Republicans, Democrats – authoritarian collectivists generally – reflexively dismiss Libertarianism as “impractical” and “naive” in order to avoid discussing the validity of core Libertarian ideals – self ownership, non-aggression. They wave their hands and say, “it won’t work.”
But is this true?
One of the most tiresome objections to a free society – that is, to a society based on the Libertarian ideals of self-ownership and non-aggression – is that absent police, there would be no way to prevent people from running amok and abusing others; that a Lord of the Flies scenario would ensue, with the strong dominating the weak. There would be chaos, insecurity and vigilantism, they cry.
Nonsense.
First, it is necessary (as Ayn Rand famously put it) to check one’s premises. It is true that a Libertarian society – a free society – would not have any need for police. Police enforce laws. As most thoughtful people know, laws are not always just. Indeed, laws are more often not just. This hardly requires elaboration.
Moreover, we already suffer from chaos, abuse and vigilantism – routinely. Only it is not seen as such by most people because it is done under color of law. We face impenetrable ukase – and arbitrary enforcement. People are treated as presumptively criminal on the theory that “someone” might be a criminal. At every step, we face demands for submission – and are threatened with violent reprisals if we do not. We are absolutely not secure in our persons or our effects.
Even something as elementary as being free to travel unmolested is denied us.
The average person is done more real violence by the law – and by the police who enforce these laws – than by the theoretical (for the most part) harm that might by done them by lawbreakers – i.e., their fellow men, absent the law.
And absent police.
For Libertarians, on the other hand, there is only one law – non-aggression: Do no harm to others or their property – but otherwise, do as you wish. Jefferson styled this the pursuit of happiness.
If this principle became the conceptual basis of our proposed system, at a stroke, the entire clunking, clanking, impenetrable, arbitrary, vicious, mindless apparatus of “the law” – and law enforcement – including the Talmudic parsing of codes and regulations – would be done away with and replaced by the simple principle: Cause none harm. It is a principle almost anyone of normal intelligence can understand – and articulate. Either a given act did – or did not – hurt someone, or cause damage to their property. Simple. No doubt, this explains why lawyers such as those who constructed the long-con Constitution venerate their laws – and loathe the Libertarian’s law.
The principle of cause no harm also implies its corollary: Go in peace. That is, if you’ve caused no harm to others, you ought to be free – have a right to be free – to go about your business in peace. To be left alone. And to have that right respected as inviolate.
But, cry the authoritarians, what about those who disrupt the peace?
Here they are manifestly disingenuous, because the majority of that which they revere in police work – that is, law enforcement – has little to do with keeping the peace and much to do with enforcing laws. It is true there are (and likely always will be) bad people in any society – including a free one. But there are far fewer genuinely bad people in any society – in the sense that they’ve caused harm to others, as opposed to “law breakers.” In a Libertarian – that is, a free – society – probably two-thirds of the work that currently occupies police (and courts and prisons, etc.) would simply . . . disappear.
But let us take the authoritarian collectivists at their word and discuss the the Libertarian replacement for police, already hinted at above:
Peace keepers.
In any community larger than a small group, there will probably always be a need for such – if only to avoid the same sort of arbitrary violence we suffer under today (only meted out by random individuals at their whim rather than by specially costumed goons acting under “color of law”).
As the term implies, their charge would be to keep the peace – but nothing more. To step in, for example, when one individual has harmed another – in order to prevent that individual from harming another (and to bring him to account for the harm he has already done).
There could be civil and criminal courts to arbitrate and adjudicate and – where necessary – make sure the scales are balanced. That miscreants are held accountable – but not cruelly or vengefully treated. That disputes are resolved, if not amicably, at least reasonably. It would not be perfect, of course – the straw man typically relied upon by authoritarian collectivists who of course never concede the endless imperfections of their system. But at least – being based on the principles of self-ownership and non-aggression – it would be more perfect than the existing system in that absent tangible evidence of having caused demonstrable harm (as opposed to violating a statute) no charges could be successfully pressed. If this were the rule rather than the exception probably 9 out of ten people would never have any interaction with the peacekeepers – beyond offering a friendly wave and a “hello, there!” once in awhile.
Most critically – and to answer the critics of practical Libertarianism – peacekeeping would not require compulsory taxes (which would of course violate the NAP) for its support.
Just as in many communities, there are volunteer fire departments funded entirely by the freely given donations of those who value this service, so also I suspect could legitimate peace keeping and civil/criminal courts be maintained by the freely given support of some (but not necessarily all) members of a community.
Most people – freed from the current system of confiscatory and coercive taxation – would likely pay for such a service willingly – without being coerced in the slightest. But those who could not afford to contribute – or who simply preferred not to (which I suspect would be few if we were talking about legitimate peace keeping based on the bedrock principle of non-aggression) would not have to. Yet they’d still enjoy the benefits, in the same way that everyone in a community with a volunteer fire department enjoys the benefits of having a fire department (for example, that a forest fire is contained before it reaches your home). Every person in the community would be bound, in terms of their freedom to act, only by the principles of non-aggression – and self-ownership.
The same for one, the same for all.
One aspect of this arrangement that’s particularly appealing is that it would almost have to be very local and small-scale – arguably, the appropriate scale for human society. 
No state police. No federal “law enforcement.” No impersonal bureaucracy.
No gigantism.
The job of keeping the peace (what is called being a policeman today) as well as that of judges, etc., could be part-time gigs – perhaps even non-compensated/rotating positions of honor shared among the members of a community.
But the guiding principles would always be: Non-aggression, self-ownership. The sum total of “the law” in a free society.
This is the basic skeleton – and by no means completely fleshed out. But, I see no reason why it could not be fleshed out. Nor – most importantly – that such a thing conflicts with core Libertarian ideals. I agree with Madison when he wrote that not all men are angels. But I disagree with him – and with authoritarian collectivists – that this fact necessitates violating the rights of angels (so to speak).
What I mean by that is simply that while most people are not angels – neither are they devils. 
The typical person is not a murderer, a rapist, a thief. Nor would they become these things absent laws forbidding such acts.
People do commit robbery (via the ballot box) and seek to control others people’s lives at gunpoint (by proxy) but chielfy because they do not quite realize what they’re doing. They’ve been ethically misdirected since childhood; their empathetic instincts manipulated – twisted – such that they believe it is (as an example) the right thing to vote for laws that “help” the poor – never really stopping to consider where that “help” comes from. Or that it cannot be right to violate a right.
Any right.
Such things can be taught; ethical confusion remedied.
Some of course cannot be reached. The Clovers among us. But many – a working majority – could be. I know this to be true because it once was true. Within living memory, a large percentage of the people in this country did believe in live – and let live. Did not believe in taking what isn’t theirs. And so on.
Therefore, it can be true again.
But the main point remains: It is certainly possible to deal with those who don’t believe in not taking what isn’t their, who do commit assault and so on – without assaulting the rights of everyone else to be left in peace.
And, free.
Libertarianism is both right – and practical.
Which is why authoritarian collectivists, red and blue, are united in their determination to keep people from discussing it by simply dismissing it.
It’s time to stop letting them get away with that.
Throw it in the Woods?
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Thanks in advance!
I have a question:
What role would libraries play in these ideal Libertarian societies?
Libraries that, for example, might house the books necessary for people to be taught these ethical principles.
Suppose nobody decided to contribute to a library, or a school, and as a result people ironically were not taught critical thinking skills that could help them see through propaganda?
You, Eric, can see through propaganda because you have access to Ludwig von Mises, Bastiet, et al.
So what happens if libraries or schools go unpaid for? Would people ironically become less free as a result, since they never learned how to distinguish between freedom and unfreedom?
After all, the authoritarian system we’ve got today came about (in part) because the masses weren’t taught all the complexities of how to see through multiple forms of propaganda, manipulative thinking, fallacies arguments, et al.
How to solve that conundrum, I wonder? What would be the role of libraries, in your view, Eric?
Thank you very much in advance!
Hi Anonymous,
Free libraries have and would continue to exist – just as charity existed before government “help” . . . at gunpoint.
They would be the result of voluntarism and noncoercive cooperation. Genuine (because freely given) human-to-human help.
As opposed to force and plunder.
Were you aware that perhaps the greatest library in the world – the New York Public Library was created by the freely given endowments of John Astor and Andrew Carnegie? No one stuck a gun to their heads. They wished to provide access to books – and used their money to make it happen. That’s how it ought to be.
The idea that coercive wealth transfer – that is, stealing from some to “give” to others – is necessary to have libraries (or to “help” people in need) is both vicious and false.
Same goes for schools.
Those who have need of them would provide the funds to support them – supplemented by the freely given assistance of those who simply wished to support them, even if they themselves do not have children.
The fact is critical thinking skills were much more common before government took over education (which is a misnomer in this context). For example, many of the Founders were brilliant autodidacts; self-taught men. Franklin, for instance. Even Hamilton (whom I regard as loathsome) never finished college. Yet most of them could read and write Greek and Latin, new the classics; were masters of rhetoric. All without force-fed government schooling.
But, they read – voraciously.
You mean the blind would not have to help pay for it if they had no use for it? 🙂
Dear Gary,
That’s a bingo!
By the way, I just finished a knock down, drag out rhetorical battle with several New Left Chomskyites at YT.
Here is one of my next to last retorts:
Bevin Chu 1 hour ago
Dear Beth,
You wrote: “Why do you care if we have money at all?”
My question for you is: “Do you want to take it from those who have it, by force if they are unwilling to part with it, and if you do, why?”
· in reply to Beth Powder (Show the comment)
Here was the reply, or non-reply.
Beth Powder 11 minutes ago
I’m not going to continue. This was, nonetheless, very interesting.
· in reply to Bevin Chu (Show the comment)
If anyone wants to see how the exchange went, or take on other comers, here’s the URL.
Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul Model of Libertarianism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fveMHVufUN4
Real name – real photo id – Beth – what a charmer. Maker of the longest unbroken string of No True Scotsman Fallacies on EweTube.
Yeah, a real cunning linguist, that Chomsky is.
Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT quotes:
“Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history,”
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”
“The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.”
“That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.”
“The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.”
“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”
“Bradley Manning should be regarded as a hero. He is doing what an honest, decent citizen should be doing: letting your population know what the government, the people who rule you are doing”
“We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum”
“I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.”
“If you look at history, even recent history, you see that there is indeed progress. . . . Over time, the cycle is clearly, generally upwards. And it doesn’t happen by laws of nature. And it doesn’t happen by social laws. . . . It happens as a result of hard work by dedicated people who are willing to look at problems honestly, to look at them without illusions, and to go to work chipping away at them, with no guarantee of success — in fact, with a need for a rather high tolerance for failure along the way, and plenty of disappointments.”
“If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”
“The number of people killed by the sanctions in Iraq is greater than the total number of people killed by all weapons of mass destruction in all of history.”
“To say, ‘I’m an embedded journalist’ is to say, ‘I’m a government Propagandist.”
“We still name our military helicopter gunships after victims of genocide. Nobody bats an eyelash about that: Blackhawk. Apache. And Comanche. If the Luftwaffe named its military helicopters Jew and Gypsy, I suppose people would notice.”
Dear Tor,
It was, shall I say, “Illuminating.”
Sometimes talking with fellow libertarians here and at other hardcore sites makes on forgetful of how the Orthodox Intelligentsia. both Left and Right, think, or rather, fail to think!
Chomsky can be good when blasting the PTB.
The problem arises when he launches into attacks on individualist libertarianism. Then his coercive egalitarian true colors emerge.
My dear Bevin. Must I keep reminding you:
“This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill: the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill: you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” – Morpheus, The Matrix
I learned long ago that I shouldn’t argue with drunks and red pill believers. They are not listening.
Oops, got the first post wrong.
My dear Bevin. Must I keep reminding you:
“This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill: the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill: you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” – Morpheus, The Matrix
I learned long ago that I shouldn’t argue with drunks and bluepill believers. They are not listening.
Dear Eric, et al,
Hate to sound like a broken record, but I can’t help it.
Another Mencken quote!
“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
― H.L. Mencken
As usual, ol’ HL had it covered!
The government didn’t make the first library or bookmobile.
Nor did it make the first schools.
Your premise – that people wouldn’t do this without coercion – is false, historically proven so.
And last, since we ARE being “taught” in government-coerced (tools, techniques, knowledge all government-selected; tax-supported) – the “simple” uneducated man COULD think on his own, and didn’t get confused and twisted by all the legalese.
But “educate” the masses in HOW TO THINK (Meaning, WHAT to think, by teaching them HOW to analyze things – you control the inputs, you then control the outputs, you see) – and you’re golden, the masses all think alike, they are uniform and predictable, and interchangeable cogs in the society…
PERFECT sheep for governance.
Flawed premise writ large, as just demonstrated by you, thank you. 🙂
As to the ROLE of libraries – same as historically filled by libraries, pubs, taverns, et al – places where ideas can eb exchanged. Includes access to the internet these days, which means any information, any time, any place, is accessible to the mind – returning us to a collection of individuals, instead of a collective of interchangeable parts.
The US and Canada and Mexico and Japan and Okinawa and India and Poland and Germany and Ethiopia and South Africa and Saudi Arabia (and even sub-regions of the larger ones, which develop in their own ways at their own rates and in their own directions) could all be UNIQUE again. (Worst is the US, with McDonalds and Wendys and Qdoba and Subway and Starbucks, etc, etc, etc. Wallyworld indeed. Same stores sea to shining sea. Same PRODUCTS. SAME PRICES…)
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa!
Jean, I don’t appreciate having words put in my mouth.
Neither does anyone else on this site, or you wouldn’t have to keep defending yourselves against those idiots who call you racists or elitists.
At no point did I argue in favor of controlling what opinions people hold.
I didn’t even actually argue “in favor of” anything, except maybe teaching people how to see through dirty tricks and propaganda. What I did was float a tentative hypothesis that without a small coercion in certain places, it would lead to a larger coercion in the long term.
I floated that hypothesis to see if Eric had come up with an answer to what I was wondering about. And he did come up with an answer.
Calm down. I’m not your enemy, I am not Satan, I am not in favor of coercive traffic laws or TSA strip searches or the “war on terror” or the “war on drugs” or security guards beating up kids in school or what-have-you
In fact, I actually had to leave a certain group I will not name because I was too vocal in my belief that kids are being treated too badly in school.
If I were in favor of all of the above, I wouldn’t be reading almost every column Eric writes.
My intent was to point out you’ve accepted a certain premise, which is incorrect.
That was evident in your question, actually.
Here’s the relevant paragraph:
Suppose nobody decided to contribute to a library, or a school, and as a result people ironically were not taught critical thinking skills that could help them see through propaganda?
Simply put: where did these schools and libraries come from? The implicit assumption is that they came from government.
Historically, that is untrue.
And I admit to being one of the more cantankerous (read: nasty) people on here. I’m getting tired of the constraints enforced on my life – I grew up with them. My parents were VERY good at controlling me, even through my 20s.
Same government.
That’s a good point.
I think there’s still a problem, though:
As Eric Peters has written multiple times, Americans have very poor priorities. Remember his article on how most Americans would prefer to WATCH football rather than PLAY it, for example.
And Eric, as well as the rest of you, have constantly complained (with good reason) about the stupidity of your fellows, and how brainwashed they are.
Here’s the problem:
You cited autodidacts like Franklin or Jefferson, but they grew up in environments where reading was seen as a sign of wisdom.
Without a government, however, values will be decided by the people, as is your goal all along…but, by the same people Eric Peters rightly decries as brainwashed.
Unfortunately, unlike in Jefferson’s day, there IS a significant chance that “the people”, at least modern-day Americans, would never build any schools or libraries, and in fact might even choose to get rid of books entirely. Look what happened to Eric when he committed the heinous sin of asking people to participate in their own lives, rather than just passively watch football on TV. He wasn’t even asking them to READ at the time, either; just actually go out and play football! And for this, he was called “elitist”.
So, you wish to rid the government of power, and give it back to the people–but, they inevitably will be the same people who gave the government so much power in the first place, unless there’s a variable I’m missing.
So let me rephrase my question:
Where are free libraries going to come from, with an American population that doesn’t understand the value of books, and is willing to relentlessly attack people like Eric Peters because he operates from ideas and principles?
Thanks in advance at least for being willing to enter into discussion with me. I very much appreciate it.
Hi Anon,
I’d offer two comments in reply:
First, we have the historical fact of private, non-coercive support for such things as libraries. Better libraries, in fact, than the ones supported by coercion.
Second, I’d urge you not to make the error of collectivizing people. Do idiots abound? Certainly. There is – and always will be – an element that has little respect for or cannot (or will not) appreciate the value of learning, of mastering subjects, of becoming an educated person. Government/coercive means, however, have arguably increased the ranks of such people.
In general, people seem to be more ignorant of even basic things such as grammar, geography, “supermarket math,” etc. than they were say 100 years ago.
In any event, the fact that some people don’t care to improve themselves, do not value knowledge, etc., in no way means that everyone is so afflicted.
Even after the fall of Rome, there was a core remnant that preserved the knowledge of antiquity. Such an event – a total collapse of “civilization” – may occur again. But even in that case, neither knowledge nor the love of it will die off. It may just go underground for a time.
One cannot achieve liberty via means that undermine liberty. Thoughtfulness is not a byproduct of statism, but rather the opposite.
If you wish for liberty – and for more thoughtful people – you must oppose that which undermines liberty, because such things are the enemy of thoughtfulness itself.
Dear Anonymous,
“So, you wish to rid the government of power, and give it back to the people–but, they inevitably will be the same people who gave the government so much power in the first place, unless there’s a variable I’m missing.”
Two variables.
One. If you happened to see the HL Mencken quote I posted about “public education,” you’ll know what I’m getting at. Deliberate dumbing down by the ruling nomenklatura. End that and a negative factor has been removed from the equation.
