Perpetual Depression

Yes, I laugh and smile. I enjoy my precious time with my children and friends. I work hard and get things done.

But when it comes to politics, there is no joy, only sorrow.

This is how I battle depression.

I first take a moment to wallow in it. Our purpose on earth is to experience life, and part of life is the ocean of emotion that overcomes us. Treasure those moments, the good and the bad. The bitterest experiences make the sweeter ever sweeter.

Then I assess why I feel the way I do. Emotions are not without reason.

I feel sorrow that our great American experiment is failing.

I feel sorrow that our nation’s founding principles are fading.

I feel sorrow that we are becoming like everyone else in the world.

Of the above, only a few things remain. We still have love–at a personal, family level. We still have religion, at least some of us. Other than that, the rest is fading away quickly.

Then I assess what I can do to control my own emotions. This isn’t mind-over-matter stuff, this is applying my understanding of how my emotions work to get the result I want.

What makes America great? Freedom. Unalienable, God-given rights. Independence. Limited government. Prosperity. Power. Truth. Love. Family. Religion. Property. Guns. Men who carry guns and shoot bad guys. Bad guys who are too scared to leave their own houses. Newspapers who complain about the way government does things.

That’s what makes America great.

I would give me great joy to see America restored to her former glory, with limited government and private citizens doing all the work and taking all the responsibility and initiative.

I remain hopeful. I believe, unlike most, that the Stars and Stripes will be flying high and proud when Christ descends from heaven to claim the earth as His. I believe that at that time, the US and Israel will be alone in the world as lovers of liberty and God. I believe that right now is the darkest hour America has ever seen—or will ever see again.

Then I break down the what into small, achievable goals.

What am I doing? What should you be doing? Cleanse the inner vessel first.

1. Redouble your personal commitment to “Love God.”
2. Redouble your personal commitment to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
3. Rediscover the Bible and Christ.
4. Build up your spouse. Redouble your commitment of your whole self to their welfare.
5. Build up your children. Take back the responsibility to educate, to nurture in love, and to enjoy the few moments we have with them on earth.
6. Build up your extended family. Find your parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, and see what you can do to help them every day.
7. Build up your community. Rediscover your neighbors and civic organizations. Make an effort to spend some more time building up what is worth building up.
8. Build up your economy, thus helping other’s economy. Yes, this is difficult, and it does make sense for many, perhaps most, to go “John Galt”. But that doesn’t mean you stop working and creating wealth. It just means you get creative in how you do it to avoid Uncle Sam.
9. Become interested in politics again, despite the state of affairs. These are times when honest men who love liberty are needed most. This is the hour when they hope you’ll withdraw to your hermitage so they can seal the victory theirs.
10. Get ready to run for office. We are going to need honest and believing citizens in every level of government to replace the deadwood and anti-Americans.

As I knock off tasks on that list, or draw my attention to them and focus on doing them, my depression clears. It’s like earning the first dollar towards a million. You’ve only got 999,999 left to go, which is a lot better than you were doing before.

Political Organization

Those of you who are feeling like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson did in 1776 need to remember the lessons of political organization.

Namely, HOW do you organize and get things done?

Tonight at the political meeting I joined in, I saw those principles in action.

First, you need to rally. You need to get people together, their attention focused on a common goal. The more specific the goal, the better. My political goal right now is to get effective limited government advocates in office at every level of our governments. I need to find people who share that goal and meet with them somehow and share my goal with them and see if they want the same goal.

Second, you need to study & instruct. If people have a goal but don’t know what to do, they will feel frustrated. If you don’t know what to do, the time is right now to learn! Learn how our governments work! Learn how elections work!

Third, you need to do. Act upon the principles and knowledge you have, even if you have very litte. Act in a way that maximizes the benefit for your effort in relation to the goal.

Part of the doing is the organizing. Organizing is simply getting people to the point where they know what exactly they need to do to get the big job done. They are working on their little corner of the project and everyone  else is working on theirs, and together, you are going to get it done.

Organizing means you need a leader—someone everyone can turn to. How do you choose leaders? If you need to choose a leader, you’re already doomed. If you can’t point to the leaders, you haven’t rallied yet! Leaders are not elected officials. They are not elected anythings. They are just people who others naturally are drawn to and who naturally know how to organize people to get things done. This is a natural process outside of any bureaucracy or Robert’s Rules or anything of that sort.

