Uncomfortable Independence Day Questions

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Here comes another Fourth of July – a good time to ask some serious questions – and ponder just how “free” we really are:   Farce of July

* Why is it ok to celebrate violent resistance to a government by our wig-wearing ancestors, but “extremist” to say anything negative about government today?

* If people can’t be trusted to govern themselves, how is it that some people can be trusted to govern others?

* What’s so great about taxation with representation?

* Has anyone ever showed you the “social contract”?

* If we’re so “free,” why can’t we even celebrate our “freedom” by lighting off a few firecrackers and bottle rockets in our own backyards? They’re illegal in most states these days for ordinary citizens to even possess – let alone use.Uncle Sam pic

* If the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, why do the “interpretations” of that law by judges supersede the plain language of the Constitution?

* Why do civilian cops have military ranks? Sergeants, captains – even four-star “generals”  . . .  some of them have military flair (AKA “fruit salad”) too … as if they’d “served” in a war somewhere.

* If it’s wrong for me (an individual) to do something aggressively violent, how does it become right when a group does the same thing?

* Is morality merely a question of numbers and percentages?

* Does calling a thing by a different name change the nature of the thing? Does a cat become “not-cat” by dint of calling it “not-cat”? If it’s still a cat – no matter what I call it – how is it that taking someone else’s money (theft) becomes not-theft when it’s called “taxation”?

* If abortion is acceptable because it’s “the woman’s body” and thus, “her right to choose”- how come a man can’t choose to do what he likes with his body? Like choosing not to wear a helmet while riding his motorcycle, for instance?police state pic

* How come there are no “senile citizen checkpoints”?

* If the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” why are the people forced to get the government’s permission to keep and bear arms?

* How is it “reasonable” to stop people en masse and at random, and force them to submit to an interrogation/search?

* Why are we forced to transact our business with privately owned banks? Why is it illegal for us to exchange value for value among ourselves?

* If you have the right to not incriminate yourself, why is it considered a criminal act to decline to fill out a federal tax form?

* Did anyone ever ask you for your “consent” to be governed? What if you do not consent?

* Why is an officer’s “safety” more important than your safety?

* If the “civil” war was fought to free the slaves, how come the commanding general of the Union Army, Ulysses S. Grant, owned a black man while he waged war on the South? (He freed the poor man eventually.)police state 2

* If corporations are “persons,” how come you can never get one on the phone – much less put “him” in prison when he defrauds you?

* Why is it ok for big cartels like Monsanto to sell genetically modified foods on their say-so that it’s ok, but a “crime” for a local farmer to sell unpasteurized milk?

* If slavery is against the law, why is it we’re compelled to work for the benefit of others?

* Shouldn’t everywhere – anywhere – be a “free speech zone”?

* If you own your home, why must you pay rent to the government every year in order to be allowed to continue to live there?

* How come other people choosing to have sex – and choosing to have kids – imposes a financial obligation on you that’s enforceable at gunpoint, but choosing to adopt a cat and figuring out how you’ll feed him and pay for his bills is entirely your own problem? 

* Why don’t school busses have to have seat belts?

* If guns are so dangerous, how come politicians are surrounded by cordons of heavily armed men?

* How did the good ol’ USA become the “homeland”?DMV pic

* If you believe it’s ok to fight off a mugger, how come it’s not ok to fight off a tax collector?

* If only “Congress may declare war,” how come we’ve been “at war” (on “terror”)  for going on 13 years without a congressional declaration of war?

* Why can’t DMV (or IRS) “customers” say “no thanks” to the services offered?

* How can health care be a right if someone else is forced to provide it?

* Do you suppose motorcycles would be “allowed” if they were a new invention?

* If you’re a free man, why must you obtain permission to travel, marry or work?4th final

* How is eminent domaining a man off his land any different than simply stealing his land?

* Why are we forced to do business with, feed, house – even hang out – with people we’d avoid if we were free to do so? 

Answer – hell, even read – these questions and you’ll come to grips with just how unfree we actually are this Farce of July. Check Makro Specials and Pick n Pay Specials. Better to stay home, wear black and mourn what we’ve lost – what some of us have freely given away – than to go through the sad pantomime of celebrating our enslavement.

Throw it in the Woods?

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99 COMMENTS

  1. The decline in American values is to be expected. It’s a feature and not a bug for them.

    They destroy markets and thwart every natural individual action as a kind of shock therapy.

    They need you to be appalled. Ashamed. Outraged about what the average American has devolved into. They intend to push you until you blush, and cross your legs, and get all bashful and befuddled by them.

    I refuse to play the game. I have options 1-3 which are the civilized route I hope to take. But also, I have option 4.

    In option 4, I’m playing a non-stop 24/7 game of Texas Hold ‘Em in my mind. I’ll just look them right in the eye and say, “this is all the debasement you’ve accomplished in the 100 years with a central bank?”

    I’m disappointed, I thought you’d all be taller. I’ll never admit the PTB is winning, or that they have any way of back-dooring my compliance and submission.

    If I wake up tomorrow, and the neighbors are all sacrificing their first borns and favorite pets on satanic altars, I’ll be like ho hum. Nice try. Not any worse than what’s been happening. Just more seen and less unseen.

    Your “civilization” is already murdering 160 million per 100 years, it makes no matter how they do it. Murder is the absolute top speed of darkness depravity limit. The means of murdering is inconsequential.

    The total collapse of art and other secondaries is a given. We’re all fine young cannibals now.

    Somehow a few chimps and gorillas sangin’ bout renting out some Christian chicks wombs by the hour or teaching their out of wedlock rainbow race zebra toddlers how to hold their uzi’s sideways is the last straw?

    What f’ing civilization is anyone even discussing saving at this point. Get real.

    The sea change in attitudes is that we even open our mouths to speak of them at all. Not a one of them is worth a word or thought. Ever.

    The declining interest in – and respect for – achievements of each other in any hard arduous endeavor.

    The goonvermins are financing an under ice rover for Europa. Talk about that if you have to mention goonvermins’ doings.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY5WQG3-3mo

    This device either functions or doesn’t. Reading about Ted Cruz or Rand Paul’s feelings or talking points, is like throwing your life away, every minute spent goes into some think tank’s spacetime woodchipper, never to return.

    Our friend’s competence no longer valued, or valued less than political constructs such as “diversity.” Illiteracy (and innumeracy) becoming common even among the “educated” classes. Well that’s our fault then. I don’t assign any value to political or statistical measurements.

    I quote them for a reference point, but, couldn’t care less. Generally the US is about the 30th best at anything. Sounds good enough to me.

    Individually, I’ve taken away a lot of competencies from here. I can hold conversations with statists out in the internet Gen Pop now. That’s amazing.

    So thanks for that Eric, Bevin, Boothe, and the rest. I can mostly keep the cuckoo in the clock, except when I choose to let it out to toll for a minute.

    What lost is merely the illusion of their being no gross vulgarity.

    The ever present trailer park/white trash/ghetto thug “values” were never confined to the trailer park/ghetto.

    What kind of Raving Lunatic watches Napalm and Agent Orange being dropped on South East Asians 1000s of miles away with a blank look on his face, like he’s watching a boring game of softball or something?

    “Keeping it real” whatever that means, is not regarded as contemptible by civilized people in public, because people feel impoverished, pressured, threatened, regardless of where they reside. They can’t keep up the appearences anymore.

    Ghetto vulgarity is the least of America’s sins. What about it’s organized violence and systematic exterminations of entire races and cultures, it didn’t find to be the “right kinds of customers?”

    – This is a deconstructed and refried comment, using a cordless ryobi worddrill at medium setting over kraft copypasta alphabet noodles. Please adjust your reading style appropriately.

  2. Top Ways Things Can Improve

    1 World fully embraces anarchism
    2 World permits true unfettered market experiment
    3 Minarchist world paradigm pivot. Instead of armies, and imposing rules thru force. Public sector morphs into only massive fiat Apollo projects offering unlimited employment for grand pursuits
    4 Netizens cooperate to offer Agora alternative to governments, religions, and institutions.

    Notes on 4: Agorism is a revolutionary philosophy that advocates a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics.

    IRC: SERVER: agora.anarplex.net
    PORT: 14716 CHANNEL: #agora

    Counter-economics is the sum of all non-aggressive human action which is forbidden by the state. The counter-economy includes the free market, the black market, the “underground economy,” all acts of civil and social disobedience, all acts of forbidden association (sexual, racial, cross-religious), and anything else the state, at any place or time, chooses to prohibit, control, regulate, tax, or tariff.

    The counter-economy excludes all state-approved action (the “white market”) and the red market (violence and theft not approved by the state).

    – In other words, I can accept anarchistic disrespect of property in so far as it doesn’t endanger an individual, or cross the line into the violent Red Market.

    – Disrespect of property means I’m okay with drug/flesh dealers walking the sidewalks of your neighborhood, slinging junk, being noisy, pissing in the alleys, lowering your property values, offending your sensibilities. Disturbing your peaceful statist quietude.

    I deny your deserving the safety of your phyle, if you will do nothing more than follow the rules, and go along to get along with the blood soaked thugs smiling and hiding behind the stolen trapping of legitimate wealth creators.

