Democracy is an incredibly successful long con. It works because of the illusion of consent. People actually believe they are “represented.”
And so, they accept impositions that would otherwise be intolerable, if imposed on them by a king or a fuhrer or generalissimo.
But when the “people” have decided… .
Except of course, they’ve done no such thing. It is all an illusion, a rhetorical sleight-of-hand that deftly hides the reality that it is not the “people” who decide anything but rather a small handful of individuals who wield vast – almost unlimited – power by claiming to act on their behalf.
Which is a fine-sounding literary device but as a political actuality it is an atrocity.
Have you ever consented to anything the government does to you? Been offered the free choice to accept – or decline? And not subject to violent repercussions in the event you do decide to decline? What sort of contract is it that you’re never actually been presented with but which you’re presumed to have signed – and which you are bound by whether you’ve signed – or not?
It is very odd.
The courts have ruled that by dint of having applied for permission to travel – that is, having applied for a driver’s license – you gave given your implied consent to, well, pretty much anything the state decides to do to you. Even when in flagrant abuse of your alleged rights, as enumerated in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
Yet few, if any of us, have actually consented to this abrogation of our rights.
We are simply told that we have, since we submitted (under duress) to the necessity of obtaining a driver’s license, so as to be able to travel semi-freely, under certain terms and conditions.
Like most political language, “consent of the governed” means (in reality) the opposite of its superficial (and generally accepted) meaning. Of a piece with legislation touting “freedom” and “patriotism.” Most of us understand very well what’s coming in that case.
We need to learn the same about “consent of the governed.”
That our consent is irrelevant.
We’ll do as we’re told – or else.
Essential to the lie of “consent” is the fraud of “representation.” As in “no taxation without representation” (implying that it’s legitimate to take your money since you’ve said it’s ok to do that… except of course you probably never said any such thing). The concept – always left fuzzy, never closely examined – is that we each give proxy power to another person (the “representative”) who then “represents” our interests.
It’s a preposterous – and pernicious – concept.
No one has your proxy power except when explicitly given.
Have you given it?
The claim is that by voting, you’ve done exactly that. Which is nonsense, since you have no choice whatsoever to decline to give your proxy. You are presented with a choice of proxies – in the same way that a condemned man in some states is presented with the choice of lethal injection or the electric chair.
Your feeble right to vote for the candidates of other people’s choosing is the mechanism by which all your sovereign rights as an individual are vitiated.
“Representation” makes you believe it’s all ok. Makes you accept the unacceptable.
Your drop of piss vote in the bucket mingles with oceans of other people’s piss-votes. A “representative” is infused with the combined “voices” of all those people and, via some process beyond the ken of mortal man, transmutes their “will” into concrete action. Which action is infused with moral authority because it echoes the vox populi.
You are “represented.”
Nonsense.
The idea that a congressman transmutes the will of thousands of discrete individuals is actually worse than nonsense.
It is imbecility.
Well, those who buy into it are imbeciles, at any rate.
Most people are unaware of the fact that the German Nazis considered themselves the ultimate democrats (little “d”). That Hitler was not a self-aggrandizing tyrant but merely a sort of conduit for the will of the German national community, the volksgemeinschaft. This is not opinion. It is what the Nazis themselves formally touted. “Hitler,” roared Rudolf Hess at one of the infamous Nuremburg partei rallies – “is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler.”
One and the same.
Noteworthy also is the verbiage of the Soviet communists, who spoke of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Check The Good Guys Catalogue and goldmark Catalogue. It wasn’t Lenin and Stalin’s dictatorship. Oh no! They were merely doing what the proletariat – the people – desired. Hence also the German Democratic Republic (the former East Germany) and the People’s Republic of China.
These are examples of democracy in its extreme, distilled form.
The “proof” of American democracy continues to wax.
One hundred years ago, we were at what you might call the hard cider, or the beer and wine stage. We are now at the Jack Daniels stage.
How much longer before we are at the methanol stage?
It depends on how much longer the long con that we are “represented” – and have given our “consent” – holds up.
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Hami1ton’s Curse in 3 Parts. First part has 5 min 48 sec of a Mark Levin program. All the rest seemed to be the audiobook.
part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta8dFPoefQU
part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn9U27fkUTo
part 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSkdwEnn4SY
Listening to this bad version will greatly enlighten you, yet not compensate the author or publisher so much as a nickel.
Which seems like a terrible practice, yet what choice does the anarchist face, but a vast spectrum of terrible choices. Please, don’t be a Crum swerving roughshod over the double yellows and never compensating the content providers.
Pay when you can, and remember you might get caught.
And don’t regurgitate that IP drivel of the Think Tank Stooges either. They give away stuff for free, cause that’s all its worth.
Think of the producer, won’t you.
The internet is largely a vast exact replica of our world, but one in which nobody pays or gets paid for much of anything.
Which is terrible if you are a writer.
And something far far worse if you’re some lower class girl paid a few hundred bucks for an adult film.
Those who peddle and host the films will make trillions. And others will make copies of the films and make trillions more.
Yet the poor girl won’t see the tiniest fraction, though she is the one providing all the value to the equation with her own flesh and beauty.
Giving back to society?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfyIO6AGWRY
The charge that Anarchism is destructive, rather than constructive, and that, therefore, Anarchism is opposed to organization, is one of the many falsehoods spread by our opponents.
They confound our present social institutions with organization; hence they fail to understand how we can oppose mandatory organization at gunpoint, and yet favor voluntary organization. The fact, however, is that government and organization are not identical.
The State is commonly regarded as the highest form of organization. But is it in reality a true organization? Is it not rather an arbitrary institution, cunningly imposed upon the masses?
