Nelson Hultberg on the Debut of SPOiLER, His New Political Party and How Ron Paul Could Win the Presidency

The Daily Bell is pleased to present an exclusive interview with Nelson Hultberg (left).

Introduction: Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Executive Director of Americans for a Free Republic. His articles have appeared in such publications as The Dallas Morning News, the San Antonio Express-News, The American Conservative, Insight, The Freeman, and Liberty, as well as numerous Internet sites. He is the author of Why We Must Abolish The Income Tax And The IRS (1997) and has written a new book titled, The Conservative Revolution: Why We Must Form a Third Political Party to Win It. In addition, he has a major work on political philosophy, The Golden Mean: The Case for Libertarian Politics and Conservative Values, that is to be released in this coming year.

Daily Bell: How did you feel about the premier of James Jaeger and Matrixx Productions latest film, SPOiLER: How a Third Political Party Could Win? (To watch SPOiLER now, click here.)

Nelson Hultberg: I think it is a stunning effort. It goes to the heart of why the American political scene is so corrupted with the poison of collectivism by exposing the terrible ideological fallacies that have seeped into our political system over the past 100 years. This is a film that could never have been made in Hollywood. Only because Jaeger and Matrixx are such independent contrarians could this have been brought about. What was it Orwell said? "In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." That is our situation today. We live in such a time of deceit in all areas of our society, and especially in Hollywood, that only the contrarians and revolutionaries are capable of deciphering the truth and putting it in front of the people. That's what this film is about – a revolutionary shift in political thought. It asks questions that the lackeys to liberalism that run Hollywood will never ask. It unmasks the root causes of our problems. It points the way toward a restoration of our Republic, which is something you will never get from the establishment moguls in cinema.

Daily Bell: It's a feature-length documentary that explores how a third political party could win the presidential election of 2012 or 2016 with four key issues. Obviously, you're the inspiration. Are you pleased with the result?

Nelson Hultberg: Very much so. It is extremely difficult in the times we live in for the forces of freedom to get a fair hearing in the media and movie houses. This film gives us that fair hearing. It tells the viewer what has brought about our demise as a free country by contrasting the two distinct periods of our history – the libertarian-conservative era, 1776-1913 with the progressive era, 1913-2011. It puts forth four strategic policies that must be enacted if we are to correct the terrible damage done to us by the Keynesians and the collectivists, and thus save the country. These are policies that can get a nationally known candidate 38% of the vote and win in a three-man race. This would begin the salvation process of the country.

Daily Bell: It features Freedom Force Founder, G. Edward Griffin (author of The Creature from Jekyll Island), Peter A. Lillback, author of George Washington's Sacred Fire, John McManus, President of the John Birch Society, Pat Buchanan, well-known author and political analyst, and Edwin Vieira, constitutional attorney from Harvard, (author of Pieces of Eight). Feel like you are in good company?

Nelson Hultberg: Extremely fine company. These are the type of "truth-tellers" that Orwell was referring to. These are the type of contrarian intellectuals who do not worship popularity over principle as the MSM talking heads do so cravenly. These are the type of minds that are not afraid of the truth. They know that we live in times of massive deceit, and their goals are far more profound than receiving acclaim from the collectivist herd. Their views are geared toward exposing the usurpations and sickening humbug that permeates politics in America today.

Daily Bell: Of course it's inspired by your strategy set forth in your new book, The Conservative Revolution. You launched AFR and the CONSERVATIVE AMERICAN PARTY to give people that choice. Tell us about its "Two Pillars Strategy."

Nelson Hultberg: The "Two Pillars Strategy" is the foundation of the Conservative American Party. It is designed to put in front of the American people two crucial political reforms that will stop the relentless growth of government and begin the restoration of what we were meant to be as a country.

These two crucial reforms are: 1) Ending the Federal Reserve's power to inflate the money supply at will, and 2) Ending the government's power to progressively tax its citizens. These two powers give government the ability to steal wealth from the people by debasing the currency and by confiscating the earnings of our most productive citizens through progressive tax rates.

