A great many people – especially conservatives – reverence the Constitution, consider that it has been abused and that if only the doctrines expressed within were revived and respected, all would be well with America again.
This, of course, is a kind of children’s bedtime story – and approximates reality to about the same degree as the story of the Three Little Pigs.
The Constitution was peddled and imposed on us by men like Alexander Hamilton, a grasper after power who very openly loathed the ideas expressed by men like Jefferson in his Declaration (and even more so in his Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions).
Hamilton and his faction – they were called Federalists, which meant then what it means today – intended to create a centralized government on the British model, but without a hereditary monarch. The Bill of Rights was just barely added, in order to sooth the (rightly, as it turned out ) suspicious, such as George Mason of Virginia.
Patrick Henry smelled a rat.
At any rate, the fact remains that the Constitution was written with great calculation by lawyers – who are trained in and well understand the meaning and potential use of words – in such as way as to assure the expansion of federal power via (among other things) the purposely open-ended Commerce Clause and deliberately nebulous phrases such as “general welfare” that can be – and have been – interpreted to mean . . . anything those who control the levers of the federal government wish it to mean.
Including – as actually happened during the Roosevelt Years – that a man farming on his own land whose produce never leaves his land let alone the state is nonetheless subject to federal regulation, because his actions “affect” Interstate Commerce.
In the same manner, Americans are forced to pay for other people’s retirement (and in their turn, forcing others to pay for theirs) and this is characterized as a “contribution.”
Regardless – the debate ought not to be over a piece of paper and what it does or does not legalize. A thing can be morally vile and entirely legal. The debate ought to be over the question of rights vs. conditional privileges. And whether the immoral can ever – rightfully – be lawful.
Does a man have an absolute right to be left in peace, so long as he himself is peaceful – or not? If not, then we do not have rights but conditional privileges, subject to modification at any time – and morality is merely a question of legality. In which case, the Israelis did Adolf Eichmann a grievous injustice when they hanged him for doing as German law required.
The Constitution is an immoral document. It explicates a litany of conditional privileges, subject to modification at any time. That this is done in an orderly manner, via “constitutionally” prescribed mechanisms, does not make the doing of it morally legitimate.
It merely legalizes it.
Theft remains theft.
Slavery, to whatever degree, remains slavery.
The Constitution articulates in flowery prose the means by which rights are to be suborned and transformed into conditional privileges; for example, the gauzy “will of the people” will be “represented” by a handful of actual people called politicians and bureaucrats and judges – whose opinions become binding on “the people.”
But this is lawyer-talk. There is no “people.” No single body, imbued with a single consciousness and – morally, the key point – unanimous in its feeling, capable of giving unanimous free consent to an action of the government. Without such unanimity and free consent you have the trampling of the will of individual people, which is contrary to their rights and which therefore can never be moral.
This idea that the otherwise immoral act – when performed freelance, by an individual – becomes not merely legal but moral when it is done via “representatives” of “the people” or via the false proxy of the ballot box is the despicable doctrine at the very core of the immoral Constitution and its intended subordination of the individual.
It is responsible for everything the authors of the thing intended – and what they intended was unlimited government. A government which may- in principle – do anything it likes, so long as it is done via “the people’s representatives” and after a vote on the matter.
Is this not abundantly the fact? Is there any sphere of our lives which the government may not, in principle, probe? You may not even take medicine to ameliorate the ills of your own body without the government’s supervision – and punishment, if you take issue with its prescriptions. The government asserts ownership over your body.
You are not free to associate.
You are not free to say “no, thanks.”
The government can do whatever it likes, so long as a law is passed or a judge decrees.
It is not accidental.
But it can be rooted out by insistence upon the use of plain, simple language not subject to “interpretation” – i.e., the sort of clear, precise language lawyers such as those who wrote the Constitution do their best to avoid using, in order to use language against us.
Viz:
“The people” – it sounds dreamy – have no “will” – and are certainly not sovereign – because no such creature as “the people” exists in fact; the term is a rhetorical device used by lawyers to legitimate the trampling of the rights of individual people – who do exist and have rights. These must be respected – morally as well as legally – else they are merely conditional privileges subject to modification or outright revocation at the whim of any politician, or group of them – or court – which declares it is acting on behalf of “the people.”
In fact, of course, these politicians and so on are acting on behalf of themselves. Or a clique. They cannot ever be acting on behalf of all, in which case the rights of some are necessarily abused. And if is permissible to abuse the rights of some, then the rights of none are secure – are anything other than conditional privileges.
As intended.
Hamilton desired a “vigorous” central government, wanted to hang Americans who questioned the moral right of the federal government – of any government – to steal their property. Supported slavery – so long as it was done according to legalprocess and called by another name.
But that is mere history.
The question at hand – whether here in the United States or anywhere on this Earth – is whether the individual has rights that others are bound to respect – morally as well as legally.
Or, not.
Is your physical body is your exclusive property – to do with as you see fit? If it is, then you are a free man. If it is not, you are a slave – the degree of your slavery being morally (as well as logically) immaterial.
Theft is theft. Rebranding legalized theft as “taxes” doesn’t change the nature of the thing. A person’s property is taken from him by violence. This is theft, by whatever name.
Moral human interactions are either voluntary and consensual – the concept of free association – or they are not. When a man is forced to interact with other men in any way whatsoever, he is no longer a free man.
Do you agree – or disagree – with the proposition that the only moral basis for interfering with any man is when he causes tangible harm to the person or property of another free man?
If you do not agree, then you believe in conditional privileges . . . as articulated in the Constitution.
. . .
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Thomas Jefferson was in France during the writing of the Constitution.
Hi Vonu,
Yes, I know. That doesn’t change the fact that Jefferson played a significant role in the creation of the Constitution.
Cheers,
Jeremy
He played a significant role in the creation of the Constitution of the state of Virginia, which served as a model for the national constitution. He had no direct role in the writing of the latter.
Vonu.
I didn’t say he had any role in writing the Constitution. But, he played a significant role in it’s creation nevertheless. While in Paris, he followed developments closely and corresponded directly with many people who did have a hand in writing the Constitution. He also favored a constitutional convention and believed the articles to be insufficient, which played some role in the decision to have a convention. His prior writings influenced those who did write the Constitution. He encouraged Madison to include a bill of rights and Madison came to endorse his view.
Jeremy
How closely can anyone follow anything when there is a 3 to 6 month delivery time for mail?
Madison refused to ratify the Constitution until he received a guarantee that a Bill of Rights would be added. Without his support, the Constitution was not going to be ratified.
Kindly share your bibliography with those of us who have never heard most of what you are saying.
Vonu,
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/a-quick-look-at-thomas-jeffersons-constitutional-legacy
“While in Paris before the Constitutional Convention, Jefferson closely followed developments in the United States. He corresponded with individuals who would eventually contribute to the formation of the Constitution, like Madison and John Jay, an author of the Federalist Papers.”
“Jefferson corresponded regarding the failures of the Articles of Confederation and discussed a need for a more powerful central government. After it was decided that a Constitutional Convention was going to be held, Madison wrote to Jefferson expressing his anxiety as he anticipated the upcoming meeting in Philadelphia.”
“Jefferson expressed his frustration with the secrecy of the Convention, but he did share some ideas with Madison while it was ongoing. For example, Jefferson wrote to Madison on June 20th explaining why the federal government should not be given the power to veto laws passed by the states. This federal power was not included in the final draft of the Constitution despite Madison’s support of the idea.”
“On December 20th, 1787, after the Constitutional Convention was over and while the ratification of the Constitution was being debated in state legislatures, Jefferson wrote a letter to Madison objecting to key parts of the Constitution. Among other things, Jefferson was concerned that the document lacked a Bill Of Rights and failed to establish term limits for federal officials. In earlier correspondences to other acquaintances, in 1786 Jefferson extolled government protection of civil liberties and wrote, for example, that “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press”. Jefferson also was a proponent of protections for religious liberty and wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which passed the Virginia General Assembly in 1786.”
“By the fall of 1788, Madison was convinced that the inclusion of a Bill Of Rights to the new Constitution would be prudent. While advocating for a bill of rights, Madison relied upon an argument first articulated by Jefferson – that a list of rights would help give the judiciary the power to ensure that other branches of governments would not infringe on citizens’ civil liberties.”
This started because I made the statement that Jefferson was trying to create a constitution. You responded with the irrelevant comment that he was in Paris while it was written. The simple fact that Jefferson argued for the need for a new constitution, justifies my initial statement. Perhaps I should have merely pointed out the irrelevance of your original comment and left it at that.
Jeremy
Your bibliography is one website?
I guess I wasted a lot of time reading all of those historian’s books because they never read your one website. They worked on older resources, like the actual letters that were shared among the people who were actually involved at the time.
I’m done, you win, I am a complete idiot that knows nothing.
Vonu,
What’s with the hostility? I never called you an idiot or implied that you are ignorant. I made a simple, true statement. Even if everything on that website is incorrect, it doesn’t change the truth of my original statement. I really don’t understand what you found objectionable about my claim that “Jefferson was genuinely trying to create a constitution”. The fact that he didn’t have a direct role in writing it is irrelevant.
Jeremy
Vonu,
I’m surprised and somewhat baffled as to how we got here and I’d like to clear the air. I enjoy reading your posts and find them interesting and informative.I never intended to imply that you are ignorant or stupid and I don’t think I claimed that anything you wrote was false. I suspect that you are vastly more knowledgeable than me in this area as I am much more interested in abstract theory then general history.
As for the claims I took from that website about Jefferson in Paris, if they’re false, I’d be interested to know. If you care to, please provide links and I will read them. Anyway, I don’t think they matter that much to the two primary claims I made, namely that Jefferson was trying to create a constitution and that he had a significant role in its’ creation. If you think those claims are false, I would be genuinely interested as to why (I’m not being snarky). But I don’t consider the true statements that he was in Paris and that he didn’t write it to be a meaningful explanation.
Anyway, for what it’s worth,
Cheers,
Jeremy
Guys,
Thanks for your responses to my comments throughout the thread. You all have good points and have given me much to think about.
That said, what IS the answer? Is anarchy the answer? Is having no government at all the answer? Even if it is, what happens when a superior entity (one that’s bigger and better organized) decides to come in and rule over us? Even though the American Indians lived a free and easy libertarian lifestyle (dare I say close to the ideal?), they were conquered by us; they didn’t have the might to keep what was theirs. Even if we were to achieve libertarian utopia, how could we KEEP it?
What about history? We tried the Articles of Confederation; that was our first Constitution. Each state had its own money, which was a mess. What does one do if they live on one state while working in another, e.g. living in NJ and working in NYC? Each state put tariffs on things that came from other states. What if you live in VA but buy a pharmaceutical made in NJ? Even though our present Constitution may give the central government too much power, did the Articles give it too little to be effective? If so, where is the balance? Is that balance even possible, given fallible and corrupt human nature?
Self-government is best. Anarchy is short-lived, nature abhors a vacuum. Anarchy would cease to exist with the arrival of the first governor.
Hi Mark,
Thanks. Yes, it can seem very daunting and hopeless. I think the first step is to recognize that the system cannot be compelled to respect liberty or forced to follow the constitution. As the late, great Joe Sobran once quipped, “the Constitution poses no serious threat to our system of government”. The second step is to reject the idea that proper institutional arrangements can overcome the scale problem. In short, scale matters more than anything else. The idea that a single entity can rule over 330 million people is absurd, and should be seen as such. I believe that the Nation State will eventually be viewed as the most destructive and barbaric institution created by man.
As to anarchy, there is a lot of literature on this, promoting the idea of PDO’s (Competing defense organizations) as a form of voluntary competing governance. David Friedman’s “The Machinery of Freedom” is interesting and you can find a number of lectures he gave on the subject on YouTube. Also, go to mises.org and search for “private defense”. Whether this would work is speculative but it is important to note that all of the theoretical problems with anarchy also apply to coercive government. There are also historical examples of stable and pretty long lived anarchic systems. Look for the article “The Not so Wild West” for an example in our own history.
Interestingly you mention the American Indians, as what happened to them is an example of the problem with Federal power vs decentralized power. Prior to the introduction of the Federal army, relations between settlers and Indians was relatively, but not universally, peaceful. Now, this had nothing to do with the goodness of the settlers or the Indians. It arose from the fact that attempting conquest, on either side, was risky and dangerous. It wasn’t until the settlers could delegate force to the Federal government and thus remove themselves from risk, that the wholesale slaughter began. Human beings, denied the ability to delegate force to an outside agency, usually figure out that cooperation is safer and more productive than conquest. Just think of your own life and those around you. Functional anarchy is so pervasive that most cannot see it. It seems undeniable that if most humans were not hard wired for voluntary cooperation, none of would be here.
In the meantime, support radical decentralization, argue for secession, nullification, etc… Remove yourself as much as possible from the State, pay as little taxes as you can get away with. Try to get on a Jury so you have an opportunity to nullify an illegitimate law, lie if you have to to. If you want to influence the system, support the Tenth amendment center and the Fully Informed Jury Association. Push for the repeal of the 17th amendment as it really did destroy “our” system of government. Support 30,000.org which seeks to eliminate the 435 cap that has rendered the power of each citizen completely meaningless. Organize some meaningful protests if you feel the risk is worth it. For instance, convince 50 or 100 drivers to approach a DUI checkpoint and refuse to submit. Inform them that they are in violation of the 4th amendment and make them drag you out of the car and take you to jail. Expose the Commission on Presidential Debates for the fraud that it is (it was created by the 2 parties for the express purpose of eliminating third party competition).
Finally, recognize that centralized power is the cause, not the enemy, of war. Decentralized societies are very difficult to conquer. Just ask any Nation State that has attempted to do so in Afghanistan.
Cheers,
Jeremy
I like the idea of overwhelming a checkpoint; I love it!
As for jury duty, I haven’t been called in almost two decades. I was only called twice. The first time I was in the Navy at Pearl Harbor, so I was quite unavailable to serve. It was 2+ decades before I was called a second time. The second time I was called, I got bounced out of the jury box (during selection) and sat around in a waiting room the rest of the day. I haven’t been called since.
And I don’t like the presidential debates being limited to just two parties; that always bothered me. I say the more, the merrier! Other countries have three or more parties. Why can’t we?
Hi, Jeremy,
That’s what scares me about modern Anarchistic thought- CDOs/PDOs. They would prove to be just as abusive as governments- maybe more so, with nothing to restrain them. That [providing private protection to land owners] is actually how the Mafia started…. Ditto Blackwater.
It matters not what we call it: Government; corporation; cartel; syndicate; etc. once you have a large organized group established, the same thing always happens.
As those seeking individual liberty, I believe our emphasis should be on the individual; and to discourage large-scale organization, from whence abuses always come, and which are nigh impossible to fight, unless one establishes a similarly-sized group- which of course, will end up becoming corrupt also- human nature being what it is.
It is my hunch that the currently popular idea of maintaining a system which is remarkably like the one big government has built, only maintained by private organizations, is an idea foisted upon anarchists by those intent on destroying us.
Either that, or they merely failed to think their premises through.
They should remember that without a state, there would be no corporations- because a corporation is nothing but an artificial “person” created by government in order to deflect liability.
Without corporations, we are all just individuals- the way it should be. Without government, people would be unhindered from defending themselves against those who might band together to abuse them. i.e. without government, the Mafia would likely be long gone, because it would not be protected from the violence of those whom it seeks to victimize, nor take advantage of laws and circumstances which give it physical and economic advantage over the average person.
Capeesh? 😀
Hey Nunzio,
I understand your points but I don’t think that competing PDO’s are destined to become just another form of big government. The key differences being monopoly power; without it, such institutions would be forced to provide a service that people actually value. Another difference is scale, it is very unlikely that a single PDO would emerge to cover all of what is now called the USA. Anyway, the theories were definitely not created by those intent on destroying us. As for not thinking through the premises, it’s hard to read Rothbard and David Friedman and come to such a conclusion. Also, private companies would exist in an anarchic society, they would just not have special privileges, enforced by monopoly power.
Look, you may be right and I don’t know what would occur in the absence of monopoly government. But, theories about PDO’s are not proscriptive, they are descriptive. In other words, security and justice are services valued by most people. Absent a monopoly power that prevents their formation, it is likely that some form of defense agencies would develop naturally in a genuinely free market to deliver those services. Of course, anyone would be free to abstain from purchasing them.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Whatever a PDO might be, the states still contain the essentials for providing regional government, and if the federal government fractures in bankruptcy, the obvious resort would be to the state governments that brung them.
Hi Vonu,
I agree. While philosophically I am an anarchist, I support radical decentralization as a step in that direction. While humans may never shake off the chains of government entirely, it is imperative to understand that scale matters. Fifty independent states would be vastly superior to the Federal Leviathan that exists today. Even Rand failed to see the problem of scale and believed that “correct” institutions and democracy can preserve liberty. This has been proven false.
BTW, PDO stands for private defense organization. As I said to Nunzio, the idea is descriptive, not proscriptive. It was developed by anarcho-capitalist thinkers like Rothbard and David Friedman. It is not a “plan” for a new society to be imposed on the people. It is an imagining of what is likely to develop naturally absent a coercive monopoly State.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy, a few years ago a town in south Texas disbanded their police force and at a much cheaper cost, hired a private security firm.
Since that time crime has plummeted as has costs associated with getting to that point.
Hi Eight,
It would be interesting if more municipalities did this. Of course, “privatization” is often just a cover for cronyism (look at the private prison system for an example) but, there are advantages to a “private” police force that are rarely discussed. The primary one being lack of immunity. It is unlikely that private peace officers would be given immunity. Thus, the firm would need to carry insurance for crimes committed by its’ officers. This would create an external constraint that does not exist in our current system.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Our neighborhood has its own private police force; it’s called “pretty much everybody.”
Only reason to ever call the sheriff (they never patrol out here) is because they tend to get involved anyway after you shoot somebody.
Where I live it’s common to hear my neighbors shoot. I can’t imagine anyone around here calling the sheriff’s dept because of shooting. There’s a shooting range a mile from me.
I take heart if it ever comes to it I’ll be able to do the three S’s.
The “next door” neighbors on two sides have backhoes // wink
Jeremy, the problem is that the correctness of virtually every federal agency has plummeted from its inception.
I’d much rather rely on anything that Erik Prince might come up with than anything that any government agency has ever come up with. I’m sure he feels the same way, since he has moved from mercenaries to corporate security, after selling Blackwater. If I were the President, he would be my choice for secretary of defense, much as he has been Trump’s choice for his personal security.
Hey Vonu,
The problem is that the Federal government, created by the constitution, rendered the experiment in stable, long term self-government impossible. This creation was destined to succeed. See Robert Higgs for an explanation: http://blog.independent.org/2013/09/13/all-government-policies-succeed-in-the-long-run/
Cheers,
Jeremy
The Constitution was meant to be a starter document, not something that would persist for 240 years. Thomas Jefferson, knowing this full well, wrote that “(t)he spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest, ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.”
It can’t be fixed short of replacement, and a replacement would be the end of liberty.
Hi Vonu,
Unlike Hamilton, I believe that Jefferson was genuinely trying to create a document that could restrain the central government. Hamilton desired a robust central government and merely paid lip service to constraining it. The problem with Jefferson is that he was naive. If the central government can be checked only by the eternal vigilance of the average citizen, then it is destined to grow, eventually to the point where it is too powerful to resist.
Again, large central government is incompatible with liberty. No constitution or “correct” structure can change this. “it” can be fixed, but only by abolishing the Federal government and inculcating a general belief in the incompatibility of large central government and liberty.
If the Federal government simply disappeared tomorrow, in short order most of us would be vastly better off.
Kind Regards,
Jeremy
Hi Mark,
One more thing. The articles were vastly superior to the Constitution. There was no popular movement clamoring for its’ repeal or amendment. It’s great “defect” was that it did not allow the Federal government to tax the people directly, which is only a problem if your an opportunist centralizer like Hamilton. The people certainly did not mind. Also, short of hard money, a system of competing currencies is preferable to the monopoly fiat system we have now. Giving the Federal government authority over money was one of the worst aspects of the Constitution. In short, the Constitutional convention should be seen as a coup, which overthrew a much better system. Check out America’s Counter-Revolution by Sheldon Richman.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
Yeah, even though my HS history teacher was liberal and favored the Constitution vs. the Articles; even though she said that life under the Articles was a mess (made a big deal about different currencies); she did say that it was gov’t officials (Hamilton, et al) who pushed the Constitution, not the general population.
