It's time to change the world, starting in our own backyards

by Rob Yates
LPNC Communications Director

Comic by Noah Zenger

If we want to be vehicles for meaningful, positive change, we must remember to keep our focus local.

Mid-November of last year, the Federal Reserve announced that it was running a twelve-week pilot, partnering with several massive banks, to test a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) for the U.S. Dollar (if you are unfamiliar, here is the Fed's definition and description, and here is an objective description). Few major press outlets covered the story in earnest, and those that did gave a brief and cursory summary of a project that could "speed up payments."

The Fed, unsurprisingly, has not published any examination of the downside of a CBDC, but has released a "study" that masquerades as objective, while the White House was lauding the possibilities a CBDC presents before the pilot was announced.

I want to make sure I am crystal clear about this… There is perhaps no current lever available to the government that is more potentially dystopian and tyrannical than a CBDC. Any potential upsides of CBDCs are dwarfed against the ability of the Fed to simply turn off your money for any reason – wrongthink (by their definition), exceeding some arbitrary carbon cap, donating to the wrong candidate, purchasing the wrong book, refusing a medical procedure…

I predicted these developments years ago, which certainly fueled my reaction. I make no claim to prescient prognostication; rather, it is easy to foresee that, when granted tools enabling greater control of the population, the state and its actors will inevitably use them.

My first instinct on reading that CBDCs were becoming a reality in the U.S. was to write something and immediately send it out to our entire subscriber base. I wanted alarm bells ringing and red lights flashing.

I actually wrote, "This is the hill we die on!" on our message boards. My penchant for the dramatic notwithstanding, I maintain that the potential for abuse of a Federal Reserve sponsored CBDC is so draconian that we should, in fact, do something. I encourage you to all contact your representative and senators and demand that an actual U.S. CBDC never see the light of day.

Avoid the distraction of federal politics

In this newsletter, I try to give a lot of space to the people who have given decades of their lives fighting for Liberty. We are in a unique situation right now, as Libertarians, where – distant as it may be – there is a real light at the end of the tunnel, if we are simply willing to run it down. But the people who set this table… they had no idea if they would ever enjoy the fruits of their labor. We all fight for Liberty for Liberty's sake, but the founders of the party and the LPNC had no expectation of success, and yet they fought on.

When I sent out the distress signal about CBDCs, the response was surprising. People who are much wiser than I were not against me writing something about it – they were supportive, in fact. But they were skeptical of impact and cautioned on expectations. We had to fight for eight months to get 45 minutes of body camera footage released for one incident in Gastonia; how can we expect to drive change at the Federal Reserve and why should we waste time and energy there?

I encourage you all to be fully educated regarding all the ways our tyrannical federal government surveilles your activity and restricts your rights. But the fact is, federal politics, impactful as they may be, are ultimately a distraction. For every onerous Federal policy we lament, there are myriad onerous city, county, and state policies we are ignoring. That opens the floodgates for much bigger government imposition.

A call to action

I can't tell you what to do, nor would I want to. It's antithetical to everything in which I believe. I can tell you, though, that there has never been a more opportune time for our message to spread. The number of unaffiliated voters is higher than registered Dems or Repubs, driven by a more than 100-percent increase since 2004. Disenchantment with the two-sided uniparty has never been higher.

We have the best message, but the forces that oppose us are powerful, well-funded, and have huge reach. Relying on the power of our message alone to advance Liberty is screaming into the void when facing the selective and targeted narrative control fostered by the front line of the state and its behemoth information apparatus.

The solutions are right there waiting for each of us to take action. Give $5 a month; volunteer one hour a week; run for local office; speak at a city council meeting; join a school board; join a county affiliate; bring a friend to a meeting; attend state and affiliate conventions; email a representative each day; phone bank for an hour; attend a tabling event; share the right book with a friend… The list of possible action extends to the horizon.

If you aren't sure where to start, reach out; I promise our Volunteer Coordinator has plenty of opportunities. Start small, it all makes a difference. Just do something.

Think locally, act locally, change the world

I hate the cliché of the new year representing some nebulous opportunity to make a change, but I recognize the perfection of the timing. Make 2023 the year you find a way to give what you can to the cause of Liberty, right here in North Carolina.

We need to win locally to stop the tidal wave of authoritarianism that is the natural consequence of a people ceding political power. Let's change the political landscape in North Carolina so that we would never worry about something like federal control through CBDCs because the tyrannical arm of the federal government would know better than to ever try and invade North Carolinians, physically, virtually, financially… and we, our children, and their children, never have to fear the government again.