    Watching and selling pirated media, especially big rich guys, not the small indepent guys. Learning how to get free shit on the internet on your own, is directly translatable to your real life.

    Being a neighborhood problem solver, can become much more profitable, if you develop a trustworthy demeanor, and develop an online presence. 42nd Street

    Why not run your own small business on the side, completely outside of any kind of monitored channels of commerce? Buy, sell, offer any kind of service you care to, and don’t tell a single soul a thing about any of it?

    I’m glad blacks are handed free money. Spanish speakers gain entry from the south. Stand at home depot for jobs. Sell shit on the street and in flea markets with no recordkeeing. Live and work for a handshake and a wad of cash.

    Love it when Europeans and Asians outwit and hamstring the US government will at every turn. When all white market production and jobs are sent overseas. I hope someone smashes and grabs every federal reserve bank for every scrap of paper and precious metal.

    I value freedom very high. Most likely, far above what most anarcho-capitalists value it at. As everything breaks, and you have the knowledge to fix things, even temporarily, you discover you now own the means to production, congrats.

    Not because grey and black markets represent the highest standard of human conduct. But because that is how states are bypassed and freedom is won in the real world. How dogooder world savers are left in the dust with their shit stolen or broken down, and their thumbs up their asses.

    Thankfully the internet is a vast network of stolen digital property. And a network of all manner of unsavory characters colluding in concert. I only have a problem with strong-arm thugs. Peaceful thugs who live outside the state thru whatever means, have my full respect and maybe even support, depending on the circumstance.

    There is an important limit to the Agora. Its corruption and rewarding of one-sided or unbalanced exchanges, may degrade everyone’s standard of living and incentive to work.

    Though I hope the Agora destroys the State and it’s violent Red Market Economy, care must be taken to ensure the Agora doesn’t destroy advanced society completely, and end what remains of entrepreneurialism, and make things even easier for the PTB to control us than it already is.

    Agorist Win!
    http://theruleoffreedom.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/agorist-win.jpg

    Heinlein Agorist Creed
    http://liveallyourlife.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/heinlein-tolerable-meme-layl.jpg

    Hola! Me llamo Agora!
    http://img.itc.cn/photo/o0SIMrCzKrV

    Counter Economics
    http://c4ss.org/content/tag/counter-economics

  3. Bevin’s template for Eric’s new website is great, can’t wait til it be implementate.
    http://www.websitetemplates.bz/images/feng_shui_dynamic_flash_template_1065m.jpg

    Harmonious with crisp and clear article presentation.
    http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/02/chinas-economy

    Also, his cookies are not only delicious, they’re also thought provoking. I like desserts that go the extra mile, and feed my mind long after the meal.
    http://www.fortunecookiemessage.com/archive.php

    [fuhng shwey]
    the Chinese art or practice of creating harmonious surroundings that enhance the balance of yin and yang, as in arranging furniture or determining the siting of a house.
    Word Origin: 1795–1800; Chinese: natural surroundings, literally, wind and water
    http://www.venusbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/Feng-Shui-Kitchen-Center.jpg

    most popular fortune cookie recipe
    http://allrecipes.com/recipe/fortune-cookies-i/

    okay actually there are no fortune cookies in china – even so open your mind – face and embrace uncomfortable questions and situations
    http://www.sodahead.com/fun/look-weird-fortune-cookies-lol-or-wth/question-2243213/

    • Dear Tor,

      I really and truly do not have a template for anyone else’s website.

      I hope you will believe me when I say that.

      I have several blogs that I haven’t even had the time to update. I would hardly presume to tell Eric how EPA should be operated.

      Eric and Dom know what they want. That’s good enough for me.

      As I told ozymandias, I have expressed an individual consumer preference, and that nothing like an authoritarian dictate ordering someone to do something.

      The supplier of consumer goods and services makes up his own mind about what to offer.

      That is the way the free market works. This includes the case where the goods or services in question are ideas.

  4. “Moon Launch Was Man’s Shining Hour
    by Ayn Rand – 1969”
    Ralph Abernathy toured NASA and made no bones about what he thought, that the money would be better spent by giving it to black people. That philosophy has triumphed. We could have been on Mars by now, perhaps well beyond but we’ve spent a trillon dollars a year on welfare. NASA’s primary mission is now muslim outreach and affirmative action. I wonder if we’ve lost? Can the country be brought around? What will it take and who’s got the guts to do it?
    K-

  5. Moon Launch Was Man’s Shining Hour
    by Ayn Rand – 1969

    “No matter what discomforts and expenses you had to bear to come here,” said a NASA guide to a group of guests at the conclusion of a tour of the Space Center on Cape Kennedy on July 15, 1969, “there will be seven minutes tomorrow morning that will make you feel it was worth it.”

    It was.

    The launch began with a large patch of bright yellow-orange flame shooting sideways from under the base of the rocket. It looked like a normal kind of flame, and I felt an instant’s shock of anxiety, as if this were a building on fire. In the next instant the flame and the rocket were hidden by such a sweep of dark red fire that the anxiety vanished. This was not part of any normal experience and could not be integrated with anything.

    The dark red fire parted into two gigantic wings, as if a hydrant were shooting streams of fire outward and up, toward the zenith, and between the two wings, against a pitch-black sky, the rocket rose slowly, so slowly that it seemed to hang still in the air, a pale cylinder with a blinding oval of white light at the bottom, like an upturned candle with its flame directed at the Earth.

    Then I became aware that this was happening in total silence, because I heard the cries of birds winging frantically away from the flames. The rocket was rising faster, slanting a little, its tense white flame leaving a long, thin spiral of bluish smoke behind it.

    It had risen into the open blue sky, and the dark red fire had turned into enormous billows of brown smoke, when the sound reached us. It was a long, violent crack, not a rolling sound, but specifically a cracking, grinding sound, as if space were breaking apart, but it seemed irrelevant and unimportant, because it was a sound from the past and the rocket was long since speeding safely out of its reach — though it was strange to realize that only a few seconds had passed.

    I found myself waving to the rocket involuntarily, I heard people applauding and joined them, grasping our common motive; it was impossible to watch passively, one had to express, by some physical action, a feeling that was not triumph, but more the feeling that that white object’s unobstructed streak of motion was the only thing that mattered in the universe.

    What we had seen, in naked essentials — but in reality, not in a work of art — was the concretized abstraction of man’s greatness.

    The fundamental significance of Apollo 11’s triumph is not political; it is philosophical; specifically, moral-epistemological.

    The meaning of the sight lay in the fact that when those dark red wings of fire flared open, one knew that one was not looking at a normal occurrence but at a cataclysm which, if unleashed by nature, would have wiped man out of existence — and one knew also that this cataclysm was planned, unleashed and controlled by man, that this unimaginable power was ruled by his power and, obediently serving his purpose, was making way for a slender, rising craft.

    One knew that this spectacle was not the product of inanimate nature, like some aurora borealis, or of chance, or of luck, that it was unmistakably human — with “human,” for once, meaning grandeur — that a purpose and a long, sustained, disciplined effort had gone to achieve this series of moments, and that man was succeeding, succeeding, succeeding!

    For once, if only for seven minutes, the worst among those who saw it had to feel — not “How small is man by the side of the Grand Canyon!” — but “How great is man and how safe is nature when he conquers it!”

    That we had seen a demonstration of man at his best, no one could doubt — this was the cause of the event’s attraction and of the stunned numbed state in which it left us. And no one could doubt that we had seen an achievement of man in his capacity as a rational being — an achievement of reason, of logic, of mathematics, of total dedication to the absolutism of reality.

    Frustration is the leitmotif in the lives of most men, particularly today — the frustration of inarticulate desires, with no knowledge of the means to achieve them. In the sight and hearing of a crumbling world, Apollo 11 enacted the story of an audacious purpose, its execution, its triumph and the means that achieved it — the story and the demonstration of man’s highest potential.

    http://ari.aynrand.org/issues/science-and-industrialization/scientific-and-technological-progress

    Ayn Rand’s Presidential Votes 1932-1980
    http://www.ariwatch.com/PresidentialElections-1.htm

    ARI position on libertarianism
    http://ari.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_libertarianism_qa

    Ayn Rand Comix
    https://www.comixology.com/Female-Force-Ayn-Rand/digital-comic/11249

    • I loathe NASA and all it stands for. Ayn Rand’s babbling aside. The FedGov banned any private ventures from using space until recently. The only entity, at that time, able to make a space bound launch in the u.S. was the FedGov. If they had gotten out of the way it is a pretty good chance, just like the wagon trains to the early west, the wagon trains to the planets and stars might well be along the way in a manner which unfortunately we will never know. So instead mankind’s intellect, risks and endeavors were all diverted to other venues all due to FedGov interference.

      I never celebrate the state even NASA is based on pure evil. Did you have the option to say. NO! I do not want my money wasted on that? Nope.

      As an aside, I am one of those individuals that do not believe the Apollo (note this is named for a greek god that rides a chariot across the skies each day) program actually landed anyone on any other surface other than the earth.

      David Ward
      Memphis, Tennessee

      • Dear David,

        I have to say you are right. Basically what Rand did with Apollo, was to say that “If I must subsidize something against my will, I prefer that it be the space program.”