Two. Absent government, relentless market forces will exert themselves on the former “Elois.” I would not underestimate the power of economic forces to whip people into shape — without physical coercion of course.
Otherwise, if humanity is trapped in a vicious cycle as you described, then it can never escape. It is trapped for all eternity. History tells us this is not true.
Anon,
Your point here is very true.
I can’t answer for anyone else – let’s just say, I’m willing to go WITHOUT civilization. I don’t much like people when I’m in a good mood and well-rested. Those days are LONG ago.
I was born in 1975; it’s not just being angry from being old. It’s not from major privation. Not from starving, or first-hand warfare.
I’m just tired of hearing stupid say stupid things and back them up with garbage “facts” – and then REFUSE to listen when you present real research. And they outnumber intelligent people, not only from statistics – that will always be true due to the bell curve – but also from the rate of reproduction, and the resulting swell of numbers – exerting a downwards force on the bell curve’s median. (More dumb people survive = lower median IQ. Meantime, those on the intelligent side are driven insane or suicidal and/or homicidal. THEY self-destruct, while the idiots don’t know they’re idiots and live on in happy ignorant bliss.)
I personally want a place of SILENCE. Somewhere I don’t have to deal with the hordes of people. (So of course, I live and work in a CITY. Not MY idea of a good time, but it’s where the work is. And it’s getting worse… Ultimate ideal would be, you, me, everyone on this board is either in a cubbyhols apartment in the city – think Fifth Element – or dead, via Agenda 21. The ELITES, however – they have their Aspen retreats, and their special getaways, and they even have a few proles to make sure they’re all set and taken care of – until Rosie [Jetsons] becomes a reality, and they can get rid of us rabble completely. It’s not tinfoil-hat stuff – Carnegie did it, Wilson did it, and there’s Camp David for POTUS, and ??? Whevere it is for the Kennedys, and you don’t seriously think Donald Rumsfeld et al take a vacatin to, say, Miami they we might? Private plane, limo, exclusive clubs and hotels – all of that will remain off-limits to US. I’m not stupid – I know where this goes. Plenty of concentration camps throughout history, aka PRISONS. Always the same tune.)
What is the point, when the populace is too stupid to understand what is goign on? The early version (original, maybe?) of The Time Machine, when he asked the Eloi for books – The books had been prserved on aural disks, which would play when spun (like a top). The books? all destroyed. No Eloi could read. Sounds like black America these days. Sounds like 50% or more of WHITE America – and they think themselves SMART because they read Animal Farm and The Great Gatsby in High School, and waxed poetic about Shakespeare…. but they never UNDERSTOOD any of it, and they ALL are going to college – meaning, the COLLEGES are also worthless. Again, it’s not a secret.
It’s another pretty lie Boobus Amoricanus gobbled up like High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Our society is fat and happy, and sickeningly “sweet”. I’d like the WOMEN to be sweet – they’re not, they’re rotten to the core. I’d like the men to be strong – they’re not, they’re effeminate! WTF?!
There’s no CURE for stupidity. There is only termination. “We” either outlive that edfective branch of the human family tree, or we take action to end it. And the longer we wait, the worse it gets – the more government surveillance, the more mooching/theft/taxation, the more we are hobbled, the worse the control grid/Matrix becomes.
If you’ve got an arm that’s infected, and it starts to smell funny – do you go to a doctor to see what’s happening? Or wait until it’s putrescent and grey and black, with maggots falling out of it? No, you go to a doctor or ER and HOPE it’s not completely gangrenous.
Maybe it’s a good time to toss out the show / Film, Firefly /Serenity. It was a poisoned TV show (Fox killed it), which was temporarily resurrected as a film. the FILM was mor important here – it outlined the Alliance’s (Government’s) dream of a Paradise, a “world without sin” as they termed it. For like 99.9% of the population, the drug introduced into the atmosphere made them peaceful, VERY peaceful – to the point they wouldn’t WORK to do anything, and they lay down and died. For the remainder of the population?
That 0.1% of the population lost all ability to control their violent urges. They were savage, brutal, cannibalistic. In the series, when these Reavers were introduced, the dialogue went:
Simon: What happens if they [Reavers] board us?
Zoë: If they take the ship they will rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins in to their clothing, and if we’re very, very lucky, they’ll do it in that order.
Sounds a lot like our erstwhile protectors, Po’lice, and metaphorically, like our erstwhile overlords. Only THEY are allowed the power to use violence; only THEY are allowed to think; only THEY are allowed to check into others’ business.
Resisting their violence? Punishable by death. Refusing their predations? Also punishable by death. Even trying to outrun them is considered a reason for execution.
I’d rather start dealing with the problem through attrition – until there are NO people asking that question from a flawed premise.
Hell, books only make sense if people CAN read – we’re LOSING that battle. College grads need LITERACY tests? And then _I_ have to work with them? THEY can’t read L’ Ron Hubbard, let alone Shakespeare, let alone Chaucer in middle English – but they pretend to know what he said? Worse, what it MEANT? Worse STILL, they base BUSINESS DECISIONS on that? So, someone like me, who wants to produce a GOOD, or EXCELLENT product – is marginalzed! Because we want to do the job ONCE, and get it RIGHT, and move on to something NEW.
But the Business promotes the liar; the thief; the thug; the whore. And now MUST promote based on SEX and RACE, to PROVE they aren’t racist or sexist.
You are correct, it’s impossible to educate people like that. It is Economic Man, he produces nothing, and now – with a society approaching idiot-proof – he can floursih. No man has to stnad on his own or accomplish anything on his own. His word isn’t worth the paper it’s recorded on, and his social standing revolves around how much money is in his bank account, and how hot the woman on his arm is, and where his wife is while he’s out with the whore, I mean esceort.
I’m just getting to “rant” state here. I have to deal with it every morning, first thing… Boss has a meeting to set the tone for the day – no matter what, we’re not getting enough detail, or we’re getting too much; we get the details on how things work, that’s irrelevant – get the dates, and the system details, and then ask the questios to get us to end of job… Like, maybe – HOW DOES THE SYSTEM PROCESS THIS? No, that’s not important.
We need to get this done, ASAP – we can’t wait on anything! but we’re not allowed the access, so to run the reports needed, we need another team to do it… But we should get the information a DIFFERENT way, not WAIT…
This is, by all accounts, an intelligent man.
My father is a rocket scientist, literally – dealing with the propulsion systems. Has models on the walls, was part of the Bell X-1 project, for example. He doesn’t want to take action, either – though at 75 or so, I can forgive him. But he and my mom won’t even leave the NYC area – it’s their WORLD, it’s the CULTURE… And the last time they’ve been in the city? 1995, maybe?
Cull the race. End the rank growth. Leave the idiots, as in the “Hitchikers Guide to the Universe,” on a distant planet. Let history forget them.
And history will clean up the mess of our lives, too. (Franklin had HOW many illegitimate children? And Jefferson? Just for example.)
(Stupid by my standards – anyone under a 120 IQ should be euthanized. One, maybe two generations, then have it at the normal way again. Every century or so, repeat. BTW, this would put me in the BOTTOM 5% or so. But it would make the human race better, especially if government education were destroyed. Read John Taylor Gatto, if you haven’t already – he was a teacher in NYC, and writes about what he ACTUALLY taught – which was NEVER on the lesson plan. Mostly compliance, irrelevance of lessons, pointlessness of hard work – the exact things that will cause a society to fail.)
Hi Jean,
Epically excellent rant – I can (cue sith lord emperor) feel your anger!
It’s also the chief reason why I fled the city. I cannot articulate how much less annoying life became when we moved to an area where the population density was low. There is an absolutely axiomatic relationship between density and maggotry. The more people – the more problems – simply because where there are more people, there are more low quality people. Clovers. Control freaks. Assholes. Idiots. These exist wherever people exist, of course. But where density is low, your everyday odds of having to deal with one are pretty low. To a great extent, they can be avoided.
But, inevitably, they come.
At which point, one must move on – again.
And we are rapidly running out of viable places to retreat to.
My recurring fantasy – I think of it constantly – is having the mental firepower to resolve the dilemma of FTL travel. Then, leaving this ball – along with a few select. The cohort of regulars here would do nicely, I think.
euthanized, huh?
nap napping? nappy after napping? maybe needs a comb drug through it? or is that just a toupee?
world (race) improvers: wiggy, wig-wearin’, whig party, waspy-yankee, wanna’ be wielders, werewolves….
low iq (integrity quotient) smart f**kers are way more dangerous than low iq (intelligence quotient) dumb f**kers…
that said, the detente, & “m.a.d.” co-dependent “love” affair, between those two blocs will continue. fortunately, the world is more than two square blocks, despite the binary-horned, they’s two & only two, false dilemma-ters insistence to the contrary.
Excellent rant Jean. — I have wondered too how this cultural “consumer economy” state has come to replace the “free and productive” state which made the USA, its sky scrapers and trips to the moon unique in world government history.
It seems to have been formalized and built into a structure when the education of the country was co-opted by the John Dewey’s and their philosophies of education beginning in the early 1900’s. The end result is multi-generational slowly indoctrinated teachers teaching what to think vs teaching how to think, and destroying the students ability of creative thought on purpose. All public school curriculum, media and entertainment control the process. This greatly benefits that small group of our “unnamed betters” that direct of the systems of money, politics and power. The high school and college graduates of today really believe they know something, while they know nothing but opinions given to them. Look at TV, movies and talk radio – they give people their “opinions” sold as facts and psychological indoctrination as entertainment. The young ones are now the “I am special” generation. Jean, you obviously have the pleasure of working with some of the “I am special” emotionally fragile little china tea-cups daily. Too bad.
Every once in a while a cow strays from the heard because he knows it is all bull-shit. But that still leaves him searching for a philosophy of life and what to do with it. Enter the “betters” again with a dazzling array of pseudo replacements to trick the poor cow back again into the directed “group think” heard. We have no idea who really funds the individuals we get exited about. The “betters” gave us the beatniks in the 50’s, hippies in the 60’s and so on. Today they give us the Rush Limbaughs’, Sean Hannitys’, politicians who talk-the-talk and their counterparts on the “left”. All designed to get the cow back into the heard.
We need to understand that human nature and how to control and direct it is the most studied and document science of all time. And guess who is the “keeper of the truth”, the possessor of looted documents from the “Library of Alexandria” and who uses that knowledge for their own purposes? We are only exposed to the commercial version. I know a little of that process after taking 2 years of psych in college. I ran away with my hair on fire when I saw the ruse, and that most of the now psychologists and psycho-analysts were there to figure out their own screwed-up selves. Now they have diplomas and credentials proving how smart they are. Total B.S. Just take a look at their “higher then cops & firemen” divorce rates. Madison Ave., the top floors of Wall Street and “K” Street in DC is where the real knowledge graduates of the powerful and psychopathic manipulators live.
Short of getting some bullets, beans and fat-back and moving to the Bitteroot Mountains of Idaho we can’t get away from it, and we can’t change the coming Brave New World at large. It is too well organized, it is world-wide and far too large for any single group or human to understand all the nuances.
In the end? Know and deal with the matrix we live in, and think for yourself. It ain’t easy, but sometimes you can have fun twisting the dials.
Dear Eric,
“My recurring fantasy – I think of it constantly – is having the mental firepower to resolve the dilemma of FTL travel. Then, leaving this ball – along with a few select.”
That was one of mine too! Especially after I read SF author Eric Frank Russell’s “The Great Explosion.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Explosion
The Great Explosion is a satirical science fiction novel by Eric Frank Russell, first published in 1962.
The Blieder drive, a faster-than-light drive system, has permitted the population of Earth to colonize the galaxy. Each planet has become the home for a particular social group. Four hundred years after the diaspora, a spaceship from Earth visits three of the planets, the first steps to unifying the galaxy under a new Empire. Things do not go entirely as hoped, as the incompetent military authoritarians of the ship encounter three very different societies.
Man was that a satisfying story!
Another fantasy, entirely my own, was that somebody invents an advanced force field that divides the planet in two. One side is free market capitalist, the other is collectivist.
One can move from one side to the other, but going through the barrier automatically converts one to the other belief, so that one cannot corrupt the other system from within.
That way the human race can always choose, and one must live with the consequences. One cannot ruin things for oneself, then move on to ruin them for others.
The fall of the Roman Empire set man back about 2000 years. But their technology wasn’t widespread. Ours is. I originally hoped that dedicated people could maintain 1950s if everything went to crap. Now a days I hope for 1910. If we can’t hold 1910 it goes into free-fall unless the Amish can hold the line in the 19th century.
The percentage of the population that can prevent the fall is incredibly small. There really aren’t enough people just to maintain the machines in a peaceful collapse. Maybe people will want to learn then but I have my doubts. They’ll more likely murder anyone with skills.
BrentP, I think you’re right about, “There really aren’t enough people just to maintain the machines”.
People these days don’t like to get dirty.
I saw a documentary about the machinery used to transfer water to the East coast. They said nobody knows how to make the stuff that makes it work.
As I’ve heard, it’s the same for the locks and dams.
The old guys who did know are dead or dying out and the young guys are not learning.
I’d lay odds that the biggest reason is drug testing and background checks.
The only people left who want to learn and do those jobs, can’t – or refuse – to pass those two requirements.
So, we all will learn what a mistake those requirements are.
I imagine that’s how it was when the Roman Empire fell.
Sign me, Refusnik
…And maybe there’s your John Gault, from the bottom up?
You’re right on one point, but wrong overall. Yes, it does require a cultural ethos of nonaggression before we can eliminate, or ratchet down, government as we know it. We’re not there yet, but the dewey-eyed posters above are working on it. Bravo. But the future you describe: localism and police (“peacekeeper”) work as a part time gig. Can’t happen. Maybe in 18th Century America, but not now. It doesn’t matter if 9 out of 10, or 99 out of 100 folks are decent. All it takes is that 1% to coordinate, over a larger geographical area, and your malefactors simply skip town to strike elsewhere, serially. POLICE work at the level needed to defeat “minor Mafias” takes labs, surveillance, training, i.e. professionalism. Our current Big Mafia provides this and keeps the peace, to a degree, and at the cost we all understand and decry. The objective, as I see it, is to inculcate this ethos of nonaggression within the population and ENFORCE it within the police and courts (now you’ve got peacekeepers, not cops), then whittle down government to the bare minimum needed to suppress competition and meet outside aggression. Government is the only legitimate institution within society which MUST not be competitive, nor profit-making. It is dangerous, but necessary. Like fire. That’s why minarchist libertarianism is realistic, anarchist libertarianism an unachievable dream.
Hey Bevin,
Did you see CBS’s “Under The Dome” by Stephen King
The Monarch is Chosen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkagHAX9H7s
How about this catchy K-Pop song. I kind of like it actually.
Hate You – Ladies Code
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EscvqYvWd8o
Bill Clinton Hypnotic Puppet Demeanor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-pzqMUTyfI
– at least Clinton got out in front of his programming, and did things he felt he enjoyed, despite the low nature of his deeds, he shrugged off the hens clucking in disapproval and let Bubba be Bubba.
GWB and Obama seem to be Misery Monarchs. Unable to even enjoy life, only able to enjoy the delusions of statewitchcraft and self-loathing dogoodery.
The psychotic eyes in the Monarch Delta violent cop videos. Something tells me, they are mostly miserable excuses for humans beings, that their power over mundanes is fleeting while the soul-crushing power of their handlers, is omnipresent.
That always the screws are ratcheting and twisting, their inhumanity crescendoing to greater and greater grotesque levels, their reality is indistinguishable from something out of a Goya painting of Hell, their only solace is to be around their fellow Demons in Blue.
Dear Tor,
Under the Dome?
Didn’t see it. I’ll see if I can get it then get back to you.
Later.
Nikita is a Delta. Cops and Soldiers are types of Deltas. The scariest to me are the Thetas. These are the violent video gamers, and SSRI false flag patsies. These are the miscreants killing people thousands of miles in bunkers, through the use of drones, and cybernetic DARPA robots.
Monarch Mind Control
The essence of their control tactics is of splitting the mind at a young age. This entails a process of trauma, torture, degradation and humiliation of the subject. The process is different for each individual, but in essence they go to your subconscious mind and find out what the most personal parts of you are. Then they essentially use this against you to break you down and rip your mind apart.
There are four types of brain waves: alpha, beta, delta, and theta. The four basic models of Monarch slaves have the same names as these four types of brain waves. High level Illuminati models may have programming that includes all of these types.
The CIA labels their harmonic-created total Mind-controlled slaves by the following: Bravo 2 series models are men programmed to run the Beast computers. Delta series are models for espionage and assassination. Juliet series are sexual mind controlled slaves. Kilo 5 series is military espionage. Michael 1 series slaves are CIA agents under total mind-control. Operation Greenstar was a Mind-control project to create UFO abductions scenarios.
Alpha
“Alpha was the basis for all the other programs, it’s where a lot of information is stored in the memory, in the mind, this base code is used by programmers to develop the other programs. It’s where the generic alter states are stored.
Beta
Is the sexual servicing part. They also sometimes called the alter state ‘Barbie’. (One of the main characters in Under the Dome is called Barbie). It may have been named for Klaus Barbie.
Sex-slave programmed women, like Marilyn Monroe, were called “presidential models”, mind-controlled slaves for the use of high-level politicians. There is a film called How To Divide a Personality and How To Create a Sex Slave. Two Huntsville porn photographers were used to help NASA create these training films. The actresses in these alter states reported they could not resist. they had no anger. they were absolute sex slaves and would do whatever they were told to do.
Delta
Delta programming is military-assassin programming that has trickled into popular consciousness through movies like La Femme Nikita. Regarding the Delta programming, it was used to do hits, kills, and also body guarding and hostage extraction. Alters have reported having a great number of alter personalities that had specialized training and different modes giving them capabilities to do different things.