Industry, too, is called an organization; yet nothing is farther from the truth. Industry is the ceaseless piracy of the rich against the poor. Industry robs the inventors and harnesses the gifted to standardize and regulate every productive enterprise to serve those in power. No alternative schemes are permitted nor tolerated by the engine of tyranny.
We are also asked to believe that the Army is an organization, but a close investigation will show that it is nothing else than a cruel instrument of blind force.
What of The Public School, The colleges, and other institutions of learning, are they not models of organization, offering the people fine opportunities for instruction?
Far from it. The school, more than any other institution, is a veritable barrack, where the human mind is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression.
Organization, as the anarchist understands it, however, is a different thing. It is based, primarily, on freedom. It is a natural and voluntary grouping of energies to secure results beneficial to humanity.
It is the harmony of organic growth which produces variety of color and form, the complete whole we admire in the flower. Analogously will the organized activity of free human beings, imbued with the spirit of free solidarity, result in the perfection of social harmony, which we call Anarchism.
In fact, Anarchism alone makes non-authoritarian organization of common interests possible, since it abolishes the existing antagonism between individuals and classes caused by straw bosses and company men.
Under present conditions the antagonism of economic and social interests results in relentless war among the social units, and creates an insurmountable obstacle in the way of a co-operative common wealth.
There is a mistaken notion that organization does not foster individual freedom; that, on the contrary, it means the decay of individuality. In reality, however, the true function of organization is to aid the development and growth of personality.
Just as the animal cells, by mutual co-operation, express their latent powers in formation of the complete organism, so does the individual, by co-operative effort with other individuals, attain his highest form of development.
An organization, in the true sense, cannot result from the combination of mere nonentities. It must be composed of self-conscious, intelligent individualities. Indeed, the total of the possibilities and activities of an organization is represented in the expression of individual energies.
It therefore logically follows that the greater the number of strong, self-conscious personalities in an organization, the less danger of stagnation, and the more intense its life element.
Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence, — the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a self-selected social organization which will establish well-being for all.
The germ of such an organization must grow in your mind. You need only assert the notion each man is an individual cell, and it is only he alone who can best choose what tissues, organs and body of which he belongs to.
Cowards who fear the consequences of their deeds have sought to smeat the name of Anarchism. To bugger the idea of Anarchism as framed by Warren, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy. Who pretend not to understand the psychologic causes which induce a Caserio, a Vaillant, a Bresci, a Berkman, or a Czolgosz to commit deeds of violence. To the soldier in his personal social struggle it is a point of honor to come in conflict with the powers of darkness and tyranny.
The spirit of Anarchism is the only one which will emancipate the slave from his slavery, the tyrant from his tyranny — the spirit which is willing to dare and suffer, that he and his loved ones may finally be free.
Rant submitted to liveleak, why not check out the comments there.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=449_1443097652
Thanks, Tor!
I think what EPautos needs is an analog to “Baba-booey!” on Howard Stern… he has people all around the country dropping that catchphrase at opportune moments, to spread the virus, so to speak!
OK, so all of us here know that the United States was established by ‘the States.’ No individual gave consent. That’s all well and good if the States are legitimate. But where did they come from? Some group of people just took over the governing authority of the various colonies. And where did the colonies come from? The were, for the most part anyway, royal grants of territory and authority. But what is the justification for kings (and queens) being able to grant such largesse. Did anyone consent to them?
No, Spooner is right when he writes of The Constitution of No Authority. Even though we would be better off under a gunvermin restricted by a strict reading of the Constitution than what we have now, that is not the ultimate goal.
“We would be better off under a gunvermin…”
No, many believe this fallacy, but I would hope to convince you this violates even Hayek’s Road To Serfdom, with no appeal to anarchy or strict rational reason required.
The principle accepted by Austrian Economics, Libertarians, and pretty much any liberty lovers, is that even under a “Dictatorship of the Good” we will sooner, rather than later, quickly find that “The Worst Get On Top”
Why the Worst Get on Top, by FA Hayek
http://www.savageleft.com/poli/rts-ten.html
We must now examine a belief from which many who regard the advent of totalitarianism as inevitable derive consolation and which seriously weakens the resistance of many others who would oppose it with all their might if they fully apprehended its nature.
It is the belief that the most repellent features of totalitarian regimes are due to the historical “accident” that they were established by groups of black-guards and thugs.
Surely, it is argued, if in Germany the creation of a totalitarian regime brought the Streichers and Killingers, the Leys and Heines, the Himmlers and Heydrichs to power, this may prove the vicious nature of the German character but not that the rise of such evil is the necessary consequence of a totalitarian system.
Why should it not be possible that the same sort of system, it if be necessary to achieve important social ends, be run by decent people for the collective good of the community?
We must not deceive ourselves into believing that all good people must support democratic processes or will necessarily wish to have a share in the government. Many, no doubt, would rather entrust it to somebody whom they think more competent.
Although this might be unwise, there is nothing bad or dishonorable in approving a dictatorship of the good. Totalitarianism, we can already hear it argued, is a powerful system alike for good and evil, and the purpose for which it will be used depends entirely on the dictators. And those who think that it is not the system we need fear, but the danger that it might be run by bad men, might even be tempted to forestall this danger by seeing that it is established in time by good men.
There are strong reasons for believing that what to us appear the worst features of totalitarian systems are not accidental byproducts but phenomena which totalitarianism is certain to sooner or later produce.
Just as the choice architect who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure.
It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more “successful” in a society tending toward totalitarianism.
Even a Ron Paul Dictatorship will fail, because individual property rights will fall by the wayside, as the success of the whole, asserts its dominance, over the success of any of its individual constituents.
Of Property. Chap. V of John Locke’s 2nd Treatise of Government;
http://www.savageleft.com/poli/treatise-two-property.html
I shall endeavour to show how men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the commoners.