        This was understandable. BUT it was nevertheless WRONG. She should not have made any excuses, any exceptions, for what she preferred personally, not when it comes to tax monies.

        Being a minarchist, Rand doomed her to such contradictions. The minarchist fallacy about “Certain things have to be done by government” leads inexorably to such internal contradictions.

        The fallacy that military defense, domestic security, and arbitration can only be performed by a monopoly is the most dangerous fallacy in the world. Ironic that she would be one to commit it.

        I’m pretty sure that Eric and others agree on this point. I suspect they were attempting to separate tech progress from government planning. Always a hard thing to do. Once the government has meddled, it becomes essentially impossible to say what would have, could have, and should have happened, absent the meddling. Which is probably what the goonvermin want. That way they can steal credit for what the private sector accomplished.

        • The thing is, NASA is such a small player in our troubles outside of its current AGW work. It has all the bad aspects of any government program, but honestly, it should be down towards the bottom of the list of priorities to dismantle.

          • RE: “NASA should be down towards the bottom of the list of priorities to dismantle.”

            I have seen this before, this, “should be down towards the bottom of the list”

            I guess that’s what some people want?
            Gradualism, or something like that?

            I’m more of a, ‘cut the whole thing OFF! Lock, stock and barrel’ type person. No favorites, no, Next-to-last, just stop the whole train! A rip-off, is a rip-off.

            I feel for the people on welfare and the people on social security, but just cut everybody OFF all at once and get it over with already!

            Forgive me for saying so,…Just think of, The Children!

            What kind of world are the old people and the Planet of The Apes NSA/NASA types leaving to the world?

            A bunch of life sucking entities?

            That is our legacy?

            That seems so contrary to everything I was taught what it was meant to be an American. …I guess that’s why I became an Austrian-Anarcho-Capitalist? The so-called, ‘Americans’ whom I once held in Very high esteem, abandoned their principles. …They sold-out.

            God Damn You All to Hell!

        • Indeed, Bevin!

          I was speaking of cultural things; the sea change in attitudes. The declining interest in – and respect for – achievement in the hard sciences. Competence no longer valued, or valued less than political constructs such as “diversity.” Illiteracy (and innumeracy) becoming common even among the “educated” classes. Gross vulgarity – trailer park/white trash/ghetto thug “values” – no longer confined to the trailer park/ghetto, nor regarded as contemptible by civilized people. Third World attitudes and attributes becoming pervasive.

          • Dear Eric,

            Absolutely right!

            Apollo was in fact made possible by the private sector in America, not the political hacks in DC.

            Just as the AutoBahn was made possible by German engineers, not the political hacks in the Nazi Party!

      • Hi David,

        I agree with you in principle. The comment I left was (as I wrote in reply to Bevin) bemoaning the cultural shift away from an achievement-valuing society to a society that values being entertained. And entertained by doings that ought to shame a chimpanzee (viz, the obsession with the Kardashians, fuhhhhhhhttttball, etc.).

        PS: I, too, questioned the Moon shots at one time. It’s tempting, because the feat was so extraordinary. It is literally hard to believe. But then I looked into it closely. Among other persuasive physical evidence, there is the fact that while it was technologically feasible in 1969 for a three-stage Saturn V to escape Earth’s gravity and send a spacecraft to the Moon and back, it was not technologically feasible to fake such things as the telemetry from the spacecraft or the video taken by the astronauts during the mission. Look into this. See, for instance:

        http://gizmodo.com/5977205/why-the-moon-landings-could-have-never-ever-been-faked-the-definitive-proof

        I don’t trust anything the government says, either. But I do trust physical evidence.

        • The one thing I have come to really dislike is the ‘ancient aliens leap’ as I call it. This is where when some production value or lie or something that doesn’t fit official narrative is found people jump to some conclusion about it.

          The government lies about everything all the time to one degree or another. That is, everything is at least a tiny percentage of lie. I believe something was seen/found on the moon. I don’t know what that was. I have my guesses. Every bit of weirdness that can’t be normally explained may be covering that up. Or just hiding things they thought the soviets could copy from seeing them on TV or something… government lying and secrecy drives most everything.

          • Hi Brent,

            I find the notion of ancient aliens interesting – and certainly possible. But proved? Not that I can see. Another equally plausible idea is that there have been previous “technological” civilizations, perhaps in remote antiquity. The Earth is very old. And human “history” – the official narrative – is barely 10,000 years old. What might have happened 50,000 years ago? Or 100,000 years ago? It’s interesting to speculate.

            But the Saturn V did take men to the Moon. The evidence supporting this is overwhelming. I suspect many people now doubt it ever happened precisely because it was such an incredible achievement, especially given late 1960s-era technology. But also because of the audaciousness of it. The culture has changed so dramatically that most people can no longer conceive of a time when “safety” was at best a tertiary consideration – while getting things done was everything.

          • rozeff. i like his stuff. http://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/08/michael-s-rozeff/federal-lunacy/

            The space race was a successful political product, along the lines of the Cold War, Social Security, and Medicare…. The space race was a successful con game, won by LBJ…. The Apollo project played to American technological and organizational strengths. With a productive economy that provided a large tax base, America was capable of building the biggest pyramid on earth, one that took American astronauts to the moon and back…. Enough money had been spent satisfying the dreams of Wernher von Braun….. The manned moon shot, like the war on terror, is an example of the inferiority of the political allocation of resources…..

            “The culture has changed so dramatically that most people can no longer conceive of a time when “safety” was at best a tertiary consideration – while getting things done was everything.”

            i think you’re transposition suckering yourself, eric. the search for patterns is such a slippery slope; human brains make ‘em up & project ‘em, as i’m sure you know. but the ‘if I had a hammer everything else’d be a nail to pound’ pattern is all over the place, too.

            tptb don’t give a damn about “safety” of the pawns, before or after goering-ing them. compelling the fodder, via psych/emotion button pushing, into space or over to iraq/afghanistan, is/was exactly the same thing. bs, every bit. & it doesn’t matter what private utilitarian rent-credits were generated by the massive externalized costs, either. how one gets from a to b is what matters. what b is, or whether it is ever attained, is irrelevant.

            am reading “flashboys” – lewis’ book about “high frequency trading”. brad katsuyama, central protagonist, has a line: “disillusion isn’t a useful emotion. i need soldiers.”

            emotions, usually deemed “negative”, are attendant disillusion, especially the first few “losses” (or few dozen, perhaps), but if disillusion itself is an emotion, then so is de-constipation. there’s the/a catch-22 fundamentality. constipated illusion is fuel; it burns, like buffalo chips. it’s the fuel too many people use to get from a to b-eing. the thing about state-wielders, tho, is their penchant for burning chips that have not yet left their buffaloeds.

            neither a borrower nor a buffalo be…that’s a primrose path to the bonfire of the chips, vanities, & thee (all too often a triple redundancy)….

            • Hi Ozzy,

              I didn’t mean to imply any nostalgia for the political aspect of Apollo. Rather, for the tremendous achievement it was. For the respect such achievement once garnered. I can remember glimmers of it. And contrast it with the imbecilities of today. The grotesque “Geraldo-ization” of public discourse. The deranged fanaticism of sports fans (the sort of 24-7 all-encompassing jock-sniffing that’s common today was looked upon as more than slightly weird in my childhood). The ever-lowering literacy of the average person… etc.

          • i see the little distinction in the window you’d like to have, eric – cute little dalmation! but absent “politics”, (& a bunch a’ ex-nazi rocket scientists?) there was no apollo.

            believe it or not…i worked with a guy whose name wasn’t spelled the same, but had a familiar ring. so i asked him about it. turned out it was an “americanized” spelling of “goering”. that goering.

            this goering loved to play wargames on his computer. loved to talk about war documentaries he’d seen on the history channel. loved to extol the utilitarian virtues that accrued “to the rest of us” as a result of war. “like penicillin,” he said. he sure sounded like he was part of the goering genome.

            no matter what tho, as long as he had just two rationalizing synapses, the ends justified the means, just fine, as far as he was concerned. for him it was prolly a german shepherd in the window…☻

            • I get that, Ozy –

              But one can admire technical brilliance and achievement without endorsing the means by which it was realized. The VW Beetle, for instance.

              Or the V2 rocket.

              The machines as such – and the men who created them.

              Same as regards Apollo.

              The Saturn V was a magnificent achievement. Landing a man on the Moon was even more so, especially in 1969.

  6. Perhaps Chomsky sounds right to my ears, because he argues from the old Pennsylvanian Quaker position from the days of William Penn in the 1600s. And he was raised in the Jewish Zionist cultural tradition.

    A lot of what’s wrong with America, has to do with violently wresting it out from its rightful cradling bosom of Pennsylvania, and dropping it off to be abused like a stepchild in the non-existent fictionland of the District of Columbia.

    Back when there were still Americans of principle who attempted to buy the land from the Indians. Who saw the dignity in all men of all nations.

    Wisdom of William Penn
    http://www.esoteric-philosophy.com/2012/10/the-wisdom-of-william-penn.html

    The Freeman – Ideas on Liberty – William Penn – America’s First Great Champion for Liberty and Peace
    http://www.quaker.org/wmpenn.html

    Somewhere deep in Judeo Christian history, there was once a current of healthy egalitarianism. Ancient Jews who tilled the soil, kept their herds together. Loved learning, astronomy, natural philosophy. Had minds filled with countless stories they could create and tell on demand.