Yeah, the Constitutional convention was originally called to tweak the Articles of Confederation. Once the convention was going, they decided to trash the Articles altogether. Even though they were sent with explicit instructions to just improve the Articles, they disobeyed their instructions and gave us the Constitution we now have.
That’s why newer calls for a convention of states is so dangerous. There’s a movement amongst conservatives and Tea Party types to have a convention of states to make amendments to the Constitution. Do research on the “Convention of States” (COS) movement to find out more. Anyway, if they pull this off, then they could trash our present Constitution and give us something even worse! For example, there’s something called The Constitution of the New States of America, which outright prohibits firearms ownership.
If you mention this to any CoS proponent like talk show host Mark Levin (a big CoS proponent), you’ll be impugned, mocked, and disparaged. They’ll tell you it can’t happen; they’ll that the delegates will be have strict instructions, and so on. They conveniently ignore our OWN history; they ignore what happened at the 1787 convention. Even though those delegates were under strict instructions to simply improve the Articles of Confederation, they ignored their instructions; the rest, as they say, is history…
Hi Mark,
Levin is just a conservative Statist. He loves Lincoln and opposes everything that could actually limit State power (nullification, secession, interposition, etc…). He mocks people who point out that Congress, not the President, is supposed to declare war. Just like the liberals he derides, Levin wants a strong central government to do what he thinks is important. He is not a friend to liberty.
BTW, i agree with you that a CoS is an insane idea.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Damned if you didn’t say it for all Jeremy. I watched a 2 hour movie yesterday with Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan and many others who defined what the federal govt. wishes to do, is intent on doing, and that’s propagandizing the illiterate, or at lest the uninformed as to what this country was founded upon.
Probably it impresses no one that I am pissed. I see no resemblance to the country I grew up in. Eisenhower wised up. He rightly tried to warn the public of the military/industrial cabal….without using the word “cabal”. Now we’re hip deep, nay, nose deep in this shit. We’d better get our act together or it will be above nose level and nobody who’s ever been swimming knows what that means. Cue the Fugs, Wide, Wide River.
Mark,
I also enjoy discussions such as these; they force us to test our own ideas and beliefs, and thus strengthen what we may have right, and discard or modify that which does not hold up.
Now, back to our regularly-scheduled bantering! 😀
O-K, here’s what it comes down to: Yes, our fathers could have done more to preserve liberty; as their fathers could have; as we could have….. but ultimately, as long as the majority of people believe in an institution called ‘government’, tyranny will exist to one degree or another, because the very nature of government is to govern- i.e. to exert control and coercion.
The idea of “Government of the people by the people for the people….” is pure BULLSHIT.
What people are “the people”? If 98 agree on one thing and 2 people want something else, then those 2 people are deprived of their self-ownership if there is government.
If the people are superior to and more powerful than the government, than the government is no government, because it can’t govern those who have superior power to it; thus it is no government, but just an expression of what some of the people want to do or are capable of doing.
If the government is superior to and more powerful than the people…well…we can see how THAT works out 🙁
Basically, people tolerate government because they inherently believe that it provides them with “security”, and that that security is more valuable than liberty. They believe government will establish a utopia.
But of course, in reality, government destroys liberty, security and any personal utopia we might find.
Had our fathers banded together and fought the encroaching tyranny, they simply would have become the new government, and we’d still be in the same boat as we are now, because the WHO matters not *Unless you’re Roger Daltry…), because human nature never changes, and good men are rare (Even truly good men with good intentions can do bad things through ignorance or incompetence; or simply because someone else’s idea of good isn’t necessarily yours).
No, it’s not the WHO- it’s the institution; the power structure. WHO controls that doesn’t really matter so much. Throughout human history, governments have only tended towards evil and oppression- you will not somehow finally “make a good one” just by delegating power to yet other men- for those who desire or would accept power over other sentinent human beings, is either corrupt and unjust, or stupid.
The only time men have been free, was in Patriarchal times. The only way people can be free, is for everyone to maintain their own power and ability to protect themselves, either alone, or in conjunction with their families and or like-minded friends and neighbors, so as to be enough of a dissuading prospect to deter others intent on doing evil.
Government or no government, there will always be evil men, and crime, and people who do not respect the lives and property of others. Despite all the government we have, crime is rampant. As one goes back into the past, the less government we had, the less crime we had. I’d rather take my chances and be free to defend myself and my property, than to be constrained by governments which often prevent us from doing such, or impose consequences upon us if we do.
But the main thing is: When we are surrounded by people who believe in government, whether they be relatively free or severely tyrannized, one thing is always constant: Those people are as much our foes as the very government itself. Even right now, since everyone around us believes in the sanctity of government, they cooperate with that government and do it’s bidding, regardless of whether or not they agree with those who are in power.
On the other hand, if half of the people around us ceased to believe in government; instead of arguing over WHO is going to run that government and what it is going to do- the government would be powerless, and we would be free.
But as soon as they seek to create a government, they are giving some the right to impose coercion and violence upon those who do not comply or agree with that government.
Your comment about it being the institution and not the WHO reminded me of what John Taylor Gatto said about public schools. He said that it was the SYSTEM, not the teachers, that were bad; he said that even good teachers would have minimal impact on the system itself. That makes perfect sense.
Oh, BTW, where are you thinking of expatting to? You said that commenting on a different post, and I asked you about it; I don’t think you saw it though, because I never saw a response. I was curious, because I think about expatting a lot. This country is NOT the same place I grew up in, that’s for sure…
Ah, yeah, Mark- I loved John Taylor Gatto’s work! Good analogy you made there. And of course, how can one maintain freedom by having a communal education system which is financed by extorted money? (And I’m originally from Long Island- where everyone’s paying five-figure property taxes to finance the local pooblik skools- which have budgets bigger than those of many countries!)
Sorry about neglecting your question- I had meant to get back to it- but then forgot who asked it!
I really can’t say definitively where I will end up permanently. Probably somewhere in the south Pacific ultimately- but for the short-term, as a jumping off point, just to get out of here, I’ve been seriously considering Belize.
For now, I’m considering south of the border, as there’s more PERSONAL FREEDOM down there. For example, many drugs that require a prescription here you can buy over the counter down there. I’ve never seen a sobriety checkpoint down there, either.
I’ve considered Belize also. It has warm weather and is on the Caribbean.
I could dig the South Pacific too. I like warmer weather, the ocean, surfing, snorkeling, etc., and you can find all the above in the right place… 🙂
Yes, I’m sure that there are plenty of nice places in Meh-hee-co, where if nothing else, it would be easy to fly below the radar. I think the importante 🙂 thing is, just to take that first step and get out of here.
I’ve known a lot of people who have left (most a decade or more ago), and they are just amazed at how different it is once ya get out of here.
We’re so used to the nonsense here, that we forget what normal life is like. Just getting out, even if it’s not to a “perfect” place, at least gives us a chance to rest and regroup, and get our bearings…and then if we still want to look further, so be it- but virtually everyone I know who has left, has stayed in the place that they initially went to (Chile; Panama; etc.)
My eye doctor used to practice in McAllen TX. His patients would just drive over the border, and get their Rx’s for a fraction of what they cost here.
Yeah…the Pacific is where I’d like to end up. Hard to get to- but that’s what keeps ’em good. Some of those places have so many remote outer island, one can just get lost and live on Gilligan’s Island for the rest of their life and enjoy….. Maybe not even have to see the flames from this place as it disintegrates.
Fetting out of NY was my first step- and i only wish I could’ve done it sooner. But I finally did it when I was 39- and it’s been a wonderful 17 years- even better than I’d hoped it’d be. Little by little, I see NY creeping into KY. and I don’t want to be here when I can no longer tell the difference.
Some long time back, I read about a guy who foresaw the world falling apart back in the 1930s, and decided to hide away on some remote South Pacific Island.
He chose … Guadalcanal.
Oops!
HAhahaha! My luck, it’d be where they test the A-bombs….. “Is it hot today, or is it me?”
Nunz,
I spent time in Peru, and I like it there. It’s far from perfect, but the greater personal freedom alone is worth it. Unless you do something MAJOR (like rape, robbery, or murder), the cops leave you alone. The immigration officials down there treat you with a lot more respect than ours do. Plus, the winters are mild. Since I know Lima and have friends there, that would be first choice. I’m looking to be out of here in 2-3 years.
If you don’t get a move on, the economy will leave before you do.
Basel 3 will be interesting come the end of March.
What’s happening in March?
I don’t think that TPTB will allow a nasty collapse, as it would wake up too many people too fast; they’d revolt, and that would screw up the globalists’ plans for us.
I dunno about March, MM, but do realize the TPTB are not omniscient nor omnipotent (Although they make think they are- or want to be)- They may effect great control over everything individually….but they can not and do not intimately control everything to the point where everything just does exactly what they intend.
The global, or even national system is HUGE, and comprised of disparate often competing interests and personalities, even at the higher levels.
They can control people to one degree or another; and institutions; and programs….but to put it all together and achieve minute control as if they were God Himself, they just are not capable of doing.
My point is, that they may try to do certain things at certain times; and may in fact be ultimately responsible for what happens….but they just don’t have the knowledge nor ultimate control of the whole system to determine exactly what happens, and time it perfectly.
Oftentimes, things happen contrary to what they want.
I don’t think that they want to crash the economy- because when it happens, they will lose a degree of control and a lot of the wealth that the peons supply- but it will happen anyway, in spite of what they want.
Just like they wanted to achieve their NWO by the year 2000…. and then 2020….
They’re indeed working to that end…but notice how it keeps getting pushed back- now it’s 2030, and looking more like 2040…. but they’re encountering more trouble lately than they anticipated…..and maybe if we’re lucky, these big empires will crumble before they achieve it……
Interesting, Mark. I had kinda given up on S. America- although I always thought that if it weren’t for so many countries there embracing socialism; and increasing US interference, it would be a natural.
I will have to check out Peru more though. For some reason, it’s one country I had neglected- not for any particular reason- it just worked out that way- but I have heard lots of good things- and what you describe “lots of personal liberty unless you do something major like rape, murder” is exactly what I want. No place is perfect, or even close to it. The best we can hope for is just to be left alone if we mind our own business (as I always do) and to be able to fly below the radar when they try to control us- which, is a lot easier to do in remote corners of “poor” places.
I’m with Vonu- time is of the essence. I’m only hesitating because I still have my 94 year-old mother, who lives here on my property and depends on me (My sisters are worthless)- and I am grateful for the time I have with her, and that she is still doing pretty well- otherwise, I’d be out of here already.
Kinda worried that selling my place here AFTER the economy crashes might make going difficult (As it’s not worth a lot to begin with!)- but then again, in the crash of ’08, property values here actually rose- as I guess good cheap rural land is attractive then to those abandoning the cities- but of course, there’s no guarantee it’ll be that way this time around…
But I will definitely look more closely at Peru. The further away from the US…the better! Who knows, maybe it would be good enough be permanent- which would be nice, as the prospect of doing a lot of traveling is not appealing, nor affordable.
Thanks!
Mexico is just fine as long as you don’t insist on having a gun.
Mexico has always been like the US is becoming, disparate local governments that range from autocracies to benign oligarchies. I visited Mexico twice with a late friend, and we once discussed the fact that we both felt safer in Los Mochis than we did in Denver.
Yeah, I’ll just stay in Montana.
The cold keeps most of the riff-raff out.
Are you going to stay in Montana after it is sold to Canada?
Ha-ha-ha-ha!
Actually, Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, and Wyoming would make a fine little independent federation.
Assuming you could get Bob Barr to agree to be their President for Life.
The Montana sale to Canada was overheard on a mainstream media newscast, FWIW.
Nunz, I’m from Jersey, so I’m familiar with the high property taxes. The local governments in both places are bigger than what our national gov’t USED to be…
Oh, one of the guys in my boot camp company was from Long Island. We always used to rib him about being from Long Gisland, hahaha!
Ahaha! A Joisey boy and a Lawn Guylander! Joisey is where many LIers go when they want lower property taxes! (Doesn’t matter- they make every place they go into an exact image of what they left!)
Both places though, a perfect example of how government ruins everything. Hard to believe, but in our lifetime, those places were some of the nicest in the country- and one could have just as much freedom there as just about anywhere…..and NOW look at the filthy messes they are, eh? They stole our money; fared sumptuously on it; and crapped all over us.
Makes me CRY when I think about it… 🙁
Why is an education system required when learning doesn’t?
Look, this is really simple.
Current american government posseses total power, per its charter.
The answer is to limit its power.
I suggest removing legal authority for it to initiate non consensual harm.
Then enforcing this rule upon it through a number of practical mechanisms
Amen, AR!
I’ve been arguing with Mark about this very point. The fundamental philosophical/moral problem with the Constitution is that it asserts a degree of ownership over the individual. It does not matter that – at first – it was a very slight degree of ownership, or even if only in principle. The fact that this principle was established laid the groundwork for… everything.
Either you are a free man – or you are not.
If you are partially free, to whatever degree, it is only a matter of time before you are utterly unfree. As today.
This is the inevitable result of “limited” government.
So true, Eric!
And even if a constitution proposed to restrain government and uphold individual liberty, it would still be utterly worthless, because mere words can not restrain evil and oppression; only the fervent desire of men for liberty and justice can maintain those ideals and repel those who would disregard them.
Heck, even the Anarchy/Voluntaryist community can not maintain those ideals on the whole: I was mortified a few nights ago to watch a video in which G. Edward Griffin (The author of such books as The Creature From Jekyll Island) was speaking at the most recent Anarchopulco…. Now don’t get me wrong, Griffin has done a lot of good to educate people on the abuses and corruption of government, and I can enjoy listening to him, and even recommend some of his stuff to people- but the thing is, ultimately, the guy is a minarchist and believes in taxation (albeit not like what we have now)- But I was very disappointed to see someone who is not (and doesn’t claim to be) an anarchist/voluntaryist, speaking at Anarchopulco, and openly advocating minarchy and such in his speech….and then everyone cheered at the end.
At least most of the comments I saw on the vid were taking the guy to task for his minarchy- but it was really shocking to see him speaking at Anarchopulco- my thought is: Has that now been infiltrated too?
Eric,
I love your site and spend lots of time here. That said, I must respectfully disagree with you WRT the Constitution. It wasn’t written to allow the gov’t to obtain unlimited power; it was explicitly written to LIMIT gov’t power. The federal government can only do those things listed in the Constitution-end of story.
For example, Article I, Section 8 lists the enumerated powers of Congress, what it can spend money on, etc.; it can do those things, and those things only. Where is the Dept. of Education in the Constitution? Where is HHS? Where are the EPA, FAA, and other alphabet soup agencies in the Constitution? I’ll tell you: they’re not there! Unfortunately, because we, the citizens, long ago let the politicians get away with flouting the limits of the Constitution, we find ourselves in the present mess.
The problem is that Constitutional limits are no longer observed. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, said that our Constitution was only for a MORAL & RELIGIOUS people, and that it was totally unsuited to the governance of any other. Whatever one may think about morality and religion, they put limits on one’s behavior; there are certain things one cannot do. That’s the root problem right there.
Because people no longer observe limits on their behavior; because one can do whatever feels good; then one can go outside of those limits. This, of course, carries over to other areas of life. Those words don’t REALLY mean what they’re supposed to mean! Don’t you know that the Constitution is a living document? Just try that with your mortgage holder and see what happens.
The Constitution is not the problem. The problem is that we, the American people, ceased to be moral and religious; because we ceased to be moral and religious, the limits of the Constitution are no longer observed and obeyed. If they were, then we wouldn’t have the modern police state USSA.
MarkyMark
Hi Mark,
If, as you write, “The federal government can only do those things listed in the Constitution – end of story,” then why is the federal government doing so many other things?
Clearly – as Spooner wrote – the Constitution either intended this or was powerless to prevent it.
I take the view that it was intended.
I say this as a guy who almost became a lawyer – or at least, could have been. I understand how they think. Hamilton was a very smart lawyer. It is not because of carelessness or for reasons of rhetoric that lawyerly terms such as “necessary and proper” and “general welfare” were included in the thing.
These were put there to give future lawyers the ability to extract unlimited power from the Constitution. Hamilton and his fellow Federalists more or less admitted this. They wanted a “vigorous” central government; they despised the idea of a loose confederation of sovereign states – to say nothing of the idea of the sovereignty of individuals.
Moreover – and more broadly – this is a contract no one now living consented to – and which therefore binds no one now living, certainly not anyone who has not explicitly consented, and in that case, it binds himself only.
Moral religious has little to do with any of this. The issue is that the Constitution arrogates power to the federal government, which is the arbiter of the limits of its own power. Which means power limited only by the Talmudic parsing of such terms as “general welfare” and “necessary and proper” (among others).
The only way out is to reject the notion that other people ever have the right to control or mulct other people, ever – for any reason. “Government” is a rhetorical device. It is just other people. And other people – regardless of titles or words or ballot boxes – have no more right to control or mulct anyone than you or I do as individuals.
The idea upon which all government is premised is that actions which would be regarded (rightly) as crimes if committed freelance, by an individual, are “legal” when done by this collective, or those who claim to be its representatives. This is incoherent, if words – principles – have any meaning.
If theft is wrong, then theft is wrong. Calling it “taxes” doesn’t make it right.
Und so weiter…
I didn’t know that the Federalists were looking to give power to those who’d come after them; if true, then the Constitution was designed to confer extra power to those who’d come after the writers.
Why does the gov’t do things it’s not supposed to do? We, the citizens, ALLOWED them to get away with the first usurpations of power, so they just kept going. We, the citizens, didn’t hold our officials ACCOUNTABLE; if you don’t hold people accountable for their actions, they’ll do them again.
The ignorance of the average person is simply APPALLING. I remember getting a call from my former Congressmen when I was out sick from work one day; it was like a roundtable/conference call with selected constituents. I never got on to make any points, but I heard plenty of others do so.
There was one guy who started complaining about local taxes or something. The Congressman politely told the guy he’d have to address the matter at the town council level, and that he couldn’t help him out. Here’s a guy-who VOTES, mind you-who didn’t know squat about what the federal gov’t does; what’s scary is that there are MILLIONS of fellow citizens like him! If people don’t know the Constitution, how can they vote for someone who will obey it? That’s part of the problem; it’s not the whole answer, but it’s part of it.
WRT taxes, the only taxes in the Constitution were tariffs and excise taxes; that’s it. I don’t object to those kinds of taxes (sales taxes, really), because you don’t pay them if you don’t buy anything. There’s no intrusive IRS needed to collect them.
I do object to income and property taxes though. Even though my house is paid for, I don’t REALLY own it; if I don’t pay rent to my town, I lose the house.
Speaking of the IRS, that’s one example how we got away from Constitutional limits long ago. If you don’t pay your income taxes, the IRS can come in and take whatever they want. What about Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure? What about needing a warrant? What about Fifth Amendment stipulations that the gov’t can’t take property without due process? I could go on, but you get my point. We, the people, have not held gov’t ACCOUNTABLE for these abuses of power! When the IRS started abusing power, we should have been out in the streets lynching the bastards.
Jefferson said it best: when the gov’t fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the gov’t, there is tyranny. Long ago, we should have taken steps to make the gov’t fear us. THAT is the problem right there.
It’s funny you mentioned law school, because I wanted to attend law school myself. I got myself out of a ticket once by carefully parsing the language of the statute in question. That said, there’s been a glut of lawyers for quite some time, and it simply didn’t make sense (as in financial sense) to attend law school. I’d like to have the means to do so, but I don’t want to pay the opportunity costs to go now.
Hi Mark,
“We, the citizens, didn’t hold our officials ACCOUNTABLE; if you don’t hold people accountable for their actions, they’ll do them again.”
How exactly are “we” supposed to hold them accountable? You suggest two options. Voting, which is preposterous, as history clearly shows that voting serves to expand State power. Or, rioting in the streets, which is romantic and all, but the likely result will be your death in a futile gesture that most will condemn and not understand. Let’s see, Jury nullification has been rendered de facto illegal and State nullification and interposition are politically toxic.
