If all the people who like our transpartisan bills would ACT, America would CHANGE, instantly! Retweet
We’re about to unveil a new, “transpartisan” Downsize DC Agenda bill. It’s the first bill we’ve added to our agenda since June 2011! Read on to see how this bill fits into our overall strategy. 
Our main objective is to recruit and mobilize enough people to Downsize DC. Our key strategy for achieving that goal is discovery before persuasion.
- “Discovery” means that we focus first on finding, recruiting, and mobilizing people who already agree with us.
- “Before persuasion” means that we attempt persuasion as a secondary effort, or even as a side-effect of our discovery efforts.
We’re NOT advocating discovery instead of persuasion, we’re advocating discovery before persuasion. We believe in persuasion, but we don’t want to prioritize it. We want to discover and mobilize people who already agree, first, and try to persuade people who disagree second.
What does it mean to focus on people who agree?
It means finding people who agree…
- On individual issues
- On most issues
The first group can include people from the Left or Right. The second type will be various kinds of libertarians. There are currently about 64-million Americans who either self-describe as libertarian or who hold mostly libertarian views on the issues. Please notice two things about that number…
- 64-million people is enough to equalize with the Left and the Right, except that…
- Nearly all of the 64-million are currently inactive, probably out of apathy because the Left and the Right control a rigged and exclusionary electoral system. So…
If the electoral strategy provokes apathy, perhaps another strategy could inspire action.
We long ago noticed that electoral change requires a majority — tens of millions of people — while grassroots pressure organizations (like the NRA and MPP) can change legislation with mere thousands or hundreds of thousands.
We also observed that libertarians tend to agree with the Left and the Right on more issues than the Left and RIght agree with each other. That means the libertarian view can be the swing position on most controversies, if only libertarians show up.
Enter Downsize DC!
Our strategy gives us two ways to win. We can…
- Take advantage of broad agreement on specific issues or
- Prevail on most issues as we discover, recruit, and activate the sleeping libertarians.
We think these strategies can work without having to be a majority or win a single election.
For an example of how a vocal minority can triumph, just look at how the populists took over the Republican Party under Trump. Indeed, even the so-called conservatives and liberals are distinct minorities in the broad spectrum of public opinion.
Our transpartisan Downsize DC Agenda is an example of pursuing opportunities for success with individual issues.
If you surveyed all Americans, you’d find that overwhelming majorities would support the Read the Bills Act and the One Subject at a Time Act, and that support would even transcend normal partisan divisions.
These are powerful examples of how Downsize DC looks for areas of agreement as a starting point.
Now we’re going to add another bill that should have solid majority support…
We’ll tell you more about this bill in an upcoming message. We’ll be promoting this bill in concert with another organization that we like very much. This organization aims to show how the non-state sector solves problems better than The State does. The bill we will promote together aims to give Americans more say in how their tax money gets spent. Stay tuned to learn more. In the meantime…
We hope you’ll embrace the idea of constantly increasing the amount of libertarian pressure Congress feels each day.
- If you haven’t sent a January message on each of our current Agenda bills, please do that now: OSTA, RTBA, WTLA
- If you’re on Facebook but are not yet following us there, please do “Follow” us. Remember, set your follow to “See First,” otherwise you might only hear from us when we pay Facebook to show you a posting.
- We can currently recruit new DC Downsizers for (far) less than $2 each. Please make a contribution or start a monthly pledge so we can recruit more people to expand our pressure on Congress.
Thanks for being an ACTIVE DC Downsizer,
Perry Willis & Jim Babka
Downsize DC