    Men full of wonder and curiosity, who wanted to understand this creation. Prolific writers in their own tongue. Learners of other tongues and traders with many other people.

    Men who tried to communicate with the master of the universe himself, whoever he might be. Who considered themselves above and beyond all the violence and coercion of this world.

    Men of the book. Of the word. Of trade. Of wealth and tools they fashioned with their own hands. Early men of the market. Perhaps they are a myth, and what they wrote about themselves never was. Nor will ever be. If so, it’s been something hard to give up.

    I think you are right about Chomsky. All the way to his core. It is fine to read his work, and listen to his speeches. He is masterful at finding fault with the existing state and institutions. But never forget what he is. A violent agent of eternal force, not reason and individual liberation.

    Noam Chomsky on creating an egalitarian, free and just society
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y8_2BBlar4

    One man’s view – Noam Chomsky interview
    http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/197305–.htm

    Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul Libertarians
    http://idealistpropaganda.blogspot.com/2009/04/noam-chomsky-on-ron-paul-libertarians.html

    Ideologically, Noam Chomsky aligns himself with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

    • Dear Tor,

      You are right. Chomsky’s own words confirm that he glosses over brute force coercion by claiming that “we voted on it, democratically, therefore it was not really coercion.”

      All his lip service to “anarchism?” Totally empty talk. Chomsky is clearly a statist social democrat who selectively criticizes the state for certain “abuses,” but who really doesn’t want to get rid of it, because he wants to “put it to good use,” to causes he approves of.

      Chomsky’s own words:

      “So pretty soon it will be April 15th, and the people in your neighborhood are going to have to send in their income taxes. The way they’re [they=Ron Paul libertarians] going to look at it, and the way they’ve been trained to look at it is that there is some alien force, like maybe from Mars, that is stealing our hard earned money from us and giving it to the government.

      Okay, well, that would be true in a totalitarian state, but if you had a democratic society you’d look at it the other way around You’d say “great, it’s April 15th, we’re all going to contribute to implement the plans that we jointly decided on for the benefit of all of us.”

      But that idea is even more frightening than Social Security. It means that we would have a functioning democracy, and no center of concentrated power is ever going to want that, for perfectly obvious reasons.

      So yes there are efforts, and pretty successful efforts to get people to fear the government as their enemy, not to regard it as the collective population acting in terms of common goals that we’ve decided on which would be what have to happen in a democracy.”

  7. I hear you Bevin.

    I’ve been arguing from the anarchist position, though I don’t necessarily agree with the position as commonly defined. Sorry this might be confusing.

    Anarchists don’t accept anarcho-capitalists as anarchists. Anarchist factions don’t agree on much, but their animosity against AnCaps is one area of consensus.

    It’s not just left wing anarchists and libertarian socialists that must be considered. The faction of highest importance is the classic liberals who initiated most of what we are discussing today.

    Some say we should reclaim the original term for them: liberal, from the collectivists
    http://cafehayek.com/2014/06/liberalism-2.html

    Anyway. Let’s make that the game plan then, make the case that we are the true anarchists, who most deserve and honor the term.

    I’m certainly no expert. When you say clarifying and honing our position is of the utmost merit, then that’s what I will strive for at this point.

    Unlike you or Eric, I’ve never been paid to write about my opinions, tell stories, or present my political analysis. I’m just some guy who likes finding interesting stuff on the internet, and throwing wildcats into discussions.

    Fundamentals of Voluntarism
    http://voluntaryist.com/fundamentals/introduction.html

    Libertarian is a broad category. Anarchism is a subset of libertarianism. Voluntarism is a subset of anarchism.

    These are the fundamentals of anarchism/voluntarism

    1 relations among people should be by mutual consent, or not at all.

    2 force is contrary to the nature of the intellect, which is reached through conviction and persuasion. If he who employs coercion against me could mold me to his purposes by argument, he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because he is weak.

    3 Voluntaryism follows naturally if no one does anything to stop it.

    4 Free market competition is a learning process which brings about results which no one can know in advance.

    5 Anarchism/voluntarism assures us that while we may have the possibility of choosing the worst, we also have the possibility of choosing the best. Whenever there is a chance for the good life, the risk of a bad one must also be accepted.

    6 We do not require a State to dictate what is right or wrong in growing food, manufacturing textiles, or in steel-making, and we do not need a government to dictate standards and procedures in any other field of endeavor either.

    7 Voluntaryism does not require of people that they violently overthrow their government, or use the electoral process to change it; merely that they shall cease to pay attention to, or support their government, whereupon it will fall of its own dead weight.

    8 The superior man can only be sure of his freedom if the inferior man is secure in his rights.

    9 Governments try to terrorize individuals into submitting to tyranny by grabbing their bodies as hostages and trying to destroy their spirits. This strategy fails against the Stoic attitude toward life. Fails among those who refuse to allow pain to disturb the equanimity the mind, and exercise of reason. A government might destroy one’s body or property, but it cannot injure one’s philosophy of life. The worst aspect of those holding political power is the way it’s corrupted their character and blinded them to their destructive nature.

  8. woo hoo, celebrating independence day with all the ceremony and majesty it deserves
    http://i.imgur.com/rKoQ8gl.jpg

    – all govts that ever existed combined, couldn’t even deliver a this simple beverage when you think about. they are after all just violent jerks that kill, steal, and destroy stuff, and nothing more.

    game of thrones VHS version
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oVfIFrpslI

    thanks, meriKa!
    http://i.imgur.com/psubQKN.jpg

    fireworks
    http://i.imgur.com/4mM407G.jpg

    if you can understand adding this caption to this photo doesn’t make it real… you can understand that adding some captions called constitutions and laws to organized mob violence doesn’t make the government real
    http://data3.whicdn.com/images/113962467/thumb.jpg

  9. If you guys want to see proof that America is a sleazy militarized state religion, just watch a few minutes of this sickening churchlike ceremony.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sICIcw7v7Vo

    750,000 of such new citizens were nationalized by USCIS in 2013

    Published on Jul 1, 2014

    Nearly 200 Las Vegas area residents from 48 former countries took the Oath of Allegiance and became U.S. citizens during a special live ceremony hosted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the city of Las Vegas.

    4:00 high priest district judge gives sermon. I ask you all to rise in praise of your Lord government
    5:00 bagpipe official fire/rescue pheros local honor guard straight out of British playbook marches down the aisle
    6:00 state church lady sings hymn O Say Can You See
    20:00 magical raising of hands and blessing of Holy American Spirit
    27:00 homo in chief gives prerecorded sermon from federal pulpit
    28:07 Proud To Be An American song is played, with eagles, mountains, and rivers slide show. No decaying urban North Korean warzones are included. Beaners, ricers, and brownies from all four directions wave their little American flags on sticks

    Maybe that was the last straw, when even folksy small town country music was taken over by Wall Street Corporations and turned into hideous propaganda New Country with synthesizers and carpet bagging homos from both coasts and every major city.

    http://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/naturalization-test/naturalization-oath-allegiance-united-states-america

    Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America

    “I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

    All applicants shall take an oath that incorporates the substance of the following:

    Support the Constitution;
    Renounce and abjure absolutely and entirely all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which the applicant was before a subject or citizen;
    Support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
    Bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and
    A. Bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; or
    B. Perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; or
    C. Perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law.

    There is no doubt I now loathe this land, God curse the USAAAAAAA…

    • Tor, your mention of “country music” made by corporations is almost an exact repeat of what I just discussed with my wife. Her co-workers listen to synthesized music as do mine. Last week I was riding in the back of the crewcab, by myself, where all us “internet weirdos” ride while those other people who attest “I don’t read, I don’t do computers” to which I reply, “And why should you since the entire knowledge of mankind is at your fingertips?” and you wouldn’t want to be accused of learning anything.(I’m not very popular). There was this corporate country music on the radio making me quite ill(and I love country music, have a repertoire of thousands of songs I can both sing and play instruments to)but that shit drives me batty. I realized in my purse(hey, when my last shave kit gave up my wife gave me an old purse with lots of pockets and I’ve been through several since then)resided some good earplugs I rapidly retrieved and stuck as far in as I could and then put my thumbs in my ears on top of that.

      This country sucks so bad I can hear it in my ears constantly(or is that tinnitis?). At least some free trade(if you can call oil companies free trade…..and I won’t)that allows those that will bust ass to achieve something other than Obamaville.

      I was reminded of how the market plays when things aren’t totally squashed by got. My neighbor(RV park)and I were speaking of work after work one day while wrenching on a pickup((something we do till bedtime since tv and fairly much everything else sucks)) ). He said he’d been sitting in that rock hammer all day waiting for word to do some work. I said that Hurry up and wait always got to me and I’d rather not. He allowed as to how it used to really bother him too till he got the right attitude. And what’s that attitude I asked. Well, he said, every time I’m sitting there finger inserted and bored, I just think of that $3,000 take home pay at the end of the week.
      Ok, I’ll finally make my point. If his skill weren’t worth that he surely wouldn’t make that. Of course socialists want to rob him, me and everyone else of as much of our hard earned money as they can to save “insert their favorite cause here”. For the chirren……or the politicians and bureaucrats who abscond with most of those funds supposedly collected for the “chirren”.