Pillar #1 is to enact Milton Friedman's 4% auto-expansion plan for the Fed. This will mandate by law that the Fed can only increase the money supply by 4% every year. Monetary expansion will be taken away from the FOMC's arbitrary discretion and be computerized, which will keep money supply growth equivalent to the growth of goods and services, which will reduce price inflation to zero. This will end the Fed's irresponsibility and allow time for the people to be educated as to the necessity for a gold standard and ending the Fed, which might require several decades. Such an auto-expansion plan is not perfect and not a permanent solution, but it will stop the destruction of our currency. It is a vital interim policy until gold money can be re-established. Even Ron Paul himself knows that the Fed is not going to be eliminated right away. Only naïve utopians who don't live in the real world want to end the Fed today. Good grief! The country would totally collapse. We need a plan to phase out the Fed. This pillar is the first step toward that process. Combine it with Edwin Vieira's plan to enact gold and silver coin alternatives at the state level, and you have a viable means to rectify 100 years of Marxist / Keynesian monetary insanity.

Pillar #2 is to enact an equal-rate income tax of 10% for everyone (i.e., a genuine flat tax). If we are to uphold "equal rights" in America, then we must have "equal rates" in our tax system. And all citizens must be assessed the tax. No exemptions. Period. Only in this way can we have a responsible electorate. When all people have to pay proportionally for their government services, they will begin to vote for less government every year at the polls. A 10% equal-rate tax for everyone will be revenue neutral, and thus not threaten the stability of the voters' lives. Because all the people will have to pay the tax, the overwhelming majority will demand that the 10% rates be lowered every year and government spending be reduced. They will start sending Ron Pauls to Congress instead of Chuck Schumers, for this is the only way they will be able to get more freedom and money into their lives. Consequently we could have a 5%-7% flat income tax in a decade or two. At that time we could then switch to a national sales tax of 5%-7% and completely eliminate the income tax along with the IRS.

Daily Bell: James Jaeger believes you are "probably the most important political philosopher to come along in the past 100 years." High praise? A fact?

Nelson Hultberg: Nice of him to say so, but I think James is engaging in hyperbole. I have a different way of thinking about political parties and strategy, which I have put forth in my book, The Conservative Revolution. And I have a forthcoming book, The Golden Mean: The Case for Libertarian Politics and Conservative Values, that I believe will dramatically shift the political paradigm in America if it is widely read. But "the most important political philosopher?" Not quite. Locke, Jefferson, Montesquieu – they were important political philosophers.

Daily Bell: What do you think of James Jaeger's efforts and freedom philosophy?

Nelson Hultberg: I think that James Jaeger is the kind of scintillating rebel that is so needed to move a confused and horribly apathetic populace into action. He has a grasp of the big ideas that move history, and he has the talent to express them in film imagery to show the intelligentsia of a country what is really happening and why. Without this type of didactic film-making, a country in the modern day cannot be saved from the fallacies of collectivism that are consuming us. We used to read books to learn about the world and threats to our freedom that lurk behind the ideologies and politics of our time. But modernity has ushered in the video-film age. The masses now get their worldview visually rather than literarily. Jaeger has mastered the medium, and he doesn't give a damn about being popular. He cares about truth. Thus he is a very important piece on the political chessboard that comprises today's America and the crucial fight she is in.

Daily Bell: How can a third political party avoid being a spoiler and actually win?

Nelson Hultberg: We suffer in America today from a terrible misconception that third-parties will spoil the best results of the voting process of our alleged "two party system." This is nonsense. If a third-party is structured properly, it can bring about a vital exposé of the monopoly of ideas that Democrats and Republicans have fashioned. If it does not marginalize itself like the Libertarian Party and Constitution Party have done, if it puts forth substantive policies (such as the four cornerstones of the Conservative American Party) that will appeal to 38% of the voters and actually solve problems rather than create them, then that party will NOT be a spoiler. It will be a winner. It will change the paradigm that is destroying us as a country.

Daily Bell: Is it true that the status quo is leading the country, and possibly the world, into totalitarianism?

Nelson Hultberg: Absolutely. We have descended into the "rabbit hole" of Alice and Wonderland politically and philosophically. Up is down, and down is up under the collectivist worldview. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less." The collectivists have so corrupted our language that the slavery of socialism is now a "new kind of freedom." Marx understood all this very well. Corrupt the money and the language, and capitalism will fall. The statists are shameless in their shyster usage of words. And the masses are unable to see the semantic fraud involved. Thus with each passing decade, we drift further and further into total government. The status quo of statism that began in 1913 and solidified itself with FDR and LBJ is bankrupt. It has no answers. It destroys freedom and prosperity as tuberculosis destroys breath and lungs. Yet it continues to move us into the morass of political absolutism because the integrity of our money and the clarity of our language have been turned into tools of tyranny.

