As you may know, I have been walking precincts today in support of U.S. Senate candidate Orly Taitz and U.S. congressional candidate John Webb. I've done this in Massachusetts and California in the past. I may be getting too old for it now.
The first thing I noticed is how dangerous it is to walk unfamiliar streets. The initial day out, I was walking with my friend Dave Duringer who is a great gun rights trust attorney and an insightful observer of conservative politics. I almost tripped and fell three times. Dave kept me from falling head first down a steep flight of three steps outside a home in Mission Viejo. He kindly blamed my glasses and eye sight. I know I'm just out of practice and talking too much.
After about three hours of it, we quit and joined the rest of our Tea Party team for lunch and cold water. It was only when I got home I realized I was suffering from symptoms of heat exhaustion.
The second thing I noticed is one of the most consistent finding in political science. Most voters are not as up-to-speed on politics and political news as those of us who make it our business to study politics.
As far as I can tell, no one we met during these walks had ever heard of John C. Drew, Ph.D. or even knew about my report on meeting the young Marxist socialist extremist Barack Obama. It is extremely easy to over-estimate how well people know you or recognize your name. Building name identification, in any area, takes time and money. The situation, in my case, is so bad that I once introduced myself to a person who did not realize I had delivered a speech - with him in the audience - a month earlier. As they say, people need to hear a message about eight times before it finally sinks in. It is humbling to realize the truth of this observation applies to me just like everyone else.
More comically, I have been introduced to others as John Drew and then mobbed with affection when I was reintroduced as Augustine25. (I'm not joking.)
On the positive side, I had forgotten how charming and friendly 95% of the people are when you ring their doorbell and ask for their vote.
Tricia and I went out walking precincts yesterday and today. (I think Dave has given up on me.) I'm a sort of nervous, nerdy type, but people listened to my spiel and offered us water and encouragement. I was startled by how many people thanked me for running for office. Tricia, of course, is a natural campaigner. As a young girl she used to visit gay bars in Laguna Beach to distribute Christian literature. She is cheerful, upbeat, and never forgets to ask for the homeowner's voter.
Campaign flyer for Orly
Taitz, John Webb, John Drew
and Dave Duringer.
It was also encouraging to see how people maintain their homes. The Republicans we visited have lovingly assembled wonderful gardens with fountains and scuptures. As a group, we Republicans love our cars, trucks and RVs. We skipped the independent voters and Democrats. I think campaigns do that because they do not want timid volunteers turned off by angry, hostile Democrats who slam the door in your face simply because you are a Christian - something that happened to Dave, but not me.
I'm thinking now that we are wrong to only go after Republican households. Right now the Republican brand is damaged in CA and we are probably leaving many Tea Party types without literature and contact simply because they are not registered Republicans. My recommendation is to target neighborhoods with Republican majority voters...but to visit every house. We need to be building our new anti-Marxist anti-Obama party. Visiting only Republicans may turn out our people, but it doesn't build the party or let folks on the fence know we need them and that we are listening to their concerns.
Finally, I had forgotten how much I fear dogs. When I was campaigning for the state assembly in MA, I remember I stopped at a farm house and was immediately surrounded by a pack of five barking dogs. I was approaching each suburban landscape as if a similar feeding frenzy might erupt once again.
I can see why it would be smart for Tea Party constitutional conservatives to raise money and do targetted direct mail. I'm willing to give my life to build a new Republican party, but I only have one life to give.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
The latest bizarre release from the Obama campaign is called The Life of Julia. This comic strip tells the story of a girl who grows up completely dependent on the taxpayers for everything from her pre-school to her health care and to her child rearing responsibilities. After looking over the government dependent life of Julia, I thought I'd put together my own account of what it was like to be harmed by the government nearly my entire life - my own The Life of John. This is not a composite situation, this is my real life. (I have updated this record to reflect where I am at as of today, July 20, 2012.)
John enrolls in pre-school. Finds it stupid and boring...cannot believe adults watch kids play musical chairs. (Three years old.)
John, center. Pre-school strikes him as slow and
boring compared to learning on his own.
John and his family move to a rural area in northern Los Angeles county without a lot of cultural or intellectual amenities. His large family and lack of resources leaves him without the normal supports enjoyed by more privileged children in other communities.
John is identified as a gifted student
by the time he is in the sixth grade.
He is placed on a special math
track for gifted students.
Nevertheless, he is quickly identified as an exceptional student and is picked to participate in advanced math courses that allow him to learn calculus by the time he is in high school.
John takes the SAT exam and scores the highest in his Hart High School graduating class. His family is poor and his living environment is over-crowded. Since his family cannot afford to hook up to the sewer line in the street, the backyard of the home is flooded with raw sewage. (17 years old.)
John, yearbook photo, 1975.
