Sean Paige says some nice things about Bureaucrash in the Colorado Springs Gazette:

“Question authority” was one of the bumper sticker bromides behind the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In many ways, it seems as much a retro-relic as love beads, lava lamps, peace signs and day-glopainted school buses with pot stench wafting out the windows.

But aging hippies take note: your tired old slogan is being dusted off by a new generation of activists and rabble rousers, on the vanguard of what might be called the counter-counterculture. Only this time, the authority these young people are questioning is the authority of the regulatory superstate created largely by liberals. And the “establishment” they rebel against is the nutty left-wing dogma that was radical back in the ’60s but has become entrenched, oppressive and mainstream today.

These guerrilla fighters in the countercounterculture are members of the Bureaucrash Activist Network — www.bureaucrash. com — who, like the yippies, hippies and dippies of old, excel at using creative acts of street theater to get their point across. They delight in making steaks of liberal sacred cows.

“Bureaucrash is dedicated to fighting the increase of government control over our lives,” according to the network’s Web site. “Our international network of pro-freedom activists works to change the political ideology of our generation through creative activism. While most youth politics supports the growth of the already bloated government bureaucracy, we fight for personal freedom, free trade and limited government.”

Crashers “believe that bloated, sprawling governments and the bureaucrats and politicians who control them ought to be mocked. Mercilessly. Why? Because when governments grow, our freedom to live our lives as we see fit shrinks. Every time a new law is passed, some bureaucrat squirreled away in a cubicle somewhere gets more power to make decisions for us. And because the vast majority of people have no idea of the lives and freedoms crushed every time the government’s power grows.

“We believe that only by spreading information about this absurd arrangement can the sprawling bureaucracy be leashed and our fundamental freedoms restored.”

If that isn’t a mission statement that will resonate with young Americans — and one that would win approval with the powderwigged, dead white guys who started it all back in the revolutionary era — then the future of freedom in this country is in doubt. The emergence of the network gives me hope that America’s true revolutionary spirit, though long dormant, isn’t dead, and that something might yet be salvaged from the land of the free.

Jason Talley is the network's “crasher in chief,” a rank to which he rose after earning his stripes battling valiantly against a college town ordinance requiring bars to close at 2 a.m. — an act of rebellion of which patriot-brewer Sam Adams would have been proud. After all, can you really be said to live in a free country, and do personal liberty and property rights really mean anything, if bars have to close when the government says they do?

But Talley and other crashers have widened the scope of their activities considerably since then. And it sounds like they are having a blast while fighting for the right things.

At a Greenpeace conference, they embarrassed organizers by revealing that a supposedly solar-powered display was just a prop, actually powered by a gas generator. At a World Trade Organization meeting in Mexico, they set up a “fair trade” refreshment stand that charged patrons more for a “protectionist soda” than for “free trade soda.” At an International Monetary Fund meeting, where the usual gaggle of anarchists were pulling out their mangy dreadlocks, bemoaning the economic disparities in the world, crashers infiltrated the protest wearing “Enjoy capitalism” T-shirts.

They take their crusade for freedom and limited government not just to conferences, but to rock concerts — all in an effort to spread a quintessentially American message. “Historically, activism has been prostate because people looked to government to solve problems,” Talley said in an interview with CEI Planet, a publication of the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Bureaucrash attempts to communicate that government is the problem and that real rebels don’t support centralized government authority.” Younger people naturally distrust the government, Talley says. But Americans, young and old, get co-opted because they look to government to take care of their pet projects.

Talley says “bad ideas” are the greatest threat to liberty today — “Especially the idea that the state can solve all your problems.” He says the group isn’t into promoting voting, political parties, candidates or legislative action. “We want to spread the idea of liberty from one person to another like a virus until everyone is infected.”

The virus seems to be spreading, with the network’s help. Like a plague, I hope.