acting, always reacting, and always playing catch-up to our marionettes, begging them for a freedom we didn’t know we possessed all along.
And how do we achieve such awareness? It’s actually very simple: we watch, we comprehend, but we do not judge. We detach from our egos, and simply observe. We make no effort to change, we just sit and watch. That’s all you have to do!
Like I said, it is very simple, but no one is saying that this will be easy or painless. The ease with which this change happens is inversely proportionate to the amount of unnecessary attachments we hold on to, and the pain is likewise directly proportionate.
One my favorite illustrations of this is the story of a painter named Joe. One day, Joe was painting on a ladder, when the footing of the ladder slipped out from under him, and he fell over 20 feet to the ground. His friends rushed to his side. “Joe, are you OK? That was quite a fall, did it hurt?”
Joe responded quite accurately, “No, the fall was fine, it was the stop that hurt.”
You see, in this reality, as human beings, we have the freedom of choice. There is no law of physics that will stop us from choosing our own path, right or wrong. We may free fall as long as we like, but the second our fallacies collide with reality—BOOM—pain manifests. A very wise man once said that “human suffering occurs when our illusions collide with reality.”
So the lesson here is when you feel a negative emotion coming over you, stop and identify just what illusion of yours is colliding with reality. Like I said, DON’T JUDGE! Don’t become frustrated or punish yourself, that only creates more illusions and misconceptions. Just watch, identify, listen, discern.
Be like the Rose. One of my favorite authors, Anthony DeMello said it something like this: we all have our flowers, our so-called “good qualities”, and we also all bear thorns. We spend much time vainly trying to enhance our natural beauty, and at the same time we are ashamed of our thorns. But not the rose! The rose makes no attempt to brighten its colors when being admired, nor increase its fragrance when an admirer stoops to enjoy it. At the same time, the rose makes no attempt to drop its thorns when an admirer pricks himself on one—the rose knows they are there for a reason, as well. No, the rose simply is what it was made to be, and it fulfills its role perfectly, without any ambition to be more, nor any fear of being less.
With this awareness of your own perfection, your fears will have no pull on you, and your love will become true love, for you will truly love yourself. The things you do will cease to be reactions, but instead actions. Without fear, the most disastrous circumstances are simply a new beginning. You simply pick up and go on, not wasting time on negative emotions, but not ignoring them, either.
Of course we will feel bad when we do not succeed, or if plans we spent weeks on are ruined, but we will be happy nonetheless, because we are not afraid. We carry on.
What does this have to do with politics? Well, if you like public control over private matters and disdain the idea of personal liberty, not a damn thing. But there is no way to truly further the cause of freedom without being free yourself. There is no way to spread love with fear. The best way to spread liberty is to live it.
The person that can love himself, to me, is what Thomas Paine described as a “Hero in the most sober sense of the word.” Not the hero who will jump on a grenade to save his squad or in front of a bullet to save a loved one. But the hero who just won’t, just can’t stop in the face of injustice and violation of basic human rights.
Whether their style is extroverted or introverted, they don’t quit. They may not be writing their Senator or planning an event all the time, but in everyday life, they are living the good life, spreading peace simply by their presence, not because it makes them feel good, but because its what they felt like doing at the time. They’re simply happy, for no other reason than there is no reason not to be.
There’s always a reason to get upset, but once you realize you get a choice in the matter, you don’t get all that upset anymore. There’s always a heckler, but that doesn’t mean you have to be mad at them. One of the most important things you can do in your life is to get rid of the idea that other people can anger you.
They can certainly try, but it’s up to you whether or not to get mad. When we say, “I am sooo mad at so and so,” we say it all. “I AM MAD”. The verb is yours, you are doing the action. The trick is, you can say “so and so made me mad”, but that’s in the past tense. When you are angry, it’s you doing it.
So just drop it. See the negative emotion, identify it, realize that you don’t have to identify with it, and let it go.
So if you’re not negatively effected by other’s dissent or fear, then you are free to feel your own feelings, and, just as important, think your own thoughts. You won’t rely on other’s opinions for your own. You will still need to listen, to take advice, but the final decision is always yours, and always best fits your own needs.
I’ve never read any Ayn Rand, but plenty of people have told me I need to, and I certainly selfishness as a virtue. Not greed, that is fear. But self-centered is all we can be. The evils of keeping to one’s self can never overcome the misdeeds done in the name of helping someone else. Charity is wonderful, if done voluntarily. But charity ends and suppression begins when there is a perpetual support system in place.
These concepts are taken for granted in the libertarian community in reference to economics, but how many realize they reach into the social realm as well? Just as free markets require individuality and can be smothered by interdependency, so can the personality wither and become atrophic when we rely on others for our own self-esteem.
The sometimes frightening but truly joyous truth is that we are alone. Not to say we are lonely, but instead emotionally and intellectually self-sufficient, with everything we need to be happy already inside us and everything we need to know around us.
One of the most beautiful things I took away from the series “Band of Brothers” was the name of their training camp. It was named after a nearby mountain that stood alone. The name of the mountain was “Currahee”, a Native American word that meant, “We stand alone, together.”
So, we stand alone as individuals, but together in the face of tyranny. I can’t tell you how honored I’ve been to stand among some of the heroes in this movement and in this room today, but I can tell you I’ve seen what just one of us can do.
As individuals, we can be downright frightening to the establishment. Together, we will be the end of it. Thank you, and God bless you, my heroes.”