If they shoot someone, then they will be told all kinds of lies about the person they are to kill. They never are really given a chance to step outside of their deep trance and to ever hear the truth about what they are doing. They live their lives in a surreal fantasy world where nothing really makes sense.
They don’t try to think for themselves, they just follow orders. They never are really given a chance to step outside of their deep trance and to ever hear the truth about what they are doing. They live their lives in a surreal fantasy world where nothing really makes sense.
If the programmers get tired of a slave’s programming breaking down, they simply give the slave an assignment in which the slave will end up dying, i.e. a suicide mission. An example would be a lady who is getting too wise about the New World Order, so a Delta is assigned to crash their car into the lady, and its written down as “just an unfortunate ACCIDENT with fatalities. A shop owner refuses to pay the Mafia for protection; so a Delta vandalizes and tears up the shop and then has a fatal shootout with the police.
Theta
Theta programming correlates with the development and use of so-called extrasensory powers and extraphysical abilities. The business press says we are in the Theta era, which they call “The Age of Empathy.” Obama is a Theta.
Theta is where they project having abilities of being ‘psychic,’ of being able to harness thought energy, Thetas have a magnetic-type individual energy that allows them to do a number of different things that they were experimenting with, including attempting long-distance mind connection with other people – even in other countries. Something not yet proven, but called ‘remote viewing.’ Thetas are able to convince others they can view them from far away. They control others by intimidation.
Theta is both actual programming and experimentation. It is encapsulated in several parts of multiple altered states. It involves long periods of ongoing training, and trial and error experimentation, to discover what seems to work.
Theta programming has attempted to use thought energy to kill someone at a distance. One of the movie and book themes they used extensively was Dune, by Frank Herbert. Thetas are taught they could cause things to happen to other people. It was to build up rage inside. It would come out in a form of pure energy that would hit them.
In EEG brain waves, theta waves are most prevalent in children. The 4 types of waves are rated according to their wave frequencies. Delta- 1-3 cycles/sec; theta 4 to 7 cycles/sec; alpha 8 to 13 cycles/sec; and beta 13 + cycles per second. Psychic warfare is the latest emerging branch of Monarch Programming. These are the soldiers used by the CIA to kill people with drones at a great distance.
Nikita Mind Control Clip
http://www.starpulse.com/Television/Nikita/Videos/?vxChannel=&vxClipId=&clip_id=38AMqCcO4E6r65UNkP4aSw&video_title=Nikita+Mind+Control+Clip
http://www.tvshow7.eu/watch-nikita-online/
http://www.tvshow7.eu/watch-under-the-dome-online/
Dear Tor,
I’ve been boning up on MK Ultra and Monarch Programming.
Amazing how much of this stuff finds its way into popular entertainment.
The Thetas remind me of the David Cronenberg SF Horror film “Scanners.”
Deltas include “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Homeland,” “Alias,” and “Nikita.”
I was puzzled by the inclusion of Katy Perry and other pop stars at first. I wondered how the PTB benefit from them. But I suppose it’s “bread and circuses” time. Keep the sheeple distracted.
Also, this was pretty shocking:
How a leading American fashion model came to be experimented upon by the CIA mind control team
http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/how-a-leading-american-fashion-model-came-to-be-experimented-upon/
This Fortean Times article from 2001 describes the infamous case of Candy Jones, a fashion model who became a MKULTRA victim. It is one of the the most documented case of the fashion world mixing with mind control.
@bevin – I don’t know where this guy gets his inside-future information, but he seems to be up on it and writes fiction novels weaving things in. At first I though he was just creative, but on further research into nano and such he knows something of that and the mapped-out political agenda.
http://www.nealstephenson.com/diamond/
I’m up to Episode 4 of Nikita, now.
Maggie Q as Nikita: “My orders were to kill your whole family. I spared you. It was the first time I defied Division.”
Watching this kind of MK (Mind Kandy?) stuff with Maggie Q isn’t so bad,
– – – – –
Oprah, a particularly nasty MK(Mind Kontrole) handler, – reads aloud from a how to molest infants manual – “for the children” – of course
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIGnUvu1Ufc
– – – – –
http://www.youtube.com/user/worldsymbolismx/videos
Hollywood MK Deception – in 25 Parts
Dear Tor,
I saw “Eyes Wide Shut” when it first came out, but was utterly confused.
Then I read this.
An Interpretation of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut Adam Gorightly
http://www.whale.to/b/gor.html
Excerpt:
Early on in Eyes Wide Shut –while at a lavish party hosted by a rich bigwig named Ziegler (played by Sydney Pollack)–star Tom Cruise’s character, Dr. Bill, is seduced by two beautiful “models” who take him by either arm, leading him toward an apparent menage a trois. When Dr. Bill asks where exactly they’re taking him, the two lovelies reply: “Where the rainbow ends.” When taken into context with what transpires later on in Eyes Wide Shut, this snatch of dialog appears to be an allusion to Monarch programming, as The Wizard of Oz has been long acknowledged by Monarch insiders as a common programming matrix, which uses Wizard of Oz themes and imagery as a tool to program minds. (It has been rumored that Judy Garland herself was the subject of just this sort of Monarch-styled mind control.)
Pretty mind-blowing stuff.
Agenda 69
After reading those three articles, it appears the elite PTB plan is mainly to bore us all to death with the most unimaginative, joyless orgies possible. Perhaps these orgies are designed by a secret UN committee. The name of the evil secret plan? Agenda 69!
Ishtar, 3000BC Fertile Crescent, Surrealism
I’m interested in anything to do with Ishtar, and the ancient civilizations of the fertile crescent. I’m a huge fan of surrealism. But I must admit, I didn’t get much out of Eyes Wide Shut when I saw it in the theater.
Adam Gorightly Is Hilarious
http://gorightly.wordpress.com/
I’ll keep digging, and won’t underestimate them, though. Sometimes the more mundane and accessible the evil is, the more it goes mainstream.
– – – – – – –
Kubrick’s 20 year project Artificial Intelligence, (completed by Spielberg after Kubrick’s death) though not Kubrick’s greatest work, really creeps me out in a deep way.
A.I. – David Is Abandoned (Closely follows Gnostic writings of Jehovah’s “mother” Sophia and ancient Hebrew folklore)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYgWHwMm9Uo
– I think this film is a better representation than the Sistine Chapel, for example, of the real genesis of humanity, and of how we came to be “real” in the Velveteen Rabbit sense.
A.I. – Final Scene – David’s Happiest Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRhCz0ELrKs
Tor wrote, “it appears the elite PTB plan is mainly to bore us all to death”
HaHa!
What better way to get no one to pay attention?
Numbers?
Graphs?
Charts?
Time lines?
History?
Mass-man yawns at all that.
Mas-man (clover) says, “If it didn’t happen now, it’s Never gonna happen.”
Fat, dumb and happy.
Now, do something important!
Get the girl standing next to you to flash us her tits.
…Or, talk about Free Money!
/Sarc off.
@Tor – Stop bashing my religion. It has been around for a few thousand years, and we have more fun then you do at our equinox get togethers. 🙂
Dear Tor,
I now have Season One of Under the Dome.
Will get back to you after I’ve watched it.
Reagan Versus Hippies: “The only light was two screens. The films were mostly colors. Shots of nude torsos on occasion. And persons twisted and gyrated provocatively in sensual fashion.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCr3nL78qWs
Gov Reagan suspends Posse Comitatus at Berkley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcfJhPVYKrk
Reagan and RFK in an English Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMzTcvXk1j4
The lesson I see is there are today no good politicians here, including Reagan. Under the articles of confederation, there was to be only temps and no such profession as “politician.” Somehow, because of war debts or something, the creditors hijacked this nation even before 1800 and it has stayed hijacked to this very day.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp
Articles of Confederation
Article 2
Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right,
Article 5
The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States; and the people of each State shall free ingress and regress to and from any other State.
And shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, as the inhabitants thereof respectively, also that no imposition, duties or restriction shall be laid by any State, on the property of the United States, or either of them.
Article 6
No vessel of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any State in time of peace; but every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of filed pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.
Agreed to by Congress 15 November 1777 In force after ratification by Maryland, 1 March 1781
– – – – –
The Athenian Constitution by Aristotle
Section 5
Since such, then, was the organization of the constitution, and the many were in slavery to the few, the people rose against the upper class. For a long time the two parties were ranged in hostile camps against one another, till at last, by common consent, they appointed Solon to be mediator and Archon, and committed the whole constitution to his hands. The immediate occasion of his appointment was his poem:
I behold, and within my heart deep sadness has claimed its place,
As I mark the oldest home of the ancient Ionian race
Slain by the sword.
But ye who have store of good, who are sated and overflow,
Restrain your swelling soul, and still it and keep it low:
Let the heart that is great within you he trained a lowlier way;
Ye shall not have all at your will, and we will not for ever obey.
Section 12
Solon’s policy is established alike by common consent, and by the mention he has himself made of the matter in his poems. Thus:
I gave to the mass of the people such rank as befitted their need,
I took not away their honor, and I granted naught to their greed;
While those who were rich in power, who in wealth were glorious and great,
I bethought me that naught should befall them unworthy their
splendor and state;
So I stood with my shield outstretched, and both were sale in its sight,
And I would not that either should triumph, when the triumph was not with right.
Section 24
Seeing the state growing in confidence and much wealth accumulated, he advised the people to lay hold of the leadership of the league, and to quit the country districts and settle in the city. He pointed out to them that all would be able to gain a living there, some by service in the army, others in the garrisons, others by taking a part in public affairs; and in this way they would secure the leadership.
Section 49
The Council also inspects the horses belonging to the state. If a man who has a good horse is found to keep it in bad condition, he is mulcted in his allowance of corn; while those which cannot keep up or which are shy and will not stand steady, it brands with a wheel on the jaw, and the horse so marked is disqualified for service.
Section 51
Market Commissioners (Agoranomi) are elected by lot. Their statutory duty is to see that all articles offered for sale in the market are pure and unadulterated.
Section 63
The juries for the law-courts are chosen by lot by the nine Greek Archons, each for their own tribe, and by the clerk to the 6 archons of Athens (known as the the layers down of law) for the tenth. There are ten entrances into the courts, one for each tribe; twenty rooms in which the lots are drawn, two for each tribe; a hundred chests, ten for each tribe;
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/athemain.asp
Athens
Athens is named for its patron goddess Athena. On top of its highpoint, known as the acropolis, were Athens’ important temples, especially, the Parthenon. Since the acropolis was easily made defensible with walls, cities, including Athens, formed around them, citizens gathering within in times of attack. Northwest of the acropolis was Areopagus where homicide cases were tried. The assembly met on Pnyx hill. The center of Athens was the agora, an open public place and market.
Another quote from Stone’s article:
“……I will now address the concept that violence and even revolution are a necessity for a future based on liberty.
Let’s reexamine the pacifists for a moment. The great difference between the true pacifist and the internet tough guy is that the pacifist lives his philosophy every day of his life, whereas the internet tough guy wants others to go live their fantasy for them, while they sit safely on their couch eating Cheetos. I wish I had a pre-1964 dime for every time I have seen an internet tough guy telling others that the “line has been crossed” and the “time for talk is over” and “we tried their way, now its time for action”. The internet would be so much more entertaining if these tough guys would shut their mouths, stand up, button their pants, wipe the french fry grease off their hands, and do what they want others to do for them. In that one fatal moment, the internet and the liberty movement would be cleansed of these clowns and their silly routines. But never fear, they aren’t likely to take my advice and walk their talk. When their grand day of action comes, they are more likely to film themselves in predawn light on a vacant street, making their threats, than actually confronting a government killer on his own terms.”
http://www.badquaker.com/archives/2740
ahaha……Now that nails it.
Bad Quaker (Ben Stone)says:
September 6, 2013 at 5:40 pm
Jon, thanks for asking. I have never found a point at which Larken and I disagree. I have never spoke with him specifically on the way the State will die, so I’m not sure if he agrees with me on that point, but as to his main points about property and self defense, we agree completely. As to his points about not belonging to organizations like the Free State Project, we agree completely.
– – – – –
I hate the state down to the last quark of the last atom of the last drop of marrow of the state. But not enough to make anyone dead unless there is no other option. The state is a real evil, worse than any imagined devil every could be. Still, it just makes me laugh to look at it.
New Dutch King shows off the royal fancy pants
http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/Wires/Online/2013-09-17/AP/Images/APTOPIX%20Netherlands%20Budget.JPEG-0e1ca.jpg
To think of all the morons who died for some square of cloth or under inspiration of a shitty tuba serenade to some greasy gaping gashed fatchick in a tiara. Blasting a last call of revele from their bullet ridden bugle with their last young breath, because they were too afraid to pawn their rifles and spend the deutchemarks at the nearest Gasthaus.
I hope every man who died in a war of aggression is still sentient and forced to watch the living men who they called “enemies.” Men who are laughing, carousing, and fucking, full of the courage to live their own lives.
I hope its a bitter eternal nightmare that eats them alive, such that they curse the bugles, the flags, the queens, and bureaucrats. That the depth of the despair over their folly is so strong that even the living soldier of today shivers a little as he puts on his uniform of the collective coward and risks dying and sharing their same fate.
I hope they are robbed blind and naked. Picked clean of every fiber of worldly possession and tool of the state mafia. But I don’ t wish them dead. Somehow, wishing another man dead, diminishes peaceful enjoyment of my own life. I do wish they would wake the fuck up before it’s too late, for all of our sakes.
Shit, Tor, wHAt are you saying? I should sell everything and boot scoot outta the country? And that love of countrymen has no meaning?
Also, I missed the part about how the Free State Project was a bad idea, could you post the transcript?
I rather liked the idea, but at the same time, I saw the futility in it.
I thought it was another quarter toss. But I admit I had high hopes at one time.
That’s a good question. I don’t think I am making linear vector statements that are to lead anyone to a destination. Finding flaws in FSP makes it real, IMHO. Still no reason not to hope it will change the world.
Sure, it would probably be a net benefit to the world to gas the entire USSA and start over, but that never happens, the worst get on top oftentimes. Why not stay put dare them to Molon Labe our country.
Rather like a bat I sound out cognitively dissonant fixtures as I map the various realities, landscapes, and personalities as I perceive them. Maybe my mind is too laden with malware for them to program, who can say?
To me one important aspect of Free State Project is whether they can exist in an optional take it or leave it attachment to the grid. How much day to day. It makes me sick, rather than some participative manner, FSP has opted for bureaucracy, but what can be done.
L Neil Smith now says we have to join forces with Conservative Republicans. Everything is falling down.
I want breakfast – Falling Down – Michael Douglas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eREiQhBDIk
Tor, thank you for the reply.
Dear Tor,
“L Neil Smith now says we have to join forces with Conservative Republicans. ”
Shit. That’s a depressing development. I thought he was wiser than that.
the enemy of my enemy is my…enemy in inventory. the hamster wheel of history. frenemy reruns. “we’ve always been at war with eastasia/eurasia…”. if big, old, long books are too much bother:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTe8jXb-7f8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MPPaBtTSy4
The following is a good summary of practical libertarianism, in addition of addressing an ongoing libertarian controversy.
Ben Stone of Bad Quaker discusses the Chris Cantwell vs. Free State Project controversy
http://www.badquaker.com/archives/2740
The last thoughts I would like to express today are very old words of advice:
Know the art of war before you engage an enemy.
Every battle is won or lost before it’s fought.
The wise warrior should feign ignorance to his opponent.
The strong warrior should feign weakness.
If you are far from your enemy, make him think you are near.
Worry your enemy, make him lose sleep, and anger him.
If you are near your enemy, make him think you are far away.
Convince him he is safe. Let him slumber while you loot his castle.
Never fight an enemy according to his strength.
Never fight an enemy on the field of his choosing.
Never allow your enemy to chose the method of battle.
Never allow your enemy to chose your weapon.
Always cheat at the enemies rules, but never cheat at what is right and true.
There is one weapon, one battlefield, and one entity that can wield that weapon on that battlefield, and defeat the State forever. The market is the natural mechanism that produces what humans desire. So long as humans desire government there will be government, but the moment humans stop desiring government and desire freedom, humans will have freedom.
It’s not our job to fight government agents. It’s our job to sell the desire for freedom to a hungry market.
– – – –
– That’s a good summary of practical libertarianism. Rather than be a nationalist or a racist, I am a means-of-productionist. I need people I can work with, not ideological twins.
Germans, Jews, Africans, laborers, owners, before the world wars, they all used used to cooperate and make each other wealthy. Then something went wrong. The task of the Libertarian is to right the imbalance, so day to day life is productive again, and then to fade into the background, back into regular life.
Perfect systems aren’t needed. Justice for past wrongs is irrelevant. Just make things right enough that the free market functions again in a way that benefits the average productive man, that is good enough.
I meet in assembly here with great minds on this website for $0.60 per day. Irrespective of my absurdism, mercurialism and name calling, my bedrock belief remains our best bet is in freeing the market.
Years ago, we would have needed waterwheels or electricity, paper mills, printing presses, typesetters, distributors, and a vast industrial enterprise, to get these ideas out to the public. Now it takes only two men, who ask only for a small monthly compensation so they can get by. If only real life were again as free as the internet.
Peace Keepers are only evil until they again start producing rather than taking, until they bring even the slightest net gain to their local society. One need only look at Switzerland to see that government can function non-intrusively enough to be a net contributor to the lives of its citizens.
Good points, Tor and well written. While I’m not so sure that government can function unintrusively enough to contribute anything of value that couldn’t be obtained without government, your point about the internet is valid as are other points you just made.
I like Stone’s writings. Thanks for linking to his site. I hadn’t checked in there for awhile.
Dear Ed,
Re: Switzerland
Ditto. Not long ago, only a few years ago, I would have been perfectly content with a Switzerland style republic.
But not any more. During the interim, I was forced to conclude that as long as the camel has his nose in the tent, it’s game over, and it’s only a matter of when, not if, minarchism will become maxarchism.