That leader will help the organization come together with roles and duties and positions. Your input is necessary since the leader can’t possibly know it all. So you’ll have to help organize by helping those around you know what you think you will be good at doing and what you want to try out.

If you are mad as heck over Obamunism, you need to RALLY, STUDY & INSTRUCT, and DO.

If you are waiting for the Republican Party or some other organization to lead the way, you’ve already lost.

Pro-American Rally Tomorrow

If you support the American ideal of, I don’t know, not living off of the backs of others and unborn generations of Americans, then you need to show up at Westlake in Seattle tomorrow at noon. Bring gear, bring signs, paint yourself blue and red and dress up like Braveheart.

If you work, call in sick—sick of government overspending and slavery to taxes.

If you are one of the people Obama is counting on to work his butt out of this recession, it may be good to take a day off to comply with his statement about this not being a time to make profits.

Think of it like a taxpayer strike, if you will.

How To Fix the Party, Step One

I’ve finally figured out how to fix the Republican Party.

Unfortunately, it is not an easy fix nor a quick one. It involves getting a lot of hands dirty that preferrably would stay clean.

Unfortunately, it is nothing novel or even interesting. You’ve heard it all before, and you’ll hear it all again.

The Republican Party is successful only when it behaves according to the republican principles that made our country what it is. That is, it is the people who send delegates and representatives who elect leaders to run the party. The power rests with the people as long as the people assert their power. Right now, at least in this corner of Washington State, two thirds of that equation is missing since the people refuse to get their hands dirty and choose good delegates and representatives. The republican party is floundering because we aren’t operating as a republic but as a monarchy. The Republican Party, to put it mildly, is operating as a democracy that has gone corrupt, which is the inevitable end of a democracy. We must course correct and that is done by getting people to assert their power once again.

There are two kinds of republicans: those who know what a PCO meeting looks like and those who have never heard of a PCO. If you are the former, it is your duty to show up and participate in precinct caucuses and run for PCO in your precinct and lead your precinct in a way that encourages republicans to speak up, participate, and take control of the party. If you are the latter, it’s your duty to connect up with other republicans and learn the ropes of the political process. This takes time and effort, but is no less important a task than driving Humvees in the sands of Iraq. In fact, I can argue that it is more important since if it doesn’t get done, there won’t be any Humvees in Iraq and no one to drive them. (And we are dangerously close to abandoning our allies in that country as we speak.)

There is a ton of work that needs to be done in order to ensure conservative victories. We need hundreds and thousands of people in this area alone to serve in PTAs, school board and city committees, and other social and community groups. There are thousands of letter that need to be written to legislators, congressmen, the governor and president. There are millions of dollars that need to be raised and distributed to people and causes that move conservatism forward. There are millions of flyers that need to be sent out, advertising campaigns that need to be funded, speeches that need to be delivered, meeting halls that need to be rented, etc… There is a lot of work to do and not nearly enough people to do it.

Just like the old Uncle Sam posters of WWII, we need you.

The only reason Washington State is a blue state is because people like you who should be involved aren’t.

Email me at jgardner@jonathangardner.net to get involved. I am going to hook you up the best I can and we are, together, going to assert our power as the people of the Republican Party and citizens of the State of Washington of the United States of America.

Bilal Hussein–Terrorist on the Payroll of the AP

If you want hard proof that the AP has been actually fighting the war on terror on the other side, then you don’t have to look any farther than Bilal Hussein.

Let me ask you a question first. Let’s pretend you run a business. Would you hire someone who you know is a terrorist? What if their job was to produce propaganda for the terrorists? Let’s say you paid them to take pictures of what the terrorists wanted pictures taken of. Then you would take those pictures and run them on TV and in the newspapers.

You’d be considered a traitor, right?

To us in the real world, this is a fairly obvious thing. You don’t go around hiring terrorists to help terrorists.

But to them in the world of newspapers and TV shows, this is one of those moral “gray” areas.

Well. Michelle Malkin (once again) has the story. (link) Bilal Hussein is the terrorists hired by the AP to take pictures of the terrorists which the AP ran.

Folks, those who stand against America aren’t few in number. They occupy the highest levels of government and run our newspapers and television shows. The left would have you believe that Rush Limbaugh, who supports the troops verbally, with his money, and in any way he can, hates soldiers, while Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who are doing everything possible to ensure that the US loses the war, are heroes of morality. Let Bilal Hussein be exhibit Z in the long list of exhibits heretofore produced.