God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience. The earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being.
And though all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature, and nobody has originally a private dominion exclusive of the rest of mankind in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state, yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial, to any particular men.
The fruit or venison which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his – i.e., a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it before it can do him any good for the support of his life.
Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a “property” in his own “person.” This nobody has any right to but himself. The “labour” of his body and the “work” of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.
It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men.
Only Ancient Greek Aristocracy as it decayed into Timocracy alone has ever succeeded as a governing system, but only for the property owning class, because it truly included men of common beliefs and understandings, and only ever acted with the consent of the owners of property to undertake limited actions for the benefit only of property owners.
How shall the people be saved from themselves? How, indeed? To Plato, who beheld as in a vision the coming of Alexander and Caesar, the actual historic answer was a gloomy picture of the change from licence to tyranny. His account of the impending fall can never lose its fresh interest:
When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cupbearers presiding over the feast, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draft, she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed oligarchs.
And loyal citizens are insultingly termed by her, slaves who hug their chains; she would have subjects who are like rulers, and rulers who are like subjects: these are the men whom she praises and honours both in private and public.
By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses, and ends by getting among the animals and infecting them. Nor must I forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other.
And I must add that no one who does not know would believe, how much greater is the liberty which the animals who are under the dominion of man have in a democracy than in any other State: for truly, the she-dogs, as the proverb says, are as good as their she-mistresses, and the horses and asses have a way of marching along with all the rights and dignities of freemen; and they will run at anybody who comes in their way if he does not leave the road clear for them; and all things are just ready to burst with liberty.
The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same desire magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracy–the truth being that the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction; and this is the ease not only in the seasons and in vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government.
The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.
Then come impeachments and judgments and trials of one another. The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness.
Aristocracy (beginning in paragraph 4)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR2/_PEMoore_15.html
This is he who begins to make a party against the rich. After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of his enemies, a tyrant full grown. Then comes the famous request for a body-guard–“Let not the people’s friend,” as they say, “be lost to them.”
Even those with double PhDs in the science of law from both Yale and Harvard deserve only our derision and our scorn.
For these so-called scientists are nothing of the sort. For at the root, there body of sacred scribbles are not based on Natural Laws, or even careful recordings of observations, and measurements, of appropriate meticulous experiments.
Nay, they are nothing else than voodoo spells, witch doctery, and quivering lipped apotheosis of the mere whims of various men, assembled into great tomes of vanities, misrepresented as somehow being the “law of the land.”
Where are the great social experiments where one group was raised under these so-called laws, and the other group was raised under something else, or nothing at all. Where was the validations of these laws, if they be truth.
There are no such attempts at providing even a thin veneer of applicability to such writings that claim such immense benevolent powers. That alone should cause you to throw this all in the woods wholesale.
It’s all a pack of untested lies that needs no further consideration until true proof and confirmation is at least begun to be attempted.
You true believers who dream of the state religion of yore, wake up. You are little better than Sovereign Citizens, who at the least, aren’t pathetic poodles of todays state.
Stop believing in all state religions. Not thinking that we are merely engaged in the wrong religion. Or performing the wrong rights of what could be a wholesome faith.
All state religions do, is impose a sort of breed onto a mass herd of humanity.
Do you really want to be irredeemably human livestock of a sum certain. Men of Metroconceptualized DNA who will never be more than Han Chinese, or Russian Slavs. Lacking enough genetic variance and vigor, to ever again exist in the wild without their ever present queens, drones, and human hives.
Damn you all, you bestial believers in animalistic beliefs of laws of the jungle without a bit of support. You truly are despicable and the downfall of all the decent yet un-assimilated men among us. Why must you remain as deaf as the deafest clover, such that it is hopeless to do anything, but once again to indulge.
Here then, ye stiff-necked state chosen people wanna-be’s, is more unwarranted discussions and refutations you never seem never to tire of nor ever to learn from.
You men of unquestioning belief, you may be lower than the clovers, I’m starting to conclude.
The clovers are hopelessly illiterate and capable of no better. But you self-righteous and self-satisfied adherents to what is so obviously misliterate. You ARE more capable. And you ARE letting us all down. Look, I’ve even added the capslock for emphasis, so sure of this I Am That I Am. For I am become death, destroyer of martial religions and stolen myths and folktales from ancient never worlds.
Conclusion of Debunking “The Story of the Buck Act”
By Roger M. Wilcox
The notion that you have more freedoms than you are using is a very attractive one. As recently as May 1997, I was willing and eager to burn my Social Security card and become a “Sovereign Citizen”. No taxes! Freedom by the bucketfull! Untouchable by any government! All I needed to find out was the precise steps as to how to do so. But the further I probed, the more I realized that there was no “one right way” to do it, despite the fact that everyone who had done so (and hadn’t been incarcerated yet, I suppose) had done it a different way and insisted that their way was the only way.
And, worse, stories of “failures”, of people who had attempted to “go Sovereign” and had ended up on the wrong end of the Federal thumbscrews, started to pop up alongside the “miraculous success stories” that had drawn me to the sovereignty movement(s) to begin with.
Not that many “patriot” pages were willing to advertise these failures. Why had these attempts failed? Because they were following somebody else’s “one right way” of doing it, of course. The American version of “Sovereignty” was like a religion with hundreds of different denominations, each with its own different answers and each assured of its own infallibility.
Most of the denominations of this American Sovereignty religion share at least a few of the same sacred documents. Mitch Modeleski’s The Federal Zone14 is linked to several “patriot” web pages, although both the older links to levity . com and the newer links to deoxy . org are no longer active. Irwin Schiff’s books How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes, and The Federal Mafia (which he wrote while in jail for tax-related crimes), receive several mentions, and are available for sale from a few sites.