Makes me sad in a way. But the old neighborhood has been torn down and you can’t go home again.
Minarchism: Great Start, Horrible Finish – Larken Rose
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktvHvW-GrvY
Dear Iberns,
Exactly right.
Happened to see that not long ago.
Very cogent argument.
As Rose put it, what makes us think it would turn out any differently a second time?
That’s why a few years ago, I finally gave up on “Restoring the Republic.”
“minarchism will become maxarchism.”
There, you just answered the question that’s been a’burnin up my mind. Here I was thinking that the opposite of minarchism would be minarchWASm. Guess that ain’t an actual word, though. 😉
Dear Ed,
Yeah. Some of us here were hashing out that particular issue a while back.
Just for the hell of it, I archived what people said.
In case you’re curious, check it out.
http://thechinadesk.blogspot.tw/2013/01/minarchism-always-becomes-maxarchism.html
“The end state of every government is tyranny!”
— John Stovall
Or as The China Desk has noted on various occasions:
“Minarchism always becomes maxarchism.”
“Limited government always becomes unlimited government.”
“The difference between limited government and totalitarianism, is the difference between the caterpillar and the moth.”
“Limited government is merely totalitarianism in its embryonic stage.”
“Limited government is merely the larval stage of totalitarianism.”
Corollaries:
“The freest minarchies become the most vicious tyrannies.”
— methlyamine
“Limited government is like limited cancer.”
— MoT
“Democracy is the apotheosis of institutionalized slavery.”
— d.c. sunsets
“The end state of every government is tyranny!”
– John Stovall
Ha. For a split second there I thought it said, – John Stossel.
…Maybe someday?
Dear DS,
John Stossel?
Hey, guess what?
After you mentioned that, I decided to run a search. I am happy to report I found this:
John Stossel Links Gun Control to Higher Crime Rates
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyoLuTjguJA
Good news indeed!
RE: “John Stossel Links Gun Control to Higher Crime Rates”
Yeah, yeah, good news for sure, but tell me when he has a problem with NSA spying, then we’re talkin’.
[His baby steps are so tiny. And slow.]
Hi Bevin,
I have a Swiss passport; my mother is Swiss. I’ve been to Switzerland several times. It is a beautiful country, but far from being a paradise for the individualist. The Swiss micromanage everything. You think an American suburban HOA is oppressive? You haven’t seen anything, friend!
The Swiss themselves are mostly habituated to this hive-state, but any of us would find it suffocating. Also the taxes – which are onerous.
What we would consider “middle class living” – owning a typical 1,800 or so sq. ft. free-standing house on an acre or so of land, having two cars and a garage to park them in, etc. – is for-the-rich-only over there.
Now, the upside is the place is very clean, the populace generally much more well-read and worldly. Things work. But it’s almost a static kind of existence, with very little elbow room for developing one’s individuality or pursuing that odd thing Jefferson spoke of called happiness….
Switzerland’s finance minister collapsed into a fit of giggles as he tried to read the unintelligible bureaucratic language in his report while answering a parliamentary question about imports of cured meats.
Giggling Swiss Finance Minister
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OOHdbRrzQQ
I like the idea of Canton upward bureaucracy and autonomy(assuming some govt is to be forced), but it sounds like in practice its oppressive, maybe because the rules are comprehensive, closely followed, and well enforced there?
Dear Eric,
You just confirmed something I read about Switzerland years ago in a spy novel entitled “The Eiger Sanction.”
It was written by Trevanian. Clint Eastwood made it into a movie. The film version wasn’t very good, unfortunately. Eastwood miscast himself as the lead, Jonathan Hemlock. The role called for someone more like Edward Fox, in the original, good version of “The Day of the Jackal.”
But a line in the book stuck in my head. The protagonist makes the wry observation that “Switzerland is for people who prefer cleanliness to life.”
That cracked me up.
Dear Eric, Tor,
Of course, just to balance out the picture, we libertarians are right to praise Switzerland for its political neutrality and non-aggressive foreign policy.
It may not be for us, but at least it isn’t bombing foreigners in order to make the world safe for Swiss values! Gotta give ’em that. These days, that’s nothing to sneeze at.
One of my customers who travels a lot for business and speaks several languages told me a story. He, an Italian friend of his and a Swiss business associate were having drinks at a cafe in Bruge. He suggested that they all sharpen their linguistic skills thus:
The American would tell an American joke in Italian, The Italian would tell an Italian joke in Schwizertitsch, and their Swiss pal would tell a Swiss joke in English. The Swiss pal derailed the idea by saying, “There ARE no Swiss jokes”.
Wow I used to live in Switzerland too in Lugano to be exact. It is true it kind of is micromanaged but then living in the UK it doesn’t seem as bad whenever I visit the country. Its landscape is beautiful however.
New way to spy on motorists: Parking gets personal in NH communities with electronic meters
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20130917/NEWS/130919374
After you receive your EasyPark device, you can load it with funds using this website. Once you arrive at a parking spot, take out your EasyPark device, turn it on and it will immediately display your balance. Then choose your parking zone to find out the time limit and the hourly parking rate. You should then place your EasyPark device on the window, according to your location’s guidelines, so parking inspectors can easily locate it.
EasyPark is a smart device that stores all your parking history events, which you are able to retrieve any time you synchronize or load your device.
https://easyparkusa.com/
EasyPark at Portsmouth, NH:
https://easyparkusa.com/portsmouth
EasyPark at Austin, TX:
https://easyparkusa.com/austin
EasyPark at LAX airport:
http://www.easyparklax.com/
It’ll be “easy” to park people in jail, too. Slavery…. coming to a neighborhood parking meter near you.
Seems appropriate that the Soviet Republic of Austin chose to represent Texas in this type of invasive technology. There’s a place that went from desirable to total slave mentality in a remarkably short period of time……
I’m not clear on how this can be used to spy on motorists.
Because it’s a TRANSCEIVER and could report more than just what we’re TOLD it reports?
If you have a teenager: Ever asked where they’re going? “OUT.”
Government says it will report the “OUT” without acknowledging it can tell you how many people are in the car, how fast you drive, whether people are wearing their seatbelts, who is using a cell phone, what is said, and even snap pictures of your face and the roads.
We are almost at the point where the old story of the man on the BIC pens having a camera as his head, is true.
And as it stands right now? RFID + Cell phone + wireless car controls = WIDE-OPEN system that can eb hacked, broken, adulterated, abused, and IS intrusive by its very existence. Think of the second Batman movie recently, where Bruce Wayne made the entire wireless network a giant surveillance device. SAME THING. Just not under a benevolent person’s control (nor under any ONE person’s control – Imagine Obummer decided on his last day in office to turn it all off. He couldn’t. Too many other people would have to make sure he wasn’t crazy, that it was the right thing to do, etc, etc, etc.)
I see the confusion now. It actually isn’t a transceiver. You have to plug it into your computer with a USB cable to add money to it (at which point the money goes to the city), and the money gets decremented from the device while you’re parked. The device has a LCD screen that tells the enforcement people you’re paying.
THEY SAY:
It’s just going to be a device yopu plug into your computer to load, and then display on the dash so you show you paid.
IT DOES:
Whatever it’s been programmed to, possibly including recording all car movements, activities, seat belt use, recording parking funds, reporting parking habits, reporting speeds, reporting where you bought gas, what quality gas you bought, how the engine is performing, if you rev high or just poke along (think the “Safe Driver” commercial from Progressive, I think it is, except you’re not being followed by a helicopter), your BAC based on exhaling in the car…
See, it’s REALLY an absolute: You can trust the government, or you can’t. We cannot trust ANYTHING they say. If they say the sky is blue, we’d better check from under an umbrella. It’s THAT bad.
“EasyPark is a smart device that stores all your parking history events,……..”, counts the skidmarks on your drawers and measures your dick. It ropes all users into a corral where they can be cornholed by the police state at its leisure. ahaha
Where i live, there used to be a concept where law-abiding citizens would band together in temporary, voluntary bands to go after dangerous, violent criminals. It was called a “posse”. If someone had committed a crime, and could not be rapidly apprehended by the local sheriff, he would “git a posse up” and go after the criminal.
Were there corrupt sheriffs? Yes. (Case in point Wyatt Earp.) But overall, it was a much better system than we have now, with a far lower crime rate. Bring back the Old West ideals.
Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges. We are the Fed Gov.
Letter to me dated September 4, 2013 from my health insurance carrier:
Our records indicate…we have enclosed your Notice of Creditable Coverage… we are required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services…you may or may not choose to enroll in Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plan…but you may loose your benefits…or you can go to the Heath Insurance Marketplace and apply…elect…or credits and fees from the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP)…you are required to contribute to the Administrative Expenses of the Heath Benefit Program…Administrative Services …$6.00 per month will be taken for the 2014 Plan Year…surplus or deficit of fees…Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)… you are required to pay a fee to the Internal Revenue Service(IRS) to fund the Institute…tier I or tier II…Health Insurance Allowance or Health Insurance Reimbursement Funds in 2013 will be charged a $2.00 fee…the Federal Government will determine the PCORI fee in future years…federal law requires a reinsurance fee of $63.00 per person per year beginning in 2014…your Open Enrollment materials will be mailed at the end of October…
Health Insurance Marketplace is designed to help you…private options…you may qualify, but we don’t know…if you decide to complete an application you may be eligible for a Premium Discount through the Marketplace…if you decide to shop we cannot help you, you must go to HeathCare.gov…
Oh f#*ck I just can’t wait to try that website out!
No mention of doctor, medical care or anything I give a shit about in the whole 4 pages.
And the Obama Chicago Mob says it is an unfair hardship to force their constitutes get an ID card in order to vote?
This country is finished.
>>In any community larger than a small group, there will probably always be a need for [peace keepers] – if only to avoid the same sort of arbitrary violence we suffer under today (only meted out by random individuals at their whim rather than by specially costumed goons acting under “color of law”).
As the term implies, their charge would be to keep the peace – but nothing more. To step in, for example, when one individual has harmed another – in order to prevent that individual from harming another (and to bring him to account for the harm he has already done).
Eric, you make that sound so civilized.
“By jove, constable. You have duly interrupted my juvenile pornographic enterprises. We’ll see each other in court then, shall we? And a good day to you too!”
Hello Eric, I’ve given a lot of thought and had many discussions about issues of the government’s role in keeping us safe from criminals and have decided that we are as a society asking the wrong question here. I think the correct way to look at this issue is to ask are we ever truly safe? I’m in my mid forties and as I sit here typing I could easily suffer a blocked artery either in my heart or brain and never finish what I have to say here. The most heavily armed or highly trained cop or soldier won’t be able to save me should a bad enough blockage occur. My point being that the whole debate of liberty vs security is a fraud; we don’t have any real security, not in this life, and the best we can hope for is to enjoy our life as it is, and such enjoyment requires the freedom and liberty for each one of us to make our own decisions about what constitutes enjoying, our rather temporary lives. I submit, what else do we really have?
Amen, Joe.
And, as we transit this all-too-temporary (and insecure) life, I submit we ought to agree to leave one another alone and in peace unless we’re being actively threatened or actually harmed.
There are many things I personally would not do – and many things I do that I’m sure others would regard as silly, even dangerous.
But these things are all our own affair, as individuals – or ought to be.
I accept that my wife will nag me about riding a motorcycle or going for what she calls “death marches” in the woods. But that’s quite a different thing than having a stranger in a funny costume threaten me with lethal violence if I don’t “buckle up” for safety or stop at his probable cause-free “checkpoint” and submit to being searched and interrogated.
A folksy way of expressing the Libertarian mindset is, simply: Live – and let live.
Its corollary is: He ain’t hurtin’ you, so leave him alone.
If those two notions became popular again, we could once again say: It’s a free country...
Live – and let live.
and its corollary:
He ain’t hurtin’ you, so leave him alone.
If only these two expressions could be translated word for word into Latin, we’d have a new pair of PERFECT national mottos.
We used to do checkpoints all the time. We used to consider it “summons dumping” and was an easy way to fill our quotas for the month. If we submitted our activity slip without getting our mandatory minimum of summonses or arrests we were screwed with. What were the summonses for? Seatbelts, expired inspection, exp registration and on a rare occasion a DWI. What did we solve? Nothing! Summonses or arrests for arbitrary laws that harm nobody but yourself are meaningless to the general public. They do create revenue for the state though. Just to clear the air…….most cops DO NOT want to write dumb tickets or do these checkpoints, they do them because they have to.
Hi Joe,
Not to peck at you too much, but I’d like to take a close look at something you just wrote:
“…most cops DO NOT want to write dumb tickets or do these checkpoints, they do them because they have to”
Italics added.
No, actually, they don’t have to. They freely choose to do this sort of work. It’s the sort of work I’d never choose to do – for the same reasons I’d never choose to become a mafia enforcer.
I’m not trying to insult you – or cops in general – gratuitously. I’m simply making a point. If good men refused to have anything to do with the enforcement of bad laws, it’d be damned hard for bad laws to have any teeth.
At some point, the buck’s gotta stop – right?
Don’t forget that it’s OVERTIME pay…
GREED wouldn’t explain why the officers are present, would it?
Greed? Like any job out there if someone throws money down on the table to do it most people would . Is it wrong? I used to do red light overtime. My only function was to issue 10-15 red light tickets in an 8 hour shift. Not easy to do at all but I needed the money or I took it in vacation hours. Every ticket was good BUT did I prevent anything? I would say no. Blaming people for starting a profession that has some negative attributes is wrong. What about lawyers, politicians, security, military etc. All necessary but grossly overdone by big government. The problem as I see it are political in nature. People should demand from government the police stop being used as enforcers of the grossly complicated legal system and often unjustly. Stop calling 911 every time you have a simple problem and handle the matter in a civilized way.
Joe, your story reminds me of a fat toad I once worked with (around?). He wold sit in briefing, fill out 20 tickets with the location of a 4 -way stop, and only leave space for the driver and time details. Then he would hide out or eat the rest of the shift. Useless piece of crap that he was. The traffic Sgt. thought he was the bomb, and so did the city manager. LMAO the day he rolled a patrol car and took out 200 feet of guardrail trying to take a freeway off ramp.
It Won’t Be Obama Who Bombs Syria
“It will be those heroic members of the U.S. military who murder from afar in defense of our freedoms.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/it-wont-be-obama-who-bombs-syria/
I Hereby Resign
“I have always said that if soldiers would just quit fighting senseless and unjust wars then they would cease.”…
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/i-hereby-resign/
…”members of the U.S. military holding up signs saying that they didn’t join the military to fight in Syria. […]
Why then did you join? To fight in Iraq? To fight in Afghanistan? I hope not. We had no business going to those countries just like we have no business going to Syria. In view of the fact that no war has been declared since World War II, yet the U.S. military has been busy ever since all around the world, what did you think you were going to be told to do once you joined the military?”…
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/i-have-mixed-feelings-about-these-pictures/
Conversation with a National Guard Recruiter
Vance: Would you drop a bomb on my house if Obama ordered you to?
Recruiter: No.
Vance: So you would disobey an order from your commander in chief?
Recruiter: Yes.
Vance: Would you drop a bomb on Syria if Obama ordered you to?
Recruiter: I don’t have to worry about doing that.
Vance: What about the people that you recruit to join the Guard?
Recruiter: That is their decision.
He is right. It is their decision. If you join the active duty military or reserves you might be put in a situation where you have to kill or be killed, destroy the property of someone who was no threat to the United States, and/or kill someone for Uncle Sam who had not done anything to America. Go ahead and join. Just don’t expect us to cheer you in airports and thank you for your service. Just don’t expect us to think of you as anything less than a destroyer, a mercenary, and a murderer.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/conversation-with-a-national-guard-recruiter/
Veterans Speak about the Military
…”I now actively discourage anyone from joining the military, especially the Army, with which I have first hand experience.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/veterans-speak-about-the-military/
Help Support Our Troops?
…”IN FRONT OF store I visit daily this exchange occurred:
Soldier (offering small flag to me): “Would you like to support our troops?”
Me (calmly): “No, sir, I would not.”
Soldier: “Why not?”
Me: “Because our military is waging unGodly, unConstitutional wars all over the world, murdering/maiming innocent people, and doing the same thing to those fighting these wars.”
Soldier (looking as if he might agree): “But that is the government.”
Me: “No, sir. That is YOU. It’s a voluntary military. And you could refuse to engage in these various evil activities.””…
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/help-support-our-troops/
Gee, Shocking News. State Governments Pay Crime Labs for Wrongful Convictions
…”As one who has written for more than a decade about wrongful convictions, I have come to believe that police and prosecutors actually want people to be wrongfully convicted, as they relish the challenge of framing an innocent person. Yes, this requires that we think of government authorities not as people seeking justice, but as people seeking their own ends at the expense of others who have neither the political connections, the wealth, or the authority to fight back.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/gee-shocking-news-state-governments-pay-crime-labs-for-wrongful-convictions/
I’m to the point now that should anyone claim to be a cop, while dressed in their “mundane” costumes, I’m going to indignantly blurt out, “The hell you say?”
Make sure you first hand over your license registration and insurance.
“… ask are we ever truly safe? […] the whole debate of liberty vs security is a fraud; we don’t have any real security, not in this life, and the best we can hope for is to enjoy our life as it is, and such enjoyment requires the freedom and liberty for each one of us to make our own decisions about what constitutes enjoying, our rather temporary lives.”
^^ THIS.
NO SUCH THING as security, it is an illusion. Security is “the absence of danger.” At any moment, we might be anihilated by a rogue asteroid, or a plane or satelite might crash down from the sky, a co-worker might have a psychotic episode, or we might have a medical issue that kills us. We do what we can.