So, what remains? Your hope that the “people” will have a moral awakening and realize that they have a duty to interpret the Constitution as you do, and only vote for politicians who will uphold that interpretation, won’t work for two simple reasons. First, many intelligent and knowledgable people disagree with you, and favor an expansive interpretation because it serves their self interest and self image. Insisting that they’re wrong (though I believe that they are) will have no effect. While we may think that they are immoral, they do not. In fact, most believe that we are immoral, heartless and cruel. Second, with almost no exceptions, there are no politicians committed to enforcing strict limits on Federal power. No matter what they say, politicians seek to expand, not limit, their own power.
Madison’s statement is romantic fluff and cannot be taken seriously. The mechanism apparently intended to limit federal power was not a naive faith in the goodness of the people and the politicians. It was competing self interest as embodied in divided sovereignty and a bicameral legislature.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
The Second Amendment was put in the Constitution precisely to give us the MEANS to contain an out of control gov’t. It wasn’t for hunting, though that was necessary in those days. It wasn’t for home defense, though that was necessary too. No, the Second Amendment was put in to give us a last line of defense, so when all other measures failed, we could fight an out of control gov’t.
As for jury nullification, that goes back to the rampant IGNORANCE of the citizenry. Jury nullification hasn’t been used much in recent times. Folks simply do not know the basics of civics, or many other things for that matter; Exhibit A is AOC. What’s scary is that there are MILLIONS of AOCs out there, and they vote!
I agree that rioting in the streets probably wouldn’t work, because precious few people would do it. If millions did it, they couldn’t arrest and jail everyone; if only a few do it, they can make an example of those who do. My point was that we should have done this LONG AGO; we should have done this decades ago when the gov’t started usurping and abusing power. Again, Jefferson’s maxim holds true.
The Second Amendment gives us nothing we didn’t already have. It just tells the government to keep their mitt off of our rights. We have no one to blame but ourselves for the mess our country is in. Thomas Jefferson knew where we were headed when he wrote that “(t)he spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest, ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.”
That’s true; the Bill of Rights merely articulates what we ALREADY HAVE. That said, my original point still stands: we had the means (i.e. arms in private hands) to reign in this soft tyranny, but we didn’t.
Hi Mark,
Who is this “we” you speak of? Dunno about you, but I wasn’t around 100-something years ago, when the income tax was imposed; nor 150-something years ago, when the federal Leviathan decided to arrogate all/unlimited power to itself.
I am not trying to be cute; just trying to make the point.
None of us now living were living when the most serious usurpations occurred; the ones which set the stage for the ones we endure today.
Regardless, it matters not – because the fact that our rights are not respected isn’t our fault. Your argument boils down to blaming the victim.
And the fact remains, the premise of the Constitution – that it is ok to deprive people of certain rights, provided it is done under color of law – is itself a guarantee of abuse.
There can be no middle ground. We’r either free – or we’re not.
Mind, I am all for more rather than less free. But the distinction remains.
Eric, you’re right; we weren’t around for the serious usurpations, e.g. Lincoln and the Civil War. That said we WERE here for the sobriety checkpoints. We WERE here for the Gun Control Act of 1968. We WERE here for the TSA’s encroachments on our liberties. I could go on, but you get my point. What did we do about what was done to us? Say what you want about the French, but at least they have enough GUTS to get in their government’s face; I’m talking about the yellow vest protesters. Why aren’t WE doing something similar?
I’d disagree with you. I was around when Ronald Reagan pushed through a gun bill in Ca. that would soon spread to every state. He did so because he was afraid of blacks.
I was around when the Vietnam war was thrust on us and I helped organize protests which got me a good FBI file going. In our late 60’s the wife and I were last raided on Aug 1st, 2016 beginning with a huge helicopter and culminating with a large ground force heavily armed…..who had so little evidence they had no warrant.
They finally left after finding no wrongdoing….but they were pissed. And this was the 3rd time we’d been raided and no wrongdoing was found.
So, where were you? Why weren’t you protecting us? You just don’t care.
What is really going on is the govt. is so huge it would be impossible to know what they have in store for your neighbors.
And voting is a joke since it’s always for the lesser of two evils.
I nearly puked on my ballot last election and was only there to vote for a dishonest Canadian named Cruz to keep a lying liberty robbing Beto O’Rourke who attempts to pass himself off as Mexican so he can pander to all those illegal aliens the Democrats want to be able to vote.
I and probably you were around for all the rigjts lost since 911. Did you rail against those who voted for the Patriot Act? Did you get spittle spewing mad as did Strom Thurmond upon the passage of the NDAA bill?
It’s easy to criticize others and downright dangerous to take on the govt. in any substantial way.
8S, wow. That’s BULLSHIT that the FBI raided you-all because you exercised your right to dissent and disagree.
At this point, I think you’re right about it being dangerous to challenge the gov’t. The only way it would work is if millions did it; then, they couldn’t arrest or jail everyone. Unfortunately, it’s human nature to think things are ok until they affect YOU…
Speaking of Ted Cruz, I love how the Republicans questioned and complained about Barack Obama’s eligibility while totally overlooking his! I’ve seen a copy of his Canadian citizenship; he didn’t even bother to renounce it until a few years ago. He sure as hell isn’t eligible to run for POTUS!
The well known, conservative talk show host, Mark Levin, was a big supporter of Cruz. What he DIDN’T tell his audience was that his stepson WORKED for Cruz! He would belittle anyone questioning Cruz’ eligibility to be POTUS; he said that it was possible to be born outside the US, yet still be a citizen. What he left out was that Cruz has NO FS-240, the State Dept. form certifying one’s birth abroad; Cruz has no CRBA (certified record of birth abroad), so he’s not eligible to be POTUS. For that matter, if one reads the Constitution carefully, I’m not even sure he was eligible to run for the Senate in 2012, because he hadn’t been a citizen long enough.
Marky, let me express what I feel like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jno9r-OWKDM
Apparently you didn’t bother to read Jefferson, as that is exactly what he said we would do. What prevents us from staging a soft revolution to counter their tyranny, while being prepared for the unlikelihood that they will respond any more positively than King George’s navy did. We outnumber and outgun the monster. All we have to do is what we should have from the beginning.
Are you talking about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants? Let’s do it! That’s something we should have done long ago…
Hi Mark and Vonu,
“That said, my original point still stands: we had the means (i.e. arms in private hands) to reign in this soft tyranny, but we didn’t.”
You have yet to explain how. The idea that “we” are primarily responsible for the government we have is preposterous, serves the interests of the political class and completely ignores the nature of coercive, monopoly government. A massive power imbalance exists between the State and the people. The people have lives to live, must provide for themselves and their families, etc… They have little time to or ability to know of, let alone prevent, the machinations of the political class. Whereas, the political class can devote as much time and energy as necessary to achieve it’s goals.
Politicians are expert liars and demagogues. Every usurpation of power is sold to the people as beneficial to them. The State supports a “court intellectual” class whose job is to present each power grab as its’ exact opposite.
In 1803, when the supreme court arrogated to itself the power of judicial review, would you have seen the ramifications and been willing to die in pursuit of a seemingly abstract goal? In 1798, when the alien and sedition act was passed, would you have taken up arms against the Federal government? Would you have rioted in protest of the Fugitive Slave act? During the civil war, if you lived in the North, would you have abandoned your home and joined the rebels in protest of Lincoln’s successful attempt to destroy the union by eradicating dual sovereignty? When Congress capped its’ members at 435, would you have understood this to be a long term power grab and used violence to oppose it. Same question with respect to the 17th amendment? If so, you are truly unique.
The idea that “we” are responsible for the government we have is exactly what the political class wants to hear.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
Your points are well taken. That said, even though we weren’t around for most of the usurpations and abuses of power, I still think we can and should have done more. Say what you want about the French, but they get angry and ACT on it, e.g. the yellow vest protesters.
Hi Mark,
My point is not that we weren’t there but that those who were did not think it worthwhile to risk their lives over seemingly minor usurpations of power. I asked if you would have done so to point out that even those of us with strong beliefs now, would likely have done nothing back then. There is a good reason for this, unless you can mobilize enough people your gesture will be futile and result in death or jail. The political class knows this and is careful to ratchet its’ power gradually, so that no particular usurpation seems “unlivable”.
The fact is that until conditions become so bad that risking death in protest seems preferable to living, most will not protest. This is the observation made by Jefferson. But, if, the maintenance of liberty requires the average Joe to kill himself early in the usurpation process, then liberty is doomed.
As to the yellow vests and why we aren’t doing likewise; well they’re further along the risk reward scale than we are, and their police, while still violent, are far less likely to kill than ours.
The problem is in the nature of coercive, monopoly government and the naive belief that a constitution can limit its’ power or grant it legitimacy.
Cheers,
Jeremy
The French, Mark? They are among the most tyrannized people in the Western world- They can be jailed for their speech; have no rights to raise and discipline their own children; pay among the highest taxes; etc.
The Yellow Vests are nothing but the European version of our “Occupy Movement”- Content with the tyranny, until they start feeling it’s effects in their pocketbooks- then they just want others to be burdened more.
Well-said, Jeremy! And that is exactly why the Pilgrims, and Founders of this country, did not seek to reform England.
Revolution only works when you have a group of people united in philosophy and ideal, and which is larger and stronger than the group whom they oppose and it’s supporters.
There’s no reforming of empires; only their own slow suicide brought about by their own dysfunction and corruption.
Hi Vonu,
I am a great admirer of Massa Tom (as Gore Vidal called him)… but let’s not forget that he helped get the ball rolling by – among other things – buying the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon on his say-so, establishing one of the first precedents for executive “decidership.”
It goes to demonstrate that nobody can really be trusted with power, even the most well-spoken, liberty-minded person.
It is unfortunate that Jefferson was away in France when the Federalists staged their counter-revolution (the “constitutional convention”). It’s possible if he had been there, which was before his corruption by Presidential power, they might not have gotten away with it.
Eric,
Forgotten, of course, is the fact that he intended to auction off the entire Louisiana Purchase, but that got lost when he decided to leave office and stem his dive towards bankruptcy. A few years down the road, and the federal government deciding it wanted to keep the land form itself, and the disposal part of the plan was abdicated.
A complete picture requires his release of all of John Adams’ political enemies from their equally unconstitutional imprisonment for alleged sedition, meaning they dissed Adams. This has culminated in the continuation of the completely draconian contempt of court persecutions.
The ignorance of the average American is the successful result of John Dewey’s plan to create good citizens. Only Americans who want to break the mold of ignorance citizenry can do it because ignorance serves the interests of TPTB.
The Ron Paul Curriculum is the nearly perfect solution to the dismantling of the public fool system. http://www.ronpaulcurriculum.com
Whatever anyone else says, this really is the heart of the matter. It’s often been said that people get the government they deserve, the problem being that the rest of us get stuck with it too. Remember Reagan? He certainly didn’t have everything right, but when he said that “freedom is never more than one generation from extinction” he was dead on. The citizens of this country were far too trusting for far too long, and weren’t willing to make the hard-in-the-short-term choices and decisions that would have kept us free in the long term.
The Great Depression is a good example. It was created in the first place by central-bank meddling, but it would have been over in a flash if not artificially prolonged to make the people beg for mercy. But no one what was really going on, and so they just kept reelecting FDR even as he used every dirty trick he could think of (court-packing, etc.) to expand government and even ram through things which had previously been declared unconstitutional. People at the time didn’t see the danger he represented, they just wanted the pain of the depression to end. Some variant of this tactic has been used successfully to push through every expansion of the federal government since then. Even the smog crisis of the 1970s that gave us catastrophic converters and, eventually, the idiotic specter of the Catalyst Felony, is an example… emission-control devices actually existed before they were mandated (Cadillac started using PCV in 1964, as far as I can remember), and besides, maybe the cities really were too dense and people needed to spread out in order to reduce the air quality problem. Absent pollution controls, people may well have started moving out to the country on their own just out of pure self-preservation, eventually returning the cities to an equilibrium of tolerable air quality. Meanwhile, some city folk would have to mingle with the rest of us out here in flyover country, perhaps discovering that we aren’t as dumb as they seem to think we are! But, for whatever reason, people didn’t or couldn’t think that way. They just wanted the federal government to wave a magic wand at their problem, which it did by kicking car culture in the teeth and claiming large amounts of illegitimate power for itself. But hey, as long as no one individual has to spend money or expend effort in the shortest of short terms, everything is fine!
This attitude may well have existed as far back as the mid-late 1870s, though I don’t remember the exact years when it manifested. Originally, decision-making in the US was supposed to take place at the most local possible level, with the federal government handling only the things the states couldn’t, and the states handling only things counties and towns couldn’t, and so on. But how long is that really going to last when people go immediately to the federal government for help with any problem or non-problem they happen to notice, and happily elect representatives who think their job is to bring home pork by any means necessary, who are just in it for themselves, or who are demonic utopians (and frequently don’t even try to hide it)?
The worst part is, it’s only too late because no one cares. The forms of a republic are still there. In theory, we could still salvage this country simply by electing the right people and passing the right laws… but it would take a miracle at this point. I’ve actually tried to get car enthusiasts on another forum interested in politics. The response I got was a mixture of apathy and derision. People, especially people like us with “specialty” hobbies and interests, simply don’t seem to think it’s our place to have an effect on the way things are going, or don’t want to bother (and I’m guilty of that one too), or are too full of environmental/safety propaganda to ever break free from it, or are attached to a cause like LGBT-whatever which is more important to them than freedom. When only utopian statists are motivated enough to make the rules, don’t be surprised when you’re living under rules made by utopian statists.
What makes this battle much harder is that said utopian statists, as a rule, appeal to emotions rather than facts. They will lose in a straight-up battle of ideas (at least if anyone bothers to do their own research), so instead they fall back on the good old refrain of “YOU WANT PEOPLE TO DIE!” and try to make it sound like you’re a horrible person if you don’t agree with them. Unfortunately, it seems very few people have the mental fortitude to resist this type of browbeating, and those who do frequently lack the spiritual fortitude to brave the scorn of those who don’t. Maintaining liberty requires being willing to say “no” to these hand-wringing emotional attacks, even if you have to do it like a petulant child and say “no” without really knowing or caring why, even if the opposition have a billion graphs and studies showing the horrible things that will happen if you say “no”, and that is something we all have failed at. Doubtless the schools are involved here.
The schools, indeed, are probably the biggest problem. We have all been trained to be passive; to consume rather than producing, to be led rather than to lead, to wait for someone to tell us what to do. If you abolished speed limits tomorrow, about 45% of the population (including the me of just a couple years ago, and probably still to some degree) would go frickin’ ham and get themselves or someone else hurt, another 45% would continue to go slow out of fear and thereby become even more annoying and dangerous than they already are, and the remaining 10% would just be sitting and staring slack-jawed at the incompetence of the other 90%. In order to see liberty restored during our lifetimes, we would have to take the 175 years of damage done by centralized education, and undo it within a few years. It would take a miracle.
Well-said, Chuck!!!!!
In short, no matter the particular style or “ism”; no matter the office-holders, government is never anything more than organized crime- with the “leaders” being the bosses who reap the ultimate profits and wield the ultimate power; those who work for them are the petty thugs who do the leg-work; who are grateful that higher-ups gave them a job and throw them some bones; and the voters are the ones who seek out the syndicate’s help when they need a few bucks or have a problem with their neighbor.
As long as the system works for them, they don’t care. As long as the system forces you to finance what they want; doesn’t impose too many restrictions on what they want to do, they’re fine with it- and if you dare complain because it doesn’t allow what you want; or funnels your money to someone else, then YOU are viewed as the enemy, instead of those who are the real enemies.
T’is human nature- and all political systems start out by taking advantage of that nature; and end up ultimately becoming the very expression of that nature. Just look at ancient Greece or Rome: So far removed time-wise, yet before their end, they were virtually identical to what we see haoppening before our eyes today.
And I agree completely- on the whole, people get the government they deserve. Had people cared about freedom and justice, they would not have been bought-off with promises of receiving the benefits of other’s wealth, or mere convenience or the prospect of some perceived “safety” at the cost of their and their children’s and neighbors liberty.
And that is why I say that there is no hope for reform; not only because of the size and scope of government- but because and more importantly, that the vast majority around us are disciples of government- and ultimately will defend that government- on every level- from ideological, to Federal, State, County, Township, and Town/City- the very entity which oppresses them as well as us- with their life, and the lives of their children- just as they do when they suck Uncle’s schlong and participate in his filthy foreign wars.
And if anyone thinks that a small minority can overcome that religion, I would refer them to the Civil War- at a time when the government was not 1/1000th as powerful as it is today; did not possess technology and arms which put it far above the citizenry; and had not yet captured the minds of most people through communal “education” and a nationwide mass media, and entitlements and conveniences…and yet half the country- a people united in cause and culture and belief, could not repel the evil power and destruction of that bastard Lincoln, and the Yanks. (Ironically, I live an hour from Lincoln’s birfplace! – Not too far from Jefferson Davis’s place though either- so I guess it evens out… :D)
Hi Mark,
The Federal government can, and will, do anything it thinks it can get away with. You cite numerous examples of transparently unconstitutional programs but still insist that it’s “our fault”. The Supreme court is not an independent entity, it has no incentive to keep the government “bound by the chains of the constitution”. The Federal government is the sole judge of its’ own power and no amount of morality among the people can keep such an institution in check. Those who revere the constitution are a big part of the problem. First, it allows for the kind of victim blaming that you routinely evoke and, second, it relies on the absurd notion that “men will reveal themselves to be angels” to work.
If memory serves, you have stated that “we’re not a democracy, we’re a Republic”. If this were ever true, the Republic officially died with the passage of the 17th amendment. This change destroyed any hope of a constitutionally limited government and fundamentally changed the nature of our system. The system was supposed to be one of divided but equal sovereignty, with Senators, who serve at the pleasure of State legislatures, representing the interests of the sovereign States, not “the people”. Senators are now just more pretentious and better paid Representatives. The notion that the three branches of the Federal government check the power of each other is risible. Almost everything the Federal government does is unconstitutional and almost all of that has been upheld by the court.
The loyalties of the court were also altered by the passage of the 17th amendment. When Senators were agents of the States, it was at least plausible that justices would be confirmed, at least in part, due to their commitment to dual sovereignty. We used to have a bicameral system, we no longer do. We now live entirely within a representative democracy, the Republic is dead. All of this was intentional. Those who seek power over others are generally horrible people. They know that it is easy to inflame the passions of “the people” into accepting expanded government power.
Cheers,
Jeremy
The USC is what I call weasel worded. That is it is worded in such a manner that government can claim endless new powers. Ever notice that in olden times it took constitutional amendments and workarounds like tax stamps to achieve what today is just another law? Why does that happen? Because of the change in interpretation leveraging the weasel wording. The weasel wording is intentional as some of those founders wanted what we have ended up with.
As to getting out of a ticket well you are lucky. IME the judge simply says he knows the law and refuses to read it. Then he decides. Case closed, pay the fine or else. It wasn’t a court, it was a shakedown.
If one remembers that the constitutional convention was a coup in itself by a majority composed of British agents and loyalists, we should consider ourselves lucky that we got anything less draconian than Australia out of the mix.
Mr. Mark,
A lot of us here (including myself) used to be Constitutionalists.
ONE of the problems with the constitution, even if the citizenry could somehow enforce it, is that while it may ostensibly seem to limit government power, those which it allows are still far too tyrannical (Such as the power to tax) to be compatible with true liberty.
If someone has the power to take what is rightfully yours, you are not free; you are a slave- the very opposite of freedom.
If certain special men somehow have the right to do to you what you do not have the moral nor legal right to do to others (Such as take your stuff, and use violence- even lethal violence against you, and or throw you in a cage if you resist) then they are superior to you- your masters; your king- it matters not what you call them.
And one can not say that we the people have delegated those rights to such men, because: a)I don’t know about you, but I never did and never would; and b)We can not delegate rights which we do not have- and we do not have the right to take other people’s stuff, and to kidnap them or use violence against them if they have not harmed anyone else.