George Gordon, who also went to jail for something-or-other, has some writings available on “sovereignty” web pages, and a book titled The Common Law (not to be confused with the book of the same name by former Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendall Holmes).
Complete 400-page transcripts of U.S. vs. Lloyd R. Long, a Tennessee case in which Long is charged with willful failure to file tax returns and is found Not Guilty because his Patriot arguments and poor responses from the IRS convinced him that he wasn’t liable for any income tax (so his failure to file wasn’t willful), are available in at least two places. And, of course, there is “The Story of the Buck Act”, originated by McDonald and edited by Modeleski.
When I first read “The Story of the Buck Act”, I was a True Believer of this new (to me) Religion of American Sovereignty. But soon, holes started appearing in their arguments. The postal zone and state driver’s license admonitions seemed to come out of nowhere. I looked up the text of 4 USC 110, and there at the top were the words “As used in sections 105-109 of this title” qualifying each and every definition contained therein — including the definition of “Federal Area” so crucial to their Buck Act argument.
If there were problems with some of their assertions, were there also problems with others? Line 156 of their own article gave me the answer. It began:
So, do some research.
http://www.supremelaw.org/copyrite/netcom.com/debuck.htm
I’m glad I did.
Humpty Dumpty’s latest opining on Federal Enclaves and the Buck Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_enclave
The Religion of American Sovereignty is mistaken. The earliest versions of the American Revolutionary Religion was mistaken. Ayn Rand saw the error of communism, nonetheless her Reformed Religion of American Sovereignty was also mistaken.
Why not go one god more. Why not reject all gods of state religion. Believe in whatever things you so choose. There will also be a horizon beyond science and reason.
Fill that void with god or scripture to your heart’s content. But never believe that any mere man’s dictations are ever grounds to rule strangers no matter who you believe he has been instructed by and inspired by. That makes you misliterate, misanthropic, and even worse than an illiterate clover.
The ‘science of law’ is just as bogus as the ‘science of economics.’
Perhaps.
Law is a social science, economics is a social science.
Communists are said to believe in their economics with a religious fervor.
Institutional economists in the Western World use scientific terms such as theory, and studies, and confine their papers to scholarly conventions and strict protocols.
Civil and Criminal Law tends more to assert that it is the one true philosophy which towers above all other possible systems of philosophical belief. It rarely expresses itself with scientific humility.
But what is to be done when so many socialists and communists alike ignore all such reasonable boundaries. Who pretend they are never unsure. And confidently proclaim their love for the poor and oppressed of capitalism in quite the same way as any preacher. And claim to be the one true savior of the feeble minded, weak in spirit, and broken in body.
Many scholars consider capitalism itself to be an emergent property that originated as Calvinist societal dogma.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/weber/protestant-ethic/ch02.htm
A sermon from Reverend Benjamin Franklin
“Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, rather thrown away, five shillings, besides.
“Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.
“Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and three pence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.”
“Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse . He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.
“The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump. ‘It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.’
“Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience.
“For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.
“He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.
“He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.
“He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.
“He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money.”
At root, is not our philosophy of providing honest value and observing laissez faire and adhering to the non-aggression principle, nothing more than a common held belief.
Probably so, with the caveat being, we claim that should we ever get the upper hand, we will not force others to adhere to our deepest principles and most cherished beliefs.
Libertarians accept that capitalism is the fairest way yet devised for man to deal with each other. But this doesn’t mean we wish to impose this system by force, but rather that we reject all other systems be enforced to our detriment that are even worse than the Crony Capitalist devils we already know.
The Spiritual Belief of Capitalism – A Critique By Ferdinand Kurnberger
They make tallow out of cattle and money out of men.” The peculiarity of this philosophy of avarice appears to be the ideal of the honest man of recognized credit, and above all the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself.
Truly what is here preached is not simply a means of making one’s way in the world, but a peculiar ethic. The infraction of its rules is treated not as foolishness but as forgetfulness of duty. That is the essence of the matter. It is not mere business astuteness, that sort of thing is common enough, it is an ethos. This is the quality which interests us.
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 1905. Ch. 5
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/weber/protestant-ethic/ch05.htm
Praise Darwin,
Evolve beyond belief. [Freedom From Religion Foundation billboard]
What really is the end game here, to free us from religion, or to free us from our shared values, and then swoop in and impose some tyrannical world socialism in its place after the misliteracy is eradicated.
There’s nothing magical or diabolical about the Jews. Why they stand above so many, is because they are hyper-literate, and become so at a very young age.
Though their Torah, Talmud, and Tanakh are themselves mere beliefs. They often expend significant effort becoming proficient and literate in these cultural touchstones.
Certainly I don’t mean to belittle or spit upon the debt I owe to scriptural literacy. My father is a successful scientist, yet he’s never invited me to his lab or facilities, nor pored over his contributions to patents with me as a fellow intellect.
Instead he sent me off to private Catholic school, and offered me employment in various family businesses, which left me ample time to pursue the kind of knowledge and skills that I found useful.
He delegated to men and women of faith that raised my mother, and which he knew little about, to school me in Latin and a great many other topics, without which, I never would have understood on my own, had I instead attended the public secular institution, which was my only other option.
My little sister is chemical engineer and fairly high up among the back office clovers who directs lots of headcount for Chevron Phillips Houston facility. Mostly this is an industrial institution governed by belief, and not organized around principles of science and industry.
She’ll never patent anything or directly contribute to science, but she’s an articulate manager who Lords over the applied engineers and chemists who for better or worse, have to answer to someone like her, because to our detriment, we don’t have a culture that values production and specialized competence to the degree that we should to be successful in the international markets.
