Before I continue with my personal narrative of the campaign and my quest for the LP presidential nomination (see chapters one and two thus far), I want to explain my campaign slogan and why I chose it. It not only played on the first syllable of my surname, but it held significance in terms of what I believe we are up against in our struggle for liberty.
It had long ago occurred to me that a conception of libertarianism, marked by such phrases as “less government, more liberty,” etc., and as I would learn painfully throughout the campaign, held tenaciously especially within the Libertarian Party, was too narrow and missed a major impediment to liberty, overlooking or denying a set of components that pose significant obstacles.
The sense conveyed by what I’ll call “narrow libertarianism” is that our only enemy is “the government” and that every other element in the social, political, and economic order is either innocuous or incidental to governmental power.
This conception misses what is obvious to many people who do not identify as lower-case libertarians and who have no affiliation with or even knowledge of the Libertarian Party as such. Such people rightly ask: What about enormous corporations and their power to extort and control us? Or to be more provincial, what about the towing company that just towed my car after the city booted it for having over five parking tickets? Don’t these entities also oppress us?
Or what about social media companies that censor and disappear us from the public square? Or what about international intergovernmental governance bodies like the United Nations and the phalanx of international non-governmental organizations like the World Economic Forum? Or what about the military industrial complex? Don’t these entities also have inordinate power?
It’s clear to many libertarians that such entities would not in fact have power over us, if not for the fact that they collude with government, and vice versa. But by the same token, these entities are extensions of government and greatly enhance governmental power, penetration, and scope. They have been grafted into the government and become limbs and organs of it. They are like nanoparticles that auto-assemble to extend the government into a monstrous robot that grows and accrues ever greater capabilities.
Consider, for example, how AI, developed partly in the private sphere, will operate as an essential tool of governmental surveillance, propaganda, power, and control. In my book Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom, I appropriated the term “governmentalities” (from postmodern theorist Michel Foucault) and emended it to refer to these extra-governmental apparatuses.
Note that I have referred to “government” thus far and not “the State.” The State as I see it, while necessarily inclusive of the government, is more than the government. I use the term the State to refer to this entire configuration of governmental and extra-governmental elements—the government and its many State apparatuses. I also call it the regime.
So, when it came time to create a primary campaign slogan, I wanted to make sure that we represented the entirety of the State, and not merely the government per se, as what we need to overcome to achieve liberty. RecTheRegime seemed to do the trick.
Nevertheless, the abolition of the central government will collapse the entirety of the State. To RecTheRegime is to bring down the government and all its governmentalities.
#GetUsOutOfTheUN
My Mama was born in 1919, she was 40 when I was born, she was a wonderful Mama and a great mentor. She had four children, and I was the baby and by the time I came along, she had done her due diligence and she had tried on every political hat and every political organization she could find; the John Birch Society was just one of many. She had never worked in a professional environment and really didn't know anything about the internet or email but years ago and some of you may remember "WebTV", well I talked her into giving it a try and I purchased everything and set her up so she could email her elected officials. I explained how email worked and that she would need her own email address. I gave her a few hours to think about it and she chose, "getusoutoftheUN", it was befitting of where she stood politically, and it was very befitting of everything you mentioned in Chapter 3.
In 1964, at the age of four, I sat on the floor of my grandparents' home and watched diligently to see if I could spot her in Charlotte, NC at the Goldwater campaign. My Mama was a Goldwater Girl. She loved Liberty and Freedom more than life. I had not discovered the Libertarian Party and neither had she, but she would have loved the LP and further loved the Mises Caucus.
When she died on 12/24/2009, I went thru her personal belongings along with my two sisters, I wanted all of her books, my sisters had zero interest.
My Mama was a very frugal woman, and limited means and I went through her bank statements and discovered many, many checks she had written to various organizations that she felt were fighting the good fight. I sat in the floor and wept, my sisters asked me why I was crying, every 10.00 check, in the memo field, had one word in all capital letters, FREEDOM. I kept all of those checks as a reminder to me to never give up the fight for individual liberty.
Not a day goes by that I don't wish I could sit down with her and tell her how much of an impact she had on my life in general, but specifically for shaping and molding my political beliefs. She was a woman, way ahead of her time. She would have no doubt loved your story and how you came to Liberty. I would also tell her, "Mama I'm a Rectenwald Girl!" You have inspired me beyond measure.
We must never lose hope, never lose our faith and when all else fails, we will know that we never gave up the fight to restore what we did not cherish, our freedom and our liberty. Our government seeks to devour what is left of us. Never surrender, never give up, hope and faith are all that is remaining. Future generations are depending on us, and many are not awake to what has happened and continues to happen every day.
As I write this, tears are streaming down my face, I hope and pray I have done her proud. #RecTheRegime #StayHighOnLiberty #EndTheInsanity
Thank you Dr. Rectenwald for your personal sacrifices to stand in the gap for so many who never knew your name!
I learned a new word. Emend (verb): make corrections or improvements to (a text)