What, in reality, we have in the Constitution, are a few rumblings of some of the basics of liberty- embodied in the Bill Of Rights- and they do not go far enough; are not sacrosanct (as they are contradicted elsewhere in the document), are too ambiguous….and, because mere words on paper can not constrain evil men and tyrants- as Eric said, it is all about POWER- regardless of the form of government.
Government is about control. It doesn’t matter if it’s a monarchy or republic, or democracy, whatever- those with the power, have the say. The Constitution has done more to keep tyrants enshrined than anything, because it legitimizes the idea of government in the minds of the people- and it is not until and if people disabuse themselves of the belief in government, that they will ever have a chance of regaining the philosophy and power necessary to establish individual liberty.
Here is a great and amusing video by Larken Rose that should make you think- just 10 minutes- please watch it to the end, where the full point is made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngpsJKQR_ZE
Nunz,
I watched the video. Mr. Rose left out an important detail WRT taxes: he omits the detail that tax by capitation is prohibited; IOW, direct taxation was NOT allowed in the Constitution as originally drafted. That’s why the 16th Amendment was necessary for the income tax; the income tax IS a direct tax, which was prohibited, per Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4.
Prior to that, taxes were in the form of tariffs or excise taxes; that is, if you didn’t buy anything, you didn’t pay taxes. It seems to me that taxation, as originally instituted in the Constitution, were voluntary; you buy nothing, you pay nothing. It’s not intrusive. It certainly isn’t robbery as Larken Rose says.
Now, if Mr. Rose were to say that taxes in their present form are robbery, then he’d be right. Income taxes are taken from us against our will, which is robbery by any other name. However, the Constitution, as originally drafted, didn’t promote or permit robbery.
That is just semantics, Mark.
Direct or indirect- there is really very little difference. If they can tax your transactions; your commerce; your property; it’s essentially the same thing, as man can not live without physical things.
It’s just like when people say “There is no tax on property in the US; just an ad velorum tax- i.e. a tax on the value of the property”- which while linguistically true, in reality amounts to the very same thing- since one can not separate the value of something from the actual something being assessed.
Why did they have The Boston Tea Party? They should have just refrained from buying or selling tea! See how absurd that notion is?
Without realizing it here, what you are doing is the very thing I mentioned in my earlier post: Using the Constitution to legitimize government/tyranny/coercion/interference with peaceful people who are just going about their own business.
True, the more minimal government, and stricter interpretation of the Constitution would be better than what we have now- but do understand that the establishment and enshrining of that lesser government by the citizenry giving heed to the Constitution, is precisely how we got to this odious point.
You can find more than you ever wanted to know about the income tax, in excruciating detail, in the six-part video series that starts here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW1Pqey_pe4
Of course boiled down to the essentials it comes down to the ages-old playbook of the State – force and fraud.
Hi Mark,
We should take care to be precise with words. Any fee one is not obliged to pay isn’t a tax.
Marky Mark. Thank you all very much. I’m enjoying this thread. All of the Executive Branch regulatory agencies are unConstitutional, in my opinion. A regulation that contains a punitive phase is a law, in my opinion. Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution states that all lawmaking power shall reside in a Congress. NOT a President or a Supreme Court. That seems important, considering it’s the very first thing in the Constitution. Executive Branch regulatory agencies should NOT exist, and the Code of Federal Regulations should be shit-canned. The administrative state is sucking the lifeblood out of this nation. Also, I believe it was NOT James Madison that made the quote about America’s Constitution being intended for a moral and religious people and unsuitable for the government of any other. It was John Adams. Anyways. Peace to you.
None of those lawyers had a license from any domestic government to service.
I have nothing to add, Eric. I just wanted to say that this is a great piece, and I agree with everything you said in it.
Thank you, Jimi – and welcome to the site!
I haven’t seen a Hunt or Schneider COE tractor since they came to their senses over a decade ago.
I am not at all a fan of the John Birch Society! How can they know so much while remaining a loyal constitutional statists is beyond me, but they did put out this good article:
https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/17716-a-legacy-of-violations-the-u-s-bill-of-rights-hyperlinked
Sadly, the oligarchy and the politicians rushed in to claim credit and to bamboozle the masses. The common people had no say in the writing of the https://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/09/william-buppert/the-constitution-the-god-that-failed/ Articles of Confederation, or its illegal replacement: The CONstitution. The majority of the ruling class elitists claimed to have superior intellect over the common man just like the elitists today still do; yet there were highly intelligent people who tried to challenge them, and the predictions of the anti-federalists proved to be correct.
http://www.barefootsworld.net/antifederalist.html
The constitution allows for the imprisonment or murder by firing squad of we, the people, for insurrection against our tyrannical government like our founding generation had done. But what about when ‘they’ violate the ‘supreme law of the land’? They can at most get impeached, which is the same thing as getting fired!
The fact that the first three presidents violated the constitution without any meaningful consequence, and no effort was made to put teeth into the constitution, is proof that it was all a farce!
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/05/william-hogeland/libertarians-socialists-and-the-whiskeyrebellion/
Then we have John Adams and his unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Act which has already been covered above in the Alexander Hamilton link.
Thomas Jefferson had a far less odious violation IMO, but violate it he did.
http://www.billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources/lessons-plans/presidents-constitution/louisiana-purchase/
The generations who fought in the revolutionary war were in fact committing treason against their then government. I doubt that any of us US citizens would hold that against the founding generation. Note my use of the word generation instead of father. The common people founded this country because they did the work and the actual fighting; not the state or the politicians who arrived later.
The Louisiana Purchase was never completed by the auctioning of the land and the return of the proceeds to the general treasury, as Jefferson had intended and planned.
Since Word Depressed flags messages with more than 3 URLs as spam: I will break my message into pieces.
What most US citizens do not know is that George Washington was a whiskey tycoon. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/george-washington-whiskey-businessman-180951364/
As president, he and the scoundrel fondling father Alexander Hamilton created the whiskey tax, which was an unconstitutional direct tax.
https://www.ttb.gov/public_info/whisky_rebellion.shtml
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2008/10/thomas-dilorenzo/hamiltons-curse/
“Word Depressed” I like that! LOL! (Ditto “Fondling Fathers”)
Wurshington collaborating with Hamilton? That don’t sound right…I’ll have to look into that- but considering that many of these proponents of freedom were also slave owners…I guess anything’s possible. (Although they didn’t consider blacks to be human….and they may have been largely right about that, based on what we’re seeing lately…)
Hello Nunzio:
(Although they didn’t consider blacks to be human….and they may have been largely right about that, based on what we’re seeing lately…)
I suspect that our DNA plays a role here. People use the word Neanderthal as a pejorative label for primitive-acting people; but perhaps the pejorative should be aimed the other way. All races of people have the ability to form peaceful cultures; but perhaps it is easier for people that have a little Neanderthal DNA to accomplish that. Caucasians and Asians DO have some Neanderthal DNA in them; Africans do not. But then again, Caucasians and Asians certainly have had some extremely vile and barbaric leaders. I am no expert on these type of things. I am only speculating based upon what I have read here: http://discovermagazine.com/2013/march/14-interbreeding-neanderthals (especially pages 3-5)
Or if it would be different if called neandertals, as many do.
If you and your progeny moved to a clime like Africa and lived like them, you too would over time become “africanly” dark.
Over time, if you too lived outside in a ruthless sun most of the day instead of living in a dwelling you’ve constructed to shade your family will naturally select for darker and darker skin
in maybe as few as 700 years your great great postdecessors would be every bit as black as any modern African we see preening about.
Indeed you too would wind up as a founder of a nigger clan as would any humans who behave as outdoor low technology type homo sapiens behave.
We’re all potentially niggers basically.
Yeah! Just like wha’ hoppened to them Dutchmen that colonized South Africa. Theys all “people of color” now. It’s just a matter of time till all them Dutchmen start selling crack on every corner, and turning every city they live in into burnt-out garbage heaps.
At least all the knee-grows who moved to Canada are turning white!
Dunno why dem darn Injuns dat be libin in alaska fer cent touries hain’t turned white yet. dag nabbit. I mean theys ain’ts expose to africa climes you no. It be colds there a lot of de tims.
/scar off
Please overlook my fairly bad attempt at Ebonics……
If that is true, why haven’t Africans long living in northern climes gone white?
Hi, Brian,
Well, I don’t know about Neanderthals [Were they pre-historic Jews? ;)] or DNA, since they’re not all “like that”.
I think it’s more of a cultural thing. I mean, what you see with blacks, wherever they may go in the Western world, you see with no other group of people. No other group as a whole has such a propensity for violence and crime and destruction at an individual level.
There is no such thing as a low-crime all-black neighborhood- anywhere. For decades, places like England and France were touted as being color-blind, but once enough jigs arrived and started grouping together, even such accomodating places, they even turned their habitats into slums there!
You’ll find no other group which turn major areas of, or even entire cities, into post-apocalyptic bombed-out war-zones, like blacks will. When other races/minorities lived in those places, they were nice, safe,clean, functional places. As soon as a good number of blacks started coming in, they quickly turned into crime-ridden, disgusting hell-holes. I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes.
Look at Africa: Any place where the white man has not largely interfered, they are still living like they did 3000 years ago, in squalor, in single-story huts and shanties, with virutally no technology, and a propensity to have exponential numbers of kids whom they can’t support. (They basically achieve those same conditions here, when they are together in sufficient numbers).
And now that Islam has been foisted upon a large portion of Africans, they are descending even deeper into the cesspool of ignorance, brutishness and violence- as we are seeing with the plague of Moslim African immigrants here and in Europe.
And what’s worse, now their culture, in conjunction with the lowest echelon of white culture, is being propagated even more, thanks to all of the coal-burners [Fat ugly white chicks who sleep with homies]. This is actually a part of a long-planned goal of the people who really run this world- to dilute the races and destroy any organic herritage/cultures, to create a new breed of slave who will be ultimately loyal to the state, and to the unifying phony institutions the state creates to replace the organic ones of the family; the church; the free-market; etc.
Totally dependent, ignorant, easily controlled people who have no real past and no kinship with anyone in particular, but just “everyone” in general…..
It appears that the KKK panther has changed its spots.
I had to serve in jury duty in Springfield, Mo. during the late 1990s before I learned about anarchism. Jury pay was $1 per day for “just doing our civic duty.” A black foreigner who could speak 5 languages fluently had been arrested for mugging a white guy. There was no question that the guy had been mugged. What was in doubt was whether or not the defendant was the actual person who assaulted the white guy. To some white people: “blacks look all alike”.
We watched a video of the defendant being questioned by a coproach. He was unable to get the guy to admit guilt. I actually thought that the defendant was innocent. In the end, he was ruled not guilty because the state failed to prove him guilty.
I have not been a registered voter for many years now, therefore I will not have to worry about being selected for jury duty again. I suppose that they could some day change the law in order to cast a wider net over us. If that happens and I am selected: I will probably simply tell the judge that I am an anarchist who believes that only the Natural Law is legitimate. I may make an exception depending upon the case.
Brian, in most places, they have already cast that broader net…. In many states now, just having a driver’s license or ID card is enough. I’ve never registered to vote in my life, yet I got “called”.
Your post illustrates another problem with the injustice system: They can convict someone merely on the testimony of only ONE witness. For matters of less consequence and back when we had real communities where people knew each other, at least positive ID was not much of an issue- but today, with cities full of every race and ethnicity known to man, and it often being dark, and more so if the perpetrator is wearing stuff to conceal his features….what are the chances of making a true positive ID?
The pigs happen to pick someone up in the vicinity, whether for that crime, or because they had stopped him for something else….BOOM!- He goes in the line-up. The victim thinks “Well they did pick him up and he was nearby, and it does sorta look like him….” .
Now they try and make it into a “racial” thing that must never be spoken, the idea that other races “all look alike” to someone of a different race- but it is absolutely true- and has even been scientifically proven that people can’t distinguish more subtle features between people of other races. (Me? I even have a hard time with people of my own race!)
So there’s another problem I’d have with being on a jury- I’m not going to convict someone based on the testimony of only ONE person, and based on the fact that he just happened to be in the vicinity, etc. But then I’d have a problem too, because he may well be guilty, and I’d feel that I was doing the victim a terrible disservice.
It’s a no-win sitchy-ation, but with the system being so messed-up, and the crooked tactics used by the pigs and all, I just don’t want to be a part of it in any way shape or form. -As much as I would like to be able to free someone who was accused of a “tax crime” or “money laundering” or drug or weapons charges, etc. or conversely, to convict OJ!
Back to your case though: As usual, the real criminal was the state, for likely not allowing the victim to arm and protect himself. All I know, some jig mugs me, [if he lives] chances are about nil of me identifying him.
I read somewhere some of the Han chineses look so much a like they can unlock each other’s iPhone X’s.
The facial recognition software was programmed by people who failed to incorporate relevant data points.
It has nothing to do with “looking so much alike”.
The pigs think it’s great so it will be used. The Tx. DPS wanted to use it on DL’s years ago and the lege ruled they couldn’t. Of course it was found(I knocked it off the first time I had to reup my CDL, an obvious thing to someone who knew what they were looking at)they had implemented them anyway. They still use them even though the lege ruled they couldn’t. And so it goes.
But doing something illegal and getting away with it is something “certain” people can do with impunity.
The wife and I had 3 attorneys who colluded to tell us a lie to make the case easy for themselves and still take our money. I smelled a rat at the time but couldn’t prove it and there was a cabal that was verily after my old ass, sorta like Cliven Bundy has endured. I’m sure he got to where he could knock off the “perps” in their vehicles, I certainly did(do).
It does illustrate how cognitive functions which develop early in life, can indeed be different between different races- so that it can be difficult for those who have developed the cognitive skills to differentiate between different people of their own race, to differentiate between people of another race, since the features/markers which we look for and have developed skill in differentiating between in our race, are totally different in another.
If it doesn’t have to do with looking alike, why would it matter if the facial recognition software took that into any level of consideration?
For instance, Bill: The subtle differences that Westerners look for (unconciously, but which have to be quantified and defined in recognition software) which may differentiate one honky from another, may be quite different when it comes to those with slanty eyes.
Just as a pedestrian can easily tell the difference between a semi tractor and a car….but likely can not tell a Kenworth from a Pete.
Just as a pedestrian can easily tell the difference between a semi tractor and a car….but likely can not tell a Kenworth from a Pete.
Apt analogy.
Semi tractors never get on the road, since they are misnomers.
‘Splain?
(Can’t just say “tractor”, as that could include John Deere’s and Allis Chalmers)
And how come farm tractors often use their namesake’s entire names? I mean, we don’t refer to certain cars as “Walter Chryslers” ……
And who was “Mack” of big truck fame? And what was his last name?
And how come I’m talking like Andy Rooney today?
And did you ever notice….
I have a question to add to Nunzio’s. What did International do to piss off JB Hunt and Schneider? Both companies we’re loyal buyers of their trucks until suddenly they weren’t. That had to have been a gigantic financial hit to them, but no mention about that event is on Wikipedia.
Brian, I believe what happened with International and JB Hunt and Schneider was that states lifted their max length/wheelbase regs so that shorter COE tractors were no longer needed. Hunt and Schneider were two of the biggest buyers of these and International was the biggest supplier. Demand died and supply followed suit.
Brian, trucking companies have many reasons for dropping one brand for another.
Mostly it’s due to costs and sometimes those that cost the least end up with more repairs, what I would guess happened to IHC.
I’ve driven 3 Eagles and hated them all. Loud, and rough and for whatever reason, don’t get traction for crap.
Somehow that thick plastic the entire cab is made of is very heavy and cracks eventually. The hoods are nightmares to raise if the cylinders are kaput and mostly, that’s the case.
But new IHC’s have been notorious for electronic failures since about ’06 or so.
Seems like Freightliner has taken the mantle for cheapest good truck.
I can tell you a comparable year model Mack is much better, quieter with a better ride, than IHC. Since Volvo has owned Mack they are much more user friendly.
Back in the 60’s and 70’s Mack addressed a long lasting suspension with a huge stack of springs. They didn’t break but everything the springs held up broke including drivers.
One outfit I worked for had a fleet of Macks and in late 70’s was replacing it with air ride KW’s that were in a different universe from an old Mack…..of course there are no non-air ride trucks on the market nowadays.
I sincerely hope that you do not write error correction software for a living.
It’s true- They’re suing Apple, ’cause making software that can’t different between Asians be raciss! [If it couldn’t recognize Dagos, I’d be very happy].
To [cr]Apple, all Chinese rook a rike!
Hi Eric, et al,
A bit late to the discussion, but to be pedantic, I think unethical rather than immoral would apply more to the U.S. constitution. That said, the most cogent arguments against the U.S.C. were penned by Lysander Spooner in No Treason….here are the introductory remarks:
NT.0.1 The question of treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have been, if free States, instead of slave States, had seceded.
NT.0.2 On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union.
NT.0.3 The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.
NT.0.4 No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle – but only in degree – between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man’s ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.
NT.0.5 Previous to the war, there were some grounds for saying that – in theory, at least, if not in practice – our government was a free one; that it rested on consent. But nothing of that kind can be said now, if the principle on which the war was carried on by the North, is irrevocably established.
NT.0.6 If that principle be not the principle of the Constitution, the fact should be known. If it be the principle of the Constitution, the Constitution itself should be at once overthrown.
Spooner was a very interesting character….here’s a link to No Treason online….
http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-0.htm#intro
… un filamento de la red mundial de mierda …
CONSTITUCIÓN DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO
PREÁMBULO
Nosotros, el pueblo de Puerto Rico, a fin de organizarnos políticamente sobre una base
plenamente democrática, promover el bienestar general y asegurar para nosotros y
nuestra posteridad el goce cabal de los derechos humanos, puesta nuestra confianza en
Dios Todopoderoso, ordenamos y establecemos esta Constitución para el estado libre
asociado que en el ejercicio de nuestro derecho natural ahora creamos dentro de nuestra
unión con los Estados Unidos de América.
CONSTITUTION OF THE ASSOCIATED FREE STATE OF PUERTO RICO
PREAMBLE
We, the people of Puerto Rico, in order to organize ourselves politically on a basis
fully democratic,
promote the general welfare and ensure for us and
our posterity the full enjoyment of human rights, putting our trust in
Almighty God,
we order and establish this Constitution for the associated free state
that in the exercise of our natural right we create our
union with the United States of America.
http://www.ramajudicial.pr/leyes/Constitucion-Estado-Libre-Asocicado-PR.pdf
my fellow white people
https://kek.gg/i/88Z4_7.jpeg
real racism is funny, tragically so.
https://kek.gg/i/4rg-Mg.jpg
considering using this AltCoin called $USD…
https://archive.is/tfx89/9044a378750f5956be303b6d1076d22ac07e3b18.jpg
anyone ever mined or bought any?
seems shady though.
it is bound to be shady since mining requires digging in the dirt.
Just more worthless fiat currency- even worse than FRN’s because they can be even more easily manipulated.
What would constitute worthy fiat currency?
why do you so loathe the subjunctive tense and double adjective clauses?
every sentence need not be simple indicative
we’re big boys here
No such thing as worthy fiat currency. Well….I’ll fix that: No such thing as fiat money. Fiat=currency, and currency’s value is only in the current- not over time, as it’s value fluctuates.
Fiat is only a noun when it has wheels.
But that kind of Fiat is even more dubious than the paper variety….
At least its value is based on something tangible.
Hey Eric, Great article, very thought provoking, real eye opener, and interesting perspective you will never hear from the Ministry of Truth…
Thanks, Nasir!
When they come get me, you guys will know why…
So when are Libertarians packing their bags and heading for Somalia?
Clover,
Somalia is an example of your system – one based on violence. It is a more honest system than the Aussie (or U.S.) system, though – and that has its merits. Somali thugs do not hide behind double talk and euphemisms – as you do. They just take and kill, sparing their victims the folderol about “protecting the public.”
I’d like to ask you a serious question and hope you’ll reply in kind:
What gives you or any other human being the moral right to violate another human being’s right to be left in peace, to not have his possessions taken by force, who hasn’t violated your rights to the same? And if you violate another man’s rights, why should other men respect yours?
