Preening Freeners

29 May

Here, Buffalo Geek explains that the movement to, say, get the state constitution overhauled isn’t really off to an auspicious start.

Leonard A. Roberto, founder of Primary Challenge, is hoping to get 4.7 million New York voters to cast a ballot next year to abolish state government. Before a crowd of 11 people in the back room of Gene’s Junkyard Bar and Grill, Roberto tried to make that goal look not only attainable, but essential. The injustice of a government using property taxes to deprive the people of their right to property was one of the examples he used to illustrate the point.

Geek goes on to suggest,

Your message is off and you’re ideas are too fringe to gain wide acceptance. You need to drop the liberty speak, stop talking like a fresh graduate of the Cato Institute and get back to basics. Talk to people, don’t scold them. Build a big tent, listen to the concerns of the people and break down the issues into simple blocks of information that are divorced from ideology. Once you do that, you might get people to work with you. Until then, you’ll be yelling “fire” into an empty theater. Good luck with all of that.

Naturally, Ostrowski is outraged, and this entire thread devolves literally into predictable self-parody.

This does not bode well for…well, for much of anything.

5 Responses to “Preening Freeners”

  1. STEEL May 29, 2009 at 11:34 pm #

    Like to see one of these guys live without the services provided by the government they think they don’t need. How valuable is their “property” going to be when the government stops providing them with a road to get to it.

  2. David Allen May 29, 2009 at 11:59 pm #

    Can’t say I’m on board with abolishing the government…. establishing a new Somolia wouldn’t be enough of an improvement to make it worth the effort. However, I admire the energy and imagination of people who are unafraid to think outside the box – that’s where the best ideas often come from.

  3. Ray May 30, 2009 at 12:25 am #

    OMG! Only the government can supply roads!???
    That must be why they invented chariots and wagons and automobiles and trucks, so that they could enslave us with their road monopoly. The sneaky bastards!

  4. STEEL May 30, 2009 at 8:19 am #

    Yep I guess you are correct… You could just shoot your neighbor so that you can take his property to build the road yourself…that is after you raise the $50m to do it and if he does not shoot you first.

  5. Mike In WNY May 30, 2009 at 9:49 am #

    If we could just get the current state and federal constitutions enforced, many problems resultant from your tyranny by the majority would be eliminated.

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