Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
-George Washington

I do not know the context of these words, but they hold truth without context.

Put into the context of today the few men would need to be a mere 547. 435 congressmen +100 senators +2 executives +9 court justices. Out of hundreds of millions of people we need to find those that rare few that put principle as their highest self interest.

But those people are not as rare as we might think at first. Part of the problem is the way we treat these people. They should all be given every opportunity to act transparently, for openness helps.

What are the virtues we're looking for? For on the one hand the Libertarian party holds up self interest as an ideal, and on the other we require of our candidates that they keep the national interests at heart. This means we need someone who understands that by protecting all peoples rights he protects his own. When someone approaches him with an idea that would payoff for himself, at the detriment of others, he needs to know that by accepting a short term gain he also accepts a long term loss. Therefore our candidates need to have a very large picture of the world.

We draw our candidates from our party members. We cannot afford to hope they will just happen to have the large picture. We must actively educate ourselves at all times. We have to know what is going on, and how it relates to our philosophy. Libertarianism is not for the lazy. This poses a bit of a problem because most people are lazy! But the problem is surmountable. For it turns out that the average person is plenty smart enough to understand the Libertarian philosophy, but is not sufficiently exposed to it.

This is a departure from earlier understanding where it was believed that the average person was uninterested. I do not believe this is the case. I believe most people have been fooled into thinking the topics are beyond them, and thus have stopped trying. There has been an endless parade of experts and talking heads babbling endlessly about minutia of policy, such that all reasonable people have long ago stopped listening.

We have to unclog the ears of the normal person, and that can best be done with man to man coverage. We are the party, not our TV commercials. We need to talk to those around us, and then meet new people. And we need to learn how to best do it.

We will never persuade people by weight of our intellect (except those amazing few who do have towering intellect) but we can persuade them by a consistent message of truth. We have to take a lesson from the glacier. The glacier is slow and methodical, and it always wins. The glacier wins by time and pressure. We have both of these. We cannot expect someone who has just been exposed to the Libertarian ideals to suddenly embrace them. They have to arrive at the conclusion that Libertarianism is a higher philosophy than their current one by use of their rational minds.

A rational mind is like a flower. It cannot help but grow if exposed to sunlight and water. The sunlight is the truth contained in Libertarianism, and the water is your FRIENDLY application of it. I stress friendly as much as possible. The truth we are spreading cannot be pounded into someone like a nail into a piece of wood, but must be gently massaged into them.

This would seem a slow process, and it is, but it is doable, and on a national scale our success is guaranteed if we understand the nature of exponential growth.

It is important for each of us over the next year to find two people and convert them, and repeat. That is all it takes. However, the convention must be complete. Complete in the sense that they also find two people and convert them.

This means we must master some new skills. We must learn how to approach people, for the standard political argument setting is worthless. Indeed, we are not interested in politics, but philosophy. It seems a strange contradiction, but it is not. Politics is the application of philosophy. Philosophy is the set of values and reasoning we use to direct our actions. Thus, with the right philosophy the right politics naturally follows.

This is had the amazing effect of allowing us to forget the persons of politics. We waste far too much time with accusations of this person did this, or that person did that, and we can focus on the heart of the matter, our philosophy. When talking with someone about Libertarianism it is important to understand that you are presenting a new way of thinking. Do not presume that you are smarter or better educated that the receiver. Listen to their ideas. People hold their ideas very firmly because they represent a large part of their self identity. You cannot hope to convert people in a day, or with a hammer.

But like the glacier, you can win.

Talk to people about the "why" of everything. This is something most people assume. Take public education for example. Rather than debate the finer points of how public education fails or succeeds, ask why it exists at all? Few people will have an answer. And you have planted the seed of truth in their mind. Then you expose it to light and water, and it grows.

As the minds of America become fertilized with these seeds, the glacier of public opinion will turn the course of the nation to where it needs to be.

Finally, there is one other issue that needs to be addressed, and that is the lost minds. Some minds simply will not see the truth, or prefer the short term over the long term in all cases. When you are involved with these minds, you are wasting your time, move on. It is much better to spend your time looking for the next mind that can accept the truth than waste your life on a lost cause.

I will have to better crystallize my thoughts on this in the future.