Sipsey Street Irregulars: Subverting the leviathan press the old fashoned way with a new fashioned twist.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Subverting the leviathan press the old fashoned way with a new fashioned twist.

Some seditionist old fart speaking at the July 4th parade in Westcliffe, CO, earlier this year.

It is with embarrassment that I am just now getting around to discharging some promises I made to myself and others on my trip in July out to Colorado. One story that I was fascinated to learn was that of George Gramlich's Mountain Publishing and the Sangre de Cristo Sentinel.

Like many rural places scattered across the country, the "traditional" community newspaper in Custer County, CO, was and is operated by owners with a decided liberal and Democrat party bias. Starting on 4 July of last year, Mountain Publishing was founded to provide a counterweight to this long-standing collectivist monopoly. As the paper proudly declares, the Sentinel is:

A newspaper to serve the good people of this county, surrounding counties and our neighboring communities located along the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. A newspaper with a conservative voice. A newspaper with "A DIFFERENT VIEW FROM THE SAME MOUNTAINS" than what is available now. A newspaper for all liberty and freedom loving citizens and patriots. We believe this is a much needed "CHOICE" in these beautiful, mostly rural, areas of Colorado. The Sentinel (also knows as a Sentry) is a Guardian. He watches over, protects, informs and warns us and others of danger. There are many current dangers to our liberties, freedoms and rights. So, first, we need to be informed, then we need to stand up for and be prepared to protect these liberties, freedoms and rights. Lastly, we need to remain vigilant. This newspaper will be our Sentinel and help us all do that.

And the amazing thing is that this weekly has been remarkably successful, with a business model that can be duplicated, I think, with good results in other places. With a lean and mean staff of just three paid staff and many willing volunteers, when I was there it had built up a circulation of 1100 that reaches well beyond the county, which according to the 2010 census had a population of only 4,255!

Printed on the presses of the nearby Pueblo Chieftan, in July the Sentinel had subscribers in 30 states all the while providing hard copy news and opinion to the local market. As George told me, "We provide a conservative/libertarian voice that isn't available in the liberal-owned papers that usual dominate in most areas. We cover local scandals that otherwise wouldn't be covered." Gramlich added with pride, "We have harnessed the power of the press" to the discomfiture of local politicians and especially the local Democrat party.

Instead of cursing the collectivist darkness, George urges others to emulate their success. "Get off your ass, start your own paper, and make it happen."

George welcomes inquiries from others interested in starting their own versions of the Sentinel. The Sangre de Cristo Sentinel and Mountain Publishing Company, Inc. are located at 610 Main St., Westcliffe, CO 81252. Their phone number is 719-783-3360.

1 comment:

Paul X said...: "Like many rural places scattered across the country, the "traditional" community newspaper in Custer County, CO, was and is operated by owners with a decided liberal and Democrat party bias."

Well, it seems they are equally likely to be fascists. Most newspaper editors never met a "public-private partnership" they didn't like.

Of course the distinction between left-liberal and fascist is mighty thin...; August 30, 2014 at 2:20 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Subverting the leviathan press the old fashoned way with a new fashioned twist.

1 comment:

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