Daily Bell: You wrote an article entitled "Who Will Be Our Modern Day Jefferson?" Tell us about it.

Nelson Hultberg: I think that article is extremely important if we are to overcome the negativity toward third-parties in America today. It refutes the common complaint that if we form a libertarian-conservative third-party challenge to the Democrats and Republicans, we will merely draw votes away from the Republican candidate and guarantee four more years of a Democrat (i.e., Obama).

But as I point out in the article, this is a false fear that is stultifying the freedom movement. Here's why. If an independent third-party candidate loses and Obama wins as a result of the GOP support being split, Obama's socialist agenda can still be stopped because Republican conservatives will pick up a considerable number of seats in the House and Senate in 2012 – adding to their sizeable gains in the recent 2010 elections. This will create gridlock and force Obama to come into the center and govern no differently than a Romney or Perry.

So what do we lose in 2012 by splitting the Republican vote? Nothing. What we gain, however, is the means to dramatically explain to America what is really happening. Our message of freedom gains access to 70 million voters! The Demopublican monopoly of ideas is broken! A genuine third choice is offered. This has never been done in the entire 50-year history of the Presidential debates.

What's important to grasp is that the country is finally ready to establish a libertarian-conservative era of government. The past 80 years of Marxist-Keynesian ideology have created the ruination that is driving the people to this realization. All that is necessary now is for a courageous leader to enter the scene and crystallize such a realization with a Ross Perot style campaign in 2012. If a third-party is structured properly, it could draw 38% of the vote and actually win. We live in revolutionary times. We have to think outside the box. We have to stop trekking the same path that we have been trekking for the past 50 years – the path of DemoPublicanism. Only a third-party can bring about such an important paradigm shift.

Daily Bell: Do you sense a change in how the freedom movement is being perceived by the larger public? G. Edward Griffin was on Glenn Beck and Freedom Watch to discuss his book, THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND. Even Alex Jones is getting mainstream airtime. Are these significant events?

Nelson Hultberg: They certainly are. This is a prime example of how freedom now has a chance to be saved. They indicate that "critical mass" is being reached in the ideological substratum that undergirds society and is so influential in moving it toward freedom or toward tyranny. Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Ayn Rand launched the ideological revolution for this way back in the early 1940s. Their ideas have now disseminated out to the public sufficiently to be bandied about on important TV shows. Granted, we in the freedom movement don't command the equivalent of CNN's Rachel Maddow or Fox's Bill O'Reilly yet, but that day is coming probably much sooner than we imagine. When the Keynesian monetary system reaches the final crisis and plunges America into the coming hyperinflationary depression, that is when the final stage of "critical mass" will be upon us. That is when our principles of Austrian economics and limited government will suddenly achieve a huge increase in credibility in the populace's eyes. And we must be ready for this. That is why we so desperately need a third-party candidate that speaks the language of freedom to get into the National TV Presidential Debates. When the final crisis is upon us, we will need to have articulate spokesmen explaining to 70 million voters how the DemoPublicans have brought about the collapse and why we must restore the Founders' vision in order to rectify their carnage.

Daily Bell: Is the two-party system running out of chances?

Nelson Hultberg: I believe the two-party system ran out of chances decades ago. It continues to dominate because of inertia among the people and the monopoly of ideas that the system has used through control of the Presidential Debates. Throw in a compliant media that mindlessly repeats the shibboleths of statism and you have the seedbed of DemoPublicanism that has ruled us politically for 50 years. But such control is doomed because of the looming economic hardship now facing America. In times of crisis, voters begin to doubt the veracity of the authorities they have followed over the years. They begin to open up their minds to new and radical visions. In this case, they will begin to open up their minds to the legitimacy of a third-party challenge. The polls already demonstrate this. More than 58% of Americans feel that a third-party is needed. The approval rating of Republicans and Democrats is at a all time low in our history. The times are certainly ripe for a paradigm shift.

Daily Bell: Does Barack Obama have a good chance of being elected?

Nelson Hultberg: I can't see how he can be returned to the White House. His unfavorable numbers are in excess of 70% in the latest polls. No president in history has ever had such horrible numbers a year out from the election and survived. He is beginning to look more and more like Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter. So pitifully ignorant of the huge tides of history that sweep into our lives because of the fallacies of false prophets such as John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx. His Jewish and Black constituencies are abandoning him in droves. Hillary Clinton is seriously contemplating a challenge for the Democratic Party nomination. Much tumult is converging upon us, and it is going to play havoc with the standard rules of politics that the talking heads of the establishment have memorized and spew out so naively in their interviews.

As Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity." Unfortunately for the political left, Obama has reigned over the "worst of times" with much foolishness and incredulity. Consequently disaster is setting in. I believe a Republican can beat him, and I believe a good libertarian-conservative independent candidate can get 38% in a three-man race and beat him.

Daily Bell: How is your new party being received?

Nelson Hultberg: Slowly but surely. Our strategy is to approach Ron Paul when it becomes certain that he is going to be denied the Republican nomination and convince him to run as an Independent on the "Two Pillars Strategy," which we believe will gain him entrance into the National TV Presidential Debates. If he would pick a strong nationally known candidate for his vice-presidential running mate, he could do what Ross Perot did in 1992, only do it better and base it upon a message of freedom and sound money. This will gain attention for our "Two Pillars" of reform and give us much needed credibility in the people's eyes. If the VP candidate Paul chooses is strong enough, then he can become the presidential candidate for the Conservative American Party in 2016, while Paul who will then be 80 years old can take on the role as symbolic head of the new freedom party. Libertarians, conservatives, and independents will join the CAP, while the me-too Republicans will merge with the Democrats. The GOP will go where useless institutions go, out of existence. The grand paradigm shift in American politics will begin. We will then have a true two-party system that offers Americans a genuine choice. We will have a party of Big Government (Democrats), and we will have a party of Small Government (Conservative Americans).

Daily Bell: How are you doing funding-wise?

Nelson Hultberg: As with any new venture that offers a radical shift in a nation's way of thinking politically, it is going slowly. But once a nationally known candidate chooses to run on the "Two-Pillars Strategy," then that would change overnight. The CAP has the potential to become America's freedom party to oppose the statists on their level, in other words, a REAL political party that can get, not 1% of the vote like the Libertarian and Constitution Parties draw, but 38% of the vote and become a viable player in the game.

Daily Bell: Have you changed your mind about central banking? Is the Fed doing better these days?

Nelson Hultberg: I certainly have not changed any views on the Fed. It needs, as Ron Paul demands, to be ended. Our monetary system must become market-oriented rather than government dominated. The only question is how to bring this about.

Daily Bell: You want to reduce their destructive influence, but what will it take to abolish central banking and remove the graduated income tax?

Nelson Hultberg: Common sense and dogged persistence on the part of libertarians and conservatives who continue to take the fight to the establishment in the upcoming years and show how both of these institutions are the lifeblood of government tyranny. They cannot be ended overnight; but they can be ended over time. The income tax will be the easiest to end; the Fed will be far more problematic. To end the income tax we must convince the voters that a 10% "equal-rate tax" is the only morally proper form of taxation for a free country that believes in "equal rights under the law." Once we can show the voters where the low-income earners of the nation will not be hurt by a true flat tax of 10% for everyone (which I demonstrate in my book, The Conservative Revolution), then they will readily vote it in because it will be in their best interests to do so.

Once it is the law of the land, we will experience an immediate demand on the part of voters to reduce government spending, which will continue until government spending is reduced down to a level supportable by about a 5%-7% tax rate. That is my estimate of what American voters would tolerate if there were no exemptions to the tax, if everyone had to pay proportionally. The "infinite demand" for government services that makes up our present system would no longer dominate elections. At this time, we could then convert a 5% "equal-rate income tax" into a 5% "national sales tax" accompanied by tariffs across the board on all imports. The states would collect the sales tax revenues. It would allow us to eliminate the IRS and the income tax totally. The reason why we reject the present Fair Tax is it has two flaws: It is progressive and thus will not induce voters to reduce government. And it requires a 23% rate, which is unsalable to the electorate. The CAP's 10% equal-rate tax suffers neither of these defects.

The Fed, unfortunately, will be a much more difficult institution to abolish. It will require that we first educate the American people into the workability of a free-market banking system. This is not something that is going to be done quickly. Even if the central banking systems of the West collapse in the coming mega-crisis, it will still be difficult to sell voters on free-market banking. They are so used to government running monetary affairs that they will probably opt for some kind of reformed government banking system.