This is the moral issue at hand. And your answer will tell us whether you are a coercive collectivist – the degree doesn’t matter; you either are you aren’t – or someone who rejects coercion and collectivism as the basis for human interaction.
You can – and may – deride me and those who agree with me as “unrealistic” and many other things. But the one thing you can’t accuse us of is regarding other people as our property, to be used and ordered about.
That is what defines the coercive collectivist.
When Libertarians have the upper hand they like to others they’re not owed anything. You’re not owed freedom. Freedom isn’t the natural order. If you go out to live in the wilderness everything is trying to kill you. Heck, even a drink of water is playing a game of Russian roulette if you don’t know how to purify water properly. So you weren’t born in a Libertarian country (strange how none exists that are peaceful) but that’s your problem, no one else’s.
Gil, ” You’re not owed freedom.”
The bloody hell I am not! I do not need your permission to be left alone.
Please tell me who has the right to deny me my freedom and by what authority?! You?!
And voluntary interactions are not limited to the wilderness BTW.
“…Libertarian country (strange how none exists that are peaceful)…”
Name me any country that is Libertarian. And then tell me how they are not peaceful.
Clover,
Everyone is owed the right to be left in peace. Even you – so long as you yourself are peaceful. That, Clover, is what freedom is. And if you deny that freedom to others, then you accept that there’s moral reason others shouldn’t deny you yours.
And then you’ll complain you have to follow the laws and pay taxes because it’s unsafe to do otherwise. Rather Libertarians have found their sweet spot where they’re not entirely happy but doing anything about it will make things worse.
Clover,
I can’t even parse this statement of yours. But yes, I object to taxes in principle because they are theft in fact. And laws are only to be respected to the extent they comport with respecting a man’s right to be let alone so long as he causes no harm to others.
Poor ol’ Clover…
I guess Gil would have thought that those who hid Jews in Nazi Germany were terrible criminals; not to mention that disobedient Rosa Parks….
Oh, wait…when it comes to laws that transgress THEIR values and morals….then it’s different…..
And the taxes… Can he explain why I must pay a ransom just to exist; just to sell my own labor; just to receive any increase on my capital; just to keep an inventory in a store room; just to own raw land or an improvement which I’ve made upon it, or which sonmeone else may have made and for which I paid them what they agreed to for it’s value?
No, he can’t. His mind can not even fathom such machinations….it’s all justified to him because he believes in “authority” with the same non-existent justification.
You wrote:
“You’re not owed freedom. Freedom isn’t the natural order. If you go out to live in the wilderness everything is trying to kill you. Heck, even a drink of water is playing a game of Russian roulette if you don’t know how to purify water properly.”
What planet have you been living on? The scenario you described above is freedom, or to be more precise, one of the many forms of freedom can take. It is a scenario free of government thugs who persist in buttonholing strangers and insisting that they are owed “taxes”.
Another form of freedom is the Mennonite and Amish pockets in rural America, although those are under constant assault by IRS thugs.
Freedom is not about bears trying to eat you in the wilderness. Freedom is about freedom from tyrants who persist in trying to control you and demand money from you.
freedom
ˈfriːdəm
noun
1.
the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.
“we do have some freedom of choice”
synonyms: right to, entitlement to;
2.
the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.
“the shark thrashed its way to freedom”
synonyms: liberty, liberation, release, emancipation, deliverance, delivery, discharge, non-confinement, extrication;
Freedom = The ability to be/do/have without interference from other people.
If we’re “not owed freedom” [i.e. the right to be left alone], how is it that *some* have somehow acquired the right to molest us? Surely if we do not even have the right to just exist without interference, how is it that we would have the right to interfere with others?
That illustrates just another unresolvable contradiction in beliefs of authoritarians- but even to the few of them who possess the intellectual capacity to recognize such oxymorons, it matters not, because ultimately their philosophy is based solely on compulsion and force, so ultimately, they do not care about logic or morality, except as they can use such to justify their current dictates.
Morning, Nunz!
I gave Gil Clover an opportunity to defend his position intelligently. He declined. I’ve been trashing his posts lately.
Hi Ya, Eric!
Yeah…I noticed!
I had some good literary 2×4’s I wanted to thrash him with…. But just as well…it would do no good. Better to spend our time in more thought-provoking endeavors.
I get a lot more out interacting with our fellows here, than I do from arguing with those who are so immoral that they have no objection to organized extortion/violence, and think it their privilege to interfere with those who have not done violence to anyone- or to delegate that “right” of theirs to others to do so.
Rather than attempt to write a reasonable response to your attempt at trolling, I’ll let it to the professionals…
https://tomwoods.com/but-somalia/
I’ll be out of here pretty soon- but not to Somolia, thank you very much- as it is a product what happens when your god-men aren’t content just to tyrannize and destroy their own countries, but also use the world as their chess board/resource supermarket/slave market.
In what way is Somalia better than where we are?
Hi Bill,
“Gil” is an ancient troll who has been plaguing the site for years. He pops up every now and then, eructing the usual cliches and non sequiturs collectivists deploy when they wish to disparage Libertarian ideas.
That is similar to what a substantial minority of those on groups where I post say about me.
Gil must be falling behind. I believe the current mantra among the statists is: “If you don’t like it, why don’t you move to North Korea?”.
Apparently, the only other places in the world that they are aware of, are other places where strict authoritarian-collectivism is practiced. They are too stupid to realize that that is the very same political ideology in which they believe- just under a different flag.
Argumentum ad Somaliam?
Hahahahaha…
As per Argumentum ad North Koream
Gee Gil-Clover, is that your solution?
Deport anyone who doesn’t “bleat with joy” like you do when they are getting ass-fucked by their own employees? Or have you forgotten those power-hungry megalomaniacs are actually our employees, not our masters? Just because you wet yourself every time you get shorn and as-raped, doesn’t mean the rest of us should enjoy, or tolerate it. The fact that we must endure it for now, is only due to the fact that sheeple like you give them the justification to screw and rob all of us. After your not worth fleecing or screwing, you may march happily to the meat grinder for their amusement, but many of us will not. Why don’t YOU go live in Somalia and be their next “salad-bar”, twat!
“Bleat with joy”-classic
but seriously, how are these guys our employees???
Who is obligated to obey who?
Is the legislature obligated to do what we say
or
Are we obligated to do what the legislature says
did we form these organizations through a super vote of some kind
or
did a super-minority form these organizations and then pick up guns and subject us to their will
I understand what you mean. Employees “should” be following the instruction of the “employer”, and not vice-versa, which is what we actually have. I was using the term “employee” by definition only, that is to say, an employee, or servant, “the one who takes the wages”. What was in my mind at the time was a quote from “Lawrence of Arabia” where Auda-Abutai says the Turks serve him by paying him 500 golden guineas, and Lawrence reminds him that Auda servers the Turks because the “servant that takes the wages”.
Clover-Gil, on the other hand, believes that his taxes give him some sort of vicarious dominion over his fellow man, and will happily use corrupt laws and LEO’s to enforce his morality on others. Eric and I have an individual in our own proximity, MA, who loves to try to do the same. Gil, and M.A., and countless others like them, are powerless people who are frustrated by their own impotence, therefore they revel in the notion of “force by proxy” that our corrupted “public servants” offer them, without them actually having to dirty their own hands. In other words, they are dickless cowards!
Why does there have to be a solution?
Clover,
It appears you’re not interested in discussing the issue. You’re here to drive-by non sequiturs and personal attacks. This reveals the emptiness of your intellectual arsenal. Why not attempt to defend coercive collectivism? Or at least admit that you are a coercive collectivist?
You & co. sound like the tenants from hell. You think by occupying a place long enough you think you own it.
Clover,
According to your logic, the owner doesn’t own his property. It exists for the benefits of his renters. Why shouldn’t they – the renters – do as they please?
It’s not your land to own unless you conquered from someone else. Since you haven’t ousted the U.S. Government’s sovereignty over “your” land then you’re being the stubborn tenant hoping for some sort of squatter rights.
Clover,
I paid the price asked by the previous owner for the land; title to it changed freely and peacefully. Unlike you, I do not steal things.
This Gil character can’t be for real!
No one could be that stupid and yet remember to breathe! Could they?
You are positive proof that they can be ignorant of the autonomic nervous system.
Yes, that’s it. People like Gil operate solely on reflexes and muscle memory- principally, the muscle between their ears.
Nunz, the problem is that Gil is not only real but that the vast majority of humanity is made up of Gils.
Sadly, Skunky, that is very true. 99% of people today are like him/her/it, and their assent and participation gives a small group of tyrants more power than any king ever had, and perpetuates the monopoly.
Gil, who conquers (takes by force) land? Governments.
If we go and conquer Gil’s yard, will it then rightfully be ours? But then he’d still want us to pay taxes on it every year, as the overlords decree, even though they were not involved in it’s conquest.
And suppose we were to conquer all of the land which the government somehow now “owns” via supposed past conquests [Made via the money and service of those who that government extorted and conscripted] would we then be liberating it from the government, or from the people who now own it/reside on it?
Or I guess we then get to do like the government- and charge a yearly fee [as much as we determine it to be] to the current occupants for the privilege of being allowed to have their name on a piece of paper and of being able to use that land and sell the rights to someone else if they want ot, to title and use it.
So, essentially, in Gil’s world, private property doesn’t exist.
Essentially, private property doesn’t exist in any jurisdiction on the planet, as it was defined by Adam Smith.
Eric,
Please answer his question instead of emulating his avoidance.
“Why does there have to be a solution?”
whatever Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OnpkDWbeJs
Somalia?
Educate yourself.
Learn about the anarcho-capitalist Icelandic Commonwealth and Medieval Ireland.
For that matter, learn about the Amish, who are pacifists, therefore by definition cannot possibly have a government, with LEOs and state violence. Yet somehow they are able to live and let live, and have done so so for several centuries, despite harassment from the USG. How is that, eh???
Damn straight bevin. Those not willing to be ruled, want absolutely no part of it, find a way.
If the Argumentum ad Somaliam had any truth, and anarchism, aka the absence of government invariably resulted in all hell breaking loose, then rural Pennsylvania would be indistinguishable from Mogadishu.
Yet mirabile dictu, it isn’t.
Lol!
Now you’re just rubbing their face in it….and I love it.
From the late, great conservatist, collectivist, “I never saw a private prison I didn’t like” Ann Richards…..to the soon to come Republican majority who liked every law that would fill those prisons, yee haw!
Yep, when you can take an “offense”(don’t quite understand it in those terms….oh the state, got it)like spinning your tires a “jailable” offense, you’re really cooking…..the taxpayers wallets….
The undeniable reality is that anarchism, far from being “impractical utopianism impossible to implement in the real world”, is actually just the opposite.
It is mankind’s natural state of affairs when brute force coercion is deemed unacceptable, and the only way that human beings may relate to each other is through mutual consent.
When human beings decide in advance that physical violence or the threat of physical violence is subhuman, a just and peaceful world will emerge spontaneously.
The Amish and Mennonites are basically on the right track. Their “turn the other cheek” pacifism is fully consistent with the NAP. It is actually “above and beyond” the moral requirements of the NAP. Merely refusing to initiate force is enough. But no one is going to fault them for bending over backwards to be on the safe side of the NAP.
That being the case, their societies/subcultures fully qualify as one of many possible variants of anarcho-capitalism. Their refusal to use advanced technology is not an essential feature of anarcho-capitalism. It is merely a cultural preference. A lifestyle choice.
Anarchism wouldn’t last long enough to survive the filling of the short-term vacuum it would constitute.
Educate yourself about history before making a fool of yourself.
https://mises.org/library/medieval-iceland-and-absence-government
Those who claim that government is the source of social order say that in its absence there would be violence, chaos, and a low standard of living. They cite civil wars in Africa, drug wars in South America, or even Gengis Khan in Mongolia. They claim that these things, which are actually examples of competing governments, are what life without government will produce.
Another common objection to stateless legal enforcement systems is to ask for “just one example of where it has worked.”
Medieval Iceland illustrates an actual and well-documented historical example of how a stateless legal order can work and it provides insights as to how we might create a more just and efficient society today.
I learned that from Mises own writings, back in the 1980s.
I guess you missed the part about how Amish and Mennonite societies have lasted nearly three centuries?
As well as the part about you having preceded them.
Hi Bill,
“Anarchism” – like “liberal” – is one of those words the meaning of which has been so warped by deliberate and inaccurate usage as to render them both functional useless, if one wishes to speak coherently.
In popular usage, “anarchism” is taken to be synonymous with chaos and violence. It once meant, simply, the rejection of government – i.e., the rejection of some portion of the population presuming to be rulers, to whatever degree, over the others.
It doesn’t mean no rules.
One way to understand the concept is to consider our relationships with friends and family. There are rules – but no rulers. I invite friends to come to my house; they do so knowing I – as an example – do not allow smoking in my house. They accept this peacefully. They are free to come – and not smoke – or they are free to leave.
This is the sort of system the Amish and other groups have and while not perfect – what is? – it is at least a system tat does not officialize the oppression of the individual for the benefit of (or to satisfy the control lust of) other people, using shibboleths such as “the people” and “representation.”
Anarchism has been the absence of civil government for as long as I’ve been alive. Popular useage is a collection of illiterati. Marshall Fritz nailed it by calling it self-government, which would solve most of our problems if everyone would govern themselves instead of relying on bands of career criminals qua government to do it to and for us.
Eric, I see “Bill” is just here to show what a pedantic moron he is. He seems to be quite impressed with himself, sadly no one else shares his opinion. I say bugger off nit picker, you are fooling no one and a simply making a a$$ of yourself.
The major difference between us is that you only have ad hominem in your toolbox.
Bill, Anarchism was practised most of the world over for most of man’s existence, basically everywhere outside of the city-states, and outside the bounds of any empires. And even within those bounds in most respects, as the technology did not exist to forcibly manage every remote place- about the most they could do was impose a tribute on a jurisdiction- and other than paying that tribute, the people were still largely free.
Anarchism is just the natural way of being- normal life for human beings, minus the artificial constructs of organized violence and coercion which are created and enabled by the mass indoctrination in the belief in collectivism/authority.
Without government, wars, much crime, and genocides would largely cease to exist, and all that would be left would be random crime, which would be quite low, as people would be free to equalize the artificial force which criminals and governments now have, because people would then be able to arm themselves to the same extent which the criminals do; and to use whatever force is necessary against said criminals, without fear of persecution by the slave owner/Uncle.
It was the criminals who supported Prohibition.
It is the criminals who support the “War On Drugs”
It’s the criminals who support gun control.
Because all of those restrictions hobble innocent men and give the criminal advantage/superior power. Under our normal state of being (anarchy) the criminal has no such advantage.
My understanding of your lack of understanding increases every day.
Eric Peters: “The Constitution is an immoral document.”
Indeed! And while the people (led by Christians and Patriots) have been well-trained to sing its praises (the Pavlov-dog effect), it’s precisely the opposite of what most people believe about it. In fact, it’s the worst thing that ever happened to America.
America was once great but not for the reason most people believe it was. In fact, quite the opposite – a classic case of Isaiah 5:20, calling evil good and good evil.
Yahweh, God of the Bible, blesses nations (makes them great and prosperous) when they look to Him as their sovereign and thus His moral law as the standard for government and society, per Deuteronomy 4:4-8, 28:1-14, etc. Consequently, America’s greatness was the result of the 17th-century Christian Colonial governments of, by, and for God established upon His unchanging moral law:
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835: “They [the 17th-century Colonials] exercised the rights of sovereignty; they named their magistrates, concluded peace or declared war, made police regulations, and enacted laws as if their allegiance was due only to God. Nothing can be more curious and, at the same time more instructive, than the legislation of that period; it is there that the solution of the great social problem which the United States now presents to the world is to be found [in perfect fulfillment of Deuteronomy 4:5-8, demonstrating the continuing veracity of Yahweh’s law and its accompanying blessings, per Deuteronomy 28:1-14].
“Amongst these documents we shall notice, as especially characteristic, the code of laws promulgated by the little State of Connecticut in 1650. The legislators of Connecticut begin with the penal laws, and … they borrow their provisions from the text of Holy Writ … copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.…” (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols. (New York: NY: The Colonial Press, 1899) vol. 1, pp. 36-37)
On the other hand, Yahweh curses nations who reject His sovereignty and replace His law with their own man-made surrogates. Thus, America began to be cursed (by God’s long suffering only incrementally at first) when the 18th-century founders replaced the 17th-century Colonial governments with their own humanistic government of, by, and for the people based upon capricious Enlightenment traditions. Without repentance for these sins of sedition our complicity therein, it was inevitable that America would find herself teetering on the precipice of moral depravity and destruction.
For more regarding these two polar opposite forms of government, see Chapter 3 “The Preamble: WE THE PEOPLE vs. YAHWEH” of free online book “Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.” Click on my name, then our website. Go to our Online Books page, click on the top entry, and scroll down to Chapter 3.
Then find out how much you really know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey in the right-hand sidebar and receive a complimentary copy of a book that examines the Constitution by the Bible.
> Do you agree – or disagree – with the proposition that
> the only moral basis for interfering with any man is when
> he causes tangible harm to the person or property of
> another free man?
I essentially agree (modulo some minor question of what is meant by a “free man.”). I will raise you: Do you agree — or disagree — that in the absence of aggression (i.e., if I have caused no tangible harm to your person or property), if I (standing on my own property) ask you to leave me alone to the extent that I will not know about your existence if I remain on my own property, then you are, in principle, willing to honor that request?
And when I say, “in principle,” I mean “within reasonable limits,” e.g., I’m not asking you to move or kill yourself, just to leave me alone, not pollute my property—my air, my water, my well, my peace and quiet,…
If you agree, then you have accepted something called the nonaggression principle, and the two of us have the beginning of a foundation for doing something about this unfortunate situation created by the Constitution and all manner of some men dispossessing and ruling over others.
Without that explicit agreement (not for everyone to agree, but only for *some* people to agree and act on the consequences—just you and I if you like), I’m not seeing much of a way forward to improve the situation. With that agreement (and one more ingredient—namely a workable notion of what constitutes property) it seems possible that something can be done. And it should be done. There’s nothing stopping you/us.
Hi Eric,
You have stated the truth. The constitution is no friend of freedom, no benefactor of morality and no companion of justice. It is merely a con and a tool used by thugs to rob, control and exploit the many.
Theft is theft no matter what you call it or how you dress it up.
All government is extortion and violence, no matter what “paper” there is supposedly limiting it’s voracious appetite. As long as a select group has any power to force others to obey them freedom is nothing but a fantasy.
Thanks for all your wonderful articles!
Brilliantly, simply stated Eric. Bravo, sir.
I’d share with a bunch of statists, but likely to no avail…
the 1789 CONstitutional CONvention was simply a counter revolution to the radical ideas of Paine, Jefferson, Henry and such.
Why do you think it was done in secret, with no public allowed?
Whether the Federalists feared an out of control Jacobean element, (that occurred just a few years later in France), really believed in fiat currency and powerful central government, or were just looking out for their short term business interests, matters not at all.
All that matters is that they got what they wanted, a powerful central government.
Which the Anti Federalists warned us of.
And they turned out to be 100% right.
How did all the anti-federalists get elected to the White House, then?
Spot on anti federalist!
If you would like to get into the legitimacy and morality of man’s law VS natural law I do not think there is a better primer than Mark Passio’s YouTube on Moral Relativism. You will find it on this MFP page.
http://missourifreepress.com/2017/09/05/moral-relativism/
Either it will expand your outlook, or you will fail to grasp it… the first time you are exposed to these ideas. I like Lew Rockwell’s views and tend to lean towards a philosophy of free market anarchism.
In Liberty!
Dum Spiro, Pugno ~MFP
Yes the Constitution is a joke but why? Because “Iron, cold iron is master of them all” (Kipling)
The Sovereign is THE one who controls the guns. Sovereignty is the concept that few truly understand. You cannot have supreme power without supreme control over force. It usually takes combat duty to make a man understand that it is the gun that matters. Paper is only good for wiping your ass. Try waving your papers at the check point and see how well they stop bullets. Power flows from the barrel of a gun.
In other words, all checkpoints are Checkpoint Charlie.
Great! Now I have to live with this “We the People” tattoo forever. Great article, as always, just wish it was three months ago, lol.