Government wants to convince us that for the “low price of $19.95 and your soul,” we’ll be safe from EVERYTHING. Until next year, when it’s $29.95, and six months later, $34.95, and the Governor’s got a new mansion, so it’s going up to ONLY $49.95, for a 5-year contract… Which is guaranteed to NOT go up in price for
52 years! But after those two years, you find out the CONTRACTED PRICE is now $149.95, AND your CHILDREN’S souls, too.I think they called it Social Security Numbers…
You nailed it, really: The only one we can count on – IS US. Failure to do so indicates weakness of mind, soul, body, and/or character. It means you’ve made a decision to be a pansy (patsy?).
So, let them go. We can’t help those Clovers. Most we could do is to ensure they are unable to harm us. (Something abuot state appointment of Senators comes to mind, and un-Gerrymandering voting districts, and ensuring that Democrat-socialists don’t GET to vote – as they intend to use government force to harm us, from the inception of government….)
I dunno, lots of fixes, but to borrow a quote: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a big gun.
Government, when sufficently advanced… IS a really big gun, and is pointed at ALL of us, and is prone to misfires.
Might they not protect [us] out of all we own?
Joe, eric, you’re both so right. This was a great article BTW. It’s spawned some great comments also, everybody with their thinking caps on. Joe, I’m right there with you on health issues being front and center, not just for me but for everyone as well as simply being safe, for however much that’s possible. I got up to Cholley Jack raising hell at an old pickup so I get the shotgun, go out and raise the hood to find Rocky and his entire retinue of badass coons alive and pissed off. Now I could just blast away and ruin the pickup or get up there, feeling foolish in just underwear and shoes and go head to head with them. As I was bashing at them and they were fighting back I realized they could come out and probably have their way with me but it was a do or die thing. After a while it was Cholley Jack two, me one and one got away. Some people would have said that was an unacceptable risk but I saw no other way out. Later, when CJ and I were both getting our flea baths with well water in the yard, I saw myself doing one of these things some day and it not working out to my satisfaction, however, I’m damned if I want anyone else to make that decision for me. Freedom, I ask for nothing else. I pity those who want more…..or less as I see it.
You’re lucky Rocky didn’t tear your ass up. If CJ hadn’t been there…. well, if CJ hadn’t clued you in that Rocky and his gang were in your old pickup…. whole lotta iffin’ goin on there, ain’t it? Good to see you, 8. I thought the poe lease had got your ass. 😉
Ed, thanks. I wasn’t as smart as CJ with his arsenal of deadly weapons. I was channeling Buck, the most stone cold killer I ever saw, a true hog dog who lived it as it came to him. Ed, I’m glad you got on a rant. You and Tor just did me a favor. Yep, I’m all for guns up….as a last resort….but starting the conversation that way results in one outcome I’m familiar with and I know very few people who are really up for that.
On the poelease front, I’m still looking over my shoulders, and up in the air. It ain’t over, never will be till I’m dead(a near possibility). I’ve lived it long enough I realized long ago it’s easy to bring about a stand-off and it’s end is assured along with mine. W/O family I fear lots of tears would be shed sooner than later. And it’s that very reason I can do without trash talk. Talk it when you’re backed up to the wall…..ain’t so easy then. If I didn’t respect eric I’d tell you what’s been going on the last couple months. I could break your heart and have you laughing your ass off at the same time. It’s been wild.
8, please email Dom and ask for my email address. I’ll email him and ask him to give it to you. I’d like to hear from you.
It’s cute to talk about medieval iceland (it really is), but…
Anyway…
I fantasize about a situation in which municipal corporations had the same model as fire protection services in rural areas.
If you wanted it, you paid for it. You get an annual certificate or whatever.
Barring real-time emergencies involving actual PUBLIC SAFETY events, if you did not have it, you would not get the services. If you needed a non-emergency investigation because of internet fraud (etc), you could go ahead and get a private investigator or maybe just deal with the sheriff’s department as they are able.
Being that things (at the city level) would have to be run on a relative skeleton crew, there should be far less time to deal with silly extras like seat-belt enforcement.
I’m trying to be pragmatic relative to reality.
All that said, I wouldn’t mind having an Irish slave or two. My house could be less cluttered.
You…. Don’t know many Irish, do you? 😉
WE are generally slovenly, short-tempered, “stubborn”, and cantankerous.
That’s in a good mood, with a mild Irishman (or woman.)
My grandmother, for example, beat up a regimental commander for being an a-hole. The regiment was willing to go after her, but “decided” it would be unwise, given that he instigated, she responded, and… It could get WORSE. For THEM. If they came back with troops necessary to deal with a peaceful town.
(Details would be about the same as, she was serving them dinner, he slapped her @$$, she slapped his skull with the skillet she was holding. The discussion afterwards was, should they arrest her? The counter-argument was, they might not live long enough to do so, and they’d be GLAD of that mercy. 😉
Yeah – _I_ am the PEACEFUL black sheep of the family. 😉 [Truth is stranger than fiction.]
Anyway, I’m being silly instead of working, I guess I should get back to making a case for the tool we want to incorporate into the New Windows 7 Rollout. Boring … [ahem] that we have to explain to our own internal “governance” people. I’m doing what I’ve done two or three times before, and worried it’ll be shot down while they try to lock us out of the systems we are testing. In OUR environment, using false / privatized data. But boss-man can go to Production and do whatever he wants, or get someone else on another team to do it for him, even – to LIVE FINANCIAL DATA.
Institutional theft, no joke.
“All that said, I wouldn’t mind having an Irish slave or two. My house could be less cluttered.”
True, that. Much of your portable property would disappear soon after you got your slaves. 😉
>>Killing was a civil offense resulting in a fine paid to the survivors of the victim.
That’s whimsically wonderful. I wonder how that would work with 16 year old De’Sean Q. Publichousing (IQ: 85).
percival – The only thing De’Sean understands is the threat of superior force. The idea of civil satisfaction in De’Sean’s case is indeed ludicrous. Since he ain’ got nuffin to start wiff, what would one take from him? There is of course bond servitude, but who wants a cold gang banger cleaning up around their house and washing their car. He ain’ worried ’bout no cop, cuz he know “da man” merely wants process De’Sean through the system, not kill him. No, what De’Sean be worried ’bout is an SWP pointing a .45 at his hay’ed. An armed and alarmed SWP may very well “save the taxpayers some money”, no civil offense with restitution required or any cops involved whatsoever. So we need cops again, why?
#1. Not all criminals are immediately identifiable
#2. Not all crimes justify a death penalty by a SWP
#3. Not all crimes have sentient victims
#4. Not all victims have a SWP (or more) on their side
#5. It’s difficult to coordinate a lot of SWPs at the same time to address a highly mobile offender at odd hours of day and night
#6. When a bunch of SWPs get together and both think they’re right, how what? Is it a matter of degree of correctness by way of some objective standard, or is it a matter of who has more ammo?
I could go on, I suppose.
Suffice to say, this isn’t Medieval Iceland.
Percival – (1) When De’Sean be in yo’ livin’ room at 2:00 AM he is immediately identifiable. Many of those who are not identified as criminals are employed in the bureaucracy, often on the police force and they will therefore remain “unidentified” in most cases by virtue of their privileged position.
(2) True. But the threat of immediate reprisal goes a lot further in deterring crime than the 90 – 95% chance of getting away with it under the current system (violent crime solvency rate of 10% in Amerika and only %5 on property crimes the last time I checked). But like in Kennesaw, Georgia where the criminals strongly believe they may get shot committing a crime, they either don’t do it or go elsewhere.
(3) Right, like the income tax for example…”the public” in general is not a sentient victim. Individual victims that dare identify the tax for what it actually is, theft of the fruits of our labor, are labeled as criminals.
(4) And the fact that they’re victims in the first place shows you how effective the present system of “law and order” is in preventing crime.
(6) So instead we attempt to coordinate a socially and racially “diverse” group that we call police, give them more guns, more ammo, more power to snoop and confiscate property, yet the only people who really feel “the heat” from all this are the law abiding. You bet this isn’t Medieval Iceland. I’m beginning to believe they were more civilized.
The idea of civil satisfaction in De’Sean’s case is indeed ludicrous. Since he ain’ got nuffin to start wiff, what would one take from him? [W]hat would one take from him? There is of course bond servitude, but who wants a cold gang banger cleaning up around their house and washing their car.
Assuming that his body hasn’t been completely destroyed by many years of gunshots and drug abuse, DeSean Q. the Gangbangin Homeboy has an entire torso full of vital organs, as well as a skeleton off of which they hang, that could fetch tens of thousands of dollars. Why not harvest them and use the money to at least partly compensate his victims?
If nothing else, I’d bet that the prospect of being made a “live organ donor/medical school cadaver” in order to pay restitution in case of wrongful death that you’ve caused might be a deterrent to violent crime in and of itself.
liberranter – Good point. But we’d need a free market in organs and cadavers. In Amerika you can only be cut up, parted out and sold off if you’re innocent and unborn…
As a retired law enforcement officer and libertarian I must comment. Eric…you talk as if THE police are the ones committing all the crimes. Lets get serious for a second. Do the police break laws while doing there jobs? YES! Why? several reasons….they are people too and have bad days, the laws are soooo complicated, some truly believe they can make a difference and the biggest is that PEOPLE lie about police misconduct and why they were “victimized”. The above is why I’m in favor of installing cameras on police uniforms.
Don’t ever ever ever mention Talmudic laws again! It’s full of laws that actually allow rape, murder and theft as a daily routine if it benefits a certain tribe.
We are in the age of pre-crime thought crime. If you say something, post something or buy something that is thought of by big brother as being a threat to them you WILL be under a spotlight or worse. Ever carry a large amount of cash or try to deposit such? Post a heated comment? ……etc. Try googling “pressure cooker” and Jihad and see what happens.
I HAVE AN ANSWER THAT SOLVES EVERTHING !!!!! Eric….you mentioned peace keepers. Lets call them …….law enforcement officers. Lets have them ONLY as responders to peoples call for help. Lets have them wear cameras recording what’s going on. Lets stop the Orwellian pre-crime nonsense. Lets be honest and state the truth….the right to carry a firearm and NOT the police are what’s really keeping criminals at bay. I can go on and on but you get my point.
There may still be small American communities that are in the main thankful for their police. In any community of significant size, however, it is safe to say the citizens wish there were less police, and in many cases no police of the kind they currently endure.
Consider the wealthiest neighborhoods and gated communities, they police themselves with their own money, and prefer that the “public servants” perpetrate their services elsewhere.
– – – – –
A brief reading of The Talmud Bavli (written 15-17 centuries ago ) teaches us that police are openly robbers for the state. They are also secretly thieves for themselves and for their cronies.
Hebrew גְּנֵבָה וּגְזֵלָה –
The thief differs from the robber in the fact that the thief steals furtively, when unobserved, whereas the robber takes openly and forcefully. This distinction is of practical significance for criminal law only; in dealing with civil cases the law relating to a robber applies equally to a thief and vice versa.
Theft and Robbery – Talmudic Law
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0019_0_19785.htm
– – – – –
What Does the Talmud Teach About Rape? – Rabbi Tzvee Zahavy
http://tzvee.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-does-talmud-teach-about-rape.html
When one tries to right a wrong, the accepted method of doing that is through currency – monetary payment.
We find that a main concern of the Talmud was the question of how the monetary compensation for the damages of the crime of rape was to be allocated, who is liable, under what circumstances, in essence, who receives the money.
Like it or not, monetary compensation is accepted across history and cultures as the main way to right a wrong.
– What is the value of having a gun put to my head to pay for Low IQ Cosplayers to beat up people, to cage people, and to execute people because they have committed aggression against me. The Talmud is at least in the realm of sanity in its attempts to decree monetary compensation as the starting point for making victims whole again, and of retaining the peace and the quiet of the realm.
Dear Tor,
“Low IQ Cosplayers”
You had me rolling around on the floor laughing with that one!
Thanks Tor. I am taking that Talmudic Law idea off of my most favored political solution list.
Hi Joe,
The problem, at core, is the system is larded up with non-crimes (ethically speaking) that are “crimes,” legally speaking.
Obvious examples include mandatory buckle-up laws, laws criminalizing the manufacture/possession/consumption/sale of some drugs – but there are countless others.
No sane person objects to the restraint (and punishment) of people who harm others physically, or defraud them, or damage their property. If cops went after those kinds of people – and those kinds of people only – then 99 out of 100 of us would never have other than voluntary interactions with cops. As in, “How are things going today, Joe?”
Instead, we live in constant dread of cops fucking with us – whether for grotesqueries such as forcing grown adults to “buckle up” or because we haven’t got our “papers” in order.
That’s not how it ought to be.
But because it is this way, more and more otherwise “law abiding” people – people who have no desire to harm anyone or their property – are coming to fear (and loathe) law enforcement.
Eric…you are 100% correct. Seeing first hand what this “war on terror” or “war on drugs” or “war on racism” or what ever floats our masters boat at the time I can say without hesitation its a waste of time and even counter productive. I’ve spoken with numerous narcotics officers whom all say the same thing …..they achieved nothing in the “war” but padding their overtime. If it were me …I would legalize most everything, narcotics, gambling, prostitution etc. You will never tell a girl knowing she can make hundreds an hour laying down (no pun intended) to stop. Why are only billionaires allowed to open casinos? Tribalism exists throughout the world and has been so since the dawn of time yet white countries and only white countries must become multicultural. Why? What ever happened to leaving people alone and letting them freely intermingle….or not?
As just one example…..Lets say Joe Shmoe is driving reckless but never gets into an accident. He speeds, goes through red lights etc but NEVER harms anyone. Now lets say Richy Meathead is also a horrible driver and gets into many accidents and loses his license and ability to drive. Who got hurt? Only Richy Meathead! Those endless summonses issued to people for really dumb violations will never be written because its totally unnecessary. See my point.
Ditto, Joe!
One of the greatest obstacles liberty-minded people face is convincing others that they’re not “irresponsible” or “hate cops” but rather that they oppose holding everyone responsible for the harm caused by some (and insist on only being held responsible for the harms they cause) – and that it’s not cops, per se, they have a problem with – it’s this business of hassling people who’ve done nothing to anyone (except perhaps themselves) on the basis of their having violated some “law” or other.
Well Eric and Joe here is a police chief constable dissappointed- thing is they just dont get the message do they??:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/Chief-Constable-Simon-Parr-disappointed-at-more-than-500-danger-drivers-caught-without-seatbelt-in-just-two-weeks-20130917143120.htm
Spot on regarding victimless crimes.
I’m back in the Peoples Republic of Texas for work and just recently heard a radio advert warning us tax slaves that back seat passengers are required to wear seatbelts as well…. Hot diggity damn! Oh, and another thing, there are these insidious commercials on the boob tube threatening you with arrest for DUI because, as they intone, “We’ll see you before you see us”… I feel safer already knowing I’m being threatened in advance.
Joe,
You’re not QUITE there yet… you STILL wish to make SOME people have rights others are denied.
And in so doing, you would deprive me of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness – which decays VERY quickly to this state.
It took 5 years (1776-1781) for the Articles of Confederation to be usurped. (Research that, I was surprised by the birth fo the Constitution – born in betrayal of America.)
It took until 1865 to FINISH that death-cycle, when the States were unified (united by force, if that helps).
Let’s just look at how things have changed from the 1960s to now.
– Illustration at top, RE: militarization of police.
– Waco, Ruby Ridge, et al.
– Local Porky Bully. (Bullies, actually.)
– Taxes up the wazoo – which go to programs and actions we neither want nor support. Buying a Bearcat. Building a new police station. Building a new jail. Buying new hardware, such as helicopters, drones, guns (AR-15 select-fire models; MP5s; Mossberge or Remmington shotguns; Glocks with what – FOR US – would be ILLEGAL, EXTENDED MAGAZINES); License plate cameras; cross-state database integrations for “points” on licenses; body armor [which I understand “they” are trying to ALSO make illegal], ammo, high-end cars (V8s and SUVs, which will likely be banned for us via government order – to the MANUFACTURERS, mind, NOT US); and things like Obamacare, mandatory insurance, DUI-checkpoints, seatbelt checkpoints, parking enforcement, paying the various bureaucracies, and public monuments to their greatness…
Not much left over for things that we could agree on, like feeding or sheltering the homeless, or helping the mentally incompetent, or PROPERLY enforcing child welfare concerns, or even enforcing parental visitation rights (Usually, to allow a father to see his child[-ren], taken in divorce, along with his paycheck.)
No, too much mopney to be made in enforcing parking, and lawn height regulations, and decoration regulations, and taxes on property, purchases, vice (ie, prostitution, when he gives her the money instead of taking her to dinner first), or vices like smoking, or noise ordinances, or DUI, or disorderly conduct, or speeding, or… [fill in the blank.]
For F*ck sakes, they don’t even properly invest in the SCHOOLS! And I’m nto a big fan of public indoctrination – most of my “heroes” were self-educated one way or another, according to their legends. [Acknowledging the legends are often BS, they’re still parables for us.] George Washington : Honestly. Abe Lincoln: Dedication and self-education. Ben Franklin: Entrepreneurial spirit, education, power of reading. Frederick Douglas: Minor teaching got him the ability to read; he took it from there. All the way to the Supreme court, and eventually to freedom [though not via the supreme court – which is enforcing the same “property” laws on ALL OF US, FOR ALL OUR MONEY.]
Anyway:
– Propagation of SWAT – to serving arrest warrants, for “failure to appear” or similar garbage
– The unending “WAR ON DRUGS” – “Drugs will injure you and destroy your life – So if you’re caught with drugs – EVEN YOUR OWN PRESCRIPTION DRUGS NOT “PROPERLY STORED” TO OUR MANDATES – I’m going to beat you up, lock you up, and ruin your life.” (Set with a picture of a cop as background; I added the Prescription Storage embellishment, as it’s something I’d heard about, and it doens’t fit the soundbite-mind most Amoricons have.