Reason & Faith are Irreconcilable – Neil d. Tyson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy5yWdVHv3o
Tor,
“By what right does one man rule over another?” – Auberon Herbert
This question, almost universally ignored, should be the beginning of all political theory. The reason it is ignored is that the only coherent answer is “by force”. By coherent, I do not mean correct. Only that it is the one answer that is not absurd. Most people recoil at this truth and thus invent myths to support the supposed “legitimacy” of the State. Democracy is, by far, the most powerful of these myths.
Richard Dawkins is fond of saying, when speaking to religious folks, that “all of you are atheists, except for one god”. I suggest that Dawkins, Harris, etc… are subject to the same observation. Statism is their religion and they believe in the foundational myths as fervently as any religious zealot. Ironically, their faith is less rational than the religious faith they criticize. The beliefs that underlie the “legitimacy” of religion are unprovable and, in my opinion, probably false. But, the beliefs that underlie the “legitimacy” of Statism are demonstrably false.
Here are a few of the myths:
“Just government rules by the consent of the governed”. – If one cannot withdraw consent, one cannot give it.
“Democracy is the means of granting consent”. – We are subject to the rulers whether we vote, abstain, complain, etc…
“Democracy validates the power of the State”. – By what right do two men rule over one? Democracy does not answer this problem.
“We are the Government”. Perhaps the most absurd, and most widely held faith. – “We” cannot kidnap and incarcerate people for “vices”. “We” cannot steal from others and call it something else. “We” are not the government.
“We” delegate just authority to the State. – “We” cannot delegate an authority that we do not possess.
“Democracy gives us control over government”. – Only a lunatic could believe that “our” ability to cast a statistically meaningless vote for three people out of the entire apparatus of the Fedgov, means that “we” control it.
Jeremy
Which is why anarchy – the absence of rulers (not rules) – is the only moral system. Property rights are sacred, and all are able to decide the rules of use for property (including their own body) which they own. Every other form involves coercion, and of course, theft (since any govt. system must be funded and it is funded by involuntary contributions), not to mention it will always be corrupt. I love H.L. Menckens comment, “An election is merely an advance auction on stolen goods!” The main reason we have a 2nd Amendment was to insure the citizens would have redress against the tyranny of the State, which is of course why all the Big Govt. folks are always trying to get rid of it. The fact that the criminals in the Sewer (aka known as Congress) have permitted $18 Trillion in debt (actually much more when you consider the obligations of mandated programs like SS, Medicare/Medicaid) should be Exhibit A that letting the lunatics run the asylum is hazardous to our health. Abolish the Fed, and the entire stinkin’ system of govt., as it will always produce an immoral result . . . and a disastrous one!
Most people do not know that when they sign their signature to a drivers license they have agreed to all the conditions embedded within the “Implied Consent Act.” This is several pages of pure evil in which you agree that the State owns your spit, your urine, your breath and your corpse if it comes to that. Every state applies the Act into their drivers license. The root to the problem is that US, Inc. was declared bankrupt back in 1933, the Federal Reserve holds that bankrupt corporation in receivership and We The People are NOT allowed to own ANYTHING until the debt is repaid.
There used to be a word that appeared in dictionaries long ago but is difficult to find anymore. This is from the original Webster’s 1828:
“ALLODIUM: Freehold estate; land which is the absolute property of the owner; real estate held in absolute independence, without being subject to any rent, service, or acknowledgement to a superior. It is thus opposed to feudal. In England, there is no allodial land, all land being held of the King; but in the United States most lands are allodial.”
All of that changed on March 9, 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt declared the United States bankrupt by and through executive order nos. 6073, 6102, 6111, and 6260. Then on April 26, 1933 came Senate Resolution no. 62 which reads in part: “The ultimate ownership of all property is in the State; individual “ownership” is only by virtue of Government, i.e., law, amounting to mere user; and use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the State.”
There’s a video on youtube where I am interviewed by Adam Kokesh and I describe the adventures of building a house without a permit and driving without a license. This experiment lasted for over 3 years until I was thrown in jail but offered “freedom” if I would obtain a drivers license once again. When there are really no choices, when you are forced to COMPLY, this is certainly not “consent of the governed.” Check out the video and read some of the helpful comments below it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVu5S2ISELo
I signed that ‘contract’ under duress. A true court would find it invalid.
Along with the bankruptcy of 1933 came the Buck Act of 1940 which essentially ended the Common Law…. which was the premise that you could not be compelled to enter a courtroom unless you had actually harmed a living individual. There are no “true” courts any longer. The State has become the injured party and it has unlimited resources to extract revenge and assert punishment when you have violated their licensing scheme. Arguing the right to travel is futility when the cop plays the role of victim, accuser and prosecutor and the judge is the complicit agent who closes the deal.
I know, I was just saying how things should be, and that I am not morally bound by their fabrications.
PtB, you’re not morally bound but go to court and the “state” will have had its morals terribly injured……via some sack of shit with a badge. Sorry about that, but I’m just not in the mood to temper my words.
8 – except the state has no morals, just the same excrement they put the badge on.
Thank God I’ve never been involved in a real life criminal case. But did you ever notice how the “persecuting [sic] attorney” in the court shows on TV always refers to his case as either “The People vs. …,” (as if he represents all the people) or “The State vs. …,” (as if ‘the State’ is the victim). We need to get rid of all “criminal law” and have everything be tort. If there is no victim to bring suit, there is no case.
I worked for a major corporation once. The “employees” were notified of an upcoming physical, of which the writing and notification didn’t explicitly say “mandatory”, only each and every employee “would” take it.
I guess it was the way it was written that pissed me off so much. A free physical offered to me, I would have been ecstatic, but one I had no say about made me see red. When my “turn” came, I declined, but later went(I had shit to do doncha see?) and had a form I “had” to sign. I signed it and then after my signature, wrote in “under duress”. So I let them do a couple things to me, not for me, but when it came time for fluids I just walked on through the place and out the door. I may have gone to my pickup and drunk a couple beers and took a couple tokes. I really don’t remember but that would have been something I probably would have done just to temper my temper.