Not just that, Dan, but now ya have to carry around a mouse in your pocket so’s ya can be a “We”.
Some of the best thoughts on freedom being published today have been coming from this here car blog. I love reading posts written by someone who has a core understanding of the human world and the way it works. Well done. Very well done.
Thanks, Huck!
I think the car fetish is helpful… or at least, it worked for me!
BEST article yet!
Thank you.
What would the Constitution look like if it had been written by a committee of Eric Peters clones?
There wouldn’t be one, because you don’t have the right to delegate to others a right that you do not already possess as an individual.
Yep! Anarchy, and the right to exist and be left alone needs no constitution, nor can it be ensured by any. A Constitution establishes a government; and government is the antithesis of anarchy, and by it’s very existence precludes the ability to be left alone and just exist.
Since the Constitution we have is a rarity in human history, what established the majority of the governments that never had a constitution?
Good thread and thoughts guys…
If you would like to get into the legitimacy and morality of man’s law VS natural law I do not think there is a better primer than Mark Passio’s YouTube on Moral Relativism. You will find it on this MFP page.
http://missourifreepress.com/2017/09/05/moral-relativism/
Either it will expand your outlook, or you will fail to grasp it… the first time you are exposed to these ideas. I like Lew Rockwell’s views and tend to lean towards a philosophy of free market anarchism.
In Liberty!
Dum Spiro, Pugno ~MFP
God so loved the world that he didn’t send a Committee
The Christian trinity isn’t a committee?
WOw, you don;t know anything about the trinity and it shows.
I guess that is what happens when one chooses not to be superstitious.
Well what you are really saying is I want a “man made god” because when I die it will be done with me, unlike the Christian God Who will never be done with me. Any God Who will judge my every action & thought (thought police) is the real villain. How dare my Creator not let me do whatever I want forever–what an asshole.
Is that about right?
Wow! Well-said, Wyatt!
All gods are manmade.
What about the One who created matter, since matter has not eternally existed, as admitted by nukular physics?
And if one and the same created intelligent self-replicating life, with DNA so complex that if stretched out into a single line, it would reach to the Moon and back 1500 times.(assuming the heliocentric model with the Moon being 250K miles away).
nukular physics?
You don’t have to be superstitious to be somewhat knowledgeable about a subject. Clearly, you are not knowledgeable about anything, just a cretin posting his issues.
Superstition relies only on ignorance.
Were you a regular at the daily paul?
No, although I was a full-time paid petition circulator for Bert Blumert’s ballot access drive for Dr. Ron Paul in 1987. I don’t read much of what Dr. Paul writes outside of what appears on LRC, because he deliberately keeps it simple so that newbies can grasp it. I would vote for him regardless of what he was running for.
1. No individual, group, government, or entity, no matter how organized, may initiate non-consensual harm…
Sounds good….but as soon as you establish a body to enforce it…you’ve broken it!
The only true way to prevent harm, is for there to be an equalization of power among the citizenry. i.e. all must be free to use the same methods and weapons to defend themselves.
How does establishing a body to enforce it, break it?
I don’t know how successful this law would be at preventing harm, but it would extinguish the legal right to cause it.
This law provides a bright line that no one may cross without legal consequence.
That said, I do agree with the rest of your second paragraph.
Well, Mike, it’s like this: If we create an entity which has the right to enforce the terms of our little constitution- i.e. to punish those who refuse to abide by it, then we granting special rights and privileges and powers to that group- such as the right to initiate violence, seize property, or deprive people of liberty- which no one else has- thus making them rulers who are entitled to use force and coercion; and we are establishing something whose administration must be paid for- thus giving that group yet more special privileges- i.e. to tax….and that is how we end up with a system like the very one we now have.
I know, it may sound strange if you’ve never thought of things this way before- but none-the-less, it’s true.
The only way to have true liberty, is to not have government. Once you give special rights and privileges to anyone, you are giving them powers which the average man does not have- so then the average man becomes inferior/subjugated to the one(s) with the special privileges.
Such anarchy can never insure that anyone will be safe all of the time, or that there will be no crime- but neither can tyranny. At least with anarchy, we would have freedom, and considerably fewer criminals to battle- since the government variety would no longer exist (and no longer be funded by us!)- and people being free to arm themselves ax they please, and to respond to the violent and abusers of property rights as they choose to, would no doubt deter a lot more criminals than our present neutered system does.
If you’re new to this sort of thing, do a search on youtube for “Larken Rose”- he has some great and very common-sense and straight-forward videos about things like this.
Maybe…but maybe you’re making a leap.
I will only point out that creating an entity does not require the additional act of granting the entity special privileges.
On the contrary, if we created an entity (I don’t know why we would, but there could be reasons) and it attempted to commit such crimes, then those harmed would have the right to defend themselves both with force initially, and with court once the danger had passed.
The root problem is that a select group of people have the right to initiate non-consensual harm upon the rest of us…with no consequence…impunity…legal immunity. This is power absolute, and it is devastating.
Again…
1) No individual, group, government, or entity, no matter how organized, may initiate non-consensual harm…
No, you’re wrong. Why? Because the ONLY constitutional body that can LAWFULLY enforce laws, etc are the People as the Militia of the several states (trained as the Congress requires the military to be trained, armed by the Congress, etc). US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clauses 15 & 16. No “standing military” was to be here in the USA, which is why all able-bodied Americans were to be trained as the military is trained; so to stop the cost of military. But after the WWII the military industrial congressional complex (US military brass, defense contractors, and those congress who fed at their troughs and the also forbidden “intelligence agencies”) grew up and has been working to destroy the USA, the US Constitution every since.
But that changed within our nation around the early 1920’s, though in my lifetime guns were still found LAWFULLY in rifle racks in pick-up windows in the 60’s and 70’s, particularly during hunting season in high school parking lots. The only shootings in schools was Kent State by a governmental national guard.
Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Initiator of the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which passed the Bill of Rights: “Whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it.”
George Washington, “Sentiments on a Peace Establishment”, letter to Alexander Hamilton; “The Writings of George Washington”: “It may be laid down, as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government…, but even of his personal services to the defence of it, and consequently that the Citizens of America (with a few legal and official exceptions) from 18 to 50 Years of Age should be borne on the Militia Rolls, provided with uniform Arms, and so far accustomed to the use of them, that the Total strength of the Country might be called forth at Short Notice on any very interesting Emergency.”
Bertrand Russell,1953: “… Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible…” (“The Impact of Science on Society”, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1953)
Ignorance is NOT bliss. I wrote an earlier comment with all backing, proofs, but it was too long for here. Reply if you want an e mail from me with the proof of what I say.
Cal,
Individuals (in their private, every day, just a guy capacity) can and do enforce laws.
Cal,
Individuals (in their private, every day, just a guy capacity) can and do enforce laws.
Ooooops, I missed your “constitutional body” qualifier.
Also, was the “your wrong” aimed at “Nunzio” or “Mike”.
It is constitutionally REQUIRED that the peole be armed and trained in the use of those arms to be used as the Militia of the several states by both the federal government and state governments. Everything else, every other agency that is used by them as enforcement is forbidden.
We might still be under the Articles Of Confederation, maybe with more States or maybe with fewer States … and I approve.
Without the Constitution Of These uSA there might not have been a Trail Of Tears; no massacring of Plains Indians; no Mexican-American war; no Spanish-American War, no Filipino-American War (ops, sorry, Filipino Insurrection); no dethroning the Kingdom Of Hawaii; no presence in Asia to antagonize the Japanese Empire, no involvement in WW1 to setup WW2; no involvement in overthrowing of governments in South and Central America, Syria, Iran, etc; no destruction of the Great Northern Railway; no war against States deciding to secede; no acceptance of standing army nor navy; etc.
Of course, no redo, so what the alternate errors wold have been, who knows?
Over the course of decades I’ve come to the conclusion if a person does bother to read these “founding” documents, they tend to interpret was is written there through the lens of the propaganda they were fed by persons of “authority.” If a person actually reads each section of the Constitution, the Amendments, the Declaration, and thinks about the the rationalizing engaged in to produce those ideas, and very different picture comes forward.
A simple review of the preamble of the B of R explicitly states the why and how of Rights. If Congress can declare what they are, then they can declare what they are not. If Congress can specify them as limits to their own rapacity, they can un-specify them at any time, and ignore them as Washington and Adams did from the get-go.
Personally, I would not exclude TJ from the ideological intent of the Constitution though he was not present. His sidekick Madison was there–a man who resisted the idea of Rights–and favored us with notes of what took place. Madison wrote a piece on the balance of majority vs minority rights, and only succeed in digging himself a pit of justifications for Federal aristocracy.
What Mr. Peters wrote here about the Constitution applies equally to the Declaration. Both are based on fallacious assumptions about Rights and the “equality” of Man.
I have been declaring this same perspective to all my friends and relatives whenever they decry the misuse of Federal power. The present state of affairs is exactly the provision for future governance that was intended back then. They knew then the probability of the “grand experiment” succeeding as an instrument of Liberty was destined to fail, simply because whenever two or more people come together they form a hierarchy, and then a power structure in order to maintain the hierarchy. Man does it. Elephants do it. Chimps do it. Birds do it.
The biggest trap laid by the constitution is the Plenary Clause. That little bit that gives congress plenary (complete and absolute) power over a ten square mile area known as The District of Columbia. No sooner had the ink dried on the Constitution for the united States, then ole’ George Washington overlaid federal “districts” on the sovereign states in order to deal with the Whiskey Rebellion because the feds had no jurisdiction in Pennsylvania past what was granted in Art. 1, Sec 8.
These “districts,” existing somewhere above the land of the states put those areas into the jurisdiction of the municipal and territorial governments of the District of Columbia, a separate City-State from the States of the Union which were collectively known as The United States of America.
In 1871 a corporate reorganization created an entity known as the UNITED STATES which is the municipal government of DC which has plenary power over the district and the territories. Add the 14th Amendment and a new “citizen” was created in order to give the recently freed slaves some sort of political status. These are known as UNITED STATES, or US citizens. They have “civil,” not inalienable, rights and possess duties and obligations to the UNITED STATES.
Through trickery and lies the creators of government, the people, American state nationals and in some cases State Citizens, were convinced they were US citizens and that this was the patriotic thing to do. They were lured in by an offer of goodies such as Social Security, unemployment insurance, voter registration (electors elect representatives) etc. The States reorganized into corporate franchises of this federal monster between the 50’s and the 70s by passing new constitutions and became known as THE STATE OF________.
State nationals and state Citizens were trapped beneath an overlay known as “this state” in their respective, and formerly, sovereign states and, by professing US citizenship, were now subject to the 80,000,000 statutes and codes of the UNITED STATES and THE STATE OF ______, which are, essentially, the same entity.
By accepting the goodies and benefits offered by the UNITED STATES, the people became little more than medieval serfs, bound to their overlords, like dancing monkeys, to carry out the duties and obligations of
UNITED STATES citizens. In other words, we volunteered to be slaves, just as Hamilton envisioned. So, yeah, Eric, the Constitution did exactly what it was written to do.
Let’s us accept the history you laid out to be true for the sake of argument. Or simply that people were brought into the present slave state by legal maneuvers and morphing of law over time. What is still missing are key items with regard to it being voluntary.
First of those key items being agreeing to the contract. Spooner shows how no living person is party to that contract so there is no reason for me to repeat it. Second if it could be shown that we agreed to this contract it must be shown it was not done under fraud or coercion. Since you clear state there was fraud involved and we both know that those who insist upon their rights and refuse to agree to any such contract will suffer significant penalties including imprisonment and death, then that makes the contract invalid.
Thus I disagree, there is no voluntary agreement since those who do know of the fraud are indeed kept in bondage through threat of violence. It does not matter if we know the federal income tax is illegal or anything else, the choice is do as they demand or end up in prison or dead.
What if you didn’t have to be agreed to be ruled in order to be ruled?
That’s my point, one’s agreement is moot. It’s done with violence. People are psychologically conditioned to it for the sake of making violence workable. If everyone knew and stood up violence wouldn’t work. So long as it can pick off a minority one at a time it works fine.
BTW, I meant to write…
What if you didn’t have to agree to be ruled in order to be ruled.
And, I guess we’re on the same page then.
I think its time for us critically thinking folks to organize again
Second if it could be shown that we agreed to this contract it must be shown it was not done under fraud or coercion. Since you clear state there was fraud involved and we both know that those who insist upon their rights and refuse to agree to any such contract will suffer significant penalties including imprisonment and death, then that makes the contract invalid.
Bingo!
Good thread and thoughts guys…
If you would like to get into the legitimacy and morality of man’s law VS natural law I do not think there is a better primer than Mark Passio’s YouTube on Moral Relativism. You will find it on this MFP page.
http://missourifreepress.com/2017/09/05/moral-relativism/
Either it will expand your outlook, or you will fail to grasp it… the first time you are exposed to these ideas. I like Lew Rockwell’s views and tend to lean towards a philosophy of free market anarchism.
In Liberty!
Dum Spiro, Pugno ~MFP
I used to hold the Constitution in great regard until I started asking the question, then everything changed.
The question is a simple one. Who, exactly, gave these 39 guys the right to write the rules for some 3 million people living in the newly-minted US at the time? If they didn’t have the moral authority to write it, then the whole premise is moot.
Imagine if I, along with 3 dozen other guys, decided for let’s say Manhattan and Brooklyn (since I live in Manhattan and the size of the two is comparable) that the inhabitants of those two boroughs and everyone who followed would have to live by a set of rules we set forth. They’d have to pay taxes to us and live according to what we wrote on that document. People would say we are nuts, yet that’s what essentially happened.
All the nonsense of “Consent of the Governed” is just mental gymnastics and it is actually an oxymoron. If you consent to something, you have no need to be governed, which means to be ruled. Consent is voluntary. Being governed is most definitely not.
We live in a society where people have been indoctrinated into believing they must adhere to a set of rules handed down by politicians. The fact that we get to “vote” means nothing. We talk about freedom a whole lot, but there is little of it. A truly free society is one where you are free to live your life as you see fit, associate with who you choose to, and you buy and sell with people who choose to do business with you. So long as you do these things without infringing on others, you are free. That’s freedom and it isn’t what we have here.
That is just the beginning of the BS G3Ken
The constitution by itself is not too bad, but they do not even follow it at all..
They also think that they can write legislation and that magically it supersedes the constitution without a constitutional amendment. (i.e. all gun laws and drug laws)
missourifreepress.com/2018/01/05/we-are-surfs-that-are-ruled-by-criminals/
Even an amendment or the constitution itself is illegitimate when it tramples a god given right.
Such as the amendment that outlawed alcohol. That was illegitimate even with a constitutional amendment.
Really? Where did the folks who wrote the Constitution get the moral right to create a set of rules that other people must live by?
Can I delegate the right to do something to others when I do not possess that right myself? For example, if I cannot take your money to pay for my child’s education, where do I get the right to give “permission” to someone else to take your money to pay for my child’s education. It’s a dangerous road, and that is why we are where we are today.
I’m in no way saying there are no rules to live by. We know what they are. Do not murder, steal, and rape, for example. Why do we know that? Because almost any rational person would agree that, if we witnessed such an act, we would have the moral right to intercede and put a stop to it.
On the other side, nobody in their right mind would think that you have the moral right to stop someone who is travelling and minding their own business and take their money under the threat of violence because that weren’t wearing a seat belt.
A truly “free” society can exist, but a free and moral society must exist without the inherent threat of force, which is what government is today. Anything and everything it does is with the implied threat of violence. If it didn’t, everything it did would be a suggestion and it would have no power.
As for leaders, people will always gravitate toeward someone with a particular skill or expertise. That’s in our DNA. The difference is taht when a “leader” begins to act imn a fashion that is detrimental to my well-being, I have the right to ignore him and walk away. With government, you do not have that option.
Ever wonder why crime is a fraction of what it once was, yet we continue to incarcerate people at an incredible rate compared with the rest of the world? It’s our government criminalizing every type of behavior, in order to exercise its control and profit from the police/prison state.
You would think that some of the states klegalizing pot would wake people up as to the nature of true crimes vs. “breaking the law”.
e.g. rape or assault or robbery or murder is always a crime and always will be. No politician needs to draft a law to tell us that it is; and if they were to write some claptrap to try and legalize such things, people would realize the folly of the whole notion of legislation.
Now when it comes to growing a plant and partaking of it’s leaves or selling said leaves to a willing buyer, someone whom they’ve never met writes words on a piece of paper and signs it, and it becomes a alw, and suddenly growing or possessing or using or selling said plant is decalred a “crime”, though it does violence to no one’s person or property.
Then, some time passes, and someone else writes something else on a piece of paper and signs it, and suddenly what was a ‘crime” is no longer a crime. And what constituted “endangering the welfare of a child” if the plant were even allowed to be in a child’s presence, or consumed in it’s vicinity….is now fine and dandy.
The only thing that has changed, are the words on a piece of paper. You would think that such would wake people up to the fact that the decrees of politicians have nothing to do with right and wrong or good or bad- and would illustrate how ludicrous the concepts of law, as opposed to morality, are.
Or here where I live. The next county over was a dry county until last year. Now it no longer is. The former sheriff who used to arrest bootleggers, now works at a liquor store, doing what he used to arrest people for.
But people don’t seem to notice or get it- even if you explain it to them. They’re happy, as long as some of the precepts of their morality are enforced upon others.
Article 3 contains the zinger which allowed for all the nonsense they’ve done.
Spooner’s Constitution of no authority again.
“The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but “the people” then existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves.”
We’d have a radically different legal system if it were as it was when Spooner wrote Trial by Jury.
All trial by jury means, is that your life and liberty are in the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.
I would love to pull jury duty on a victimless crime type of case where I can use jury nullification to bring the entire crushing machinery of the State to grinding halt. All you have to do is kick back and say “the persecutor did not prove the State’s case beyond a reasonable doubt” and leave them scratching their pointy little heads as to what they did wrong. Play your cards close to your vest and there is not a damned thing the dirtbags can do about it. (Of course you have to play the compliant, indoctrinated slave during voir dire.)
http://fija.org/
Yes.
You can’t let them know you’re an advocate of jury nullification.
You have to just say “I don’t think the persecutor [sic, lol] proved his case”‘
Kindly cite the law that requires you to say anything?
Bill, haven’t you noticed that our overlords are above the law? Do you have a bigger gun and more soldiers than they?
No law needed. The judge bangs the gavel and says “contempt of court”- and the goons whisk you away.
Just another reason not to accept the invite to play in their sandbox.
They are above your interpretation of their law, but not your ability to game their pretenses.
There is no legitimate reason required to vote not guilty on a jury. Jury deliberation is illegitimate.
And judges are not supposed to “instruct” juries, nor question jurors….but they routinely do.
Because the jurors are just as ignorant as the rest of the gallery.
Hi Bill,
Agreed. Also, a major flaw with the concept is that it selects the unemployed. I don’t know anyone who has the time to spend on jury duty. My friends and I – all independently employed/small businessmen – literally work seven days a week. How does one justify the economic loss of not working for – potentially – several weeks (or even several days) to be on a jury?
I know I can’t do it.
If called, I won’t “serve.”
If they dragoon me in there, I will spout racist invective and assure them that I hate everyone and as far as I am concerned, everyone’s not guilty of anything…
If there were any intelligent individuals writing legislation, or at least court rules, they would recognize that they have a large body of citizens who would gratefully remain on jury duty indefinitely as long as they received room and board along with immunity from prosecution for loitering.
When the invited me to play in their sandbox, I sent them a letter explaining that I would:
Not convict anyone of a victimless crime.
Not convict anyone of anything which was not a punishable offense in the eyes of God.
And that I am a self-employed one-man operation who is solely responsible for maintaining my income by my own endeavors.
I got a permanent exemption from ever being called again!
Just the last of my three excuses should do it for you though, Eric.
It’s not as if we have jobs or goobermint positions where we get paid when absent for jury duty.
Jury duty would be economic hardship on us.
A local friend who is a small business owner and essentially a one-man operation got called….and actually “served”. He was basically out of business for several weeks! (Luckily, his wife works).
