Dr. Paul,

I just watched your interview with Rachel Maddow, and first of all thought you did an admirable job of trying not to let her pin you down on the political point she was trying to make.  As I’m sure you’ll agree, it’s her show and she was going to make the point she wanted to make regardless, but you did very well, I think, in distinguishing the racial issue from the federal/private one.

In general I found myself agreeing with  you, but I wanted to offer a philosophical twist for your consideration.  I agree that the federal gov’t should not unilaterally decide how someone can run their private business, but at the same time I think that we the people are collectively responsible for deciding what kind of people we are.  For example, most of us agree that cold-blooded, first degree murder is not only abhorrent but morally wrong to the point of tolerating a law that abridges one man’s personal freedom to act in order to protect another man’s right to live.  We as a people and a culture have decided that this is an acceptable and even desirable limitation.  And so I think that overall, it’s not a question of whether laws exist that restrict private freedoms, but rather a question of where we draw that line.  I don’t agree with laws that seek to take a minority moral position and impose it on everyone, but I think there is potentially a place to say that if a significant majority of us collectively agree that a given law protecting something as foundational as the inherent dignity of an individual reflects who we are as a people and a nation, then perhaps that may be acceptable.

Now with that said, I’m inclined to observe that to my knowledge the legal definitions and prosecution of murder occurs at the state and local levels rather than federal and that is perhaps more appropriately where such laws belong.  However, in that view nothing would have changed in the 60’s because the states in question were more than happy to continue business as usual with their Jim Crow laws intact, so I’m not sure how useful such an observation is to the current issue.

In any case, congratulations on your primary victory, and best of luck in shaping the political conversations to come rather than allowing them to be shaped for and against you.

- Joel Fouse

More specifically, I realized that what’s been happening in the software world for the past 10-20 years may be a useful and perhaps instructive analogy.  You could substitute “Microsoft” for “Democrats”, “IBM and others” for “Republicans”, and “the Free/Open Source Software movement” for “the Tea Party movement”, and write a very, very similar analysis of the world of software maybe 10 years ago.  The open source movement is very disparate, organic, passionate and apathetic by turn, lively, contentious, frequently at odds with itself, and above all wildly successful, with emphasis on “wildly”.  It is not a company like Microsoft or IBM, does not enter into contracts or make business deals, does not have a spokesman or PR department, and does not in any way have a board or any other semblance of centralized control structure.  It is comprised of folks from any and every demographic you can think of, and probably a few you can’t.  Genders, ages, religions, philosophies political and moral, skills, geographies, economies, you name it, all are represented in the open source community.  Its single defining characteristic is the emphasis on freedom — freedom to tinker, freedom to learn, freedom to create, and freedom to give that freedom to others.  Anyone who wants to be involved doesn’t have to apply, doesn’t have to get permission, doesn’t have to go through volunteer training.  You just jump in and do it.  If you want to see how something works, pop open the hood.  If you want to figure out why someone else’s open source program has a bug in it and see if you can fix it, knock yourself out.  If you think you can do a better job than what someone else put out there, by all means roll up your sleeves and go for it.

So what’s the point here?  The point is that open source’s very strength comes from the fact that it’s almost a free-for-all, a community of folks who have similar ideas but are free to put flesh around those ideas in any way they see fit.  Any given project will naturally have its own control structure, with the creators and maintainers accepting or declining input from others and generally running the project as they like.  But that has no bearing on what anyone else does with any other project, and shouldn’t — other projects have other goals, other considerations, other priorities.  Sometimes mutual goals foster collaboration, other times there is direct competition or even confrontation, and that’s okay.  It is a living, vibrant, active community, not a machine.

Which brings me back to the tea party folks.  They may all agree on certain Libertarian-esque ideals, primarily freedom from as much government intervention in their lives as possible, but what that looks like in Florida may be entirely different than what that looks like in Montana or Indiana or New Hampshire, or for that matter Washington, DC.  It certainly looked different between New York and Massachusetts recently.   Tea partiers in this state may want the Republican, while those in that city may want the Democrat given the options available, while some other congressional district may support the Independent against both major parties or even write someone in.  These folks are passionate about what they’re doing and individualistic by nature, and they’ve seen the power of getting involved.

The Obama presidential campaign of 2008 was ground-breaking in a number of ways, but one that has been analyzed and celebrated again and again was how well it gathered and harnessed the collective interests and passions of millions of supporters into a somewhat cohesive whole.  A second and closely related way is how well it controlled its message and presentation.  Everywhere you looked you saw the same images, logos, fonts (for those who notice such things), colors, and talking points.  Everything was efficient, engineered, and expertly driven.

The answer to that is not a Republican copycat campaign, mimicking the methods and control of the original (though they may well try).  The answer is the antithesis of all of that.  It’s people saying what’s on their minds, not what they’ve been told to say.  It’s voters supporting a candidate because they like her ideas, not because her name’s in the right column.  It’s citizens expressing their views in any way, medium, and method they see fit with no concern for approval channels or whose interests they might offend.  The Tea Party movement is open source politics.  It’s we, the people, waking up.

Maybe my impressions are off.  I haven’t met with any tea party groups or talked to an of its leaders or anything.  But from what I see, trying to take what’s happening and stuff it into a well-formed political suit misses the point, and runs the risk of robbing it of the very thing that makes it alive:  freedom.

I Can Hear the Rhythm by Misty Edwards

The More I Seek You sung by Kari Jobe

In a few months, every American is going to be getting $300-$600 rebate check to help “spur” on the economy. This is separate from your tax refund, and will cost the U.S. about $170 Billion.

Separately, did you know that the UN estimates that 25,000 people die EACH DAY (that’s eight 9/11 tragedies every day) because they lack access to clean water. They also estimate that $52 billion/year would provide the infrastructure to provide clean water to these folks. (WHO&UNICEF; Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment 2000 Report).

So we (whoever wants to) are going to be sending our rebate checks (part of it, all of it,… whatever) to help build wells in Africa instead of buying more junk to lay around the house (or more fast food, or more entertainment,…).

The org is called BareFootWorld, and their (current) project is to ask people to give them a portion (or all) of their rebate check so they can send it all on to 1000 wells to get clean water to people who need it. Want to give straight to 1000 wells instead? That’s cool too (it’s all going there anyway), just let the folks at BareFootWorld know so they can tally it in their total.

Or, you know, you could buy another toaster or something.

It’s high time we stop worrying about offending someone’s sensibilities. God help us…