      Of course everyone of these worthless politicians will be voted out next election. And if you believe that I have a great ocean front beach property I’d like to sell you in west Tx.

  10. Probably the words anarchism and capitalism are useless. There just isn’t enough agreement on what these mean.

    Anarchism in the past, has a list of achievements it can point to. But lately, most anarchists are trying to expand anarchism too far.

    They’re claiming anarchism can be an all-encompassing social system. That they’ll seize the means of production and then leave these intact and make them available for the benefit of all to the exclusion of noone. Sounds too good to be true.

    Anarcho-capitalists seem to gloss over a lot of societal problems. They claim once the state is eradicated, coercion will end. They seem to forget how effect the British Corporations were at controlling the colonies, long before they founded either their first state, the monarchy, or their second state, the constitutional republic.

    AnCaps seem to employ a lot of optimistic word magic, with not much in the real world to back any of it up.

    Corporations and businesses go to great lengths to make sure your options are limited.

    In this new AnCap utopia, there appears to be only live productive people who want to work for an honest wage. Those who want nothing but to be given their fair chance within a meritocracy.

    This seems to be a complete fallacy. Lots of people don’t want to provide value for value. They just want to have access to what they need, and pay whatever they feel like for it.

    I would be more enthusiastic about Anarcho Capitalism if they provided a place for all the masses who don’t want to work. Who don’t really respect property all that much. Who reserve the right to use violence and aggression when it suits them.

    AnCaps seem to think these hordes of non-workers will just quietly starve without intruding on the AnCaps glittering new gulches filled with Producers.

    If AnCaps explicitly say, they are only interested in developing heavily armed and gated communities that are entirely self-sufficient and have no need of any outsiders, I would be more encouraged.

    If they also pledged to voluntarily provide some of their excess production and wealth for those not in their community, that would seem a prudent thing to do as well.

    Communism failed because it required a person better than those currently in existence. I fear Anarcho Capitalism will fail for the exact same reason. If being an AnCap requires being better than the average guy, then it’s likely it’s doomed to fail before it’s even tried.

  11. Or: why did the Founding Fathers who seemed to write in a way that they were Libertarians installed a new government that was generally worse than the British Crown for most people on the street?

    • Exactly so, Clover.

      The Constitution was written in secret conclave, without prior authorization, by a small cabal of “Federalists” who despised the limited central government specified by the Articles of Confederation.

      These men – Hamilton, especially – were authoritarians (like you)… not Libertarians.

      • Thomas Jefferson is “go to” Founding Father for Libertarians but what did he actually do that would make him a Libertarian?Clover

        • Clover,

          Libertarianism did not exist as a conscious, fully evolved ethical-political philosophy during Jefferson’s lifetime.

          However, he was an early acolyte in several key respects – most notably his contention that all men have equal rights to life and liberty. From this flows the non-aggression principle that is the basis of modern Libertarian ethics.

          Was Jefferson “perfect”? Of course not.

          But he was an instinctive anti-authoritarian, which is probably why you seek to impugn him.

  12. People who choose a life of liberty do not want to control or rule other people, they merely want to be left alone. Left alone to be self-determining and self-governing. They want to participate freely and voluntarily in all relationships.
    http://www.simpleliberty.org/main/index.htm

    http://liberator.dk/some-thoughts-on-the-anarcho-capitalism-versus-anarchy-controversy

    I guess I’m an anarcho anarchist, because I’m not on board with those calling themselves anarchists whose plan is to attack the rich, but I also don’t subscribe to anarcho-capitalism and its worship of sacred corporations as a complete and functioning philosophy either

    One has to respect the true hierarchies of human minds, human ability, and productive skill. Thus I’ll respect Elon Musk as head of Tesla, because he seems to have some legitimate participation in producing something for the market, albeit a problematic market rife with govt meddling. I would not respect Barack Obama being appointed head of Tesla in 2016, because I know he would have no legitimate participation in producing anything for the market.

    Any anarchist is free to hit Barack Obama or any Archon of the state on the head and take everything he has, because he’s never earned any of it. He acquires only through force. An anarchist must refrain from attacking Elon Musk, despite his state entanglements, because to some degree or another he has earned what he has.

    Ricardo Flores Magon
    http://prolecenter.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/indigenous-hero-ricardo-flores-magon/

    Let us no longer elevate anyone; let us all rise! Let us no longer hang medals or crosses on the chests of our leaders; if they want to be decorated, let us decorate them with our fists.

    Let’s suppose that the number lost in World War I is a million; this would signify that a million families find themselves without protection because their men were so stupid that they preferred to march to the slaughterhouse to defend the interests of their exploiters rather than to go to war in defense of the interests of their phyle. That such lambs die is a good thing. There’s no lack of men who are obstacles to the desire for liberty of the other individuals of their phyle. That means we’ll encounter fewer obstacles in our struggle for the destruction of the present system

    Anarchy Archives
    http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/

    Spunk Anarchist Library
    http://www.spunk.org/

    Tyranny of one Tyranny of all
    http://www.simpleliberty.org/tootoa/anarchy_abused.htm

    • Hi Tor,

      Thanks for the post and the links. I especially liked the last paragraph of your last link.

      “Someone once wrote that there are only two political theories that are perfectly consistent: anarchy and totalitarianism. The former embraces free association and voluntary exchange and believes that each individual is the sole owner of his or her self. Totalitarianism rejects those beliefs. In between the two theories is the hodge-podge of convoluted political theories and compromises.”

      My own journey to anarchism began by trying to answer this question posed by Auberon Herbert: “By what right do men exercise power over each other?” This question should, of course, be the first question asked in any serious inquiry into the nature and legitimacy of government. Logically, I was eventually compelled to answer that it is not by right, but by force, that men exercise power over each other. It was then that I realized that the inculcated reverence for democracy, limited government, the rule of law, constitutions, etc… serves the purpose of obscuring the fundamental fact that government does not possess any “right” to exercise power over men. No matter what the type of government, its’ “legitimacy” is always founded on force. In addition, because every government claims both a legal monopoly on the use of force, and a monopoly on the interpretation of law, every government is, in theory, totalitarian.

      Finally, I am genuinely confused by your statement, “but I also don’t subscribe to anarcho-capitalism and its worship of sacred corporations as a complete and functioning philosophy either”. Corporations are creatures of the State and, as such, they receive special privileges granted by the State. My understanding of anarcho-capitalism is necessarily limited as there is limited time for study. Still, I have read Rothbard, Rockwell, Hoppe, Murphy, Higgs, Block, Woods, etc… and none of them “worship the sacred corporation”. I also read and enjoy “left libertarians” such as Sheldon Richman, Roderick Long, Gary Chartier and Kevin Carson. While many left libertarians consciously reject the term capitalism, the difference between “right” and “left” libertarians seems somewhat trivial; if one prefers “voluntaryism” or “freed” markets, the core philosophy is the same.

      Ultimately, I prefer anarchist, without modifiers. But, if pressed, I would describe myself as an anarcho-capitalist. I like the term because capitalism (properly understood) recognizes that private property rights are necessary for a free and peaceful society, and encourages voluntary, social cooperation for mutual benefit.

      Kind Regards,
      Jeremy

      • 1 Auberon Herbert is the originator of voluntaryism. Voluntaryism being a subset of anarchism. He is closest to what I believe in, but there is no label out there that fits all of what I believe in and practice.

        – AnCap believe those in an advantageous situation, corporate capitalists, will just lay down their advantage and walk away from it. Anarchists disagree.

        Most anarchists believe in attacking the rich, all rich, in an anti-evolutionary sense. No one will be able to take advantage of another if they have their way. But no one will be left that knows how to continue human progress and create wealth either.

        2 Anarcho-Capitalism is not usually recognized as a form of anarchism by most traditional anarchists, as anarchism has historically been anti-capitalist.

        3 Many anarchists view capitalism as an inherently authoritarian and hierarchical system, and seek the expropriation of private property. Considerable tension exists between these left anarchists and laissez-faire anarcho-capitalists, as the former generally rejects anarcho-capitalism as a form of anarchism and considers anarcho-capitalism an oxymoron, while the latter holds that such expropriation is counterproductive to order, and would require a state.

        4 Traditional anarchists view anarcho-capitalism as a form of right-wing libertarianism, as anarchism has historically been anti-capitalist and concerned with social and economic equality.

        5 Most social anarchists argue that anarcho-capitalism is not a form of anarchism because they view capitalism as being inherently authoritarian. In particular they argue that certain capitalist transactions are not voluntary, and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires coercion, which is incompatible with an anarchist society.

        6 Anarcho-capitalism can only exist if wage slavery exists, and that the two are dependent on each other. I think the biggest problem that Anarcho-capitalists have in understanding traditional Anarchism, is that they generally define “voluntary” different and use this as a smokescreen to legitimize their beliefs.

        6B AnCaps belief that a transaction in which a man comes to a boss and seeks a wage in exchange for labor is voluntary, but this is only true if wage slavery didn’t exist, which AnCaps never take into account.

