Guns and Dope Party

The Guns and Dope Party is a United States political party envisioned by cult author Robert Anton Wilson. While the party has proposals that can be considered generally libertarian and anarchist in its principles, it presents these positions in a facetious manner, and advocates extremely absurd things, for example replacing one third of Congress with ostriches. This is consistent with Robert Anton Wilson's and chaotic tradition of advocating freedom through parody and surrealism. Indeed, this school of thought regards dogma as the main root of humanity's evils and holds the view that people shouldn't take things - or themselves - too seriously.
The party's political ideology stems from Wilson's insight that "every ostrich is a tsar" - that is, a radical political belief that each individual should be capable of governing him/herself. Guns and Dope has consistently supported "everybody" for President of the United States, where voters are encouraged to write-in their own name on the ballot.
One chapter of the Guns and Dope Party regularly hosts a theme camp at Nevada's yearly counter-culture sopped Burning Man festival.
About the Guns and Dope Party
The Guns and Dope Party arose from the mind of fiction and non-fiction writer Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007) in response to a request from his friends that he enter the California 2003 special mid-term recall election as a candidate for Governor. The party platform uses both satire and multi-layered political conviction in an effort to inject several alternative views into mainstream political thinking. Wilson, suffering with the physically debilitating effects of Post-polio syndrome, used medicinal marijuana to ease his pain, and wrote the party platform and other Guns and Dope Party musings from his bed in the last several years of his life. These views included advocacy for medicinal marijuana, as well as thoughts on voluntary taxation (citing 19th century legal philosopher Lysander Spooner), separation of religion from politics, and tactical use of the second and tenth amendment of the United States constitution. Wilson, while not exactly a proponent of gun use, used the premise of the second amendment to stress the importance of a citizenry's right to protect itself against the abuses of its own government. The medicinal marijuana collective (WAMM) that supplied Wilson with his medicine was approved by state and city regulations (see California's Proposition 215, also known as the 1996 Compassionate Use Act), but was in 2002 raided by the US Drug Enforcement Agency. In response to that raid and with the support of city and state government officials, organizers held a rally and medicinal marijuana give-away on the steps of Santa Cruz, California's city hall. Wilson attended the event, and from his wheelchair gave the following remarks,
"The 10th Amendment says all powers not relegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people. Nowhere does it say that a goddamn tsar will be in charge of my medical care and interfere between me and my doctor. If anybody in Philadelphia in the 18th Century had suggested putting something like that in the Constitution, they would have been considered a raving lunatic. This Constitution was not created to establish a tsarist tyranny, it was established to create a free society!"
Wilson's view on the US drug war and the actions of the office of the drug tsar led to his inserting an anti-tsarism plank in the Guns and Dope Party platform. While tracing tsarism in America in a convoluted manner from the CIA's recruitment of a former Nazi pro-tsarist intelligence officer, Wilson's primary use of tsarism as a satirical metaphor rose from his defense of the US constitution's Tenth Amendment concept regarding the limitations of the federal government.
Most of Wilson's writings used satire and humor as a way of entertaining, disarming and challenging his reader's belief systems. As a general critique of politics Wilson wrote the following in the party's second Position Paper (labeled Position Paper #5),
"First order of business on assuming office:
Fire 33% of the Congress (names selected at random)
and replace them with full-grown adult ostriches,
whose mysterious and awesome dignity will
elevate the suidaen barbarity long established there."
Wilson presumably included ostriches in the Guns and Dope Party platform as a pointed joke, but says on the party's website that Olga, the ostrich featured in the Orson Welles movie Southern Star, was the party's spiritual advisor. Wilson wrote, "Without her, we might take ourselves -- and featherless biped politics in general -- too damned seriously, following the usual "slippery slope" downward from Ideology to Idiocy."
Wilson coined the party name based on his insight that "dopers" and "gun nuts" if working together would form a formidable majority in California. Wilson wrote, "I'll tolerate your hobbies if you'll tolerate mine."
After the 2003 special election in California, Wilson turned the focus of the party towards a national political direction and advocated for a more critical electorate by introducing the slogan "Everybody for President." Wilson wrote, "Well, at least everybody who feels ready for the responsibility of self-government. Those who still need a Big Daddy or a Big Momma to discipline and dominate them should vote for whatever fuhrer or saviour they like best."
When he heard that someone had stated on an internet blog "I'm having some difficulty distinguishing the Guns and Dope Party from the Libertarian Party." Wilson labeled that comment the "Koan of the week."
In 2004 some fans of the writer were granted permission to borrow the ideas and graphics of the Guns and Dope Party and host a theme camp at Nevada's yearly Burning Man festival.
Wilson wrote about the Guns and Dope Party in his last published book Email to the Universe.
Graphics for the Guns and Dope Party were created by Wilson's friend, musician, writer and graphic designer Richard Rasa.
This information provided by Robert Anton Wilson, Richard Rasa and members of Wilson's private email group known as the GroupMind.

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