This is where immense danger lurks, for if we do not effectively demonstrate to voters that the Fed and fiat money are the sources of the boom-bust cycle of modern economics, then they could very well be bamboozled into adopting some sort of global central banking system as a solution to the coming crisis. Global government would then be right around the corner. American sovereignty would be on life support. This again is why a third-party headed up by an articulate candidate who understands these issues is so important to put in place. As the mega-crisis unfolds, it will be imperative that we offer the 70 million voters that tune into the National Presidential Debates an opposition view to "global government banking" and convince them that our boom-bust troubles are spawned by the Fed's irresponsible fiat money.

Edwin Vieira's approach is also crucial to sell to Americans. His plan is to get the state governments to put into place acceptance of gold and silver coins as circulating money. Thus when the fiat paper money system fails (as it surely will), there is already in place numerous state hard money systems that could function as we climb out of the collapse. The country would then have a competitive form of money to the Fed's paper issuance that the people could opt for. This would help prepare for a future system absent the Fed, i.e., a true free-market banking system.

Daily Bell: What will it take to reduce the US's standing army?

Nelson Hultberg: A thorough rout of the neoconservative view spewed out by the Bill Kristols, Newt Gingrichs, Richard Perles and David Frums. Their paranoid view of a militant Islam posing an ideology of conquest just as the Nazis and Soviets did has to be refuted. We must show Americans that Islamic terrorists do not care for Western style individualism, but they do not want to take us over, and what's most important they do not have the power to take us over if we will only do one thing – protect our borders. They attacked us, not because they hate our freedom, but because they hate our military and bureaucratic presence in their countries and our support of Israeli domination of the Palestinians. We have been doing to them what the Brits did for so many decades to the Irish. We were in their territory with bombs and troops and bureaucrats. We were playing the role of occupiers. Thus the IRA solution to the detested British presence became the Islamic solution to a detested American presence.

Only when we have refuted the poisonous paranoia of neoconservatism will we be able to convince American voters that America should not, and cannot, be the policeman of the world. Only then will we be able to reduce the US's standing army and end the obsessive nation building that consumes our foreign policy wonks at the Pentagon. The neocons have so frightened Americans in the wake of 9-11 that a majority of the voters believe we need 820 military bases in 135 countries around the world in order to protect our nation.

Imperial hubris rules the neocons. History repeats. Ignorance and arrogance push us into moral and financial bankruptcy as we try to control the intractable idiocies of tribalism in the Mideast under the guise of our "national interest."

Daily Bell: Have you been in touch with Ron Paul about his participation?

Nelson Hultberg: James Jaeger has been in touch with his chief of staff, Jeff Deist, regarding the film, and both of us would like to try and approach Paul about an Independent run once SPOiLER gets some traction and if Paul is denied the GOP nomination. Paul is surely keeping his options open for the possibility of an Independent run in the manner of Ross Perot in 1992. That, I think, is one of the reasons why he is not running again for his Congressional seat. This allows him to pursue bigger ambitions if he gets enough monetary support and feels he can gain 15% in the polls to qualify for the National TV Presidential Debates. So the potential is there.

Daily Bell: Is the US becoming more oppressive to freedom recently or less so?

Nelson Hultberg: Far and away more oppressive to freedom. Look at the monstrosity of ObamaCare, the renewal of the Patriot Act, the increase of Fed monetary manipulation, the refusal to face reality in foreign policy, the hubris of Washington regarding taxes and regulations, the inability to reduce spending and borrowing in face of trillions of dollars in debt. The sheer lunacy of our legislators smacks of a power lust that rivals many despotisms of history. Only the twisted shams of statist mythology taught in our schools props up the lunacy and passes it off to the people as a rational approach to political economy. Our self-delusion is so pathological that there can be no salvation until we have experienced the horrors of a full blown crash. Only then will there be a chance that the people might wake up and grasp that pervasive evil has overcome us, and that we are going to have to take some radical steps to bring freedom and sanity back to our lives.

Daily Bell: Are US wars more successful or less so?

Nelson Hultberg: Less successful. What have we gained in our Mideast ventures? Over 4,000 deaths and 31,000 wounded in Iraq alone. Over 1,700 dead in Afghanistan and 11,000 wounded. Over a trillion dollars in debt. And there are several hundred thousand Iraqi casualties added to our own. Has it been worth it? I think the answer to that will come when we finally pull out our troops and allow the Iraqis to govern themselves. I believe at that time a vicious civil war will commence among the tribes that populate the area. Like any shrewd guerrillas, the Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, and Wahabbis are merely biding their time at present for the ravages of war to erode Washington's lust for war. But with our pullout they will mercilessly undo the political forms our military's sacrifice and blood have built. These groups have been fighting among themselves for centuries, and American political philosophy is not going to eliminate the hostilities they hold for each other. Any democratic structure that we manage to erect will eventually be junked by the tribal mentalities that dominate the region once American troops are withdrawn.

