The Freedom Fighter's Journal: Spread the Word

TIA Daily • September 3, 2010

ANNOUNCEMENT

Today's edition has a few important announcements about the administrative and promotional aspects of TIA Daily. But first, two brief follow-ups on recent items in the newsletter.

Yesterday, I counted seven members of the "DeMint Caucus" of small-government radicals who are likely to be in the Senate next year: Jim DeMint, of course, and Tom Coburn, plus newcomers Sharron Angle in Nevada, Joe Miller in Alaska, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, and Mike Lee in Utah. I unaccountably forgot Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, who is running well ahead of the Democratic nominee. So make that eight. To put that number in perspective, there are 37 Senate seats up for election this year, so just under one quarter of those seats could be won by radical pro-free-marketers. And they will all be there for another six years.

That would be a very significant shift in the ideological composition of the Senate. And there may be a few others—maybe Ken Buck in Colorado, maybe Marco Rubio in Florida—who I should count in this group, but I don't yet have enough evidence to mark them down as radicals who would back a big reduction in government, rather than just run-of-the-mill conservatives.

Second, a couple of people have sent me notes that misinterpreted Jack Wakeland's recent piece on "The Constitutional Creed," in which he challenged the idea that the Supreme Court is the only judge of the constitutionality of legislation. Influenced by some conservative writers on this topic, a few readers interpreted this to mean that the Supreme Court shouldn't have the power of judicial review. But that's not the point Jack was making (or that I was approving of). Our point is that Congress also has the responsibility of holding itself to the Constitution. To put it succinctly, the point is not that the other branches of government decide the constitutionality of legislation instead of the courts. The point is that they decide the constitutionality of legislation in addition to the courts.

I'll have a lot more to say in the future on the subject of "The Constitutional Creed," which I think is a very powerful way of looking at politics, at how to debate political issues, and at how to judge politicians.

Now to the updates on TIA Daily. Some of you who are reading this—about ten thousand of you, in fact—have been getting a free version of TIA Daily for about a month or so, because you were previously a subscriber, or because you once put yourself on one of our "trial" lists. Some of you have noticed that this has gone beyond the occasional promotional issue that I occasionally send out, so I wanted to remind you why you are getting this free version. From now until the election—and possibly beyond, if it works out—I am sending out a free version of TIA Daily to everyone on our mailing list, as a way of reaching a maximum audience at this crucial time.

As you may have noticed from my update about the potential change in the Senate, I think we're seeing a huge shift in the political fortunes for liberty, and I want to make sure TIA Daily has as much impact on this trend as we possibly can.

In the next week, I'll be doing a little bit more to let readers on both lists know the differences between the free version and the full paid version, which has additional links and articles. Now that I've (hopefully) got a lot of new people hooked on the free list, I want to entice them to sign up for the full version. You can go to http://www.TIADaily.com/subscribe.

The increased distribution of the free version has also been made possible by donations from our readers; to help out, go to http://www.TIADaily.com/support.

I also want to recommend some ways that all of you—those on the free list and those on the paid subscribers list—can get TIA Daily and the ideas in it into the hands of even more people.

As part of our new efforts at distribution, we've been sending our e-mails through a different system which seems to offer more reliable delivery. You may also note that it offers a little link at the bottom of each issue to "Forward" our e-mails to your friends. Your friends, in turn, will get a link they can click on to add themselves to our free distribution list. I encourage readers to use this function liberally, as a way of getting TIA Daily out to a larger readership, especially during this crucial election period.

In addition, I am finally starting to make serious use of social media, adding a TIA Daily Facebook page, where I will post regular updates on the contents of TIA Daily, as well as links to articles—I just put up three recent ones that I think deserve to be shared, and I'll be adding a few more over the weekend. This should make it much easier for Facebook members to recommend our publicly-available articles to their friends.

So if you are on Facebook, please "like" TIA Daily and recommend it to your Facebook friends, as well.

Use these tools to spread the word.

As I mentioned, some of this expanded distribution of TIA Daily is made possible by the support of our readers. Like an insurgent candidate in the election—the kind of candidate who can't count on big money from the party establishment—we're relying on a large number of small donations from an enthusiastic "base." Our "Money Bomb for Ideas" in early June was a big success, and we ended up just a few thousand shy of our $50,000 goal. Many of you have already been generous, but please consider offering some additional support to help us finish up the job.

Now, I'm going on to the next big task: pushing forward some new work on our website.

I think we've got a huge, long-term job ahead of us, one that won't stop on November 2, even with a big Republican win—especially if we get a big Republican win. We will have to prepare for a long stand-off between a Republican Congress and a president who has proven to be a stubborn, recalcitrant leftist. And we must also continue reforming and radicalizing the Republican Party in preparation for the 2012 election, which will give us an opportunity to further radicalize the Senate and put a pro-liberty president in the White House. And underneath all of that is the task of changing the political culture, instilling a greater understanding of the ideas that support liberty and of the "constitutional creed" that defines a proper approach to government.

Stay engaged, stay active—and stay tuned.—RWT

One-Year Subscription — $74
Six-Month Subscription — $38

Subscribe now!