Nothing was ever said to me and I watched many people get fired a couple months later, more of management than clock punchers like myself. I was amazed how they took those people and walked them to their work stations or offices, let them remove personal items and walked them to their vehicles where they were escorted off premises.
It was a wake-up call for everybody I think. We already knew one facility had issued an ultimatum for everyone who worked there to be nicotine free by a certain date and those who didn’t quit smoking were fired. I never found out what happened to those people since smoking is legal but there was no doubt in my mind they had many suits against them although I never knew of suits, how many or the results thereof.
I figured, as did most, we’d be accosted by something similar. That was “the physical” I suppose but nothing else ever came to pass. Funny thing though, I worked in QC and in a lab(and in every other part of the facility) where everyone had to have very good math skills and worked pretty hard physically most times in all sorts of weather extremes. About a year later HQ decreed most of those QC jobs, the lowest paid in the plant, would be abolished. I didn’t wait and have kicked myself ever since. I could easily have fallen into the track pit and flopped about with ruined (take your choice)as so many railroaders had done and gone on with a suit for a couple years and a great retirement, and been in good financial shape. I was never that sort of person but with that a-hole bunch, I should have been.
I recall changing names from the personnel dept. to HR. Amazing what defining people as personnel and then “human resources” can do to a system. It was a steady plunge in workers freedom and rights from that moment on. BTW, every year insurance covered less and cost more, the time required for an extra week of vacation increased and coverage for everything was degraded. No matter what malady afflicted my wife and I, I never collected a cent of health insurance. I did collect workman’s comp for a broken ankle I had off the job. I was treated horribly when I came back because managements “special” people had to do my work and it was shift work. Of course I loved having a broken ankle, not getting any pay for months and nearly starving when all the while, my bosses were telling everybody I was collecting pay and living the good life.
I recall trying to make some money and I’ve always been a good mechanic so I slid around on the floor and did mechanic work. One day I dropped a breakover handle and big socket on top of that broken ankle. It took my breath away while I sat there biting my lip and trying to not mess my pants. Yep, it was great being off and living that “high life”……and we couldn’t even afford beer. What an insult.
A friend who worked there dropped a big shaft on his foot one day. It missed his steel toe and did a number on his foot but he told no one about it and gritted his teeth and tried not to limp for weeks doing his job in maintenance. Injuries just weren’t allowed without retribution.
People would get hurt, badly sometimes, but never miss a day. I’ve seen people carried to their work station, set up in a way to minimize pain and barely be there due to painkillers they were taking but they were “at” work and no lost time was incurred. A lost time work injury meant you would be allowed to come back to work but only for a couple months before something you did was a reason to fire you so naturally, when people got hurt badly enough to not be able to be there the next day or however long the company could say your days off were supposed to be at that time, they knew their job was effectively a done deal so they’d sue since there was nothing to lose at that point. It’s even worse now.
I wish I could edit my previous comment but I can’t find a tool. I intended to say the “IMPLIED Consent Act” is the hidden agenda that you agree to when you receive a drivers license.
Hi Tom,
I’ll fix it for you!
As usual, an analysis of particular pointedness.
The comment about Germany being Hitler and Hitler being Germany reminded me of when I had to have a new well drilled. With 5+ acres I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have a problem meeting The County’s requirements but, I checked the regs and picked a place that was easy access for the driller. However, the bureaucrat from the Health Department had to come out and “site the well” within regs. While she traipsed around my property she lectured me on all the set-back requirements which I already knew. I casually mentioned I thought I had a place to drill and she said she’d make the final decision…she did…about two feet from where I planned to have it.
She signed the paper work and was bidding me a farewell when I “innocently” asked, “gee, what if someone can’t meet the set-backs mandated by law?” She leaned over the hood of her GovCo Dodge Neon, gave me a squinty stare and said, “I AM the law.” I wondered how deep I would have to dig for her never to be found.
“You also left out political parties”
One of the things I am enjoying about the Trump candidacy is the thing that the GOP bigwigs fear: that he may destroy the party.
Now we just need to find someone who can do the same to the Dems.
I dunno…. They seem to be pretty good at breaking themselves….
Sooner or later, the fags and the Jihadists will find they don’t BOTH fit in that “big tent”….
(Insulting terms used to underscore the stupid. 😉 )
Except what we call “democracy” is not democracy. Elective government BY DEFINITION is oligarchy and not democracy.
Democracy as practiced in ancient Athens was based on sortition (i.e. selecting public officials by lottery from all citizens). This is because democracy means “the people rule” not “the people vote.” All magistrates and jurists in Athens were chosen by lottery.
Aristotle described democracy as “rule and be ruled in turn.”
Aristotle also wrote in Politics that “elections are thought to be oligarchic and selection by lot democratic.” He wrote “thought to be” in other words that was the common meaning of the word then.
The reason elections are oligarchy is because only the rich or those sponsored by the rich can afford to run for office. So what the US really is is plutocracy or rule by the rich. Elections are a fraud.
So people can bitch all they want about the republican system of oligarchy that we have but they are wrong to call it democracy. There has not been an actual democracy on Earth since 338 B.C.
The Final End of Athenian Democracy
A year after their defeat of Athens in 404 BC, the Spartans allowed the Athenians to replace the government of the Thirty Tyrants with a new democracy. The tyranny had been a terrible and bloody failure, and even the Spartans acknowledged that a moderate form of democracy would be preferable.
