January 8

I can't say that I'm all that pleased about the percentage results of today's primary. It shows how far we have to go. After the primaries closed, we gathered in a ballroom of a hotel in Concord, where Ron Paul gave a great speech. We watched the results come in, we discussed details of future plans, and we turned down the opportunity to party in a mansion along the Atlantic coast. What we, the group of people I grew closest to and I, did afterwards, was to go back to our place and to start a meeting at about midnight. It ended up being a two hour meeting, after a very long week (as some of you may have noticed based on some of the times that I've posted these messages), in which we talked about what would come next, what went wrong, what went right. Some of our discussion about the future was based on Johannes's concept of building a broader base for the movement - educating ourselves. This race is not over, and this movement is young.

There were plenty of long faces about this evening. The loss might even be a good thing, because it will cut some of the less committed fat from the movement. It is important to encourage a necessary civic virtue at this moment, however. That civic virtue is resilience, persistence. We really must never give up in spreading this message of individual freedom, and that most certainly includes now.

I wish you all well. Time to return to Chicago to help push along organizing my congressional district with another gentleman, who happens to study at the University of Chicago. From there, Nevada, then back to Chicago. Then I will see how things are going post-Super Tuesday.

Allan
(writing from New London, New Hampshire)