        6C Wage slavery, the idea that social coercion is the basis for capitalism and WHY people go to capitalists in the first place, is the center of the capitalist system and is an inevitable part of capitalism. If all the means of production are privately owned, people simply MUST work for a capitalist in order to obtain their basic living necessities through a wage (then food, shelter, etc… on the market). The Austrian Economists believe that wage slavery merely does not exist, in that if a man needs more, he/she simply enters into a wage labor agreement so that he/she could obtain compensation and that non-violent coercion isn’t legitimate coercion, but natural aspects of the economy.

        6D That’s just the problem in the language we’re having here. Anarcho-capitalists believe that their interactions are “voluntary” (the worker-boss relationship), while traditional Anarchists ardently believe that this relationship is socially coerced, because the means of production are privately owned.

        6E Within Anarcho-capitalism, you would still have a boss in the private sector, and to be self-employed, you must gain the resources and capital to do so, thus initially going through a phase of having a boss in the private sector. Anarchism seeks to abolish the private boss (capitalist) and the public boss (government).

        6F Now, in a society without a state. Let’s say that 50% of the world was socialist and the means of production were public, and that 50% of the world is Anarcho-capitalist, I would argue that Anarcho-capitalism would eventually, naturally become economically and inevitably impossible.

        6G Workers drive the capitalist modes of production. If the worker can enter a commune, create a product, receive its full compensation as well as being able to control it, AND work without a boss, then he will do so. Over time, The Anarcho-capitalist sphere will slowly diminish until it’s turned to nothing but a few property owners with no workers. Basically what i’m arguing, is that any system of free association exists, where the means of production are commonly owned, will inevitably lead to the diminish of capitalism, as the workforce will soon depart from the realm of the capitalist.

        6H Therefore, wage slavery and capitalism NEED each other, and neither exist without the other. There is no incentive for capitalism if wage slavery isn’t there. To put it into a sentence: Capitalism requires social coercion to be economically viable as well as possible. Thoughts, criticisms etc?

        6I As long as the means of production are privately owned, wage slavery will always exist.

        Free Market Defense of Walmart?
        http://anarchobjectivist.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/a-free-market-defense-of-walmart-not-so-fast/

        7 This conclusion I reached is rooted in AnCap ethics.

        Anarcho-capitalism is a bastardization of humanity

        As many know, the lives of human beings are worthless in a general sense; nobody is ‘entitled’ to food, housing, etc. Everyone must buy that, it must be paid for in a market environment, everything is a commodity to be sold right down to justice.

        Nobody has the right to justice, if you’re raped and can’t afford the courts? Who cares! You are worthless, you are entitled to nothing as a human being. Disabled and abandoned by your parents? Well, fuck you! Humanity has no inalienable right to life, however, ‘Anarcho’-Capitalism does propose another system of inalienable rights.

        These inalienable rights are private property and the means to the protection of private property from outside aggression, the non-aggression principle in AnCap terms. Consider this; this is a system where the means to Capitalism and acquiring wealth/capital (private property) is LITERALLY more important than human life. You are more entitled to the ability to acquire capital than you are to your own life.

        Freedom folks. This is freedom. The world is one giant business, your lives are meaningless in this giant business, the only inalienable rights there are, are the rights to acquiring and holding capital.

        Capital is before human life, this is a world literally deduced to the transfer of capital, the means of acquiring money, the process of business. It is a world driven by greed and a complete obliteration of human spirit.

        An anarcho-capitalist at a fire
        http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20110929.gif

        • Hi Tor,

          Thanks for the thoughtful and lengthy response. I will do my best to address your statements.

          “- AnCap believe those in an advantageous situation, corporate capitalists, will just lay down their advantage and walk away from it. Anarchists disagree.”

          No, AnCaps believe that corporate capitalists receive their “advantageous situation” because of State granted privilege. AnCaps are not so naive as to believe that, absent the State, corporate capitalists would walk away from their privilege. However, if they tried to maintain such privilege, it would require the direct use of force; they could not rely on the State to do it for them. Unfortunately, most people still believe that State use of force is legitimate, and thus acquiesce to policies which grant special privileges to the corporate elite. Absent the State, the use of force to maintain corporate privilege would be seen by the people for what it is. Namely, naked and illegitimate aggression.

          “2 Anarcho-Capitalism is not usually recognized as a form of anarchism by most traditional anarchists, as anarchism has historically been anti-capitalist.”

          From your link: “Anarchy merely means no rulers — nothing more and nothing less.” AnCaps make a distinction between corporatism, which requires rulers and State granted privilege, and capitalism, which does not.

          “3 Many anarchists view capitalism as an inherently authoritarian and hierarchical system, and seek the expropriation of private property. Considerable tension exists between these left anarchists and laissez-faire anarcho-capitalists, as the former generally rejects anarcho-capitalism as a form of anarchism and considers anarcho-capitalism an oxymoron, while the latter holds that such expropriation is counterproductive to order, and would require a state.”

          Any conceivable free society will produce natural hierarchies because peoples wants, interests and abilities differ. Those who attempt to abolish hierarchies will be compelled to initiate force, and thus claim a privileged status.

          AnCaps consider anarcho-communism, anarcho-socialism, etc… to be an oxymoron because the expropriation of private property requires the initiation of force, and the creation of a privileged class entitled to use that force. Thus, advocating the expropriation of private property violates the basic principles of anarchism.

          “5 Most social anarchists argue that anarcho-capitalism is not a form of anarchism because they view capitalism as being inherently authoritarian. In particular they argue that certain capitalist transactions are not voluntary, and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires coercion, which is incompatible with an anarchist society.”

          If we define capitalism as a system of State granted privilege that confers upon a minority of people a “right” to control the means of production, then the “social anarchists” are correct. However, such a definition of capitalism is essentially identical to fascism. As I’m sure you are aware, AnCaps do not accept this definition of capitalism. Still, given the baggage associated with the term, I am sympathetic to left libertarians who argue that we should abandon it. However, if capitalism means a system of private ownership and voluntary exchange, then any attempt to abolish it will “require coercion, which is incompatible with an anarchist society.”

          “6 Anarcho-capitalism can only exist if wage slavery exists, and that the two are dependent on each other. I think the biggest problem that Anarcho-capitalists have in understanding traditional Anarchism, is that they generally define “voluntary” different and use this as a smokescreen to legitimize their beliefs.”

          What does “wage slavery” even mean in a free society? Any free society, to provide for the needs and wants of its’ members, will require the specialization of labor. Some people are better at innovation, entrepreneurship, management of scarce resources, etc… than others. “Wage labor” allows for all people to be productive in a free society. Any attempt to forbid those people who are not skilled at “self-employment” from offering the services that they can provide, at a wage, would require coercion, and thus be incompatible with an anarchist society.

          “6F Now, in a society without a state. Let’s say that 50% of the world was socialist and the means of production were public, and that 50% of the world is Anarcho-capitalist, I would argue that Anarcho-capitalism would eventually, naturally become economically and inevitably impossible. ”

          What is meant by “public” ownership of the means of production? In practice, this concept has always meant that an elite few assert control of the means of production but pretend that the resources are “owned” by the public. Of course, the “public” can’t actually exercise any control, thus the theory requires the creation of a coercive monopoly to maintain control of “public” resources. Perhaps you mean that the “public” really owns the means of production, and that everyone has an equal right to use them. If so, I would argue that the 50% of the world which held that the means of production were “public” would suffer from the “tragedy of the commons” problem. Resources would be quickly squandered and fighting and death would ensue. Early American settlers attempted to build a society based somewhat along the lines of “public” ownership of the means of production (albeit, along a corporate charter model). Mass starvation and death were the result.

          “6G Workers drive the capitalist modes of production. If the worker can enter a commune, create a product, receive its full compensation as well as being able to control it, AND work without a boss, then he will do so. Over time, The Anarcho-capitalist sphere will slowly diminish until it’s turned to nothing but a few property owners with no workers. Basically what i’m arguing, is that any system of free association exists, where the means of production are commonly owned, will inevitably lead to the diminish of capitalism, as the workforce will soon depart from the realm of the capitalist.”

          Workers and entrepreneurs and investors and inventors and innovators drive the capitalist modes of production. What if a worker can’t create a product that other people value? “Full compensation” of nothing strikes me as a bad deal. Why, in a free society, would it be permissible to prevent such a person from offering a service that he can provide, at a wage?

          Basically, what I’m arguing is that in any system where free association truly exists, private ownership of the means of production will emerge naturally. Any attempt to impose “public” ownership of the means of production will require the creation of a coercive class, and the eventual destruction of society.

          Unfortunately, I have to do some productive work now and I must delay comment on point 7 to a later time.

          Kind Regards,
          Jeremy

          • Dear Jeremy,

            Again, crystalline clarity.

            I have long felt that absolute conceptual clarity is essential.

            As the Chinese philosopher Confucius put it:

            Above all it is essential to refer to things by their correct names. If things are not referred to by their correct names, then our language will not reflect reality. If our language does not reflect reality, then our actions will not reflect reality, and will be exercises in futility.
            — Confucius, The Analects, Chapter 13, Verse 3

            I am not a fan of Confucius, who could be considered a Chinese counterpart of an American conservative. But some of his insights were astute.

