August 2023
Hello Liberty Lovers of Riverside County!
In the News: SCA 7
This SHOULD be in the news, but is flying a little bit under the radar because it seems like a very boring topic. SCA in this context stands for Senate Constitutional Amendment. Written by State Senators Umberg and Atkins, this is entitled “The Right to Organize and Negotiate Act.” Put plainly, it’s a Trojan Horse. The bill has nothing substantive to do with organizing or negotiating, and everything to do with turning union demands into legal rights. The language of the proposed amendment elevates the “right to economic wellbeing at work” to the same level as free speech, freedom of religion, and all the other things we generally think of as rights.
The problem is that nothing that requires someone else’s time or resources can ever be a right. You cannot claim a right to your neighbor’s money, property, talent, time, or any other resource belonging to your neighbor. Such a “right” would ultimately justify slavery. It’s an obscene perversion of what a right truly is: part of an individual person’s irrevocable capacity for action.
The Libertarian Party Statement of Principles echoes the founding documents of the United States in declaring:
… all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.
Every person has the inalienable right to choose for themselves what to do with their body, their property, and their speech. Claiming a right to someone else’s property can never be legitimate.
However, this is exactly what SCA 7 seeks to do. SCA 7 would allow a union to theoretically claim that any action by anyone negatively affects the union, and therefore is a violation of the union members’ “right to economic wellbeing.” Public sector unions would be particular beneficiaries of this, as they could claim that any attempt to renegotiate any contract would violate their “right to economic wellbeing.” This is madness, the road to dictatorial union control of government at every level.
The California Policy Center, a watchdog group, is watching this closely. Check the Suggested Reading section below for links that will help you understand how awful this is, and how you can contact your state legislators to express your disapproval.
Discord Servers for State and National
If you are a dues-paying member of the Libertarian Party, there are two communications channels you can join to be part of the insider conversation.
The LPCA Discord server is ready for you to join! Find the server at this link: https://discord.gg/wfXzapGsTd
There is a new and growing LNC server as well! It has some kinks to work out, so it’s a little wild and wooly in there, but that server can be found here: https://discord.gg/fxdH2bre
Discord is an off-Facebook communications forum for productive and meaningful discussion to help grow the Party, and make it the vehicle for liberty it was always intended to be. Join and enjoy some general camaraderie, share liberty memes, get news of upcoming events, and (politely) engage with libertarians across California and the whole country!
Upon joining, you’ll be put in a new member channel awaiting verification. Be patient. Once your dues status is verified, you will get more information about how you can interact in the communications channels.
Party Membership
The national Libertarian Party defines a "sustaining member" as somebody who has signed the membership application statement and pays dues (currently a minimum of $25 per year) to the national organization. The number of national sustaining members in each state is used to allocate both delegate slots at national conventions and representation of the state parties on the Libertarian National Committee.
The higher the fraction of sustaining national members in California, the more delegates we can send to the upcoming presidential nominating convention. And as long as California accounts for at least 10% of the national total, we'll continue to qualify to have our own representative on the LNC. Other states’ memberships are growing, so we're currently a bit short of that, but the allocation for the next term will be made this October, so we still have time to qualify.
Note that while paying dues at the state level (California) or the county level (Riverside County) qualifies you as a voting member (aka "central committee member") at both the state and county levels, national membership is separate.
If you aren't a dues-paying member at all, you can join both as a national member and as a state/county member using a single online form:
Combined National/State/County Membership Form
If you are already a state/county member but not a national member, please consider adding national membership now. If you have any problems with the form, let us know at admin@rclp.us (or join the Discord server and ask the whole state party) and we’ll get you pointed in the right direction.
Join us in taking a stand for a world set free!