Even though he is poor, with high SAT scores, the best
schools turn him down because he is white.
John wins scholarships from the state of California and Occidental College to go to school. Affirmative action backed by the U.S. government keeps him from attending a better and more prestigious school because he is Armenian-American and not a member of a politically powerful minority group. (18 years old.) He gives the graduation speech at his high school. His brother Jim suggests that John peaked too early.
John in scholarship winning photo.
John attends Occidental College and earns straight A's during his freshman year. John on a becomes a Marxist socialist and establishes the Political Awareness Fellowship, the Marxist student organization on campus. Halfway through his sophomore year, John's scholarship and hard work earns him a one-year opportunity to attend the University of Sussex in England. He studies Marxism overseas and visits France, Morocco, Greece and Italy. While in Morocco, John is shocked to observe child labor in action.
Back at Occidental for his senior year, John writes his college honors thesis on Marxist economics. John wins a scholarship to Cornell University. He is also asked to take out a loan. He protests and threatens not to attend Cornell unless they pay a full scholarship. Cornell University relents and John gets a full scholarship even though he is a young white guy. (22 years old.)
John at Occidental College during his senior year - 1979.
John goes back to visit his Marxist socialist friends at Occidental College including Caroline Boss and Hasan Chandoo. They introduce him to the young Barack Obama. John argues with young Obama and suggests that a Communist style revolution is unrealistic. Obama seems to agree. (23 years old.)
John with radical college sweetheart
in the summer of 1981.
John takes a year off from graduate school. He starts to realize that Karl Marx was wrong about a lot of things including spiritual matters. John begins to use his intuition and imagination to forge his own philosophy independent of Marxist socialist ideology. (25 years old.)
John earns his M.A. degree from Cornell University. He has introduced a new explanation for the cause of welfare programs in the United States that disconfirms Marx’s hypothesis, disconfirms Piven and Cloward, and disrupts 40 years of political science knowledge. He has a hard time winning over his professors to his new ideas. John works as a gardener to make money to survive. (27 years old.)
John teaching political science
at the University of Oregon in 1986.
John is teaching at the number one liberal arts college in the nation – Williams College. He was blocked from applying to other schools because Cornell University sent less qualified African-American students to the major openings as larger universities. (29 years old.)
John's identification card from
Williams College in 1986.
John wins the William Anderson Award from the APSA for the best doctoral dissertation in the nation in his field. John looks for teaching jobs in political science in California. He comes in second to the less qualified minority candidate about nine times. He is very frustrated about affirmative action and the damage it has done to him over his life. (37 years old.)
John's award-winning thesis
is published as a book in 1994.
John quits looking for work as a college professor and starts working in fundraising jobs for charities as a grant writer. He is married to a girl he first met while he was in high school – Tricia. (41 years old.)
John starts his own grant writing consulting company and immediately manages to survive and eventually buy a condo and travel around the world with Tricia. (45 years old.)
John notices that because of Proposition 13, he is paying more in taxes on his new condo than his wealthier, older neighbors. He teaches part-time in the MBA program at a Christian school - Hope International University. (46 years old.) John notices that one of the people he knew from his Marxist socialist days, Barack Obama, is running for President. John contacts all the major media outlets, but no one wants to publicize his story about meeting the young ideologically extremist Barack Obama. (51 years old.)
John tries to alert mainstream media to
Obama's radicalism, but no one seems to listen.
John calls Ron Kessler and tells his story of meeting and debating the young Marxist socialist Obama. Within two years, John’s story on meeting young Obama is published in at least four books in time for the 2010 elections. (53 years old.)
Meanwhile, John grows his company in the middle of a recession caused by the Democrat party when it gained full control of Congress in 2007. He hires new people and creates jobs while making his clients a ton of money. Obama wants to tax John more because he earns over $250,000 per year. (55 years old.)
John visits a Native American
dwelling in Anchorage, Alaska in 2011.
John discovers that because he is older and white that the political forces that control health care in the world of Obama have decided that his life is less valuable compared to the lives of Democrat party voters. (65 years old.)
One of John's favorite programs is
the cult classic, The Prisoner TV Series.
John discovers that inflation and the increased cost of living make Social Security a waste of time. John wishes he could have invested all that extra money into gold or real estate. (67 years old.)
John meets Andrew Breitbart in 2011.
John looks back on his life and sees that the government has been largely hostile to his career and his economic well-being. In general, John has been deeply harmed by big government and a lot of his earning power and investment resources were taken from him to benefit other people who did not live their lives with as much intention or carefulness.
John wishes he had done even more to break the news about Obama’s ideological extremism in 2008. (68 years old.)
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
Orange County's Tea Party Patriots. From left to right, John Drew,
John Webb, Orly Taitz, Nina Davar, Kevin Richardson,
Dave Duringer and Steve Magdziak.
