Allison Bricker
This past January, Mr. Gary Franchi of Restore the Republic and Freedom TV, inquired if I might be interested in becoming a regular columnist for Republic Magazine. My excited, albeit tongue-tied reply to him was emphatically yes-yes-yes. It struck me as a welcome opportunity to help spread the message of liberty and the Constitution in a medium more palatable to those still not sold on the notion that the internet is as revolutionary to the modern dissemination of information as the Gutenberg Press was in its day.
Thus with the would-be liberty movement demographic in mind and having written three separate articles, (two due out in June with the third coming in July), it seemed time to begin spreading the word in our little corner of the Republic; Lake County, Indiana, affectionately referred to as “da Region”
For the uninitiated, Lake County was once home to Jean Shepherd, the author and main protagonist of “A Christmas Story” as well as birthplace of “The Jackson Five”. However, these days all that remain are the hollowed out rusting skeletons of the once great steel mills. Miles upon endless miles of strip malls conjoined with fast food restaurants all nestled in between the crumbling downtowns of cities like Hammond, East Chicago, and Gary.
In contrast to the industrial and manufacturing carcass, politically speaking Lake County is as it has been for the last one-hundred years. Control of the county in large part cedes itself to the behemoth labor unions that in turn ensure the most corrupt ingrained political machine this side of Chicago city limits retains its power. The once proud labor pool still begrudgingly votes year after year for “Democrats” hoping that some how, some way, the Democrat Party will live up to its unofficial billing as “the party for the little guy”.
Much of the country came to know the embarrassment that is Lake County Politics, when on the evening of the 2008 Indiana Primary Election, the H2 Hummer driving, poverty-pimp Mayor of Gary, Rudy Clay squared off live on CNN against the “Dapper Dan” slicked hair, good-ole boy Mayor of Hammond, Thomas McDermott, regarding the obscenely late election returns.
As a consequence of the aforementioned, the bulk of the population has become so zealously cynical to politics as usual, that it in turn makes for a receptive audience. This at least in my opinion makes an ideal location to spread the message of Liberty and severely restricted Constitutional government. Let us be candidly plain, a great reshuffling is indeed on the horizon. Whether liberty beats back the stranglehold of ever-encroaching tyranny is as of yet undecided, but this merely indicates to me that we must reaffirm our duty and dedication as protectors of this; the greatest experiment in human liberty the world has ever known.
As so eloquently written in a quote attributed to Mr. Samuel Adams:
With the sentiment of Mr. Adams in mind, it occurred to me that perhaps I might do my part in setting these “brush fires” by contacting small businesses in the area to see if they would be interested in carrying “Republic Magazine” on their newsstands. Thus, upon their arrival, I loaded up our little car, quickly stopped off at Dunkin’ Donuts for my beverage of choice regardless of weather: coffee, and began my enjoyable/educational trek up, down, and across Lake County, Indiana.
As suspected, the smoke shops, natural heath stores, the firearms dealer whom we just purchased a shotgun from a few months back, as well as several mom and pop convenience stores all agreed to take the magazines on consignment. By the time it came to stop soliciting business and instead switch to free distributive promotion by handing out copies to doctor’s offices and some of the small town taverns, my spiel in support of Liberty and the Constitution verbalized itself effortlessly.
However, I was immediately dumbstruck when not once, twice, but three times in response to me expounding that the magazine is “Pro-Liberty” and “Pro-Constitution” the business owner immediately, tersely, and without pause responded, “Yeah, but I am a Democrat”.
The obvious question, which then springs to mind is, so does that mean you are “anti-Liberty” and “anti-Constituion”? However, not wishing to sidetrack myself from the task at hand, I simply thanked them for their time and continued on my way. It struck me as odd, having grown up in a Democrat household, that the reaction to the words Constitution and liberty would be “Yeah, but I’m a Democrat.”
My mother considered herself a Democrat. She was an avid fan of John F. Kennedy, a hippie who thought the drug war was ludicrous, and someone who helped define the original definition of the word liberal to me as one who has an open mind. At one time up until just after President Clinton was elected, I even considered myself a Democrat. We certainly were not rich; our family was that typical Lake County, blue-collar working-class family, i.e. the Democrat Party Poster family.
Indeed, our family continues to have some extraordinary friends who still call themselves Democrats. Yet none has flummoxed me with such a guttural knee jerk reaction to the word liberty or Constitution. The difference at least in my mind; all of our Democrat friends belong to the “Boomer” generation, not “Generation Me” or “Gen X”. Thus, the reaction elicited by these “neo-liberals” is the unfortunate symptom of a deeper more engrained polarization from that which my parent’s generation grew up.
In the end, my experience advocating the virtues of liberty, illuminated two keen points. Overall, the message of liberty continues to receive a wider and growing audience, and that as the purposeful polarization of the left/right paradigm continues, their minions will most likely, as ironic as it may seem, join in support of a common enemy: Those of us who seek to rebind the hands of government back unto Constitutional restrictions.
Whether it is regarding foreign policy and the doctrine of preemptive war or the fascist corporatization of our economy, it is clear that the Constitution is seen solely as an obstruction to the tyrant’s utopian fairytale.