As a system of government, democracy quickly spread to a number of other leading city-states, despite the authoritarian grip of Sparta on the Greek world. However, Sparta’s dominance was not to last. Overextended and unable to adjust to new battle techniques, in 371 BC Spartan hoplites suffered their first major defeat in 200 years at the hands of the Theban general Epaminodas. Only a decade later Sparta had been reduced to a shadow of its former self.
But Thebes’ dominance of Greece would be short-lived. A new power had begun to assert its leadership over the country: Macedonia. Once a backwater, the Macedonian king Philip II had turned his country into a military powerhouse. Philip’s decisive victory came in 338 BC, when he defeated a combined force from Athens and Thebes. A year later Philip formed the League of Corinth which established him as the ruler, or hegemon, of a federal Greece.
Democracy in Athens had finally come to an end. The destiny of Greece would thereafter become inseparable with the empire of Philip’s son: Alexander the Great.
Athenian Democracy
http://www.ancient.eu/Athenian_Democracy/
One option is to move to a country with a Government that is inefficient at imposing its will on the residents. There is a good chance you can live in the countryside and not be bothered too much.
First time I’ve seen anything here on zerohedge….
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-21/long-con-democracy-illusion-consent
It’s a tough crowd over there but as of right now it’s rated 5 of 5 there.
I read through the first three pages of comments, no disagreements or quibbles even, with anything eric wrote.
Seems encouraging.
Spot on too…..thanks.
Mr. Peters and others: I don’t know anything about you, but I have just seen your essay on Zerohedge. I humbly urge and request you to read MY essay at http://www.viewofsociety.wordpress.com. If you want to contact me, my web address is [email protected].
Further to that previous post, my email address contains an “underscore” character between the “p” and the “r”.
Paul, interesting, almost humorous. As a brief runover of the article, I was immediately taken that you hadn’t included bankers in the thief section or with religion. Ever heard a serious banker not give thanks to some deity? The deity that creates children is his main benefactor. What about the dishonest man?
I’d keep refining it but it’s a start, more than I’ve done. Good luck.
Tyler Durden included one of eric’s Tesla is tech-no-logical articles.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-21/tesla-bonfire-money-printers-vanities
Ich Bin Ein DebtBro
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2811/9081714607_4f56a58a3e_b.jpg
Statue of Trump-erty
https://www.flickr.com/photos/expd/20780872140/
The Newest Colossus
Quite like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With tailored suits helicoptering from land to land;
Here at the new Eastern Brandenburg gate shall stand
A mighty man with a torch, whose flame
Is the digitized pixelated lightning, and his name
Father of Eagles. From his raptor-gloved hand
Perched atop gilded debtor’s prisons; his wise eyes command
The new jerusalem harbor that banking towers frame.
“Eat ancient lands, your fill of my media circuses and storied pomp!” cries he
With stiff upper lip. “Keep from me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to freeload,
We’re overfilled with the wretched refuse of yon teeming shore.
Send back, the homeless, tempest-tost from me,
I lift my sniper’s rifle and slam shut the golden door!”
To Eightsouthman,
Thanks for your comment. Re. the presentation being humorous, I think I was a good deal influenced by the styles of Laurence J. Peter (“The Peter Principle”) and Eric Berne (“Games People Play” and other works on his Transactional Analysis theory of psychology), if you are old enough to remember them. I wanted to put things in a way the ordinary man could understand, not just appeal to the people I call Priests. Beyond that, as a sometime salesman and writer of letters to newspapers, I have had to learn to be brief. People do not give you their attention for very long, and you have to condense your message into as few words as you can manage.
Re. bankers, I do include the boards who actually manage fiat (“paper”) money as Priests. I suppose you could argue that ordinary bankers are their acolytes, under-Priests, if you will. There is a certain amount of ambiguity in a number of occupations, I think. The important thing is to get the principle clear. Darwin didn’t cover every detail in “The Origin of Species,” but he did write about a principle, so clearly that nobody has ever been able to seriously take him on.
I am not an anarchist in the sense of writing about how things ought to be. I follow Machiavelli in writing about how things are. I don’t think you can expect to change anything unless you understand it first. The person who can best say how to fix it may not be the person who first explains how it is.
Paul, Tor mentions debtors prison, a very serious, egregious situation in Tx. right now and some other states as well. Credit card companies disguised as supposedly legal payday companies have been using prosecutors to impose criminal law on civil forfeiture they’ve suffered due to their usery ways cleared by Bushco a decade ago.
Banks make banking unaffordable to those with the least and extract rates they end up not being able to pay.
Who’s going to try to pay back a “loan” when they realize they’ve been snookered, have no real way of paying those rates and come to the conclusion they’re better off cutting and running? A few hundred dollars don’t go far each week, certainly not far enough to pay back a few hundred dollars…..a week.
So prosecutors go after them as if they’ve harmed “the state”(sic). Everyone else has to pay the sharks via tax for incarcerated people who were living hand to mouth to begin with. It’s a bad, sad system.
Just another example of the intent of government to OWN us.
I referenced Season one of Continuum some time back – all people were born with a “life debt” which had to be paid back. Failure due to death meant the debt was passed on to the “estate” (surviving relatives). Failure to MAKE payments meant enslavement (literally), as it showed people being implanted with a chip to make them organic machines on the assembly line. Ironically, they were assembling more “drone” chips for implanting on other “debtors.”
We are past time for the Big R….
Friends, not sure if I am the “Paul” the note above was addressed to, and don’t have a lot of time right now. From what I have been reading on Zerohedge about “civil forfeiture” (i.e. plunder by cops), it seems as if you are in a bad way in the United States. This is perhaps all the more reason to read my essay at http://www.viewofsociety.wordpress.com, because it is a validation of my proposition. We are not yet so badly off in Australia, although recently some highly improper laws have been passed to stamp out certain motorcycle gangs that the government is having trouble getting rid of by their usual means. All the best, must go, and hope to continue this conversation later. Unfortunately I am not very good at using computers and may be missing a lot.
