Brainstorming at Ralph's

On January 20, 2001, just after George Bush took the oath of office, a group of Libertarians was plotting the overthrow of his government.

Well, actually, a bunch of people got together at Ralph Shnelvar's house to brainstorm on how we could peacefully get a lot more people to become members of the Libertarian Party.

This truly was a brainstorming session. The results of this brainstorming session are quite encouraging.

At the last meeting (Saturday Dec 2, 2000) of the Ad Hoc Committee that I call E Pluribus Uterus, I had presented the tentative idea that we, as Libertarians, attempt to go out and purchase controlling shares of a profitable national media outlet. The purpose of this would have been to:

1. Give us a bit more exposure.
2. The profits could fund Libertarian activities.
3. Would be a liquid investment vehicle.

This idea did not seem to generate a lot of enthusiasm. Plus, a preliminary search of available outlets showed that there were no good candidates even if we did manage to raise $100 to $1,000 from every registered Libertarian in the country.

So much for that idea.

Also at that last meeting, Ron Bain suggested that we attempt to draft Clint Eastwood. At the Jan 20th meeting Steve Gresh gave some more information about Eastwood's qualifications as a candidate.

The January 20, 2001 meeting was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. This being a group of Libertarians, the first Libertarian showed up before I had a chance to take a shower at 10:30 a.m.. The second showed up at 11:30. The last one showed up at 3:30.

By 3:30 we had the following attendees (in alphabetical order by last name)

• Ron Bain
• Steve Gresh
• Sara Raab
• Ralph Shnelvar
• Jerry Van Sickle
• BetteRose Smith
• Chris Yoder

At noon I called the meeting to order. I spent about 30 minutes going around and got an overview of the different political philosophies of each attendee. Although I know that each attendee basically wants the same thing - "Get the damn government off of my back!" - The reason I did this was to get a feeling for the underlying objective of each attendee. Is it "no government?", "small government?", "constitutionally limited government?"

Of course, each Libertarian had his own feel for what government (if any) should do. All of us, though, are unanimous that the current government is much too big and very much out of control.

The next phase of the meeting dealt with "What demographic group should we be targeting?" The general consensus was that we should be targeting high school and college kids; roughly, Gen X and Gen Y. Sara Raab cautioned, though, that these kids are terribly self-centered and nonpolitical - getting to them will be hard.

We next progressed to "Let's brainstorm. Please place on the table as absurd an idea as you can. Maybe something will be sparked."

One of the things that I regret is that I did not put in the "What is our objective?" phase before we started brainstorming. As it turns out, it may have been lucky that we did not constrain ourselves with something as silly as an objective.

During the meeting Jerry Van Sickle suggested that we have many Libertarian experiments so that we can see what works. I argued that with the limited resources that we have that we need to focus. Parallel experiments should be replaced with sequential experiments. As it turns out, Jerry may be correct by default. Getting Libertarians to focus on a single task may be as hard as getting a crew at Red Robin to sing Happy Birthday on key.

Here are some of the whacked-out ideas that were suggested:

1. Start a chain of restaurants, burger places, called the Libertarian.
2. Porn web site with LP philosophy as requirements to get in?
3. Get Penn & Teller (the famous magicians) to run for president and vice president: Teller would be the perfect vice presidential candidate since no one has heard from him before and no one will hear from him again.
4. Bikini Carwash Fund raiser.
5. Get a really silly ballot initiative. For instance:
   1. Ballot initiative to force governor to wear broncos uniform on Super Bowl Sunday.
   2. One month a year, the speed limit goes up 15 mph statewide.
   3. On April 15th, no sales tax anywhere in the state of Colorado.

BALLOT INITIATIVE: We actually went through a list of "good" ballot initiatives when BetteRose pointed out that each of the (now stupid) proposals were anti-Libertarian because they were somehow coercive. There was a collective "Oh" when BetteRose pointed out the flaws.

So we came up with criteria that a ballot initiative should meet:

1. It should not be coercive in any way.
2. It should have absolutely no opposition since we do not want a battle with the title setting board.
3. It should appeal to GenXers and GenYers so that we can get them involved in the ballot initiative process and, thus, involved with the Libertarian party.

The meeting adjourned, temporarily, so that we could all go to Hunan Gardens for a cheap - but good - buffet lunch.

While grabbing a smoke break, Sara Raab politely gave a couple of passing GenYers a "Come here, I'd like to talk to you" shout and they came over. "What law do you think should be changed?" These young men said "If a young person is driving and has a drunk passenger, then the driver can get a ticket."

We think that this would be a great law to change. Way-to-go Sara!

PENN JILLETTE: It turns out that Penn Jillette may be the ideal Libertarian candidate. A brief search of his background shows him to be quite libertarian as well as smart. Clearly, he knows how to use the media.

A presidential campaign based on magic and logic should, as they say, "have legs."

Whether he wins or not, he will likely bring a lot of good press to the Libertarian Party.

Both Steve Gresh and I asked BetteRose for some sort of official blessing so that draft committees could have some sort of official sanction. BetteRose pointed out that - although she could be a member of a draft committee - it is against bylaws to give any official sanction to any draft committee.

RESULTS: Three tasks will be pursued in parallel by E Pluribus Uterus:

1. A ballot initiative will be investigated. This task will be initially spearheaded by Chris Yoder and Sara Raab.
2. A "Draft Clint Eastwood" committee will be spearheaded by Ron Bain.
3. A "Draft Penn Jillette" committee will be jointly spearheaded by Steve Gresh and Ralph Shnelvar.

Of course, we are looking for both input and volunteers.

Ralph