          • Dear Jeremy and Bevin,
            I will do my best to prevail against your so-called Anarcho-Capitalists.

            I will admit up front, that anarchism will almost certainly lose. Because anarchism is trying to win the battle in a political manner.

            Anarchists seem better suited to defeat the existing state than do AnCaps. But then ready to utterly squander this achievement, by trying to beat their manifestos into law books and enforced social constructs, and lord some dogma of anti-hierarchy over the orphans and ruins of the aftermath of the state, upon winning this victory.

            Traditional anarchists seem to think the state is just a mask of the corporations. Even should you smash the state entirely, you’d still be at the mercy of the rich elite, who would swiftly find new ways of controlling and subjugating you. That is why anarchists advocate taking the existing means of production over by force.

            The state armies that exist, are useful only for attacking other state armies of competing nations. They are ineffective at defending themselves from an attack from within. From an organized uprising of the far more numerous anarchists and populist poor in their midst.

            I too am steeped in the AnCap gospel, but unlike Bevin, I’m not that confident in the power of crystal clarity to save the day. Nor that you have fully demonstrated such clarity as of yet.

            You’ve won the first and second quarters. With your first and second responses.

            But it’s halftime now, and my generals are still in the game.

            I would say in the past corporations have proven quite adept at applying force all on their own. But certainly, weakening the state to make corporations use their own force is preferable to the state doing so.

            Consider just the tennis shoes that basketball players wear.

            What Nike has to do to distribute and sell their shoes throughout the world. Different languages, rules, currencies, customs.

            Make them in lower priced areas and sell them in higher priced areas.

            Though I too hate the government, what will truly happen if it is defeated? Will the Nike shoemakers merely remove the labels that say Made In Phillipines or Made In Malaysia and carry on as before?

            I fear something will emerge in this vacuum, it will not dare call itself a government. But what kinds of force and coercion will it employ, I’d like to know.

            Uncomfortable AnCap Questions:

            It would seem we could agree to tentatively abandon the term “capitalism” for something new – perhaps homesteadism. Or valuism. Probably there’s a catchier term than AnCap we could coin as well?

            “Why, in a free society, would it be permissible to prevent such a person from offering a service that he can provide, at a wage?” Anarchists say no such free society will ever exist. AnCap’s utopia will never emerge, because forces will converge and fence off the commons and resources, until all landless men are forced into wage earning jobs at low wages.

            “private ownership of the means of production will emerge naturally.” can you give at least one example of how this will take place?

            – The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state.

            But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune.

            – F. Engels, in a letter of 1883

            Notes on Anarchism – Noam Chomsky
            http://www.chomsky.info/books/state01.htm

            – anarchism has a broad back, like paper it endures anything” – including, those whose acts are such that “a mortal enemy of anarchism could not have done better.”
            – Octave Mirbeau: (1894)
            http://radicalarchives.org/2011/06/08/mirbeau-anarchisms-broad-back/

            Anarchist FAQ/What is Anarchism?
            http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Anarchist_FAQ/What_is_Anarchism%3F/1.1

            “Anarchism can be understood as the generic social and political idea that expresses negation of all power, sovereignty, domination, and hierarchical division, and a will to their dissolution.

            Anarchism is therefore more than anti-statism even if government (the state) . . . is, appropriately, the central focus of anarchist critique.”
            – David Weick

            “Anarchists are people who reject all forms of government or coercive authority, all forms of hierarchy and domination. They are therefore opposed to what the Mexican anarchist Flores Magon called the ‘sombre trinity’ — state, capital and the church.

            Anarchists are thus opposed to both capitalism and to the state, as well as to all forms of religious authority.

            But anarchists also seek to establish or bring about by varying means, a condition of anarchy, that is, a decentralised society without coercive institutions, a society organised through a federation of voluntary associations.”
            – Brian Morris

          • Dear Tor,

            I’m pretty sure Jeremy was not saying that “anacaps” and “anarchists” are two hostile camps.

            But just to be safe, let me confine myself to what I am saying. Just so I don’t unwittingly misrepresent Jeremy’s views.

            I say that anacaps ARE anarchists. Anarchists ARE anacaps.

            I say that “left wing anarchists” aka “libertarian socialists” are not genuine anarchists. If they were honest, they would not call themselves anarchists. They say they would abolish the state, but they would then violate the NAP through other state like institutions.

          • bevin….

            crystalline clarity…essential

            i’ve sold to engineers (types), batted it back/forth on various deals. i know how they need to have info packaged. & how they typically disdain, are suspicious of, other styles. & their affectation of style-superiority (not an accusation – you’ve already advocated live let live as regards presentation/communication styles).

            clarity is a beholder’s eye/brain ’emergent property’, from allusive-rich to machine code. so, “essential-ness” is a very individualistic thing. remember the pacino scene in “glengarry glen ross”? he wasn’t pitching an engineer. if he had been, the pitch woulda’ been different. sellers, buyers, & the bought & paid for in the psychological/emotional marketplace (a la that goering quote you cited)….

            particular pacino pitch…

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa9dttNx1S8

            but if you mean something like it’s “essential” to ultimate success of the napanacap program versus all the authoritarian others, then you’re fetishizing language styles/combinations. & that’s no different than (forget his handle)’s “three organic laws” (or whatever it was). the pen is mighty, just don’t take one to a sword fight. remember the connery scene in “the untouchables”? don’t be the “wop”…or the “mick”, either, i’d say….

            doo-wop, bebop, & the beat(in’) goes on…(& just happens to be same banditti land – see below)

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d5jXDvrOu4

            “crystal clarity” givers have been with us just as long as the poets engineers tend not to read/recite. & still, large deposit napancap gem crystallization has not occurred. & it won’t. the human condition generates, instead, blood diamonds, controlled & “modulated” by cartels. “natural hierarchies” have always been, & will continue to be, subverted & harnessed/destroyed by the perennial crops of those dissatisfied with the slots they would occupy within such “natural orders”, & these banditti will always be buttressed & abetted by their throngs of admiring panem et circenses supporters. which begs the question: which hierarchy is “natural”? i think that’s a rhetorical question. “john galt” thought trying to sell one answer vs the other was a waste of precious life.

            banditti(s) of the prairie, then (in the “good old days”)…111-man jury…55/56 rifleman firing squads…meet the new banditti – eventually elliott ness & al capone, etc – same as the old banditti…

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banditti_of_the_Prairie

            as for confucius…”ozymandias” is not reality. nor are my – or anyone elses’ – given names. maps & territories & “roses” & men minus plumes & guerres…

            serape, stogie, “six”-shooter, steed…surname? nah….

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s7vmJm05_E

          • Dear oz,

            “(not an accusation – you’ve already advocated live let live as regards presentation/communication styles).”

            Yes, Correct.

            As I told Tor, (and by implication you) he should do whatever comes naturally for him as far as writing style, even if it is not always my cup of tea.

            As hardcore laissez faire capitalists. we must of course follow our own drumbeat. We must trust that everyone will find his own audience in a free marketplace of ideas.

            That does not of course mean that from a consumer perspective, I cannot express a personal preference, and state my reasons for that preference! That too is part of libertarianism.

            That is what distinguishes us from clovers. We libertarians do not leap from having preferences, to forcing others to agree with our preferences.

        • Dear Tor,

          Thanks for another thoughtful and respectful response, as well as the humorous links. As an aside, I don’t know how to post a direct response to your comment because there is no “reply” button at the end of it. So, I’ve responded to your original reply. Perhaps it will show up in the right sequence, perhaps not.

          Anyway, I will attempt to respond to your observations.

          “Traditional anarchists seem to think the state is just a mask of the corporations. Even should you smash the state entirely, you’d still be at the mercy of the rich elite, who would swiftly find new ways of controlling and subjugating you. That is why anarchists advocate taking the existing means of production over by force.”

          First, I’d like to know what you mean by “traditional anarchists”. Do the American individualist anarchists fall into that category? I see anarcho-capitalism as an extension of individualist anarchism, and definitely part of the “tradition of anarchist thought”. Again, if we accept that “Anarchy merely means no rulers — nothing more and nothing less”, then a very important question is what strains of “anarchy” are compatible with the principle of “no rulers”. I believe that anarcho-capitalism is most consistent with this principle. I could do no better than to quote your own words to illustrate this point:

          “Anarchists seem better suited to defeat the existing state than do AnCaps. But then ready to utterly squander this achievement, by trying to beat their manifestos into law books and enforced social constructs, and lord some dogma of anti-hierarchy over the orphans and ruins of the aftermath of the state, upon winning this victory.”

          The point is that if any so called anarchist is more concerned with abolishing “hierarchy” and “social coercion” than abolishing the State, they will “advocate taking the existing means of production over by force.” This amounts to a complete repudiation of anarchist principles.