The Founding Fathers are surely turning over in their graves in face of this mess. Our economy slouches toward bankruptcy (and our culture toward Gomorrah) because of our government's reckless reaching beyond its financial and spiritual supply lines. Great nations fall precisely because of this kind of blindness, this kind of senseless waste and inhumanity that the Bushes and Obamas of history so callously heap upon their fellowman.

Daily Bell: Why did the US attack Libya?

Nelson Hultberg: Because a "world policeman mentality" dominates the Pentagon. Libya is just another arena of chaos that we must control in order to keep peace in the world. Washington elites believe that since we are the dominant superpower of the world, we must exercise that power to shape the world to our desires. Libya will not be the last intervention on our part in that region of the world.

Daily Bell: Why is the US involved in so many wars?

Nelson Hultberg: Because neoconservatives dominate the foreign policy circles of Washington and the Council on Foreign Relations. Their vision is that of Pax Americana. This vision was given a big boost in the controversial 1992 Pentagon report by former Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz titled, "Defense Planning Guidance." In it, he called on America in the post-Cold War era to alter its foreign policy aims from merely defense of our nation to actively pursue a reshaping of the world – in short, get involved in nation building whenever and wherever it would appear to benefit us. We must seize the opportunity to bend as many nations as possible to our will, to our values, and to our form of democracy. Only in this way can we truly promote "peace and stability" for ourselves and our allies. Only in this way can America heed the call to national greatness that falls on the shoulders of singular superpowers. This view now dominates both the Democrats and Republicans.

This sort of hubris really began back in 1913 with Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives. American power, they felt, must be used to "save the world for Democracy." The international socialists at this time were taking over the academic circles of America. The sane foreign policy prescriptions of Jefferson and Washington (avoid entangling alliances), which served our nation very well for 125 years, got discarded as anachronistic and inadequate for a modern world. America was becoming a superpower, and she needed to act like one. National sovereignty was suddenly viewed as an evil. Globalism was the wave of the future.

Consequently democracy has become our new god, the raison d'etre of our lives. It is now the curative for all the world's ills from war to poverty to cultural primitiveness. Spread its healing principles to mankind, and we can build a heaven on earth. The fact that the British felt the same call to duty in their imperialistic dreams of the nineteenth century goes ominously unnoticed by our punditry. What is the difference between the Kristol-Wolfowitz vision and the expansionist policies of Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria in England of the 1870s that promoted war against the Afghans and the Zulus? British-style colonization may not be the goal of the neocon vision, but the curse of global hegemony is, just as it was for Germany's seeking of "lebensraum," Rome's seeking of Pax Romana, and Alexander the Great's seeking to conquer the neighboring nations of his time.

Daily Bell: Does Ron Paul have a chance to win the presidency?

Nelson Hultberg: Certainly not as a Republican. The GOP will never nominate him. If he actually wants to be President, he will have to do it as an Independent. But he would also have to temper his strong libertarian stands to actually be President. I don't think he wants to play that role, however. I think he wants to bring dramatic attention to the fallacies of the DemoPublican political paradigm and its worship of statism. This he can do best by running for President and pointing out on the campaign trail the lunacy of our present tax and monetary policies. He has been tremendously galvanizing in this respect since he began his crusade in 2007.

Daily Bell: Why isn't the Libertarian party doing better?

Nelson Hultberg: Because it marginalizes itself. It does this because it attempts to instantly implement an ideal vision of how society should be constructed through the political process. Libertarians ignore the fact that politics is a game of incrementalism, that it is not an arena in which an "ideal society" can suddenly be voted into place. Because they try to do this, they are perceived by the public as not living in the real world.

For example, whenever they are asked what tax policy they advocate for the country, Libertarian Party members reply that the income tax should be totally abolished and government should be stripped down to a minimal state funded solely by tariffs. Now this is a wonderful "ideal" that could perhaps be achieved in 70-80 years. But it's not a credible political platform to be gained through a political campaign today. Libertarian Party members are blind to the damage this does to their image in the minds of the voters. As a result, they are marginalized as utopian. They end up getting at best 1% of the vote every year and remain obscure fringe voices.