– Murders and Rapists go unpunished – but if I MAKE A MISTAKE on my taxes, I’ll go to prison. AND YOU’LL HELP.
– Foster care: ‘Nuff said. The bad apples in there destroy the credibility of the whole system, ESPECIALLY when one hears about (a) good parents who have their children kidnapped, and (b) “foster parents” who abuse their wards, to the point of death – sometimes MULTIPLE TIMES, and NO POLICE ACTIONS ARE TAKEN.
You need to look wider: There are a LOT of fugitives from Darwin’s Law. PIGS are a big one, and IT’S BLATANT NOW.
I caught an episode of CSI: Miami last night. Worthless drama centered on a cold-blooded murderer cop, BTW (forget the season, but he pulled the trigger on someone who was no threat to him, or the target – blew the man’s head off, instead of disabling him).
Anyway, the line was said in interrogation of a gang member – the gang Primero was killed, and there was a start of a gang war. The gang banger they wanted to charge was taunting them, that he’d “taken a murderer off the street.” Response line: “It wasn’t your RIGHT.” (Emphasis added.)
But it IS the State’s right – to imprison, torture, kill?
I’m a vicious SOB – and _I_ don’t even believe that sort of self-serving BULLSHIT.
But some people just plain need killin’.
These days, they wear a variety of uniforms: Three-piece suits; black robes; and badges.
when the mass media is trying to push the same agenda, you now have collusion => mass indoctrination.
You need more time outside the system. You need to be hassled for doing what’s right – or doing nothing at all. For BEING there. Because someone MIGHT drink and drive. Or MIGHT shoot someone else. Or MIGHT injure/kill themselves. Or because they acted to PROTECT someone else – but they’re not “THE LAW.”
Since the worst I’ve had is a speeding ticket – how much more anger is there in someone wrongfully prosecuted? Or denied the chance to mount any defence, by not being allowed to testify? Or not being allowed to present evidence on his behalf?
How many children are going to be kidnapped by the government, to get more from Uncle Sam’s tits directed to that agency?
How many more BAILOUT events will happen – ON OUR DIME?
How much longer are we supposed to sit and WAIT for this tugocracy* to get it right, by passing MORE laws that do the SAME or WORSE than the FAILED laws before them?
[* Originally meant “thugocracy”, but maybe the typo is more accurate?]
DAMN STRAIGHT citizens should be armed – you got that 100% right. Same with the Pre-Crime bit.
But you want to solve the issue of crime – by allowing people the SAME DELUSIONS that get us here (get, not got: it’s happened so many times it’s predictable.)
DO NOT try to let them think they can count on OTHERS (police or whomever) to DO FOR THEM. It’s the Teach a Man To Fish lesson, and you want to give them fish, EACH AND EVERY TIME.
Police.
Fire department.
Public Works.
Sanitation.
Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard….
POTUS, SCOTUS, CONgress.
How long before the Toilet Safety Administration is wiping our @$$ for us?
Remember, we once thought it was CRAZY to talk of being monitored and spied upon by our government. That the elections of the USSR were fraudulent. That Americans could come and go as they wished, within the country, and even abroad, with a minimum of hassle or fuss.
Now? We CARRY THE GODDAMN THINGS WITH US, the GPS is in the phone YOU BUY. (Me, too, to be fair; my complaint is, I can’t turn the GPS or the WiFi OFF when I want.) Speed regulators, Catalytic converters, rules on what gas you can buy, which papers are correct for which person and which privilege, checkpoints for UN-probable cause (including cases where GOOD DRIVING is the cause of suspsicion, I shit you not!).
People are shot “AT” by the cops – innocent bystanders injured or killed – and cops walk scott-free. Not even a blemish in their record. Cops get away with rape, murder, blackmail, planting evidence… EVEN ON CAMERA!
It’s almost at the point of “kill a cop, save the world.”
And that’s no accident. Martial Law in Boston. Live-fire “terrorism” drills. PMCs are doing VERY well…. Americans meantime have given up their balls.
I could keep ranting, but… I doubt anyone’s even reading any more. Most people here know these things already, that’s part of the site’s charter – and people like me, who are less moral, are looking around wondering why everyon’es still clinging to their safety blanket of civility, when the enforcers have shown they have no willingness to be HONEST, let alone moral. We are to be controlled and “farmed” – and I’m unwilling to be a vegetable in my cube for the rest of my life. I am not producing for the State – I owe it NOTHING. It does not FEED me, nor CLOTHE me, but wants to MEDICATE me – for “diseases”* I don’t even have. [Diseases of the mind: Most people agree these are a farce, including the psychologists and psychiatrists. There is no physical defect, unlike in transsexuality or same-sex attraction: these groups have different configurations in their brains, it’s been shown with MRIs.]
Molon Labe. If I’m going to hell – and I believe I am – I WILL send as many as possible along before me.
As I’ve said to others, Just Keep Pushing. [Though that is not directed at you personally; usually, it IS directed at who I am speaking to, and I kept the phrasing.]
You are correct. The police are there solely to protect but this has been reinterpreted to mean enforcing/controlling every aspect of your life now. Militarized Police? I was in the Marines many years ago so I have experience in that as well. To get around laws banning our military for domestic purposes Homeland Security was formed but how nice to also have local police helping out as well. Yes I read about police departments getting tanks, drones, surveillance equipment etc from Homeland Security. As countries fall apart the government wants to maintain power. Look at Russia when it collapsed overnight. Who is going to pay all these government people if a collapse happens? There will be a lot of metal around to sell to junk yards if and after a big collapse. $$$$$$
Dear Jean,
“… which decays VERY quickly to this state.”
Well said.
Speaking for myself, I never intended to become a hardline anarchist. Like Eric, I would have been content with the way America was back in the 50s.
But a funny thing happened even as I was willing to remain a “moderate.”
The “camel’s nose in the tent syndrome” asserted itself, and Minarchism became Maxarchism. Not “unfortunately,” but “inevitably.”
I, like many others, eventually came to realize that there simply can be no compromise. Once a society is infected with the virus of statism, it will eventually take over. It cannot be prevented. It is not “if,” it is “when.”
The harsh reality of this “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile syndrome” led me, like many others, to become hardline anarchists.
The only solution, the only root cure, is a transformation in the way people think of “The Government.”
This four minute video clip explains it better than anything.
Prescription drugs? Oh, that’s already happened in Utah to one oldster. His wife was barely dead and cold when the cops show up to “confiscate” her scrips. Can you believe that shit?!
Unfortunately, he was too distraught to lay out the cops on the front stairs.
Timeframe, BTW, is important – MoT didn’t include the literal meaning of “barely” – it was about 2 hours, as I recall. Literally BARELY, EMS still there – but he might SELL DRUGS.
Hey, we all are going to die – it’s the nature (requirement, even) of being human.
Sending a few ahead to their eternal reward sounds better and better, as we have less and less capacity to talk things out or correct the damage being done to us.
If we can’t flourish – we’ll die trying to prevent THEM from flourishing. Who knows, we might win. Or, the next “educated” generation might.
Police wearing cameras. Best idea I have heard in 20 years. City of Rialto did it and got 80% reduction in citizen complaints. That should be enough for a nationwide “citizen” demand for those tools to be mandatory or else. Then we can begin dismantling the bloated law books.
On the one hand, you’re right about the cameras, Garysco.
On the other hand, that’s just what we need, more cameras? Cameras going into people’s houses along with the pheroes? That part seems not-so-good.
@Downshift, your going to have to clean up all those beer cans in the single-wide you live in. Might be on YouTube. 🙂
Re cameras. People don’t seem to mind them when Fox has their bad-boy “Cops” show.
Re cameras. People don’t seem to mind them when Fox has their bad-boy “Cops” show.
If by “people,” you mean the 98 percent of brainless, TV-addicted, authoriteh-worshiping sheeple who watch brain rot like Cops (I think it was Will Grigg who referred to that show as “law enforcement voyeur porn”, or something similar), then you’re definitely NOT making a positive endorsement with that statement.
@liberranter No disagreement. I am just lobbying for a positive solution starting point. What are yours?
It’s more than that, Garysco.
It’s an elimination of privacy all around, and I don’t mean for the pheroes.
Innocent people will have the inside of their houses filmed, and the inside of their cars filmed, the record will be forever. Will it be reviewed years down the line for other unnoticed “crimes”?
Would they pop up later in unrelated court cases?
Would they be public record?
What’s legal this year, is illegal the next, will they do a follow up based on notes and film?
…See where I’m going with this?
Imho, the ‘positive solution starting point’ is that if the pheroes are so bad they need a camera on them all the time, the whole lot of them need to be laid off.
It’s bad enough having a cop stick his face in the car window when a person gets pulled over (and point those sniffer flashlights at you) now a camera too? Yeesh.
“COPS” because of its long life is actually quite the documentary now.
It shows the growth of the US police state. Early episodes show calm, even friendly cops who are confident. Current episodes show angry, aggressive, violent, paranoid cops.
As I stated before, yes it’s a distorted reality to show cops at their best, but that lens is a constant throughout the run.
@Downshift. Oh I am with you on the prol surveillance devices. I actually make a game out of messing with them to give the NSA algorithms something to do. But if that is world we live in I want every contact John Law makes to be available for review as well. Keeps everyone honest.
RE: “Keeps everyone honest.”
Not the crafty ones.
BTW, did you read Jon’s last few bits?:
Breaking: US Navy Yard shooting: is it possible to learn the truth?
[and…]
Navy Yard shooting: psyop, loose ends, media parrots
http://www.nomorefakenews.com/
What else can I say?
Something about truth being stranger than fiction?
Ok. Cop Cams bad idea. I get it.
You are not making reference to every recent shooter and terrorist in the media has had a common drug and/ or official government agency connection are you?
Or U.S. Army document: FM 3-05.301 Psychological Operations Process Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures,…
2-97. Inevitability appeals most often rely on the emotion of fear, particularly fear of death, injury, or some other type of harm. For example, if a person does not surrender, he will die, or if a person does not pay his taxes, he will go to jail. It can also be an appeal to logic. Both require proof that the promised outcome will actually occur. Therefore, it is crucial that credibility be gained and maintained throughout
the argument.
2-98. An in group-out group appeal seeks to divide a TA or separate two TAs. It creates an enemy of one group, and encourages the other group to rebel/discriminate against them. This appeal frequently points out major differences between TAs, or factions of a TA. If PSYOP cannot effectively portray the in group in a negative manner, the appeal will fail.
2-99. Bandwagon appeals play upon the TA’s need to belong or conform to group standards. The two main types of bandwagon appeal are an appeal to companionship and an appeal to conformity. Peer pressure is an example of the conformity type of bandwagon appeal.
Or something like that, are you comrade?
I learned about that stuff once.
At the time, I thought there was no real need to know it.
No-Real-Need,?
I’m not sure if I regret not absorbing it more.
U.S. Army document: FM 3-05.301 Psychological Operations Process Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures,…eh?
Talk about distortions from fiat money printing.
Interesting stuff, Garysco. Please continue your online gaming.
@Downshift – Like Dirty Harry said: “… just don’t bore me.”
Oh shit! Did I do that?
I soo hate doing that.
I did mention on another thread about this 20 or 30-something girl I saw at a garage sale. …
She was wearing a full dress (yellow with white) and strappy sandals.
And She-Was-Da-Bomb!
I’d Never in my life seen a more beautiful woman at a garage sale.
EVER!
.. I think she fingered a wrench.
…And then…
Well. I won’t say,” and then”.
…Let’s just stop right there.
I know exactly who she is. Snap-On tools 2005 calendar, June I think.
That’s exactly it, Garysco!
Exactly.
The third most prettiest girl I ever saw. In Real Life.
(I’ve seen and known some real beauties, what can I say? I’ve turned them down too. …Maybe I shouldn’t have?)
But surely, she was THE prettiest I Ever saw at a garage sale.
…And I’m serious about her fingering the wrench.
You might think I’m joking, but I’m not.
… I’m many things, but I’m NOT a bullshitter.
I agree on what’s keeping criminals at bay, Joe. A stickup boy is more worried about getting shot than about getting locked up. He has more to fear from an intended victim than from whatever cop might be in his AO.
Joe, if I know anything it’s that “technical glitches” suddenly appear out of nowhere when these purported recording devices finger cops for aggregious actions. They get deleted or corrupted at these critical moments when your otherwise donut-eating events seemingly never encounter these problems. Just like the video tape evidence that suddenly goes bad but never did before… All too coincidental.
Government mostly has to do with giving people (unnecessary) jobs, but it is all so entrenched now. If we started to practice the NAP millions would be put out of work: those involved in the useless government jobs, and the jobs necessary to extract money from the tax cattle to pay for those needless jobs. These tax-feeders do NOT want to lose their cushy jobs, and be forced to look for and work at a real job. A very important example of this is the JFK assassination. JFK was making peace with Cuba, making peace with Russia, and stopping the Viet Nam war. He wanted to get rid of the CIA. The Military/Security/Industrial/Complex is the biggest tax-feeder in the gubment. These people HAD to kill Kennedy to keep the paychecks rolling in.
The problem with an out of work tapeworm is…?
Out of work nematode is…?
OOW Planarian?
OOW heartworm, or virus, or bacteria – say malaria, or HIV?
Is it not a self-fixing problem? The truly worthless starve, the productive are free to thrive.
Those that fail are fertilizer and food for worms. They’ll grow back – they always do. We’ve had idiots and imbeciles since time immemorial; we just used to accept that if someone did something STUPID, and DIED, it was the result of stupidity – not the result of an improperly-policed or under-lawed society.
These days, if you’re driving & Texting & drinking & fixing your makeup all at once, and you get hurt – it’s the CAR MANUFACTURER’S fault or such. They should’ve made it impossible to drive while texting, and drinking, and fixing your makeup in the rearview mirror – but they better provide a plug for your curling iron! (Sounds like I’m picking on the ladies, but it’s just an easier example to make. Men do lots of stupid stuff while driving, too.)
First post here… I recently read a frightening book called “The Sociopath Next Door.” In it the author asserts that about 4% of the population are true sociopaths. She further asserts that they follow a normal Gaussian distribution for intelligence. This means there are some very smart, very evil people running free out there. Now, and this is my connection, if you combine this fact with the results of Milgram Experiment (look it up if unfamiliar) you can begin to see how a sociopath in a position of authority can amplify his or her effect on society.
Hi Eric,
I have that book – it’s top drawer. Another one, in a similar vein, is Political Ponerology. See here:
http://www.amazon.com/Political-Ponerology-Science-Adjusted-Purposes/dp/1897244258/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379338020&sr=8-1&keywords=Political+Ponerology
I think you’d like it – or rather, find it informative – for the same reasons….
Dear Eric,
“This means there are some very smart, very evil people running free out there.”
Yeah. They meet annually at Bilderberg and other NWO venues.
Um. You really, really ought to look up how things worked out under the Celtic clan system in Scotland and Ireland, and read and absorb the message of the last part of the biblical Book of Judges that is punctuated with the refrain “in those days, there was no king in Israel” and variants of that. Although low level, violence was endemic and wide spread (with frequent flare ups). Sawney Bean and Gilderoy MacGregor you will always have with you.
I’m not suggesting that the statist cure (a king in Israel, equally condemned by Samuel in the Bible) is better than the disease, but neither am I in denial that there is a disease.
No, that was never true. Rather, within every generation the U.S.A. did just precisely that sort of taking and then went into self-deception over having done it, from the abuse of the slaves, the Loyalists, the Indians, the Spanish (in Florida, along with enslaving the free blacks there), the Indians again, the Mexicans, the Utah Mormons, the Indians again again, the Hawaiians, the Spanish again (in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines), and so on down to the present day. And there were lots of msmaller episodes, like the Strangite Mormons I mentioned when commenting on another post. Yes, most of those took place through or along with state channels; so? the people themselves made a deal with that devil to get both its direct assistance and its subsequent validation.
And that is the big problem: people would face cognitive dissonance on a massive scale if they faced up to the misbehaviour from which they benefit even today, and they wouldn’t want to give up either the benefits or the feeling right with themselves – so they invest the state with a mantle of authority from which they draw their own personal validation in continuing that ill getting of ill gotten gains.
Hi PM,
Yes, but did you read the rest?
I specifically admitted that violence is not going away – ever.
However, I’d argue that it’s preferable to deal with ordinary thugs rather than state-sanctioned ones.
I can, for instance, fight back against a home intruder. I can kill him – self-defense – if I believe my life is in danger.
But if the intruder is wearing a special costume? Then I must Submit & Obey. The least resistance is illegal.
Dear Eric,
Exactly!!!
That is the thing that galls me the most. In a so-called “lawless Wild West” scenario, at least one can defend oneself without fear of subsequent prosecution.
Wake Up America!
On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Enmesh, Norfolk, England, killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term. How did it become a crime to defend one’s own life in the once great British Empire?
For the answer, read on:
http://thechinadesk.blogspot.tw/2013/01/wake-up-america.html
Permit me to throw a “wildcat” into the ring of discussion here.
Ayn Rand on the topic of Libertarians — 1971
“For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More specifically, I disapprove of, and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so called “hippies of the right,” who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.
Above all do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to “do something”. By “ideological” (in this context) I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined and, usually, contradictory political goals… or the “libertarian” hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism. To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principals for the sake of some superficial political action, which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of “your” ideas and the victory of of your enemies.
[ The “libertarians” ….plagiarize Ayn Rand’s principal that no man may initiate the use of physical force, and treat it as a mystically revealed out of context absolute…]
In a philosophical battle for a free society, the one crucial connection to be upheld is that between capitalism and reason… The “libertarians” are tying capitalism to the whim-worshiping subjectivism and chaos of anarchy. To cooperate with either group is to betray capitalism, reason, and one’s own future.