Suggested Reading This Month
In line with the In the News segment of this newsletter, read Will Swaim’s article in National Review about SCA 7. Swaim is the president of the California Policy Center, and close watcher of these sorts of shenanigans. His article is an excellent primer on the ramifications of granting public sector union contracts constitutional protection. Find the link at the bottom of the Summary column at this link: https://californiapolicycenter.org/bills/sca-7-would-amend-ca-constitution-to-give-unions-unprecedented-power-over-state-and-local-government/
In the general education section, take a look at Maddox Locher’s signs you might be a libertarian over at FEE.org. It often surprises people that they’ve been here a long time, and just haven’t realized it. Check it out here: https://fee.org/articles/9-signs-you-might-be-a-budding-libertarian
For viewing/listening, check out Dave Smith on Patrick Bet-David’s podcast. The PBD Podcast is always a freewheeling affair, but for six and a half minutes here Dave Smith lays out an overview of the political disaster that has been the 21st century so far. Sometimes it is good to stop and re-orient, and remember that at the end of the day, the struggle of our time has never really been progressive versus conservative. It is authoritarian versus libertarian. And authoritarians come in more than one flavor. Find the clip here (or advance the show to the 1:38:10 mark):
And last but not least this go-round, Check out LNC Chair Angela McArdle’s first Torchside Chat. She intends to make these sorts of brief updates a regular feature, so it’s worth following the LP YouTube channel so you get notifications. Find it here:
Calendar Notes
As always, bookmark and regularly check
for up-to-date event details.
1-4 September 2023: The Norco Fair. At the quarterly meeting in July we voted to have an official presence at the fair. We will have an LPRC booth in the vendor area where we’ll be talking liberty and handing out literature and stickers (and probably getting involved with some fried food). If you have been wondering how you can get involved in a party event, this is a great opportunity, as we need a few people to help crew the booth and be liberty evangelists. And even if you are just a regular fair attendee, come see us anyway and say hi!
10 September 2023: Comedy Show. Libertarian comedian Robbie “The Fire” Bernstein comes to Riverside County on his perennial Summer Porch Tour. LPRC Vice Chair Matt Gunnell will be hosting this stop on the tour at his property in Aguanga, and we’re excited to welcome Robbie to the Inland Empire! Check out the Eventbrite link and get your tickets. Fair warning: Robbie is … irreverent. Take that as you will. We’re libertarians. You can make your own decisions for your own life. :)
23-25 February 2024: The Libertarian Party of California annual convention. This may seem like a little way off yet, but it’s worth getting onto your calendar. This one has an added feature: since 2024 is a presidential election year, this convention will include the election of state delegates to the national convention in May. For us here in the southern parts of the state, it’s even more convenient, since it will be held in Orange County! Contracts are being finalized right now; watch our website for details, which we will post as soon as they are available.
Closing Thoughts from the Chair
Another of the guests on the PBD Podcast linked to above is Ricky Aguilar. At one point he asks a really good question: who are the tyrants in my community? It’s a really good question we don’t ask ourselves often enough.
There are real people at the local level who aid and abet tyranny. It is easy to believe that “the tyrants” are far away in D.C. or Davos, and miss that there are people at every local level who have that same viciousness in them, that same lust for power and control. These people must be discovered and outed, because left unchecked they tend to gain more and more power. They crave it, honestly believing they deserve it. They think they are better than you, know better how to live your life than you, and deserve to run things with no backtalk from you.
And Thomas Paine said it best:
It’s one thing to say that. It’s another thing to put it into practice. One of the reasons we all love to rant about faraway tyrants is that it’s safe. They don’t know us, and we can’t do anything about them anyway, so we can just run our mouths and shout and point and laugh.
But making fun of politicians is like a drug. Getting addicted to it reduces your personal power. You stay in a constant state of distraction, focused on faraway things, while local fiends and jerks seize more and more power at City Hall and the State Legislature.
How do you put Paine’s advice into REAL practice? Be active in your community. Be active in your local government. I invite you to find your City Councilperson or School Board trustee. Get to know them. Get on a civic committee or board, any committee or board. Start swimming in the streams of local politics. Start finding out who the villains are in the government arenas that are closest to you. Face them. Oppose them. Speak truth when they lie, and stand your ground when they squeal.
Government is awful, and attracts awful people. There are tyrants in your community. You need to be active in your community in order to bring them to light.
—Loren Dean
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