Now, how do we beat them? We beat them by refusing to buy their garbage. We don’t spend even 3 cents on a newspaper. We don’t watch their news casts or their biased TV shows. We don’t see their anti-war movies. We don’t donate to their campaigns and we certainly don’t vote for them. We beat them by supporting those who don’t hire terrorists. We send our checks to the candidates who really stand for the US winning the war and for supporting our troops. And we vote and we bring our family and neighbors to vote.

And when the enemies of America get caught, and when their people get put on trial, we cheer.

Hip-hip-hooray! Bilal Hussein is going to jail for a very, very long time. And America gets to watch and see what the AP was doing all these years.

Defeating Bad Government

I have been thinking about conspiracies and sorts. Let’s suppose that some conspiracies are actually true. Let’s suppose that there are members of government who have less than honorable intentions and are engaging each other to further those causes on the backs of the people.

What do we do about it?

My solution is that we need to change the way we live our lives. Regular folks cannot go about their life with a “live and let live” mentality. They must seek office, or they must seek to support those good and wise people who seek office. They must be absolutely informed. This means doing a lot more than reading the paper or watching the news. They must be debaters, thinkers, reasoners, and independent from all influence that others would have over them.

That’s a tall order, and I can hardly expect more than a small fraction of the people of any area to ever achieve even a small part of the above goals. However, we have seen in times past that it doesn’t take a great number of people to accomplish big goals. It doesn’t even take big tasks to accomplish big goals. By small and simple things, great things happen.

However, that doesn’t excuse the rest of us. Just because there are others who can do these things for us doesn’t mean we should sit back and allow others to take control. That’s the exact problem we are having today.

Southside Republican Club

I have long felt that politics is more than just ideas or policies. It is about building social networks, friends, and helpers. It is about building community.

In the southside of King County, we Republicans have been too interested in our own families and work, and we have neglected the social aspects of our party. After all, it is a party, and party means having fun meeting each other and new people.

I am talking with several of the leaders of the 30th district Republican Party and it is apparent that we uniformly want to start a Southside Republican Club in the vein of the Eastside Republican Club.

The club would be focused on building a social network and meeting candidates and elected officials from the past and present. We would also invite thinkers and speakers and researchers and have other topics of interest. The meetings would probably be monthly, and there would be a nominal fee to cover the expenses.

We desperately need someone with enthusiasm and leadership to coordinate the events. I can tell you that you will have at least five and maybe ten hard workers at your disposal. The ideal candidate would be retired or have plenty of free time. You don’t have to be very political or even very Republican, just have the ability to get things done and organize all the ducks in a row. Plenty of enthusiasm is required as well.

We also need committee members, people who can put in a few hours of work a month and be dependable about it. People who only have connections and ideas but no time or energy are also welcome.

We also need people to come to the events! If you are only able to show up, we’re interested in hearing from you.

By no means are we limiting ourselves to the 30th district, Federal Way, or even King County. We may even end up basing this out of Auburn or Tacoma. Perhaps we may rotate.

If you are interested in helping or just attending, please leave a comment. I moderate all the comments so I promise I won’t post your information publically but I will get in touch with you.

The Nativity Movie

I heard that the nativity movie was released on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, 3-6 PM on KKOL 1300 last Friday. My wife and I had an opportunity to see it Saturday evening here in Federal Way.

I must say I am impressed. It was about as realistic as you can ask for. Of course they embellished some parts. Of course they adjusted some of the timing to make it work. But in so doing, they sent a clear message about how the Kingdom of Heaven works and how it does not in the time allotted.

The movie is respectful and reverent. The only parts I disagree with are the two birthing scenes. That’s a little too much realism for me, having been with my wife through 4 real live, natural births. It’s always funny when they show the 6-month old baby. My wife really believes that that’s what newborn babies look like. I guess it is part of the hormones that block the memory of how hard the birth was so that humans would have more than 1 child. Of course, if they showed a real, live newborn on camera, it would disgust the audience and prompt me to ask, “Where did they get the kid from?”

I encourage everyone to spend the money in the theatres to send a message to Hollywood that we want more of this. It’s a great way to boycott a movie like, say, Borat.

Contributors Wanted

I am looking for contributors. I want to turn this into a regular blog, and perhaps a subscription newsletter. I am willing to edit if you will provide your passion and enthusiasm for real liberty. Contact me and let’s get going!