Jamie Frost Remmey — Libertarian for U.S. House, PA-01 — On Ballot Access, Defend the Guard & War Powers

A Mile of Signatures by Hand — Just to Get on the BallotThis is the Thursday interview closing Week 7 of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — the week we traced the Dutch Republic, the first modern commercial republic, which grew prosperous not by concentrating power but by refusing to. All week the argument was that liberty and prosperity travel together, and that power held far from the people tends to be power misused. This conversation puts a living face on it: a candidate standing in the middle of the machinery, who can tell you what it actually costs to try to build a piece of that refusal today.Jamie Frost Remmey is the Libertarian nominee for the United States House in Pennsylvania’s First Congressional District, in Bucks and Montgomery counties, challenging five-term incumbent Republican Brian Fitzpatrick and Democrat Bob Harvie. She is not a career politician and does not pretend to be one — she is funding the race out of her own pocket and those of friends and family, working two jobs while she does it, and gathering by hand the more than 5,000 valid signatures Pennsylvania demands before it will print a third-party name on the ballot at all.Two threads run through the conversation, and they are the same thread seen from two distances. The first is close to home: what it takes for a third-party candidate to reach a Pennsylvania ballot, and what that machinery reveals about who the system is built to serve. The second reaches back to the week’s history — the Dutch insight that decentralized power keeps people free — and forward to the war power: to Grotius and the free sea, to who may send Americans into combat, and to Defend the Guard, the state-level reform that would bar a governor from releasing his state’s National Guard into overseas combat unless Congress has done its one constitutional job and voted to declare war. The last time Congress did that was 1941.This week’s standing question runs through all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?⏱️ CHAPTERS00:00 Introduction: The Dutch Act of Abjuration 00:37 Episode Overview: Interview with Jamie Frost Remmey 03:32 Interview Begins: Challenging the Duopoly 05:44 The Influence of Dark Money in Politics 08:43 Building Support for Third Parties 13:18 The Unfair Hurdles of Ballot Access in PA 18:02 Decentralization and Reclaiming Congressional Power 21:20 The Defend the Guard Movement 26:49 Executive Overreach and the War Powers Act 28:16 Policy Differences with the Incumbent 29:34 Where to Find and Support the Campaign 30:51 Post-Interview Reflection: The Cost of Liberty 31:48 Defend the Guard as the Dutch Design Rediscovered 34:03 Conclusion and Preview of Next Week📚 Companion article — Article 7, “The Dutch Experiment,” on the improvised republic and the free-sea principle behind this week: [article URL]🎙️ Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 7, Interview | Consequential Actions━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Consequential Actions𝕏: https://x.com/jkellick🎧 Spotify: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#jamiefrostremmey #libertarian #defendtheguard #warpowers #ballotaccess #pennsylvania #pa01 #selfevident #liberty #consequentialactions This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeffkellick.substack.com