Paul Rackemann.
Yes Paul(Rackmann), we are in dire straits. I was keeping abreast of the biker situation before the totally immoral laws were passed. I was aghast that it happened in that country since it seems to adhere to a fairer type of law than the US. It’s certainly a blow to freedom there whether the non-motorcycle riders there understand it or not. I didn’t find a common backlash to it as I thought I would. I suppose Vietnam was the last “backlash” in this country and once people my age had either gone underground, been incarcerated or simply acquiesced to the lowest common denominator, I’ve seen little backbone since. “Give me liberty or life” has been supplanted by “I’ll take a Big Mac and an extra large Coke please”.
And I just realized I met my wife of 43 years at a McDonald’s…..sheesh……
Correction “Give me liberty or give me death”…..and I suppose I should have contributed that to Patrick Henry although I hope everyone knows that.
“I’ll take a Big Mac and an extra large Coke please” – and if I make it a diet Coke, I can have a large fries.
Karen Kwiatkowski has a great proposal on LRC – replace the GOP debates with a Survivor style reality show.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/karen-kwiatkowski/ditch-the-republican-debates/
Another thing ‘they’ never mention is that the consent of the governed really means delegation of authority. And ‘we’ can’t delegate to anyone else (e.g., gunvermin) something we do not have the right to do ourselves. Steal, for instance.
Something I’ve not seen mentioned is the effect of population growth on your personal representation percentage.
By law, there are no more than 435 Representatives in Congress to serve as your voice in government. In 1910 there were 92 million residents in the US, so each representative was voting for 211 thousand people.
In 2015 there are 320 million residents, and we have the same number of Representatives, with each Representative now voting for 735 thousand people. Meaning your voice has been diluted to just over 28% of what it was a century ago.
If we expand the number of Representatives (whose number was always designed to reflect the size/population of the states vs. the 2-member-per-state Senate) should we restore that 1910 ratio, or go further and head towards a more direct democracy, now that we have the internet and physical proximity to Washington DC isn’t a major requirement?
It’s not too late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment
The first reaction most people have when I mention your simple population explosion math is either that the size of the House would become unmanageable, or (in the west) that it would somehow give too much power to the major cities and large population states. Neither of these I perceive as a problem. If the House became so large as to not be able to govern, in my mind that’s a sure sign that there’s too much concentrated power in Washington and We, The People, should remedy that by breaking up the federal system into multiple countries. As for concentration of power in populated states, what do you think we have now?
1) Lincoln’s war.
2) “Public” Schools based on the Prussian model stomping out other forms of education available to the masses.
3) Fixed cap on the number of representatives in the US house.
4) Direct election of senators.
5) Federal Reserve Act.
6) Income tax on domestically earned wages.
7) Voting universality.
And there is how we got an unaccountable government in a nutshell.
Now someone may question #7, but it is a very important step. When voting was more restricted it was restricted to those who had to do the work and owned the stuff that got taxed or at least attempted to do so. It was far from perfect. It was deeply flawed in many ways. However what it did is kept government somewhat in check. Those voting wanted to retain what they earned and keep their stuff. They didn’t want to be limited or effectively enslaved. When voting became universal, those with nothing could vote themselves other people’s earnings and tax their stuff. This drowned out the influence of the people who were subjected to government the most and hence made government unaccountable to anyone but the very very wealthy that could buy political office holders. If functions much like the direct election of senators and the limit on the number of members in the house. It dilutes the voice of those who would limit government to a point of ineffective chatter.
Why does the direct election of senators dilute? Doesn’t it allow people to choose instead of corrupt state governments? Corrupt state governments don’t want to send money to the feds from their economies and then get some of it back. They want to send nothing and get something. State governments want to keep their power and keep the feds out. With senators as creatures of state government they prevent the federal government from growing because they are beholden to the state governments and their diversity of interests. Directly elected they become creatures of the federal government.
It was a brilliant design to use government’s natural tendency of corruption to keep it in check. Now with senators elected directly by the people they have no connection to state government and thus no accountability for anything but remaining popular back home to the ill informed voting mass.
I really like this explanation of senators being creatures of the federal government instead of serving the state. I never actually thought that much about it.
I guess that’s what “they” want, people not thinking much about anything.
You also left out political parties, although I don’t know how they can be avoided. I don’t feel bad about not having a solution, neither did Jefferson!
Political parties go back to day one and they don’t make the government unaccountable simply by existing.
No, the political parties simply make sure there are different flavors of Kool-Aid available for the booboisie.
BrentP, even though it dates from as far back as Plato and probably beyond, I’ve wondered if timocracy wouldn’t actually be better than what we have. The billions spent on just senatorial elections should be a tip-off there’s big bucks to be made and whatever shill who gets elected will simply do the will of his “contributors”, the main ones.
Might not people who had actually made something, who owned something being the only people qualified for office be an improvement? Would it even matter now? It’s one of those things I think of when I hear the Donald speak. I know he’s full of himself, often refers to himself in the 3rd person, but might he not have enough chutzpah to thwart others he deems enemies? Or does he really have enemies among that set?
It’s a known fact he’s used govt. to get his fortune, not unlike anyone else he might have a difference of opinion with.
Then I remember George Washington going after farmers with lethal intent to force them to pay more taxes, more taxes to the tune of many times the tax on tea that supposedly led to the hysterical revolt. He went after honest, hard-working people simply because bureaucrats saw them making money in amounts others weren’t.
I really have little to no hope for the current system….even for the longer run of past my time(tomorrow?). It seems like things are coming to a head, not only in this country but around the world(although not EVERY country).