Daily Bell: What's next for you?

Nelson Hultberg: Getting my book, The Golden Mean: The Case for Libertarian Politics and Conservative Values, published. I spent ten years writing it, and I believe it has the potential to dramatically shift the freedom movement into a powerful force that can defeat statism. But both libertarians and conservatives are going to have to make some important ideological changes in their approaches. And they are going to have to come together as they were in the early years.

When it first began in the early 1940s, the freedom movement in America was not split between conservatives and libertarians. It was one coalition unified in rebellion against FDR's welfare state. Its purpose was to restore the Founders' vision of strict constitutional government and federalism. By 1960, however, the movement had become tragically bifurcated. Ayn Rand departed totally from Burkean influence to form today's libertarian movement, while Russell Kirk drove conservatives away from their Lockean roots of individualism. This split has now created two incomplete visions (contemporary libertarianism and conservatism) that are, in their singularity, incapable of effectively challenging the authoritarian statism that dominates the institutions of modern society.

What must be done is to reunite these two divisions. This will require a rational theory of politics that can effectively bring together the two philosophical streams of John Locke and Edmund Burke so as to restore the original Republic of states that Jefferson and the Founders envisioned. The Golden Mean, I believe, accomplishes this theoretical unification.

Daily Bell: Who will run for president under your banner?

Nelson Hultberg: That is best answered by reading my article, "Who Will Be Our Modern Day Jefferson?"

Daily Bell: Are you focused on presidential campaigns or on building the party up from grass roots?

Nelson Hultberg: We are focused on the presidential campaigns. We believe that the primary necessity is to get a candidate into the National TV Presidential Debates and do what Ross Perot did. But then repeat the process every four years. Use this national attention then to build the grassroots and compete every two years in the off year elections for Congress. Once we have a presidential candidate into the National Debates running on the "Two Pillars Strategy," we have a means to explain to 70 million voters how the DemoPublicans are robbing us of our money, our rights, and our freedom. The difference in our approach and that of Perot is that we will be selling freedom based upon two revolutionary policies of tax and monetary reform that will stop the growth of the leviathan cold. The two pillars can be sold to 38% of the American electorate, which is where we differ from the Libertarian and Constitution Parties. They are only able to sell their platform to 1% of the electorate. We plan to be a REAL third-party that can actually win with reform that will break the DemoPublican monopoly and begin the restoration of the Republic.

Daily Bell: Do you have members now?

Nelson Hultberg: Yes, but we are still in the crawling stage. We hope to begin to walk with SPOiLER's emergence, and then begun to run if we can convince Ron Paul to wage an Independent campaign in 2012, with his VP candidate emerging as the head of the Conservative American Party in 2016.

Daily Bell: Will the movie help you attract a membership?

Nelson Hultberg: We believe it will. It is designed to convince Americans that there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, that as Pat Buchanan declares in the film, there is a conspiracy between the two parties to pass the presidency back and forth between them.

Daily Bell: What do you say to those who believe the US is beyond repair and that politics cannot solve anything?

Nelson Hultberg: I say, check the history of our founding. We were born out of the cauldron of politics. Samuel Adams and John Hancock orchestrated the Boston Tea Party as a political protest. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence with politics permeating his reasoning. The Federalist Papers were some of the most salient political writings ever penned by man. Our Constitution is the greatest political document ever created. The men who met at Independence Hall in 1787 knew well the power of politics and were some of the most brilliant sages of history. Politics can indeed save us; but it has to be a rational and radical politics – radical meaning fundamental. It has to go to the root cause of our problems, which are the two evils of 1913, the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax.

Our country will never be beyond repair. With truth and courage, we can overcome the most tyrannical of evils and the most disastrous of economic crashes. I fully realize the strength of the ruling establishment and the odds that a challenge like this is up against. But I see overwhelming challenge as rampant throughout history. I see that all progress in forming better, freer societies only comes about because there are certain people in this world (the Thomas Jeffersons and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns) who just don't allow immense power structures to bother them or dissuade them. They know that with the power of moral truth on their side they can sweep into existence a free and just political order. And that is what we have on our side – moral truth. America was the first morally proper form of government in history because it enshrined the individual as possessed of inalienable rights and made government the servant of the people rather than the other way around. It idealized the concept of "objective law." This ideal that the Founders gave to us can be restored and strengthened. The vision of Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and Paine was not meant to prevail just for the 19th century. It was meant to prevail for all of time. I discuss this way of thinking at great length in The Golden Mean.