I’m not sure anybody who uses three hyphenated, compound adjectives in the same sentence has any business lecturing me on what is and is not “rational.” 😉
Hummm. English as a second language maybe? I do know that I can’t write for sh*%t, so I offer no criticism here.
Hell Darien, just look at my avatar. That should tell you something about me. |:
“Permit me to throw a “wildcat” into the ring of discussion here…”
That’s top-notched triple-hyphenated-awesomeness that made me smile.
I want to purge the I’m-The-Alpha-Monarch-Knower and You’re-the-Beta-Monarch-Learner dialectic mentality when writing – so it’s back to the chrysalis for me. I’ll aspire to throw more wildcats into more discussions from now on.
– – – –
Arabic Lesson With Maha
Maha Discusses Arabic Loanwords in English
alcohol, algebra, apricot, coffee, cotton, giraffe, hashish,
lilac, mafia, monsoon, sofa, sugar
Should Nordic Men Breastfeed In Public?
Fuckin’ A, Darien. ahaha I nominate that one of yours for Post of the Day.
Well Ed, I can see you’ve never read Ayn Rand’s magnummest opus:
tl; dr. Real libertarians know every word. Especially the part in chapter – tl; dr where she discusses the lynchpin equation that justifies lynching moochers and then swearing from the mountaintops above the valleys of the communists that: tl; dr = tl; dr!
You got it, Tor.
Ayn Rand was a delusional, self absorbed egomaniac who stole every single idea she ever expressed from better thinkers and writers than she could ever have been.
Fuck Ayn Rand and her silly assed cult of personality she created for herself. Fuck her objectivist followers who write justifications for neocon warmongering.
The most delusional statement ever written by a libertarian writer is “It all starts with Ayn Rand”. At least once a week there’s a former liberal or conservative who has just discovered ol’ Ayn and has to spread the good news. It gets tedious.
Finally, fuck the LP. I dumped them in 1998, and should have done so in ’92. They’re simply a fundraising organization for a group of professional political campaign advisors who specialize in keeping their paychecks coming in.
Sorry, but I’m too fuckin old and have been at this shit too fuckin long to have any patience with hearing the same old shit trumpeted as if it were brand new.
I better shut up so I can be “refuted intensively”, as Mike so eloquently put it. 😉
Hi Ed,
Are you hip to Leonard Read? He – along with Mencken and Bastiat – were among my earliest favorites. I came to Rand much later. I agree with Bevin that she was a good polemicist (and a tedious novelist) but have always seen her as a compromised figure because of the Stalinist cult she built up around herself. It made her seem unhinged – which made the ideas she tried to advocate seem unhinged by dint of association with her. I suspect she alienated as many people as she converted.
Eric, yes I’m familiar with Leonard Read. My gateway writer was AJ Nock. Mencken gave me my early contempt for politicians. Murray Rothbard was the giant of essayists, IMO. For me, Rand was never even on the list, since I tried to read one of her novels in High School and discovered that she couldn’t write a novel for shit. Also, her fans among my classmates were the most insufferable assholes in that school. 😉
Well, I guess I’ll get refuted intensively later, or maybe I’m just being ignored. ahaha
Ed, I’ve been to Libertarian party meetings, and can at least say I’ve commiserated with like-minded folk, but in the end it all felt like an intellectual circle jerk. What were we actually going to do? Time and again I heard one man say that it was a generational project and I said to myself, “Fuck that shit!”… I don’t recall Washington, Franklin, Jefferson etc. sitting around drinking tea and eating biscuits saying things like that. How ludicrous! By the time thirty or forty years have rolled around your kids will have grown up in a culture of ever increasing slavery and consider it “normal”. They’ll curse us come some day for being fearful lazy assholes.
Hi MoT,
I agree with the sentiment – but disagree that we’re fearful lazy assholes. The thing that defeats me is not the prospect of fighting but rather the fact that my fighting – by myself – would be futile and suicidal. The key to this puzzle is improving the odds on our side, so that if we’re compelled to act, it will be neither futile nor necessarily suicidal.
The frustrating thing is the waiting. But I really believe the day will come.
Eric, at the rate things are going we’re going to be the best “educated” slaves that ever existed.
Eric,
There have been free societies that worked well with the application of law and justice being handled by the free market. Case in point: The following is from an article created by David Friedman and published at the University of Chicago Law School (Go to http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html). I think you will find it very interesting on how the ancient Icelandic people handled their legal affairs. I quote, in part:
“… medieval Icelandic institutions have several peculiar and interesting characteristics; they might almost have been invented by a mad economist to test the lengths to which market systems could supplant government in its most fundamental functions. Killing was a civil offense resulting in a fine paid to the survivors of the victim. Laws were made by a “parliament,” seats in which were a marketable commodity. Enforcement of law was entirely a private affair. And yet these extraordinary institutions survived for over three hundred years, and the society in which they survived appears to have been in many ways an attractive one . Its citizens were, by medieval standards, free…”
Dear Larry,
Right!
I remained on the fence about free market anarchism for years. It was the real world example of Iceland that finally tipped the scales for me. After that I jettisoned minarchism and never looked back.
The historical precedent of Medieval Iceland proved that free market anarchism was not merely theoretically sound, it was also entirely feasible in the down and dirty world.
It worked for 300 years, longer than the unitedstate has been in existence. No one can claim that it didn’t work.
Here is the article, posted a Mises.org, that finally sold me:
Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government
Mises Daily: Wednesday, December 25, 2002 by Thomas Whiston
http://mises.org/daily/1121
What that leaves out is that the Icelanders got their start by wiping out or driving out the Irish monks who were there before, and then consolidated their position by using (mostly) Irish slaves. It’s in their own records, and DNA evidence supports it.
Dear PM,
I’m sure you will agree that there is no causal relationship between free market anarchism and genocide.
Other political systems do indeed have causal relationships. For example, mercantilism has an unmistakable causal relationship with colonialism and imperialism.
But not free market anarchism.
Eric, you wrote in part, “For Libertarians, on the other hand, there is only one law – non-aggression…”
As a member of the Libertarian party for about one dozen years, I have to disagree with this statement. There is a time and place for aggression. If you wake up at 2:00 AM and there is some strange man who broke into your house and he is standing over the bed of you baby daughter then, aggression may be clearly justified.
When one joins the Libertarian party, they do not give up the right to use aggression when aggression is the correct and appropriate response. What we Libertarians attest to is to not INITIATE force to achieve political of social goals. If force is initiated against us then it is quite reasonable and appropriate to use force, if that is what it takes to stop the use of force against us. Go to the Libertarian party membership page. To join, you must agree to the following:
“To validate my membership, I certify that I oppose the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals.”
Larry, you are incorrect. There is no right time for an unprovoked attack. Libertarians use force, but they use it in self-defense and against aggression.
In the hypothetical situation you gave, the homeowner has been provoked, and is justified in taking a wide range of immediate action, whatever he considers appropriate.
This platform clause is copy-pasted from the libertarian party website
1.6 Self-Defense
The only legitimate use of force is in defense of individual rights — life, liberty, and justly acquired property — against aggression. This right inheres in the individual, who may agree to be aided by any other individual or group. We affirm the individual right recognized by the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms, and oppose the prosecution of individuals for exercising their rights of self-defense. We oppose all laws at any level of government requiring registration of, or restricting, the ownership, manufacture, or transfer or sale of firearms or ammunition.
aggression (n.)
1610s, “unprovoked attack,” from French aggression (16c.), from Latin aggressionem (nominative aggressio) “a going to, an attack,” noun of action from past participle stem of aggredi “to approach; attack,” from ad- “to” (see ad-) + gradi (past participle gressus) “to step,” from gradus “a step” (see grade). Psychological sense of “hostile or destructive behavior” first recorded 1912 in A.A. Brill’s translation of Freud.
Libertarian Party is a subset of the Libertarian movement. It’s is not an authoritative resource. Many Libertarians decline to engage in any political action, for various reasons. George Will’s definition isn’t too far from the mark:
George Will on Libertarians – “They Come in Varying Degrees of Severity”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/08/04/george_will_if_christie_thinks_libertarians_are_dangerous_mr_christie_himself_may_be_dangerous.html
George Will’s Libertarian Evolution
“Let’s be clear about what libertarianism is and what it isn’t.
It is not anarchism. It has a role for government. But what libertarianism says, it comes in many flavors and many degrees of severity, it basically says before the government bridges the freedom of an individual or the freedom of several individuals contracting together, that government ought to have, A, a compelling reason and, B, a constitutional warrant for doing so.”
– George Will
Dear Tor,
Good points.
In fact, one could be considerably harsher than that. I supported the LP for years. But no more.
Libertarian Party: Worthless
by Larken Rose
http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Opinion/075264-2010-09-13-libertarian-party-worthless.htm
Excerpt:
I’m sad to announce that the Libertarian Party is utterly worthless. Well, the fact that it was a political party vying for the throne made it not only worthless, but counter-productive, from the beginning. If you’re waiting around for “government” to pass a “law” giving you permission to be free, then: a) you’ll be waiting a long time, and b) you’re not even free inside your own head yet. As long as you are begging any master to endorse your freedom, you will remain a slave.
But aside from that, my complaint today is that the Libertarian party has no real principles anymore. None. By its label, there is only one principle it should ever have had: the principle of non-aggression. That’s what “libertarianism” is all about. It’s a very simple, basic principle, and it is philosophically and morally sound. And it has been abandoned by the Libertarian Party. (No, this didn’t just happen now, but it’s getting more obvious.)
The Libertarian Party doesn’t like to talk about its ultimate end goal: a purely voluntary society. Why not? Because that’s not its end goal anymore. Its end goal is to be in power, to be the new master–a more wise, benevolent master, but a master nonetheless. “Well, once we get into power, then we’ll slowly do away with state aggression.” Bull poop. They would do nothing of the sort. They’ve stopped even giving lip service to that goal, and are now pathetically wimpering about “lower taxes,” and a “reduced” this and a “reformed” that.
Whoa! Bevin. Karmic coincidence here. I just posted Rand’s thoughts (below).
part:
“To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principals for the sake of some superficial political action, which is bound to fail.”
Dear Gary,
Jungian “synchronicity” more likely!
Rand was right in her critique.
But… sad to say, and I say this as a “recovering Student of Objectivism,” the official Objectivist movement also fell victim to that same syndrome.
To wit: Peikoff et al becoming rabid warfare statists, vis a vis Israel, even while correctly denouncing Amerika for becoming fascist.
Bevin – Yes, I agree her philosophy was being morphed by her insiders even as she lived. But at least the cat got out of the bag before it was caught and sent to the re-education camp.
Damn. Does that mean I have to go back to thinking for myself?
LP, you’re not quite liberational enough, you’re quasi-liberation, you’re semi-liberation, margarine-liberation, the Diet Coke of Liberation, not liberated enough.
Dr Evil on Jerry Springer
Larken Rose, and others with his experiences aren’t interested in a merely more permissive prison. He’s a hard core libertarian who’s true horror of being locked in a cage in a day and age where, it’s not even remotely necessary, except as Monarch Mind Control Protocol.
He’s been the answer to the question:
Whose Bed Are Your Jackboots Under?
Shania – Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?
Dear Tor,
Re: Monarch Mind Control
Never heard of it before. Ran a quick search on it and skimmed a short intro on the subject.
Then today, I happened to watch the “Nikita” TV series. One of the government trained assassins had a butterfly tattoo on the back of her neck!
I’m starting to see what you’re talking about. Apparently the series writer was hip to MMC.
Incidentally, this particular show is pretty good ideologically speaking. It’s about an escaped former assassin named Nikita, who sets out to bring down the agency, sabotage its operations, and right the wrongs she did for it did in the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhelGgaa2Wg
Morally it’s reminiscent of Manning and Snowden. This makes it watchable. The exact opposite of mindless paeans to The Government such as JAG, NCIS, Alias.
Dear Tor,
This Monarch Programming thing is mind-boggling. I’ve been skimming articles on it. Creepy stuff.
How a leading American fashion model came to be experimented upon by the CIA mind control team
This Fortean Times article from 2001 describes the infamous case of Candy Jones, a fashion model who became a MKULTRA victim. It is one of the the most documented case of the fashion world mixing with mind control.
http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/how-a-leading-american-fashion-model-came-to-be-experimented-upon/
Now a lot of what I’ve seen in the media makes more sense. TV shows like “Alias,” “Fringe,” “Nikita,” “Homeland.”
aggression (n.)
1610s, “unprovoked attack,”
Tor, I stand corrected. I should have used the word, “force”.
Dear Larry,
We’re all on the same side on this issue.
I think the problem here is definitional.
Some terms are fuzzy and have multiple meanings in the dictionary.
I believe that when Eric and others speak of “non-aggression” they mean “the non-initiation of force.” They do not mean a lack of emotional aggressiveness. That is something that may well be needed during self-defense.
I’m pretty sure we’re all in agreement on this.
Bevin,
I agree. As Tor pointed out, aggression, by definition, is unprovoked attack,
Thanks for the feedback.
@Larry – Libertarian etc. and Pacifism are mutually exclusive terms. There seems to be a lot of confusion going around on definitions of labels and terms. Even the definition of “Libertarian” has changed over the years. Not by accident in my opinion, because the “culture controllers” know how to manipulate people and groups. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” – Mark Twain
Dear Larry,
The example of the midnight intruder is not one of “aggression” on the part of the homeowner. It is self-defense.
It is aggression on the part of the midnight intruder.
The homeowner is fully justified in using defensive force.
It’s important not to confuse “non-aggression” with Amish style “turn the other cheek” pacifism. While noble in its intent, it winds up being “I’m a doormat, walk all over me.”
I’m pretty sure that’s not what anybody here is talking about.
Hi Larry,
Self defense is not aggression. It is just that – self defense.
It is a response to aggression.
I realize we’re probably both in agreement – and just being slightly pedantic.
I chose not to use “non-initiation of force” simply because it’s clunky sounding to me, while “aggression” is clean and simple and straightforward.
Those familiar with Libertarianism understand what is meant immediately when one says either thing. But for newbies, “aggression” is probably easier to digest – and in the context of the article, its meaning ought to be obvious.
Yes, some confusion about the definition for aggression and force. As Tor pointed out, aggression is an unprovoked attack. I stand corrected.
Hi Larry,
No worries – we’re on the same side!
” If you wake up at 2:00 AM and there is some strange man who broke into your house and he is standing over the bed of you baby daughter then, aggression may be clearly justified.”
The man BROKE INTO YOUR HOUSE. That’s aggression. Whatever violence you do to him in response is defensive, not aggressive.
Although I agree with your premise, I sense major “fuzziness” where these theories meet reality.
Let’s say that armed robbery is committed against an innocent individual. How do these volunteer “peacekeepers” and the libertarian judicial system you envision proceed to apprehend the perpetrator and deal with him/her in such a way that they are less likely to do it again?
Details, please. 🙂
Here is one of a series of YouTube videos that gives a suggestion how people can do without government.
It probably does not have the depth & details you would like, but it is not a bad start.
Dear Mith,
Excellent video, and not just as an isolated video.
It also represents the kind of simple, straightforward explanations that can convert large numbers of people to free market anarchism.
I’m considering making videos like this in lieu of, or perhaps in addition to, writing essays on free market anarchism.
How would a voluntary society keep the peace? I suspect it would depend on the people involved. Each voluntary community might well try many different things, and change their minds as they learned and grew. I’d suggest that an “armed robber” would not likely survive the attempt. But if they did, and if they somehow got away and were apprehended, they would first have to deal with restitution to the victim, for whatever harm or theft they had committed. Then the community would have to decide what else was needed to make the victims whole, if possible. Shunning or banning are powerful things in a society without welfare and government transfer of wealth from producer to parasite.
When the aggressor knows well that he/she will face either physical pain up to death, or that nobody would trade with them or offer services… this would be a powerful motivator.
There are no guarantees in any of this, and no “one right way” to go about it. A voluntary association will inevitably do a better job of everything than a top down, coercive bunch of “rulers” who are totally unaccountable to their subjects. That I CAN guarantee.
The thing is… if you and a bunch of your neighbors would rather have a non-voluntary government, rulers, cops and so forth… go for it. No skin off my nose. Just don’t come to me demanding that I participate… or especially, that I pay for it. I want no part of it.
The thing is… if you and a bunch of your neighbors would rather have a non-voluntary government, rulers, cops and so forth… go for it. No skin off my nose. Just don’t come to me demanding that I participate… or especially, that I pay for it. I want no part of it.
Ah, but therein lies the paradox: a system based on coercive force, given its very nature, cannot let others who are not part of it “live and let live” (for an imperfect but relevant example and precedent, think: the American War to Prevent Southern Independence, 1861-1865) It would only be a matter of time before the community based on positive law (i.e., a community ruled by a government) would begin using aggressive violence to force its will upon a community of anarcho-capitalists that wanted nothing to do with it. Thus, the very existence of government, on any level, anywhere cannot peacefully coexist with anarcho-capitalism. They are mutually exclusive and mutually antagonistic.
I’m certainly open to any examples that refute my assertion, but it just seems axiomatic. I’m absolutely not saying that a libertarian society is unsustainable; indeed, exactly the opposite. What I’m saying is that the existence of such a society is likely to mean perpetual defensive warfare against the statists who are determined not to let it exist in peace.
One thing I’ve wondered about my whole life is the idea of no one can be trusted until you know them personally. When I was a kid I didn’t really fear adults. In fact I always felt that if I were lost or needed help I could ask an adult and they’d help out. This extended to any adult, including the (black) janitor at church, the (black, white, old and young) neighbors next door, the guy with the funny accent at the store (OK, maybe a stretch, but I bought candy and ice cream from him). Now if I was up to no good, of course I was afraid of adults, but that’s a story for another post.
