In January of 1991, for instance, in the midst of the Eastern European collapse of communism, Soviet troops assaulted the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, and took over several city locations in an attempt to crush the revolution. The targets? Not armories, nor troop concentrations – but the central publishing house and the TV tower, in an attempt to suppress the nationalist media.

And, in March of 2003, as part of a crackdown by communist Cuban state security, the house of Pedro Alvarez, Secretary-General of Cuba’s CUTC, a prominent trade union, was raided; Alvarez was arrested and state-threatening materials were seized. The “state-threatening materials”? Not guns, bombs or artillery – but books, computers, radios and fax machines.

Why is it that despots consider the transmission of information to be deadlier to their tyrannical ends than stockpiles of guns and bombs?

Because their propaganda-driven policies of aggression and enslavement cannot stand the truth of exposure. The “samizdat,” for instance (the network of illegal and underground publications of banned books, thoughts and materials in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union), was a significant thorn in the side of Marxist-Leninist agitprop for decades – and its activities, when coupled with new, incoming Western technology throughout the 1980s, played a significant role in the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Actions, as everyone likes to say, speak louder than words, ladies and gentlemen – and it is such actions that make it clear that it is the power of ideas that such thugs fear – and, even more so, your understanding of that power – so, be advised: If you want to fight a battle against the coercive powers we find assaulting us today, the FIRST step of that process would be to become aware of your own personal and intellectual power, and start acting on it! Dictators both domestic and foreign are spending billions and billions of dollars in their attempts to propagandize your mind and get you to fail to see that answer –because they know that if you do, all of their schemes collapse.

As Ayn Rand once observed, “Ideas cannot be fought except by means of better ideas. The battle consists, not of opposing, but of exposing; not of denouncing, but of disproving; not of evading, but of boldly proclaiming a full, consistent and radical alternative.” (Ayn Rand, “The Cashing In: The Student Rebellion,” 1965.)

So, again, ladies and gentlemen, in closing, let me reiterate: PRACTICE your personal and intellectual power. Do NOT give your sanction or support to the thugs who are ruling you through your own tacit consent. Make such thugs display the true nature of the source of their so-called power by performing their demands at the point of a gun.  If they place you in jail, if they steal your property, if they burn down your house or place you in front of a firing squad – do NOT given them the power of your sanction! Our forefathers once swore on their ‘lives, fortunes and sacred honor” to defend the ideas of liberty – have we become so timid and programmed by the machine that we cannot stand up and do the same?

Once this issue is seen for what it is, with the window-dressing of the legal and social system and your voluntary compliance stripped away, you’d be surprised by how fast they retreat. You – as one human being, as one individual, as the spirit of one indomitable mind – are the key. “Become the change you wish to see in the world.” And, together, not as a mass but as a collection of such individuals, we can topple these regimes any time we care to – because it is actually our sanction and our consent that makes such rule possible! My suggestion for you, today, would be to act accordingly and quit granting the rule of brute force a dignity and respect it does not deserve and has not earned… For, again, it is such tragic errors that maintain such rule, and when we finally realize that you cannot enslave a free man, but only kill him, our Second Renaissance will be assured.

 This ends Brad’s talk that he gave at a TEA party rally. I would like to take a moment to thank Brad for being so out spoken and continuing to fight the good fight.