Who is he: Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas, a graduate of Beloit College in Wisconsin, and the Executive Director of Americans for a Free Republic (AFR.org). Hultberg's 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 on numerous Internet sites such as The Daily Bell, Financial Sense and Safe Haven.
Hultberg believes Americans need to return to the ideals of Thomas Jefferson, Barry Goldwater and Ron Paul. If freedom and the Constitution are to be saved for future generations, it will require less government, not more. It will require a political party based upon true (libertarian) conservatism, not the pseudo version of today's Republican spendaholics.
Statism dominates the US today because power elites pulling the strings of both the Democrats and Republicans possess a stultifying monopoly over the political process, and both sides of the dialectic preach only one message − the necessity of "bigger and bigger government" every year. As a result, there is purposefully no effective counter-vision being presented to the voters at election time that will demonstrate both the need and the means of restoring a limited government.
AFR has launched the National Independent Party to give people that choice. Its revolutionary "Two Pillars Strategy" is designed to get the party the necessary 15 percent in the polls to qualify for the national televised presidential election debates and thereby challenge the tyrannical corruption of today's Washington / Wall Street establishment.
Hultberg and AFR's Two Pillars plan is structured around radical tax and monetary reform, which they maintain will stop the growth of the Federal Government cold and begin its automatic reduction. Imagine a government that is relentlessly shrinking every year instead of relentlessly expanding. The "Two Pillars plan" has the potential to do this and get the freedom message in front of 70 million voters. This has never been done in the 52-year history of the televised presidential debates.
Imagine America with zero percent inflation every year, a totally neutered Fed that can no longer debase the currency, a simplified 10 percent flat tax that no longer redistributes wealth and can be figured in ten minutes every April, millions of jobs coming back from overseas and capital flowing into America from all over the world to recharge its sputtering economy.
This is what the National Independent Party offers to bring to America. To paraphrase Victor Hugo, it is an idea whose time has come. The justice and sanity of its "Two Pillars" of reform could have a huge, galvanizing appeal, which gives it the potential to capture 15 to 20 percent of the vote in 2016 and have a dramatic presence in the national debates, then 35 percent in 2020 and victory in a three-candidate race. Big government does not have to rule people's lives.
Background: For several years during the 1990s, Nelson Hultberg worked with Citizens for an Alternative Tax System (CATS) out of Washington, DC, promoting repeal of the federal income tax. In June 1998, Hultberg was featured with Congressmen Bill Archer, Dick Armey, and Billy Tauzin in Texas Business magazine as one of the state's leading tax reformers, "Texas Tea Party."
Nelson Hultberg is the author of Breaking the Demopublican Monopoly: How to Unify America with a Third-Party that Can Win. In addition, in 2012 he has a forthcoming book, The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values. Hultberg is also a member of the Advisory Board for The Foundation for the Advancement of Free-Market Thinking (FAFMT). Email him at nelshultberg@aol.com.