As I grew up, that non-fear of others has stayed with me, and I think I’ve benefited from it. It certainly has allowed me to meet many interesting people with some amazing stories (like the guy I knew in school who escaped with his family from Iran in the 1970s). But I’ve known many people who regularly use terms like “sand nigger,” “there are two types blacks,” “japs” -my own parents use that one, “rednecks” and other derogatory terms for people they don’t know, have never met, etc. How these people get though life is beyond me. I’m sure that I’m a little naive giving people the benefit of the doubt, but I also believe that no one spits in my omelet at the restaurant either.
It also has led me to realize that most of what we’re told when it comes to mass media news is designed to promote tribalism and reinforce stereotypes. Of course most of the readers here know that’ nothing new, but it’s the equivalent of “lowest common denominator” TV programming. Keep people afraid of young, black people and no one will mind when 70% of them get thrown in jail. Dehumanize Muslims and “never forget 9/11” and the Middle East oil becomes manifest destiny.
What’s this got to do with police? Well, if you only trust people who look like you, or people in your circle, your need for protection will be much higher. Since you can’t afford the level of protection you desire, you get the state to provide a level of protection. Once the government is involved the bureaucratic empires are assembled, and new bogymen need to be invented. And remember, everything in our economy requires unlimited growth for the fiat currency and unlimited borrowing to continue, and crime is no different. As the population ages and technology improves lives, crime decreases. So unless you’re going to encourage a 3rd world level of birthrate, or destroy technological advancement (which I do think is happening, especially when it comes to electricity and infrastructure), you’ll need to come up with a bunch of new crimes to justify expansion. Along with that crime comes new criminals, who are hell bent on destruction of your society and well being.
If we were truly a Christan and caring society we’d be more interested in helping out our fellow man to make sure they don’t get caught up in a system that encourages theft. Instead we’re told that people who are different are inherently evil and should be dealt with accordingly. Basic war-style propaganda being used against ourselves. It’s only a matter of time until we’re all on the wrong side of the thin blue line, no matter what we do.
“… we’d be more interested in helping out our fellow man to make sure they don’t get caught up in a system that encourages theft.”
Is that not best done by living so that each individual is free to live their lives as they see fit, and responsible for themselves – free to take risks, and responsible for the consequences of their choices and actions? This obviously has to include self defense.
The most logical outcome of any lethal attack is the death or serious injury of the aggressor at the hands of the intended victim or their guardian. Do you think that very real possibility might cause a great many people to seriously consider NOT attacking other people?
The “system” teaches children complete dependence on government, and seriously uses every possible means to discourage critical thinking and self reliance, self responsibility – and these children very seldom have any opportunity to avoid becoming a part of that system. All of their lives are surrounded by theft, fraud, lies and corruption, so why would they not think that was the norm, the good, the way the world is supposed to work?
It is the lack of freedom, and individual responsibility that encourages theft and the various “war on…” that expands the definition of criminal beyond aggression. Eliminate the “war on drugs” – on food, childhood, everything else – and there would be no justification at all for police.
People ARE different, and always will be. That doesn’t make anyone automatically evil of course, but there is no more justification to think that everyone is automatically good and non threatening either. People are what and who they are, and voluntary association is a cornerstone of any freedom. The _forced_ homogenized “society” is as scary and wrong as the worst slavery or “Jim Crow” era situation.
The key is not to initiate force, to mind one’s own business and leave others to mind theirs. Help and encouragement can be offered, most certainly, but as a free gift in voluntary association, not some societal imperative at other people’s expense.
Trust, but verify. Respect is earned.
I’ve met people from practically every corner of the planet, there’s really no reason to fear anyone or any group except those people who want to rule over others.
Fear and hate comes from those who wish to rule us because that is how they rule us.
One of my best friends from college is the authoritarian-socialist type. We hadn’t seen each other in ten years or so, but we got together for a weekend a few years back, and one of the things we talked about was libertarianism. He was honestly interested (whatever his intellectual errors, the man is honest and will engage ideas instead of just demagoguing Hegel and Hobbes), and we had a lively conversation that involved him saying that we need government because people “can’t be trusted.” I replied that, of all people, the ones who can be trusted the *least* are people who have power and people who want power. He had no real response to that.
Dear Darien,
“I replied that, of all people, the ones who can be trusted the *least* are people who have power and people who want power. He had no real response to that.”
You’re right.
He is honest!
Which means there is hope for him yet.
A common socialist belief is that we are too “stupid” to govern ourselves without direction. But they are OK with the “collective stupidity” to vote in rules and rulers. Operator, give the the number for 9-1-1.
Dear Gary,
It’s amazing how whatever the folly government was responsible for, Mencken usually had it covered.
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
— H. L. Mencken
Bevin wrote: Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Darn. And all this time I thought I was smarter then the average bear. I will have to look into then Mencken fellow, thanks. 🙂
I’ve always thought that the beginning of wisdom is recognition that one hasn’t got the answers. Which, when you think about it, is a 16-inch gun salvo across the bow of government-snuggling. That is, if you haven’t got absolute knowledge of the “right” way to live your own life, how the “f” dare you attempt to run other people’s lives?
The only thing we can know – because it can be demonstrated – is when an actual harm has been done to a specific, actual human being or his property.
Then – and only then – is there just cause to thwart action, or to obtain compensation, etc.
Dear Gary,
Search “HL Mencken quotes.” You’ll find a gold mine of quotable political observations.
Not surprisingly, Mencken was an individualist anarchist.
To wit:
“I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.”
— H. L. Mencken
Hi Darien,
Your friend might be salvageable. However, my bet is he’ll prove to be another Hamilton – someone who ultimately will never abide the idea of others being free to do as they wish rather than as he wishes they’d do. I say this because I’ve had – and lost – several similar friends, for the same reason. They’re a “type,” if you like.
Keep us posted. I’ll be interested to learn how this turns out…
I’ve often pointed that out when I get the ‘people are scum’ counter argument. I also ask the person making that argument if the only thing stopping him from harming others and stealing stuff is fear of government punishment. Silence is the usual result.
Then there are the arguments that libertarianism has too much faith in other people followed up by an argument that libertarians are paranoid and afraid of their fellow man. My response is that paranoia, fear of one’s fellow man, would mandate the belief in an large, powerful, intrusive government to keep us safe. Again, the result is silence.
I really don’t get the statist mind. It is so illogical and self conflicting. If it were a computer program it would crash immediately.
Dear Brent,
Amen to that.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
— H. L. Mencken
No.
When I was six, my family was at great risk of being massacred by the mutinying paramilitary Force Publique in the newly independent Belgian Congo, along with the rest of the white population in that town, until we were rescued after a three day siege by a paratroop drop carried out in defiance of orders. The killers had no interest whatsoever in ruling us, and in fact they had thrown that option aside by mutinying; they just wanted to kill us, as they had their white officers.
So no, there are other threats.
P.M.Lawrence – I know a couple who were Seventh Day Adventist missionaries in Rwanda. They said when the killing started, the perpetrators weren’t interested in ruling over their victims other than to hack them up. But neither were they interested in this older white couple, as long as they kept their door shut and stayed inside. They said it was horrible having to sit idly by and listen to the screaming and moaning. But they knew if they stepped outside to try to comfort or aid the dying woman hacked up on their front porch or opened their house to try to hide some of the other villagers, they would be next.
So I must agree on there being other serious threats in this world besides power lust; namely bloodlust. Some people merely want to see others dead, for whatever arbitrary reason and care not one whit about ruling over them.
That is still a lust for power.
Let’s keep the tool separate from the intent.
Terror, fear, taxes – all grant power over others. That’s the only point they have.
Kill 10, silence 50.
We could learn something – the rules only apply to those who will be bound by them.
We’re almost at the point where we will NEED to raise the black flag. There will be no other choice – the alternative (not choice) would be abject subjugation.
Yeah Jean, I think you’re right: blood lust is just the ultimate form of power lust. Once you have all the money, all the sex, all the drugs and all the power, what’s left for a psychopath? Death and destruction of course.
Excellent, and there’s another important angle. I wrote about it this week at my blog. Downsizing Government: http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/?p=2537
What does the president of the US (whoever that might be) actually DO that improves your life and helps provide the essentials necessary for survival? What would you like him (or her) to do that would improve your life without harming anyone else. Is that even possible? You don’t really want to harm other people, do you?
Think about it.
Nothing at all comes to my mind. In fact, I can think of dozens of things various presidents have done over the years that did exactly the opposite. Those actions damaged my ability to live peacefully and productively, and managed to harm a great many other people as well, in my name and with money stolen from me.
This is the best article you’ve written so far, imho,
It contains the basics of just about everything I’ve been trying to tell people since 1984.
…Only now, are some of them, ‘getting it’.
Brav-the fuck-O.
… And may, ‘The Fourth Turning’ proceed as fast as it can.
Maybe then, the madness can end?
Thanks, DS!
I was thinking it might be a good thought exercise – not just for me – to explore practical Libertarianism. I’m sick of being told (as I wrote) that our ideas are “impractical” and “unworkable.”
Especially in view of how horrendously awful their ideas have proven to be.
Great time to start the discussion Eric.
In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that police do not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm.
Indeed!
And – even worse – their primary “duty” comes down to harming us at every turn. Using fear and the threat of violence to compel our obedience to inane, unjust laws. Actually using violence to enforce those laws. Taking away our liberty – and our property (the same things).
Eric, I am afraid it is even more insidious then that. The explanation very technical, but cities and counties are corporations, and the police work for those corporations. Bottom line is that the U.S. Constitution gets fuzzy when it is corporations doing things under administrative and commercial code law. That is why you cannot raise U.S, Constitution issues when you have to go to court. The judge cannot hear of such things because that document cannot be brought into those proceedings. The whole mess is a slight of hand and is contained inside the matrix.
Agreed.
I was actually on a pre-law track in college. One of the many things that turned me away from that – hard right, now! – was discovering that “the law” is not the plain language of the Constitution (leaving aside the problems with that) but rather, whatever judges (and even bureaucrats) “interpret” it to mean. And then, the interpretations of prior interpretations. This is called “case law.” The Constitution, as a legal document, has been a nullity since at least 1865.
Oh brother, YES.
Try being a conscientious cop and keep up with the constantly changing flatulence-rulings of the Black Robed Ones on search & seizure, traffic stops, you can or cannot question certain people, and entering or not entering structures. Ever seen a dog chase its tail?
That is why lawyers get a Title of Nobility “Bar Card” when they join that Fu*#ed up profession.
For a monetary explanation of what has happened:
Recorded at least 3 years ago, you’ll see how right he is.
Dear Eric,
Just noticed that Paul Craig Roberts posted an article at LRC. Check out the title!
Everyone is coming to this same conclusion!
Police Are More Dangerous To The Public Than Are Criminals
By Paul Craig Roberts
September 17, 2013
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/09/paul-craig-roberts/are-police-more-dangerous-than-criminals/
Excerpt:
“The facts seem to support the case that police in the US commit more crimes and acts of violence against the public than do the criminals who do not wear badges.”
Hi Bevin,
Yes, awareness is dawning… percolating, even!
I have noticed that when I make negative comments about cops in public/among other people, many murmur agreement. That’s new.
Among my circle – middle class people, mostly – deferential respect used to be the norm.
It’s not anymore.
We’re getting traction!
Dear Eric,
Yes!
Also, Lew Rockwell just talked with Alex Jones about how 2013 might just be the watershed moment, when the tide finally turns.
Alex asked Lew how much longer the American Imperium can linger on. Lew said it depends on the US economy. Probably 5 to 10 years. Alex agreed.
Lew Rockwell: We’re Winning
2013, Lew tells Alex Jones, is the year that the world woke up.
September 16, 2013
http://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/lew-rockwell-i-think-well-win/
“We’re getting traction!”
Which is why there has been a recent attack by the state worshiping sect against libertarianism. Stefan Molyneux has done a great job at debunking two of the most recent hit pieces:
11 Questions You Should Ask Hypocritical Libertarians – Rebutted!
Libertarians Are the New Communists – Rebutted!
Dear Iberns,
Yes!
It’s now Phase Three.
Phase Three is when they realize your rhetoric is reaching and converting people and can no longer be safely ignored (Phase One) or contemptuously ridiculed (Phase Two) so they must escalate and attack you.
May I also suhest this article:
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/09/08/the-law-of-attraction-is-the-new-age-version-of-the-surveillance-state/
Tangential, but relevant.
Point to me – Jon Rappoport is big on the “collective conscious” or group-mind / collectivist meme right now. not that he’s wrong, just – as the tide is shifting, I’m noticing a few things…
– Collectivist / Cloverism is more of a problem. (Some likely comes from diet, the rest – people’s herd mentality, or mob mentality – same diff. Like the “President Rock Star” we have now. It’s an issue.)
– GM everything WILL come back to bite us in the ass, not IF, WHEN. It’s a question of how the organisms are modified. And seeing the counter-actions – like destroying HEALTHY bee colonies (which are resistant to the poisons these same GMO-backing organizations are providing to keep their GM-crops flourishing?) – I see a need to do more than pontificate and keyboard-warrior / armchair general things.
GM is done a bunch of ways, from modifying cells using viruses to modifying pollinization & cross-breeding animals to create hybrids. Viruses CAN be zootrophic, crossing species boundaries. Given that humans have as much in common, genetically, with fruit flies as with our ape relatives [the cynic in me thinks that’s an understatement… Closer to fruit flies] – we’ll be affected by the viruses, sooner or later. We don’t knwo what will be changed, or how. And since we also have other mutagens in our diets and in immunizations and such, we don’t know what sort of stew we’re making – and as long as Monsanto and Schering-Plough and DOW profit from it all, who gives a f*ck?
I do, and I’m a big fan of purification by fire… And if not done SOON, we’ll have nothing natural to recover – IE, non-GMOs will be DEAD. (It happens with hybrids, too – Dalmations are almost a thing of the past, their genes so thin they can’t reproduce. Reason we’re seeing certain new “breeds”, mostly cross-breeds, show up: cock-a-poo, or Golden doodle, for example.)
What happens if we can’t find bees any more? I mean, WTF is going on here? Rather than deal with African “Killer” bees, we’re going after FRUIT FLIES, trying to engineer their death in the maggot stage – which means the maggots stay in our fruit and vegetables? So, then we CONSUME those GMOs, and – logically – WE are vulnerable to infection by the viruses used to make the GMO. Those things stick around, as in GMO corn, which has been on the market for YEARS already. And people are getting obese… And GMO Wheat, too – And people are getting OBESE… And sugar (refined from corn) is EVERYWHERE, in EVERYTHING (Ketchup, mustard, tortilla chips, soda, mayonaise, candy, breakfast cereal targeting children…)
WE are being modified on ALL FRONTS.
– Eternal propaganda. The woman is a TV watcher. I’m pronouncedly less so, but our “together time” is spent in front of the TV. (I tend to have the computer going: Who gives a F*ck about Snookie on Dancing with the Stars? You want to dance, let’s go learn how. Nope, better to watch others do it… Anyway.) Whenever I notice it, I CALL IT OUT. And more recently, I’m noticing it is TRULY Ubiquitous: Warnings and directions on the trains, subway, consumer products; product placement in real life; limitation of choice [like the question, what do you want for breakfast this morning, pancakes or cereal? Omitted is the answer, I don’t want breakfast – it’s NOT an option.]; and the strangling propaganda of all the mass medias, TV, computer, newspapers. Can’t even turn away.
As an adult, I can turn it off: But look at the messages in CHILDREN’S programming. They don’t have the awareness, and ARE being taught – as Jon notes – to be a hive-mind, a groupthink collective.
We are in the middle of a war zone, and we’re retreating on all fronts.
Turn off the TV. Don’t read the news.
Grow your own food (when possible).
Lose the cell phone.
Live off-the-grid.
It won’t be possible much longer:
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/the-new-biometrics-iris-scans-at-a-distance_092013 and http://www.thedailysheeple.com/global-smart-id-for-all-uk-citizens_092013
So – our space flight programs are gone, expansion outwards isn’t an option. We are being forced to submit, and it’s the end game. We NEED a Hail Mary – OR, we need to admit it’s a war, face the hard truth – and do things about it. Education is a losing battle, unless we find ways to infiltrate that system. Talking polemics with the old folks is useless – unless they will provide strategy and knowledge and communications networks. Resisting authority is pointless, if we’ll be killed – but sniping them from cover and disappearing, especially if we use “alternative” weapons like gauss rifles and particle or beam weapons? Remove “theirs” and insert “ours”, just as they’ve been doing for over 50 years now. [McCarthyism and the Red Scare? He was looking in the wrong place. And he’s painted as a loon by the MEDIA that makes school textbooks, which makes the sub-text: Don’t question, don’t worry – WE will protect you… Go back to sleep.]
I know it’s hard to reach the masses. Maybe it’d be a GOOD thing for the terrorists to come out ahead now and again. Maybe a well-orchestrated pandemic (agenda 21) would be the RIGHT thing to do, if humans are so intent on playing God over all the earth. Remove the vast wastes of humanity, and then we can work on perfecting our genome. Also, by destroying the wealth, we allow character to grow back. (something I could benefit from, too, no doubt.) But it’s ancient wisdom that “where wealth accumulates, Men Decay.” Gods of the Copybook Headings ARE returning – WE CAN ONLY CHOOSE HOW THEY RETURN, and whether we are a “Test Subject” or a prole victim is UP TO US.
Thoughts? (Beyond commenting it’s genocide, we know that already. It’s coming, we know THAT, too. So since it’s inevitable, let’s figure out how to direct it instead of running away from it.)
* NOT Zootrophic. ZOONOTIC.
Also, in the search for the right word, found this:
http://www.cidd.psu.edu/Fresearch/synopses/recombination-helps-virus-jump-species
So, when viruses mutate/evolve – as with GMO tampering? They can make serious changes. And they can do that to US.
FYI–there’s a very informative thinkpiece on how Libertarians are changing policing and educing offenses at http://www.libertarianinternational.org
Thanks, Rob – I will take a look…