A Tale of Two Meetings

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

It was the most interesting of times and the most threatening of times. The Princess Di of American politics, Barack Hussein Obama, was President-elect of the United States of America. In Virginia people who self-identify as Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives of several stripes met to discuss how to make the threatening times more interesting for their opportunity – than their calamity. I attended two of these meetings.

One meeting was seven people (I call us peasants) gathering matches to start a grassfire in the Republican Party of Virginia. The spark plug is an American who immigrated from the Soviet Union at age 24. He is an engineer and a defense contractor. He loves liberty. He has lived under socialism and totalitarianism and hates them both.

The “Russian’s” meeting was a meeting of the minds on descriptions of the problem at different levels across different disciplines – from different perspectives. It was an agreement on first principles as outlined in the August 2008 Resolution of the King George Republican Committee. It ended with a decision to call for a meeting to organize a standing Virginia Committee of Correspondence.

This Virginia Committee of Correspondence will be a legal political action committee. It will share the message from King George County to all 134 cities and county committees in the Republican Party of Virginia. It will promote this Resolution and other commonsense, consensus, Constitutional proposals:
• promoting future governance as written, and amended, in the U.S. and Virginia Constitutions,
• developing new ideas, thinking anew, to resolve challenges in governance using the moral power of the Bill of Rights for individual liberty, rights and responsibilities,
• forming a political action committee to raise funds, share ideas, communicate consensus propositions,
• supporting Constitutional candidates in the Republican Party for all elected party and public offices.
The next move is to organize this Virginia Committee of Correspondence across the Commonwealth.

One meeting was seventy people who had or have some presence as political activists. The leader is the former Republican chairman of Georgia, now full time activist and Libertarian stalwart.

The “Georgian’s” meeting was a meeting of experts reporting on what the election means across the spectrum of political issues. It was a description of threatening events and possible responses. Many spoke with a certain disdain for National and Virginia Republicans in public and party office. It ended with a call to activism, “until Republicans decide that they need us to help them win.”

There will be another meeting next month...

posted by Jim Bowden, James Atticus Bowden | 10:11 AM