Eric, I’ve been called for jury duty several times. Most times I don’t have to show up. When I have had to show up all but once I stayed in the waiting room. The one time I got into the court room I didn’t get into the jury box. But if I did I knew I wouldn’t stay there.
See, the judge requires the jurors to apply the law as the judge explains it to them or something close to that. That is basically giving up the real power of the jury.
All one has to do is make it clear that he’ll judge the law and booted from the jury selection he shall be.
Also there questions on the war on some drugs… if you won’t convict on principle, booted you shall be.
It may be hard not lose a day but not ending up on a jury is easy with principles like ours.
Nunz, hafta respectfully disagree with you here.
I know a lot of my fellow Liberty minded people disagree but I think jury duty is something we should – must – get active in instead of avoiding it. To me it is necessary for us to come to the aid of our fellow man whenever the government is attacking him through the courts. Would we not want someone on our side should we find ourselves in the docket for some bullshit “crime”?
Stealth must be used to get on the jury so that we can do just what Jason Flinders advocates above. If just one member of the jury was committed to the absolute right/authority of jury nullification he/she might be able to persuade the other jurors to vote not guilty to immoral false laws. Often all that is needed is for one person of proper morals and courage to take a stand to inspire others to stand as well. Imagine if prosecutors started losing every victimless “crime” case like pot smoking/possession/selling!
Jury duty can be an act of rebellion. Let us embrace this tactic.
Skunk, over the years I’ve pondered those very things which you’ve mentioned- but the reality is often quite different than what we might imagine.
Jury nullification isn’t so easy. And depending on the crime and type of case, just one person dissenting on a jury might not accomplish anything.
And as much as I’d like to see people not convicted for victimless crimes, I have to say, that about 90% of locasl cases are drug cases- and while I’d never convict for any drug-related charge, I have to say, that considering the nature of most of the “offenders”, I think the use of my time would largely be a waste- as the vast majority of them are rabble, thieves, welfare cretins, and generally people who don’t give a rat’s patoot about their own freedom, and just keep ending up in Uncle’s net, because they just don’t care, or are perpetually getting in trouble for other misdeeds.
Then there are the more serious cases- for real crimes. Where someone may be guilty of something like robbery- and you don’t want to let them off- but yet you know the penalty for their crime is unjust/inappropriate. Then what?
If you don’t want to be responsible for a miscarriage of justice, to the victim or the perpetrator- what can you do in a system such as this?
My mother was on a jury years ago- A bunch of niggers broke into an occupied home to rob it, and also raped the family’s teenage daughter, and abused the parents.
The defendants were clearly guilty. But because they somehow managed to have a great lawyer, much info was never brought to light or stricken from the record. In the end, a mistrial was declared, and my mother ended up wasting about 2 weeks of her time.
It would be nice to be able to truly do something to positively affect justice, and throw a monkey wrench in the wheels of the system, but the chances of actually being in a position to do so on any given jury call, are very slim.
This “justice system” is so perverted, there is really precious little good we can do from within.
My niece’s idiot kid just sentenced to 5 years in prison. Ultimately, it was for drugs and repeated parole violations- but they had let him go so many other times in the past for things like robbery and vandalism; and the stupid kid is just a lazy no-account POS- and never even went out of his way to hide his drug use/dealings- but rather even posting on Facebook about them, that I think that you or i would have been quite the fool to have worked to set him free.
The system is so screwed up; this society is so screwed up- it’s not a black and white world anymore. From the belly of such a system, it’s hard to even truly know sometimes, in the artificial halls of injustice, if we’d be doing good or bad.
It’s rather easy, actually. For someone who believes in a higher power, that higher power reserves vengeance to himself. Call it God, call it karma, call it nature, it matters little. Always serve on a jury, never vote for the state to take its pound of flesh from your fellow man unless he has broken a real law- thou shalt not murder, rape, etc.
“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord”. “It is for me, I shall avenge.”
Justice and vengeance are neither synonomous nor related.
Serving on a jury is doing the duty assigned in the Declaration of Independence.
Vengeance is one thing; justice is another. We [believers] are commanded to abstain from vengeance, but to enact justice.
The trouble is, in a rogue system such as our present country, it’s not just a matter of guilt or innocent. The laws are so perverted. The courts are so perverted [often the truth which would prove guilt or uphold innocence is barred from being mentioned]; and even when guilt of a legitimate crime is obvious, the punishment is often unjust- either for the victim, or the perpetrator, or society- of all of the above-so that even when you are trying to do good, our present system makes it impossible, and merely ends up making us a party to injutice, in one way or another.
Believers are frequently difficult to discern from schizophrenics.
Nunz, please note that I am referring to cases of BS victimless crimes and jury nullification.
The other side of the coin is that yes, those who commit real crimes against their fellow man must be dealt with fairly but quickly and harshly. And that too is up to us Napians serving on juries for such crimes as well. OJ as an example.
In other words, Justice must be done. (Justice is defined as protecting the innocent while punishing the guilty.) It is up to good men and women to make this happen.
Oh, I know and agree, Skunk.
We could do good by foiling the state’s plans to cage to committers of victimless “crimes”.
And we could do good making sure that justice gets served when someone is guilty of a real crime.
But the reality is, most cases are neither here nor there. And in important cases, half the time the truth doesn’t even come out; and then as I’ve said, half the time, this system perverts justice so much, that you don’t want to acquit the guilty, yet you also don’t want to see an unjust penalty imposed…so you end up in a real quandry.
I just see jury doody as a position in which it would be rare for us to be able to do any real good, but where we’d just end up doing free labor for the state, and likely end up just sitting on a bunch of BS petty thug cases.
Only one juror is required to vote not guilty to acquit the defendant. Anything less than unanimous guilty is acquittal. Mistrial has nothing to do with the jury.
I know, Bill. The defendants were overwhelmingly guilty. A mistrial was declared because of a remark the judge had made. My point was: The utter futility of my mother’s time and effort.
I think oftentimes, by being on a jury, we just end up being a part of the machinery of the system, despite our intentions.
In a case where someone has committed a real crime, such as robbery or murder- our presence accomplishes nothing.
In a pure drug or tax case, or Constitutional rights being violated by the gov’t, etc. we could no doubt do some good- but what are the chances?
It’s far more likely that we’d end up on a trial of someone like the douchebag I saw in the paper the other day: Stupid tattooed pill-popping welfare cunt gets caught stealing from Walmart. Has drugs in her purse, and has a warrant for passing bad checks….
I’m going to lose money and waste my time for that? For someone I wouldn’t spit on? They could put her up against a wall and shoot her, and I wouldn’t care too much…..
But what do you do if you’re on the jury?
To not convict someone like that would be a slap in the face to the those whose property she stole by shoplifting and by writing bad checks.
To convict her would also be a disservice, as it would be punishing the taxpayers who have to feed and shelter her in the barred hotel- and it would still be a disservice to her victims, as it would prevent her from making restitution and paying punitive damages…..
So essentially, I’d be in a no-win situation- neutered by the system which has conscripted me to do it service….and all for what? For some stupid cunt who doesn’t respect property rights, and who cares so little for her own freedom that she’ll blatantly risk it for $20 worth of Chinese garbage.
The time is past for such things. This society is just too far gone.
Probation and restitution were more indicated than incarceration or a mistrial.
The mistrial trial- the one my mother was on- was for robbery, rape of a 14 year-old in her own bed in front of her parents; and assault of the parents….
And there were 13 eyewitnesses, you and the jury panel?
Nope- just three witnesses (Not counting the admissions of the accomplices who were talking) as well as forensic evidence.
Or maybe the middle-class white fambly just enjoy beating the crap out of each other, trashing their home, and accusing random groups of niggers of felonies….
The only reason I never performed jury duty is because I was always out of town on business, being a longhaul truck driver.
The one time I did jury duty, I was part of a panel that was seated before lunch, and the defendant pled out during lunch.
Dear G3Ken,
Exactly right.
As I put it in my blog:
Government: a gang of thugs that demands obedience and money at gunpoint from everyone inside a line it drew on a map. https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/
If one clears one’s head of preconceptions drilled into one since K-12, one suddenly goes
“WTF! How did I come to believe such nonsense? How can a bunch of complete strangers unilaterally make up a bunch of rules that I must obey, and form a gang that I must pay?”
A most thought provoking article. Thank you for posting it!
NAL
Hi Nick,
Thanks!
Hoping I can shake this bug; then maybe my mind will clear up enough to write another!
Dear Eric,
Wonderful your article ! i am speechless !
Thanks God that there still are people like you !
Hi Alex,
Thanks – and there are more of us here, too. You among them!
Welcome to EPautos!
Cross posted Eric. Thank You for your dedication to liberty.
It Did What it Was Written To Do – Eric Peters on the trouble with the constitution.
See website link for article. This was marked as spam with a link here… grrrrrrr
Thanks, IW!
The Spam filter drives me up the tree, too…
Let’s test the spam filter again:
missourifreepress.com/2018/01/08/it-did-what-it-was-written-to-do-eric-peters-on-the-trouble-with-the-constitution/
I remember going to DC when I was a kid. My mother wanted to see the National Archives, so she could gaze upon the big 3 documents. There was a fairly long line and wait time, but at least the place was air-conditioned. There’s a fairly elaborate security setup where the great parchment is able to be whisked down an elevator to an underground vault in seconds in case of attack. Armed guards (probably military these days). The documents are stored in an elaborate oxygen-free glass envelope to prevent deterioration. Impressive for sure. The sense of awe, even today, is pretty overwhelming. In my memory my mother teared up a bit when she saw them. Of course after we left she made some comment about how much better off we’d be if we lived under the rules laid out by these sage authors. No one really noticed the parallels with the Soviet Union and the lines to see Lenin’s tomb, nor the irony.
Today of course I’d eat a bean burrito before the visit in order to better express my opinion. With all that marble I’ll bet the reverb would be epic!
Everyone would know the source after it was triangulated by cellphone apps. You’d be recognized by facial recognition and publicly embarrassed by viral posting of your face across the Internet. Your race to the restroom would confirm your identity.
Ready, just make sure and carry a copy of Ben Franklin’s book “Fart Proudly” in case you have any trouble. You can just hold it up, and say that you are doing your patriotic doody….I mean duty….
You also might want to wear an adult diaper.
eric, good job. I just read the article by Gary North in today’s LRC. You and he are covering some of the same ground and I salute both of you
A couple of years ago a neighbor and I were discussing the lie of the state being moral.
I mentioned libertarians since I didn’t want to bowl him over with “anarcy” .
He said he had a problem with such. I asked who he wanted to rob. I’m afraid I put him off with that which wasn’t my intention. I hope I made him think about it…..for a long time.
Eric, a thought provoking article. You might be a little hard on that Constitution. It was a stunning advance for its time. There are many flaws such as the broad commerce clause, the necessary and proper clause and the ambiguity about state sovereignty. Slavery was another flaw from the perspective of people generations removed. In 1789 slavery was considered a permanent part of human nature by the overwhelming majority. The small number of abolitionists had views that would brand them white supremacists today. The states that forbade slavery had the underlying purpose to keep Negros out of their states period.
State sovereignty was demolished by Lincoln’s rape of the South, not necessarily by the Constitution. Lincoln wanted war and a more carefully written phrase probably wouldn’t have deterred him. He stepped all over the document and hopefully roasts in hell for the million pointless deaths.
There is no point redrawing the Constitution. A handful of amendments could improve the work. A couple of means were provided to amend. I have asked where there is a better constitution. Some who think about this like the South African version. It is ten times longer and full of impractical nonsense (my opinion). We are much freer with what we have. A libertarian land would be nice but there are not enough angels.
We’d be better off without a constitution than any constitution ever drawn up by humans. All such documents have uniformly violated the NAP since before it was created.
Maybe too, if people had not felt constrained to do things in an orderly and lawful manner so as to preserve a constitutional government, they would have fought for their basic rights when such were being infringed early on, when the government was not ye all powerful.
The Constitution is moral. It’s the people who are immoral. John Adams remarked that “our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Blaming the Constitution for abuses of our liberty when we insist on dancing the flamenco on it is like blaming a weather forecast for the storm that followed.
An anthology of Lysander Spooner’s works sits proudly in my book case; read, underlined, approved and sometimes argued with. He should take a dose of his own medicine: by his own words if he or libertarianism were unable to prevent tyranny then he (or it) should not exist. His is fallacious reasoning of a high order. Fact is, anywhere there are more than a few people assembled in a society there will be a hierarchy and thus instances of abuse of power. In a way libertarians are as utopian as Communists: they dream of a world and human nature that never existed and never will.
Bionic Mosquito, a self-professed libertarian, should be studied. In a series of comments he has pointedly remarked that the NAP is utterly insufficient as an organizing principle for real, honest-to-goodness flesh and blood people. The atomistic libertarian, he argues, denigrates all ties such as language, family, culture, anything that binds a person to tradition or mores–just like Communism did!
So yes, the Constitution can be traduced, the Bill of Rights crumpled, tyranny brought upon us. Not because of any innate flaw in that document, but because the people don’t want it and its constrictions. If a dog prefers its own vomit to wholesome food, what are you going to do?
Morning, Ross!
I’m still not even close to 100 percent due to the flu or whatever it is I have, so if I am less than usually coherent, mea culpa!
I consider the Constitution immoral because it denies the sovereignty of the individual, who is subordinated to something called “the people.” While this sounds nice, as a rhetorical device, it means – in practice – some of the people, who are empowered to impose their will on other people.
It countenances theft – the “power to lay and collect taxes.”
From these two ur evils, all the other evils flow. Once it is accepted that any person’s right to be left in peace, to be secure in his person and effects, his property – may be violated, not because of any harm he has caused but in order to profit other people, or to slake their desire that he conform to their will – those rights become conditional privileges and will be further eroded until, in time, they no longer exist at all.
Pandora’s Box has been opened. If it is okay to steal a man’s money for “x” than why not “y”? If a group of people can vote to take away my absolute right to possess and control my property – including my own body – then I am a slave to whatever degree they have voted to deprive me possession/control of same. Real estate taxes are the perfect example of this.
It took a long time for the designs of Hamilton and his ilk to come to fruition, but they are exactly as intended. Hamilton was The Chimp or Mitt Romney of his time. A plugged-in elitist who felt the rabble – that’s us – had to be kept in line and that elitists such as himself knew best and their vision would be imposed on the rabble, for their own good. That it also made him (and those like him, including The Chimp, et al) fabulously wealthy was of course purely coincidental!
Hello Eric:
I hope you’re feeling better. It’s been one of those winters, and we are due to get nailed again tomorrow here in Frozenville.
You’re a busy man with a job to do, so let my reply be brief: I don’t see taxes as theft, except when they’re excessive in which case they’re more like tyranny. We are all greatly overtaxed but I actually did vote for a slight increase in our township property taxes because I saw the need, knew where the money would go, and think the township officers are honest men. (Plus there’s a sunset on the measure.)
Any kind of society beyond the most primitive will need income to cover societal needs. Suppose you live in a purely libertarian unit: no taxes but you pay a fee for everything nonetheless. You might disagree with your neighbors or the costs of living there, so you move on. But every unit (town, country, county, state, development) you will ever move to will still have fee after fee for you to pay, like it or not. You could take to the hills and live like a hermit, but that would likely be a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short life.
You will pay, one way or another, and whether you like it or not. Libertarians tend to ignore those examples which don’t shine a brilliant light on their theory: private prisons haven’t been the hot ticket to anything, and private security groups such as Blackwater (Xe or whatever name it takes now) have shown as much corruption as any government unit. I think libertarianism doesn’t take into account human nature and its proneness to venality.
One last example, this time from Libertarian extraordinaire Walter Block: suppose there’s a crying need to build a highway in a certain place in Fredonia, all with voluntary private money of course and nigh unto universal support, except for the owner of one parcel in the way who won’t sell. There’s no eminent domain in Fredonia, so what to do? Block says one solution would be to build a bridge over the property! How would you like to live in shadow under the rumble of trucks day and night and cascades of rain, salt, gravel and other debris? Some solution.
Libertarians put so much faith into their arrangement, as if they could suspend the same human drives that have corrupted the Constitution and all other kinds of government. They would find that the same problems bedeviling the “isms” they despise would haunt theirs as well. So much for a brief answer–sorry.
Hi Ross,
Thanks for the kind words! It’s 60-ish here now, which is fine with me… 🙂
On your reply: You mention “need” several times. This is a subjective value judgment, I’m sure you’ll agree. How does one man’s “need” – as he sees it – entitle him to impose his will on others, to take their property and so on?
You write that you “saw the need” to support an increase in property taxes. What about those who do not share your view? Who would prefer not to be compelled by the threat of violence against their property (and so, themselves) to hand over money for a purpose they do not care to support?
I need a number of things which I cannot afford – such as a visit to the doctor for myself to get a scrip for antibiotics to cure this lung infection and annual physicals at the vet for my cats – because the needs of random strangers who’ve stolen my money via taxes based on their “needs” have been forcibly put ahead of my own needs. I am compelled to pay property taxes which amount to mortgage that will never be paid off, depriving me of the financial security of free ownership of my home, in order to fund the government schooling of other people’s kids I don’t even know. Why does the fact that someone else chose to have children impose an obligation on me or any other person to provide for their education – or anything else?
If “need” legitimates the taking of another person’s property, why do we frown on the mugger who demands your money or your life? He needs your money, doesn’t he?
At least, as he sees it.
Taxes differ from a street mugging only in that the former are performed by bureaucrats using “process” in order to obscure the nature of the thing – very much in the way that most people only see a nicely Saran-wrapped ribeye at the meat counter and never have to think about the cow who provided it.
And once the principle is accepted that “need” entitles people to steal, it is only a matter of time before we get to where we are – that is, to a society based on predation rather than goodwill. Politics becomes – as Mencken put it – an advance auction of stolen goods. The worst sort of people acquire power – by appealing to the worst sort of people.
Voila.
It all gets back to my rant about “the people” (“society” is a synonym). These don’t exist except as a verbal tool used to make sweeping generalizations about a collective will that does not exist. There are only individuals, each with their own views – and each equally entitled to be left in peace, provided they themselves are peaceful.
If two (or more) mean agree on a thing, then – among themselves – acting collectively toward some common purpose is fine. But what we are talking about is something quite different. “The people” and “society” are terms used by some people who falsely presume to speak (and act) on behalf of everyone. Falsely, in the sense that they have no right to do so, without the specific consent of everyone affected. Which of course they almost never have.
The argument you put forward is basically the Hamiltonian one: That progress requires the subordination of the individual to the “greater good” – as articulated by leaders who act on behalf of “society,” the “public good” and “the people.”
Ross: >”I don’t see taxes as theft, except when they’re excessive “<
Define "excessive", and who gets to make that determination.
On Long Island, where I originally come from, the typical property tax bill is over $10K per year. [Speaking of "needs"- just the existence of such a tax causes need, and prevents those in the lower income brackets from ever owning property- even if they were to inherit it]
Many Long Islanders will move to places where the property tax may be $3500/yr and think that that is great- while the locals see that as excessive, as it is 10x what it was a few years before all the NYers arrived.
My taxes here in Bumblephuk where i now live, are <$300/yr -and I consider that excessive, because a)I keep my income very low in order to keep it below taxable level, and I practice homesteading, and b) No one should have to pay a tax just to exist and to live upon his "own" land.
If you, by voting; or anyone else (such as a politician, by decree) get to exercise control over my labor, finances and or property by demanding that I pay money when I have not created an obligation by voluntarily partaking of a product or service, then you are a master and I am a slave.
If "need" is sufficient moral and legal justification to obligate others to give their wealth or property to someone else, then perhaps we should all refrain from any productive endeavors so that we thus have "need" and can then be recipients of such largess, instead of victims of the state and voting booth muggers.
Such is the basis of communism and ALL tyranny- no matter how small the tax may be initially (just as our income tax was originally a tiny percent, levied only on a small percentage of citizens)- even if we were all only forced to pay one penny- it establishes the precedent, that someone other than ourselves have ultimate control over our lives and property.
To say that we do not believe in slavery, and then to obligate our neighbors to give any portion of the fruit of their labor or pay a ransom for their own property, is a terrible and absurd contradiction. Such is the very basis of all slavery and tyranny.
