The Climate for Freedom

The Climate for Freedom

by Will Christensen (California)

Speech given at the Restaurant Social and Speakers Forum of the IAP National Conference, January 17, 2003, Taylorsville (Salt Lake City), Utah. Will Christensen is Western States Coordinator for the Independent American Party.

Well, it’s my pleasure to be here today and I welcome you all. I pray that the Spirit of Freedom may be with us and that it will guide the words that I say.

You know, freedom is the most important word and the most important idea in history. We talk a lot as conservatives about the Constitution, and the Constitution is given to us to guarantee our freedoms that are God-given. But the theory of freedom is within the Declaration of Independence, and the actuality, the government that is set up to guarantee our freedom is given to us in the Constitution, so I like to look first to the Declaration of Independence.

I’d like to point your attention to several trends that we have right now that are leading towards freedom. In the book Megatrends, which was written in the early 1980's, he talks about the breakup of the two-party system – and I think we’ve pretty much seen that, haven’t we? The parties have come closer and closer and closer together, until it’s kind of a catchword that there really aren’t two parties but they’re just different forms of the same party.

You know, the Internet is a real tool for freedom. The people who are after our freedom and wish to put us in slavery have taken control of the normal media. But the Internet has given us an alternate media, and there is much, much truth that has gotten out through the Internet. And so that is another trend.

A trend that I see happening all over our country is the skepticism of the American people. And they’re skeptical about two things. They’re skeptical about our government. There was a University of Virginia study that indicated that more than 1 out of 4 (over 25% of our people) believe that the government is set up for the benefit of certain organizations and corporations – and I believe that as well.

The second area of skepticism among our people is a skepticism of what they see and hear on the media; and that is leading to the seeking of information from the alternative media – and that is getting a lot of truth out. Now, according to this same University of Virginia study, 20% of our people believe that there is a conspiracy and that our government is involved in it in some way or another. That means 1 out of 5. That means that if you live on a normal block of 7 or 8 houses, at least one of those (besides you) believes there is a conspiracy. And so these are some of the trends that we should be taking advantage of to pursue our agenda towards freedom.

There are more and more freedom organizations springing up all across our country. I have a booklet of 11 pages of organizations and corporations and companies and individuals who have been put together by the Gun Owners of America (Richard?). On those pages there is an average of 50 organizations and 50 names a page – so that means there’s over 500 organizations. Now what we are going to do within the party is we’re going to contact those organizations and tell them that we are the political party in the United States that espouses freedom, particularly the Bill of Rights, and more particularly the Second Amendment. And so we’re going to ask them for their help in building the party in their areas and, with that, we will accelerate our move across the United States.

There is another movement toward freedom that is helping this climate of freedom, and that is the movement of people into businesses of their own. Now, when you work for a corporation the corporation hassles the government or the government hassles the corporation. But when you are in business for yourself the government hassles you! How many here have been in business for themselves? Is that right? Does the government hassle you? Well, I submit that this is a great trend towards freedom, because people when the have their own ox gourd begin to see some of the problems that are endemic in the growth of government.

So, how do we provide leadership for this tidal wave of freedom thinkers? We do it a number of ways. We provide a contact point for those organizations and freedom seekers to help them find other freedom seekers. Before you came into the party or some other organized freedom organization you may have thought you were all alone. How many here thought that? Maybe you still think it! But, we’re not. We are in the preponderant majority. And all we have to do is connect those people in the various areas and help them get organized, either through the party or through another means.

OK, leadership. We need to provide organizational help for those freedom seekers, and that organizational help in this guise will be helping them organize the Independent American Party within their jurisdiction – their state, their county, whatever. And then (and this is most important) we need to provide proactive alternatives for Americans. And in order to do that – you know, our enemies (the enemies of freedom) call us "reactionaries." Why do you think they call us "reactionaries"? Well, they give us something to do. Let me give you an example:

There was a federal judge in my state (California) who said, "We’re going to take ‘under God’ out of the Pledge of Allegiance." Now, how does that affect your freedom, actually, when compared with perhaps the Patriot Bill, the Homeland Security Bill, one of those? It really affects it very, very little. But, those people who are uninformed get all excited about that and they begin to fight, and we, then, maybe, don’t get "under God" taken out of the Pledge. Our enemies had given that as busywork, something that we can do that really won’t hurt them all that much. Now, when we get the Patriot Bill rescinded, that gets them where they live. When the Homeland Security Bill is annulled, they will feel that. If we get "under God" put back into the Pledge, they don’t really care.

So here’s what we’re going to do: We’re working on a bill and it will be ready in probably another week. We’ve looked for areas where the large bulk of the American people believe as we do. OK, the Supreme Court way back in the ’70's and the 80’s made a series of decisions that were anti-religion. Just pure and simple. So what we’ve done, we've done a little homework, and in the Constitution it says that Congress has control of what the Supreme Court can judge on and what they can’t. Now that has not been used probably for a century or a century and a half. However, it has been used, and we have a precedent.

And so, here is a bill to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States in all cases regarding prayer in public places. Now, this is written by one of our speakers here, Gary Van Horn. And he says the reason for the proposed legislation: The First Amendment to the Constitution for the United States says in part, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech ..." The court has in innumerable cases prohibited the free exercise of religion by banning prayer in public buildings and places; and in doing so, has been guilty also of abridging the freedom of speech.

About three years ago, we did this as a trial. There were several members of the party who got together at the time of the Panama Canal Treaty. As a matter of fact, it was in that summer before the Canal was given away in December. And so we thought about it, and said, we need a bill that will abridge and abrogate that treaty. So the four of us got together, and we came up with a bill. The best we could do. And we sent it out to about 50 members of Congress. One of those, Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, picked it up. She ran it through her staff and made it better. And that became HJR077. And that was the Panama Canal – (well I can’t remember the rest of it). It would have abrogated the treaty. We would have saved our Canal had that bill passed. It did not pass, because we didn’t have the strength.

However, what did we accomplish by that? That bill went all over the United States and educated many, many people – hundreds and thousands and millions of people, because of that bill. And because of that bill, we had some of the liberals who were spending time thinking up things for us to do, actually doing things that we thought up for them to do. (laughter) So, that’s one of the things – a bill to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

Now on the 13th of January of this year, Justice Scalia of the Supreme Court came out with a speech, and he said (and I quote), "Although Constitution says the government cannot establish or promote religion, the framers did not intend for God to be stricken from public life." Well, it looks like the time is right for this bill, because we have one of the chief justices who will be on our side. We will send this bill out to probably 70 to 80 members of Congress and Senate.

We’re going to repeal the Patriot or Homeland Security Bill. That is in the mill right now. We will probably have that bill ready to go in about a month. We’ve done a little study, and there are two states that have bills banning partial birth abortion. That’s a hot button in our nation. One of them is Ohio, and one of them happens to be your state, Utah. Very good. We are going to send those sample bills – not bills, but acts – to the other 48 states and encourage them to pass their own abortion bills. And so on, and so on. We have a proactive menu of bills that we are going to send to Congress, to the state legislatures, to the counties, wherever they need to go, and wherever they can do the most good. And that is one way that this party will provide the leadership for the rebirth of freedom that is happening in this United States. I Thank you.