The guest for the 10/23/12 show of Missouri Freedom Radio was Doug Burlison  (view his city council bio).  Doug is a member of the Springfield MO City Council.  He has been elected and subsequently re-elected to his seat on the city council even though he isn’t a Democrat or Republican.  On tonight’s show, host Grant Warren and Mr. Burlison discussed a wide range of topics from the coverage 3rd party candidates receive nationally vs locally, to the fact that when Burlison announced support for the state of Missouri declaring independence, he was re-elected!

When asked about Burlison’s Libertarian ideals, and how he was elected to the Springfield city Council, Doug replied with, “Well, actually it is a non-partisan office, so officially I’m not elected as a Libertarian. But my first campaign where I got elected, the media really went out of their way to label me as a Libertarian – when they didn’t label any other candidate with any partisan affiliation at all. So in effect I was running as Libertarian Doug Burlison, which I think was an attempt to marginalize the campaign. But prior to that, I had been very active as far as getting the city audited by the State of Missouri, and I think it was one of those cases where actions spoke louder than words. And regardless what label the media tried to put on me, I actually won the election.”

As for his thoughts on the Presidential debates we’ve all seen on television for the last couple weeks? “To be honest I can’t really comment too much on those, because I haven’t watched any of them. Now I did watch the ‘Free and Equal’ debate tonight that had Jill Stein (Green Party), Rocky Anderson (Justice Party), Virgil Goode (Constitution Party) and Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party). And wow, what a refresher to see a debate where actual issues are discussed, and you have candidates that are very passionate about their stances, and it doesn’t seem rehearsed. Just pure politics if you will, and I appreciated seeing that. And it was awesome having Larry King moderate that as well. I hope more people can tune into the alternatives that are out there – because they are out there, and they’re on the ballot in enough states where they could become the President of the United States. There’s still time before the election, and this is the day and age where things can go viral. So anyone who hasn’t checked out alternative candidates as of yet, I’d sure encourage that. Because I guarantee that you’ll find someone who will line up more with your beliefs than the mainstream puppets that we mostly see on stage.”

Grant Warren then asked if Doug would talk a little about his views on state and local sovereignty, as well as prior comments on how Missouri going it’s own way would be fine – or that even the city of Springfield could do better than the Federal Government was doing for the people. “I know they (the media) probably used that to marginalize you,” Grant stated, “but the people of Springfield elected you anyway.”

“Let me back up a little bit.” Doug explained. “What was being discussed was that I had conducted some chat on an internet forum somewhere, and someone had busted me on it. They turned us into the media on it, and expected a real ‘gotcha’ moment. So I went into the interview on it, and they were asking me where I had come up with this idea, and if I was serious about it. It gave me a good opportunity to talk about the Declaration of Independence, and the concepts that are in that document – which basically states that if our Government, regardless of what form it is, if we deem it no longer productive to our lives, we have the right to change that government. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a state, a nation, or a city. It’s just a basic, natural human right to have a voice in your own Government. To be clear, what I was talking about at that point, is that secession is one of those concepts that should never get taken off the table. I may agree that it might be a method of last resort, but it’s something we as humans certainly have the choice to do.”

To listen to the rest of this interview, please see Missouri Freedom Radio.