Hi Nunz,
Dammit, man – that was beautifully put! Hat tip, sir!
eric,
you should consider taking the 5 hour bike ride to Nunz’s
You two have what the other needs I think.
Maybe you both grow saffron or some other high value crops and jumpstart the aggression free revolution economy in 2018
THANKS, Eric!
I just don’t “get” these people. If one of the perpetually “needy” robs you, himself, on the street, he will caged, as that is still rightly recognized as a crime.
If though, he robs you persistenly through his “elected representative”, that is perfectly fine….because it is robbery by the “will of the people”.
A perfect example of the fraudulent nature of “their” psychotic moral relativity, in which certain actions are crimes when undertaken by the average citizen, but are obligations when when demanded by the gods our naighbors have elected.
It’s hard to even fathom! How can something be a crime when perpetrated by one person, but yet resisting victimhood, is a crime, when the very same act is perpetrated by someone else?
You don’t see these kinds of contradictions and absurdities in anarchy, because anarchism is pure truth; but you do see such things in virtually all other political philosophies, because their premsies are faulty and fraudulent, and they can not withstand even basic scrutiny without exposing inherent contradictions.
Hey…Tor’s right….we’re not too far from each other. Just hop on Hwy 80 and head west! Warning though, I’m a pretty boring guy!
Been on Route 80 in Virginia near Meadowview. It’s the same road across the border fence into ‘Tucky.
A mighty fine way to go
Careful of them illegal ‘Tucky tobaccy-backs sneaking into Virginia to steal your jobs and go on your welfare though.
Most of them are meth heads probably.
Hopefully your paperwork is good enough to carry your firearm, if not, bring it anyway of course.
Follow I-81 S to VA-80 W/Glenbrook Ave in Meadowview. Take exit 24 from I-81 S
Turn right onto VA-80 W/Glenbrook Ave
Continue to follow VA-80 W
Meadowview
Then you’ll see Elk Garden, Rosedale, Honeker, Davenport, Bee, Birchleaf, Haysi, Breaks Interstate Park
Then you’re in the ‘Tucky Blue Grass
You’ll see Elkhorn City, Belcher, Coal Run, Watergap…
From East to West KY:
Kentucky Route 80 (KY 80) is a 465 mile state highway in southern Kentucky. The route originates on the state’s western border at Columbus in Hickman County, and stretches across the southern portion of the state, terminating southeast of Elkhorn City on the border with Virginia.
It is the longest Kentucky State Highway, though the official distance as listed in route logs is much less due to multiple concurrencies with U.S. Route 68 and U.S. Route 23.
A new, four-laned 8.5-mile section of Kentucky 80 opened in Calloway County on November 25, 2009.
The route is now four-lanes from Mayfield to Aurora.
From Columbus, the road passes through Hickman, Carlisle and Graves Counties to Mayfield.
The two-lane segment of former Highway 80 from Mayfield to Aurora now has two separate designations.
From Mayfield, Kentucky 80 travels along a new four-lane corridor into Calloway County and on to Murray.
The route continues through eastern Calloway County and into Marshall County before converging with U.S. Highway 68 near the eastern terminus of Kentucky 402 in Aurora.
From Aurora, it follows US 68 through Trigg, Christian, Todd, and Logan counties to Bowling Green (Warren County).
From Bowling Green to Somerset, Kentucky, Highway 80 is paralleled by the Louis B. Nunn Cumberland Parkway.
Highway 80 serves rural portions of Barren, Metcalfe (including the city of Edmonton), Adair, Russell, and Casey counties to Somerset (Pulaski County).
Between Somerset and London (Laurel County), Highway 80 is again the primary route.
From London to Hazard, Kentucky, Highway 80 is again supplanted, this time by the former Daniel Boone Parkway, Highway 80 serves rural portions of Clay, Leslie, and Perry counties before rejoining the Parkway near Hazard.
Highway 80 is a modern four-lane highway (though not controlled access) from Hazard through Knott County to Watergap, Kentucky in Floyd County where it converges with U.S. Highway 23.
Take the road through the mountain that comes out in the town (not the county) of Cumberland, KY- in the Appalachians- It’s like a miniature white version of Detroit. I’ve never seen anything like it….
Set yer watch back an hour shortly after you pass the nice li’l town of Columbia on the Q-Cumberland Pkwy, as you’ll be entering the Central time zone.
Half the people in Columbia seem to be on Eastern time; the other half on central time. The two factions mustn’t intermingle, because there seems to be no confusion among the natives…but if yer an outsider and don’t know who’s on what….it’s confusing!
Kentucky Senator Wants Just One Time Zone Around Lake Cumberland
By WKU PUBLIC RADIO NEWS •
Pulaski County state senator Chris Girdler wants to change time.
The Somerset republican wants all Kentucky counties bordering Lake Cumberland to be in the Eastern time zone to better accommodate tourism.
The Somerset “Commonwealth Journal” reports Girdler sent a letter to officials in a six county region wanting Clinton, Cumberland and Russell Counties to leave the Central time zone and join Pulaski, McCreary and Wayne counties in moving an hour ahead.
Wayne County made the switch just a few years ago.
Girdler says most of the population around Lake Cumberland is already in the Eastern time zone, as is Kentucky’s largest city, Louisville.
He says having all the counties within the same time zone would improve promotion of Lake Cumberland and the interaction among the counties.
It’s scary that these asshole pollute-ticians always have so much time on their hands, that they can futz with things like Daylight Savings Time and Time Zones…..
I was reading about DST a while back- it’s amazing how many changes have been made to the scheme over the years, not to mention studies and proposals…..all in the name of “making things easier/better”, but it’s the constant changes to the long-established routine which create more confusion than anything else!
It’s funny, I had to go to Loovul* (Big city near Cincinnati), which is north and even a hair west of me…and way west of Columbia and the eastern/Central dividing line down here….and I didn’t realize that Loovul is on eastern time…
[*=proper pronunciation]
1) Your opinion of a thing does not change the nature or character of a thing.
2) The conflict isn’t about the amount of money taken, its about using robbery as the method to extract the money…
We believe that we can develop methods of providing for our needs that don’t include initiating non-consensual harm.
We can but will we?
We have developed a few mechanisms already.
1) Trade
2) Charity
3) Shared ownership
All provide for our needs without initiating non-consensual harm.
All of which unnecessarily complicates the simplicity of totally laissez faire trade.
I’m too dense to get the joke
It isn’t a joke. You are categorizing into unnecessary “mechanisms” something which is philosophically homogenous.
oh…I guess I was too dense to even know that
This would be the same John Adams that used the sedition act to jail his political enemies?
I often argue points by simply stating that people want things this way. Most every complaint people have about the way things are is the result of the way people wanted things.
If humans by nature require a tyrannical hierarchy based on violence then humans are doomed to self destruction. There is no abolition of hierarchy in libertarianism only that it arise voluntarily and not be based upon violence. Yes, there is something utopian about libertarianism but it doesn’t ignore human nature. It is the one line of philosophical thought where a tiny group isn’t aiming to exploit it. The aim has been more towards minimizing its negative impacts.
The US of A was first undermined by creating conditions where people accepted the notion that people were dumb, immoral, etc that they required being managed. If we don’t require management then lots of people would be faced with working for a living. Is it utopian to think we could there? From our position yes, but from another time it would seem only a few steps further along the path they were on. Our path was deliberately changed away from one where libertarianism was largely possible. Things were heading in the direction of decentralization, until they weren’t.
Decentralization minimizes the effects of human nature, the abuses of power and so on. It can only go so far. Centralization maximizes them and the effects can go very far.
Is communism or any other form to be ignorant of human nature or was it designed to exploit it for the benefit of the managerial class of each system? They seem to be flawed because they go against human nature but are they really flawed? There is a great deal of benefit in each to the management class and those above them for awhile. Or at the very least comparatively among those of the same society. All of them are at best some sort of con-game against those who will ultimately be managed and forced to support the system. To get them to along with it. They are designed to abuse power.
Of our available choices, which is the system that works us away from the horrors of human nature? We really seem to have limited choices and they are all some form that would fall under the libertarian heading today.
A lot of damage has been done since the 1770s until now wrt how people see things. They want to be ruled and taken care of. Like serfs of old they were brought up this way. How would 18th century americans react to this? It would be completely foreign to them if not appalling.
With all this rambling I suppose I am back where I always end up, nothing changes until the schools are out of the hands of government. Until then people will want to be ruled and managed so they will be. And that’s one aspect of libertarianism that’s different, the schools are not in government hands.
The major shortcoming of the LP’s platform is that humans aren’t humans until after they are born.
Ross, at one time, I believed what you do. But I’ve come to realize the contradictions and fallacies of that position- and that in fact, a document which establishes the right of a government to exist; to tax; and to deprive people of life, liberty and property, just as long as some formula called “due process” is adhered to, can in no way secure our freedom, even under the very best of circumstances in a perfect world with perfect people- much less in an imperfect world, with imperfect people- especially when it is that very document which gives special rights and privileges to *some* few people, who are then allowed to do things which are crimes when WE do the same (such as theft- only which they call taxation).
Actions are right or they are wrong; they are crimes or they are not crimes. In reality, certain actions can not be a crime when performed by one person, but not a crime when performed by another- but such a document as the Constitution would have us believe the contrary- and this is the inherent problem with anything which attempts to create or give legitimacy to government, because government (Some men ruling over other men who have not harmed anyone; and some men being able to do that which would be a crime if done by others) itself is illegitimate and the diametric opposite of/enemy of liberty- and thus no government can protect our liberty- it can only destroy it- and THAT is not moral.
Ross, “The Constitution is moral.”
How can it be moral when it violates true morality – Natural Law Rights?
Time to read “Natural Law or Don’t Put a Rubber on Your Willy” by Robert A. Wilson?
Common misunderstanding…libertarians want to hold all law breakers accountable.
they appear to be one of the only organized groups of people that understand human nature and want to create legal mechanisms to counter the bad.
If you ever catch anything on television, “real” or from Hollywood, the worship of the state and collectivism is literally jaw dropping.
Here is one of the most nauseating examples of state worship ever filmed.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112346/
I’d guess you’re mostly preaching to the choir — but some damn fine preaching!
Well said, sir.
Jim, in my opinion, that’s all one can do, is preach to (and encourage) the choir, because either someone has an inate love and desire for liberty or they don’t. Mere words can not impart a desire for and love of liberty; and in a world where people are monitored and searched, and every aspect of their lives micro-managed by government, I don’t think they even need help in realizing that they are not free.
I think most people have an innate love of liberty, but they’ve been brainwashed by government schoolteachers and whatnot into thinking coercion is liberty. I’ve been trying to get through to my leftist GF about how we live in a low security open air prison, and yet despite most of her ancestors being literal property, I run up against a brick wall on the most crucial conceptual breakthroughs – taxation being literal theft, and that we are literally fractional slaves.
Doesn’t mean I don’t keep trying. It is hard to quit loving Big Brother when everyone else she knows loves BB too, despite objecting to some of the specifics.
Jim, anyone with even a TINGE of a care for liberty would be aghast every single day at the police-state tactics that the average American takes in stride without so much as a hint of complaint.
Every day, MILLIONS line up to be strip searched and deprived of virtually every right of a free person, just to board a plane at a facility which their extorted money has paid for.
They gladly send their kids off to kill and be killed in the emperor’s wars, and are so thrilled for the “privilege, that they call them “heroes”.
In many places, people not only gladly pay property taxes, but pay5-figure property taxes to live in just a normal house, where the local government dictates every little detail of everything which you may do on your property- and makes you pay yet more for “permits” to do the things which aren’t prohibited entirely.
In most places now, merely letting your kids play outside or walk down the street unacompanied by an adult, can get you arrested and charged with a crime. Perish the thought you leave your kid sitting in the car in a parking lot for 4 or 10 minutes!
Etc. etc. ad infinitum.
My point is though, that people with even a vague concern for their own autonomy; and even a very modest amount of self-respect, would not tolerate any such things- much less cheer for them and vote for their continuance and participate in their mechanisms.
I mean, if you were to go to, say, Honduras or Guatemala, or even back in time to the America of our grandfathers, no one would tolerate such things- not even statists and liberals. Such would be a cause for mass rebellion and armed uprising, and withdrawal from participation.
Today, here? No one bats an eye. When people are this far gone, they will look upon the sane as the raving lunatics, and as enemies who are hostile to the well-being of their system.
People who tolerate constant abridgments of and assaults upon their most basic freedoms and rights to exist in peace and be left alone, can not be made to cherish liberty, any more so than a thief can made to respectr the sanctity of private property on anything but an animalistic punishment/reward level.
It’s just not in them. It’s not a part of their morality or worldview.
“It’s just not in them. It’s not a part of their morality or worldview.”
That doesn’t comport with my experience with my GF, who on a personal basis respects those freedoms and rights to live in peace. The disconnect comes when strangers with funny hats and costumes using sanitized language do things that she would be furious about if ordinary friends, neighbors, or companies tried to do. If politicians were to bluntly say they wanted to steal 40% of her income and spend it on stuff like throwing brown skinned peoples in cages, out would come the pitchforks and tar and feathers, but by calling it taxation and saying it is voluntary and for the common good, and providing some goods and services that are not obviously counterproductive or outright malignant, the Stockholm Syndrome kicks in to prevent the massive cognitive dissonance crippling their ability to get through each day without being pissed off and furious.
At least, that’s my theory about how a genuinely caring and compassionate person keeps supporting repellent politicians and their minions.
40% eh? She must have a good accountant. I make jacksquat and the central bankers have devalued it severely before I get it.
Then I pay all sorts of taxes, once again, before the check has been writ. Once I get the bit that’s left I spend more taxes on everything I buy…..and taxes increase the price of that.
Then gummint Healthcare takes a big bite, enough so that the supposed healthcare is no longer within my financial reach.
I’d like to see a Gary North type figure out what my pitiful paycheck is worth in the end.
You probably wouldn’t want to know.
That’s just it, Jim- they like “freedom” when it suits them or their morality and causes. But they really prefer authoritarian collectivism, as long as it is their brand of such- because it forces others to support and participate in their causes.
They care when the brown people are caged…but not so much when the middle-aged white guy is caged or even executed.
Their “freedom” is not the freedom to be left alone…but rather a selective freedom for some to be left somewhat alone under some circumstances. They fear freedom, because their own prejudices make them believe that the brown people can’t take care of themselves, and would therefore starve if others weren’t forced to support them.
They truly don’t want freedom for all people; they don’t think that people are capable of hadnling freedom; and they reason that others should not have more freedom than they do, and since they are quite content to have their money taken and redistributed; and to be searched and prodded; and to have their conduct regulated in a manner determined by “the experts” to be the proper thing to do……that should be good enough for the rest of us.
They can not imagine life without the state and it’s coercive power. It’s just a matter of who is coerced, and what for. They might not like everything the state does (like caging brown people), but they recoil in horror at the idea of us keeping the fruit of our labor, and not being forced to support the brown (and increasingly white) children…and grandparents; etc.
When I discuss the Constitution, I sometimes hear the following argument: “Well, if the Constitution were followed, we’d be all right. But the politicians don’t follow the Constitution. This is a very similar argument to the one used to defend Stalin, the second greatest murderer in history, and his sometime friend Mao, the worst murderer in history. “Well, Stalin and Mao weren’t really practicing Communism. If they had actually practiced Communism, the Russians and Chinese would have been all right…
The fact is that, as Lysander Spooner once said, “whether the Constitution be one thing or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
Lysander nailed it when he said that it authorized such a government…
Article 3 is the crux to the whole thing
The CONstitution had me fooled.
I came to realize at a very early age (when I was 6) that we were not free. As time went on, that fact was only more firmly cemented in my mind by what I’d see and experience. I didn’t know what an Anarchist was…but i was one. I knew from that young age, that no one has a right to dictate and control the actions of anyone else in our own lives, save our parents!
I was sidetracked for a while though, because the wise person entrusted to bestow wisdom upon me in the government indoctrination camp- otherwise known as a 23 year-old dingbat who managed to graduate teacher’s college, and who now spends her days interacting with other people’s children instead of finding a husband and raising kids of her own, told us that this piece of paper called the Constitution guarantees that we can be free….when we’re not being forced to go to the government school of course.
And when we asked about taxes, they told us “they are voluntary”- but our parents seemed to think that if they didn’t “volunteer” to pay them, they’d go to jail.etc. etc.
But I bought into the idea that if only the Constitution were followed, we’d be free.
It didn’t occur to me, till more recently, that the principle achievement of that Constitution, was the establishment and legitimization of the very government whose existence prevents us from ever being free.
Eric, Best. Article. EVER!
……and the way it fooled me:
The Bill Of Rights.
Sure, it enumerates some of the necessary conditions of liberty- and seeing that, I naturally assumed that that was the principle objective of that constitution- to uphold those rights. But the reality is, that the rest of the constitution establishes and enables a government which has the capacity to violate everyone of those rights, as well as those not mentioned- without penalty.
That Bill Of Rights is no impediment to tyranny- as it can be violated at will- as it now is, routinely every single day, without penalty or restraint. All it does, is give those who who may have a yearning for liberty, a point to focus on, to falsely think that the Constitution which contains it will somehow establish or preserve liberty- much in the same way that the people of the Weimar Republic or USSR believed that those countries constitutions were beneficial to them because they empowered them to vote!
So in this way, even some of us who strive for liberty and self-ownership, were deluded into still believing in the concept of government- which, even at it’s most minimal level, is the enemy of liberty and self-ownership.
I assume you’ve read this wonderful piece on the subject of the state? https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Anatomy%20of%20the%20State_3.pdf
Bookmarked! Thanks! (Weather’s bad today, so I might even get a chance to read it today!)
Bravo.
Bravo
Bravo.
For far too many GovCo is their god. The Constitution is their Bible.
What you write is considered heresy by most.
I’m sure they view the words of Sam Adams in the same light…
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
― Samuel Adams
It used be that Tammany Hall Politics was the icon of political corruption in this country. That organiuzation was most infamous for favoring special interest groups to gain political support, while systematically robbing everyone blind in general. Does that sound like anything we see going on today? The fact is, that is exactly our government’s current Method of Operation, or Standard Operating Procedure. This is a true story, the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Tammany Hall was a model of good government compared to what we have now. George Plunkitt spelled out “honest graft” where everyone benefits. There is no such animal today. We are in terminal Bolshevism. Wherever control falls to a certain desert dwelling tribe, communism and genocide follows. We are Russia in 1917, give it a little longer and we will be starving in the cold – anyone else get the connection to forced energy shortages and planned scarcity in the face of a brutal winter being the exact model used to depopulate the Ukraine? Global Warming is this gang’s “modernization.”
That model will work awfully well for the American Kulaks in flyover country. That is when the importation of millions of violent criminals doesn’t accomplish the goal fast enough. This is what it is to live as a Palestinian, how soon before many of us resort to the same final acts of resistance?
In my opinion, it was an experiment- with hundreds of millions of innocent guinea pigs.
The Bolsheviks imposed communism on Russia in an instant, by violence.
Here in the US, we implemented the very same policies and social engineering tactics, only gradually over 100 years, with the consent of the victims, manufactured by propaganda and brainwashing- with limited violence at first, and now more comprehensive violence, to bring the remaining resistors into compliance, or eliminate them.
So, the USSR suffered the social and economic effects of communism earlier, since it practiced full-blown communism early on. Whereas we are seeing the gradual whithering of our economy and society here, in proportion to the level of communism being practiced here at any given point- with the effects starting to become equivalent to what the Russians experienced decades ago, as we catch up to the level of communism they were practicing.
The authors and practitioners of modern communism were all certainly of the desert-dwelling variety- whop were ultimately behind the attempt to cleanse their own race in Germany.
The fact that the USSR and the USSA were both allies should be obvious- seeing as how we defended the USSR in WWII, and even handed all of Eastern Europe over to them afterwards….in the name of “making the world safe for democracy”.
But just wave a flag, and mention apple pie and baseball, and that is enough to block reality from the view of 99.8% of the people.
I know exactly what you mean Eric,
Somewhere in the background where the public does not see anymore, is a man dressed in feathers and gold saying “so let it be written, so let it be done!”