Daily Bell: Any other statements you want to make?

Nelson Hultberg: If you, the reader, value freedom and honor, then you must not allow the DemoPublicans to win by default. Because of their greed and hubris they are destroying the greatest country that ever existed. You must join the fight in whatever way you can. Ayn Rand spoke to this very profoundly with one of the themes of Atlas Shrugged, the "sanction of the victim." By this she meant that dictatorships come about because the people, in their apathy and fear, sanction them. They vote for their own enslavement. Or they stand by and do nothing while the PC police and the money corrupters and the corporate statists openly violate the basic rights of mankind in their lunatic pursuits of self-aggrandizement. These despicable humans and their warped ideologies must be challenged. If we do not rise to this challenge, a new high-tech Dark Ages could well descend upon us for the next thousand years.

Daily Bell: Thanks for your time, and congratulations.

Nelson Hultberg: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Here at DB, we call for the abolishment of central banking regularly, and thus Nelson Hultberg's two-pillar platform, which includes using Milton Friedman's idea of a steady-state Fed, is perhaps a bit of a ... leisurely solution in our view. Also, only the free-market can determine how much money an economy needs; so pumping in a certain amount of money per year may provide distortion more than wealth.

Having said that, we notice that no one else seems to have any bright ideas on how to move America back onto a course of freedom and away from the path of authoritarianism. At least Nelson Hultberg has set forth a path, a fairly courageous one – and even has an idea who should blaze it.

Popular libertarian candidate Ron Paul, he believes, will eventually need a platform and party, and Nelson Hultberg hopes an understanding may be reached. He believes Ron Paul will eventually run via a third-party as the Republicans will not elect him. He is not dismayed by reports that Ron Paul has ruled out a third party run if he doesn't end up winning the presidential nomination.

Ron Paul certainly continues to make progress. Just yesterday he won the California straw poll, and by a fairly wide margin. This no doubt caused yet more dismay within the tight, authoritarian circle of the GOP's leadership and is further confusing the mainstream media that simply doesn't know how to cover Ron Paul's rise.

So far the ranks at the top remain closed to Ron Paul's brand of free-market thinking. Ron Paul wants to shut down America's global empire – some 1,000 military and spy bases – and end central banking as well. Central banking and military intimidation are the two main mechanisms whereby the US and the Anglosphere power elite projects its influence around the world.

The world, in fact, is run by a handful of small, impossibly wealthy families that have set up a global central banking economy, funded America.'s military empire (as an enforcement arm) and want to move toward global government as soon as possible.

It is these families and their plans that Ron Paul continues to challenge with his campaign. The leaders of these mighty, hidden familial enterprises cannot be pleased that his message continues to resonate and is made more pertinent by the collapse of the fiat-money economy supported by the price-fixing of central banking.

We have the idea that Ron Paul may back into the nomination simply because one way the families work is by co-option. Ronald Reagan, who believed in smaller government, was co-opted in the 1980s in our view. It was Reagan's time, and now it may be Ron Paul's time. He just launched another successful "money bomb" campaign netting him US$1 million and is doing well with PAC money, too. The other candidates have all adopted portions of his rhetoric without crediting him, even Texas governor Rick Perry, the supposed front-runner.

Ronald Reagan proved an unstoppable force as well, from a political standpoint. He won, but then, eventually, was intimidated by a variety of factors, or so it seems. (It didn't help that John Hinckley shot him.) Maybe Ron Paul will win the nomination, and then the powers-that-be shall try to intimidate him ... as an alternative to trying to keep the nomination from him altogether. Rick Perry seems to be the "chosen" candidate of the elites this time round, but we have a hard time believing that Perry will actually win. Time will tell.

If Ron Paul doesn't win, maybe he will change his mind and decide to run as a third-party force. Nelson Hultberg has prepared the vehicle and all Ron Paul needs to do is step in and drive it. Stranger things have happened and these are indeed strange times. Perhaps they are hopeful times as well. Congratulations to Nelson Hultberg on his new political party and James Jaeger for his brand new – and already well-received – movie, SPOiLER.

To watch SPOiLER now, click here. To order DVD copies, click here.