Ernest Hancock of Freedom’s Phoenix is, in my opinion, one of the freedom movements greatest activists. I can say that I was personally inspired by his work on multiple fronts. It seems to me that when I look at where the rubber meets the road in the freedom movement, there you find Ernie.
Here Earnest Hancock is speaking at the Southern California Libertarian Party Conference in 2014 on the importance of activism and education with the right spirit.
BTW the So Cal Conference is a pseudo counter convention focused on activism held by the San Bernardino County LP. 2015 will be its 6th year in a row and the committee is looking for speaker nominations. Along with philosopher and activists within the movement, the conference also likes to host representatives that are working in freedom areas where the other parties intersect, such as the drug war, end the fed, and 4th amendment rights.
When Ernie is on his game, he is hard to beat. He’s usually enthusiastic, optimistic, and has some great guests on the show. But I think he has a bit of a problem that’s hard for me to describe.
He’s sort of a counterspin doctor, reframing every bit of news into something that confirms his narrative about “they them those who won’t leave us alone” and how they are consciously and persistently out to enslave us. (I may be overstating it a bit for clarity. ) Ernie comes by it honestly, as he’s gone up against a lot of ornery bureaucrats in his activism, but I like to keep my mind open to the possibility that sometimes bad things happen because of the invisible foot of the state, rather than a sinister conspiracy. Sometimes people just disagree with us and think their anti-freedom ideas will benefit everyone, and treating them like would-be slave masters might not help us understand what’s really happening and how to win the day. (Gotta admit, he has accomplished tons more for liberty than I have. He’s out there trying and learning.)
If you stare into the abyss… All of our front line warriors, all activists, are right up there in the face of the beast doing battle. The very act of engaging the enemy makes you reflect and sometimes absorb them. Many warriors deal with this meta effect in a lot of different ways.
My view of conspiracies and what they represent is the subject of another post. Fear has its effect. It simply is what it is. The mark of an activist is their ability to hold it together in those stresses. I expect consistency out of candidates more than I do out of activists for this reason. Out of activists I expect repeated bursts of awesome with a LOT of exploration.
In a way, I see a lot of “exploration” in how I interpret the motivator of Ernie’s more “projected” theories than I do an attempt to bend wills with fraud. For him that which is “possible” is more important than the “proven”. For some, the appearance of evil is enough to assign shame.
This is where my personal strategies are different than Ernie’s. What Ernie gets from his strategies, that I don’t, it is an intuitive approach. He sees value in things before I do for this trait. It is this… that despite being a cynic,his works are often brilliantly constructive.
Not hitting it on the head every time is just part of being an artist 🙂