Skip to main content

Unsuccessful Conversion Experience


I had an unsuccessful conversion experience this past weekend.

A Canadian man sat down next to me at a baseball game and started talking about how great socialized "everything" was in Canada, and how much everything here sucked. And let me admit...I was excited. I was delighted for the opportunity to persuade him. Honestly, I was thrilled for the opportunity to intellectually crush him.

And he left that night unchanged. And I left that night realizing I don't exactly know how to make people open to the idea that government doesn't need to be in charge of things.

Hanging out here, I feel like I'm learning all the talking points. I'm absolutely convinced in both the moral and effectual benefits of freedom. And yet, I am only currently able to persuade already-conservatives to move toward a more consistent and holistic view of freedom. For those who believe solely in the benevolent arm of the federal government to right the wrongs of an uncharitable populace, my words falter. They don't pierce.

Help me.



By: Eric Olsen, Regular Columnist
Articles | Author's Page | Website

Popular posts from this blog

The American Tea Party 2009: Goals, Objectives, and Principles

Image by André Karwath ( CC ) I do not presume to be the mouthpiece or leader of the 21st century American Tea Party movement, so the following is a summary of my personal vision for the modern American Tea Party, a list of objectives I believe it should seek to accomplish, and a set of principles I believe it should strive to embody. I am writing this because the Tea Party movement will fail to create real change unless it finds direction in sound principles and takes specific, practical steps to ensure the implementation of those principles in public policy. I. Principles Any political movement is doomed to failure so long as it is merely fighting for a particular, isolated policy preference or even a set of such preferences, absent of any context and underived from or related to a unified framework for viewing reality, humankind's role in reality, and government's role in humanity. The following (originally published in the Dec. 2008 article " Six Reasons Not To Bailo...

Ron Paul’s Devious Plan to Steal the Presidency

This is an absolute hoot! Ron Paul hating Republicans are in panic mode. The website Hillbuzz.org includes in its blogroll Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Conservatives4Palin. Hillbuzz is so utterly revolting that I may just have to subscribe to its updates. Up until yesterday, I really hadn’t taken the Ron Paul campaign very seriously. Most non-Paul voters probably felt like I did, and laughed him off as that “kooky Uncle” who didn’t have a chance in hell to win the Republican nomination for President. Well, I’ve changed my mind. Big time. Yesterday I attended the Republican organizational convention for my Senate district here in Minnesota, and what I witnessed was an organized take-over of our nomination process by Ron Paul cultists. They came to this convention with the sole intent to take over as many of the delegate seats as they could, and sadly, they succeeded. Read the rest here Hillbuzz 

IRS Admits Targeting Tea Party!

You think Matt Drudge is just being hysterical in that screenshot above? With that ALL CAPS headline about the IRS? Being hysterical, while trying to sell you chocolate covered strawberries for Mother's Day? Well guess again, because you know this is seriously crazy when even the AP is using all caps for their headline , and filing it under a subdomain called "bigstory": The AP says : The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday. Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said. "That was wrong. T...
–––As Featured On–––