          Natural hierarchies will always develop in a free society. What anarchists should oppose is unnatural and undeserved hierarchies (those created by force). Also, “social coercion” is a really sloppy term. Coercion means the use, or threat, of force. In a statist society we are “socially coerced” to pay taxes, apply for licenses, observe employment requirements, abstain from providing products or services prohibited by the State, etc… In a free society, “social coercion” is an oxymoron; a more accurate term would be “social pressure”. But, in a truly free society, “social pressure” is mostly a good thing: take care of yourself, take care of your family, honor your commitments, don’t steal, etc…

          “private ownership of the means of production will emerge naturally.” can you give at least one example of how this will take place?”

          Sure, but first let me point out that I was riffing on your statement: “Basically what i’m arguing, is that any system of free association exists, where the means of production are commonly owned, will inevitably lead to the diminish of capitalism, as the workforce will soon depart from the realm of the capitalist.”

          You left out the first part of my response, so I will post it in full: “Basically, what I’m arguing is that in any system where free association truly exists, private ownership of the means of production will emerge naturally.”

          So, let’s imagine the ever popular “desert island” scenario. A group of people are stranded on an island with no resources other than the clothes on their backs and what is available on the island. However, the island is pretty barren. Natural shelters and food are scarce. The people make spears from sticks to catch fish and barely get by. They have little time to build shelters, so sleeping is dangerous and unpleasant. Eventually one person in the group notices that fish school in a particular spot. He tries to spear them but finds that he can only spear one fish before the school disperses. Frustrated, he looks for a better way to catch fish. He notices that seaweed can be harvested and woven into a net. Over a period of days, he works additional hours to catch enough fish by spear so that he can take time off to build nets. Once he builds the nets, he is able to catch twenty times the fish of anyone else. He offers to someone the ability to use his nets in exchange for half of the fish that he can catch. This is a good deal for that person because he can now acquire ten times as many fish as before. This original “capitalist” uses his newly acquired free time to construct a better shelter because he no longer needs to worry about catching fish. The original employee (wage laborer) realizes that he now has more fish than he needs and offers to pay another to construct a better shelter for him. This process continues, and continues to diversify.

          Some people are better at innovation, some people are better at management, some people are content to work for wages. Eventually, one wage laborer realizes that many social wants are not being fulfilled. He delays improvements on his dwelling so that he can plant crops on an area of unused land. People want the produce and are wiling to pay for it, others are willing to work on this farm for wages.

          So, you get the gist. No State, no force, just a situation where someone creates ownership over one part of the means of production which leads to social betterment. Also notice, absent the coercive force of government, anyone is allowed to enter the game and become an owner of the means of production. Finally, notice that every owner of the means of production took risks. Because of that, people who did not wish to take risks, were able to be wage laborers.

          Finally, you quote Engels: – “The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state.

          But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune.

          – F. Engels, in a letter of 1883”

          This is precisely the problem. The State can never be tamed, it can never be forced to serve the interests of the “proletariat”. The State will always favor itself and the politically connected economic class that colludes with it.

          Marx famously declared that communism would lead to a “withering away of the State” However, Marx and Engels were heavily influenced by Hegel. The following Hegel quotes are from “The Open Society and its’ Enemies” by Karl Popper.

          “The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth … We must therefore worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on earth … The State is the march of God through the world … The State must be comprehended as an organism … To the complete State belongs, essentially, consciousness and thought. The State knows what it wills … The State … exists for its own sake … The State is the actually existing, realized moral life.”

          That’s all for now, it’s time for bed.

          Kind Regards,
          Jeremy

          • Dear Jeremy,

            You wrote,

            The point is that if any so called anarchist is more concerned with abolishing “hierarchy” and “social coercion” than abolishing the State, they will “advocate taking the existing means of production over by force.” This amounts to a complete repudiation of anarchist principles.

            Exactly right.

            That is why I say that only anarcho-capitalists, akak market anarchists, aka voluntaryists, are bona fide anarchists.

            Other purported anarchists are merely statist wolves in anarchist’s sheep’s clothing.

            They are worse than the so-called “thick libertarians” who come dangerously close to advocating “positive rights” instead of “negative rights.”

            The acid test is always the NAP. It always separates the sheep from the goats. Genuine anarchists adhere to the NAP 100%. Anyone who doesn’t, is NOT a anarchist at all, and has no right to wear the label.

          • Dear Tor,

            Always trust “bottom line theory.”

            People like to lay claim to what they suspect is the moral high ground. But often they are merely talking the talk, not walking the walk.

            Libertarian socialists such as Noam Chomsky for example, love to boast that “freedom” or “liberty” is their highest value. They lie. It is not. It never was. Their bottom line has always been EQUALITY of condition. Their motivation has always been egalitarian envy, not freedom from interference.

            Libertarian socialists such as Noam Chomsky are coercive egalitarians who are unwilling to tolerate inequality, even if the inequality is imposed by nature rather than ruling elites. Therefore they are willing, nay eager to abolish that inequality by sweeping the NAP under the rug.

            The only authentic libertarians there are on this earth, are libertarians whose bottom line is liberty, not equality. They (we) have no problem with inequality as long as it was not the result of brute force coercion, i.e., violations of the NAP.

            As I have long said, never trust the rhetoric alone. Always look for an ideologue’s bottom line.

          • Dear Eric,

            Ditto. Envy is so pointless.

            Nature makes every one of us unique. We each have our own path to trod. What’s to envy?

            We weren’t meant to compare and be compared. We were meant to march to our own drumbeat.

            Socialists have long accused free market capitalists (not to be confused with cronyists and kleptocrats) of being motivated by “greed.”

            Not true. We are motivated by the desire to fulfill our own unique destinies, whatever they may be.

            Rather it is socialists who have the unhealthy, unsavory psychological motivations. They are motivated by envy. Hence their obsession with equality of condition, and their eagerness to impose “social justice.”

            • Yup!

              Speaking of Apollo:

              I have long held that the first manned flight of the Saturn V (Apollo 8, Borman, Anders & Lovell) was the apotheosis of the United States as a nation dedicated to excellence, to productive achievement. It has been downhill ever since. For almost 50 years, the country has been living on fumes. Those crew-cut, chain smoking men at mission control – and the men on top of that Saturn V rocket – incarnated what America was.

              Watch this video:

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXIW1eEzrFM

              Every time I do, I weep for what has been thrown away.

              Now, we have fuuuhhhhhhtttttball (and lately, soccer) worship, cRap and the Kardashians. Dancing With the Stars instead of men headed to the stars.

              It’s sickening and depressing.

          • Some of it, I think, comes down to what you DO (IE, external vs. internal locus of control).
            I Envy those who are beautiful, fit, wealthy, strong.

            I admit it freely.

            I do NOT, however, wish to deprive them of what is theirs, if it was essentially done “honestly.”
            Genetics, for example, produces beauty. Also strength. But to DEVELOP those into something? THAT takes dedication and work. I envy them -in the bad sense – their advantage. But I can put in the time and effort, too, and while I might never win the Miss America pageant, I can be “the best I can be” in that realm. (OK, the mirrors don’t crack any more…. Next thing to work on? ) 😉

            Envy can be a motivator, if people will deal with it that way. I want X, I must do actions 1, 2, 3, 4, etc, and sacrifice A, B, and C. OR… I can decide the price isn’t worth it, and choose another direction. But I can’t do both! I can’t be, for example, BOTH a man and a woman. I can’t get rich without putting in the time necessary to learn about money; learn a skill; hone the skill; advertise my skill; invest my profits; shmooze, socialize, network, etc, to keep abreast of the news and rumors, and make friends who will lead me to new heights of power and money. Donald Trump wasn’t BORN, really; he MADE HIMSELF.

            Even Anna Nicole Smith wasn’t BORN, she had to do certain things to make her way through life. There were probably a few dozen comparable girls, at least, that we never heard of: they wanted something else, whether it was a career in the boardroom or a husband and children.

            It’s the Hero’s Journey of mythology. Luke Skywalker is no different from Hercules or Jason of the Argonauts. The details change; the rules remain the same. Charles Barkley wasn’t born a perfect basketball player, nor Mike Tyson a boxer, nor Martha Stewart a CEO…. Etc.

            I see it as motivation, as an example of what can be done. E.G., “the @$$hole” over at Chaos and Pain. Or any of the contributors on T-Nation. The Rock, Dwayne Johnson. Hulk Hogan, a giant of his time. Johnny Dep (Can you imagine Edward Scissorhands, or Captain Jack Sparrow, being played by ANYONE else? ) Madonna. Ripley will ALWAYS be Sigourney Weaver…
            Etc.

            UsSe your negatives to grow… If you’re “depressed because your life sucks?” Then, make a better life – use that envy as a motivator.

            But envy without action? No point, spot on. It’s just a waste of energy….

        • Dear Bevin,

          Thank you for the kind words. Like you, I believe that clarity of language and precise definitions are important. I’m flattered that you think I achieved it.

          As for the Confucius quote, it is interesting that true wisdom often comes from unlikely places. Consider this Keynes quote as an example.

          “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls . . . become ‘profiteers’, who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished not less than the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds . . . all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless.”

          Kind Regards,
          Jeremy

          • Dear Jeremy,

            You are most welcome!

            In this Age of Newspeak, when torture is referred to as “enhanced interrogation,” racial discrimination is referred to as “affirmative action,” and counterfeiting is referred to as “quantitative easing,” intellectual clarity has never been more precious.

            I’ve encountered that quote a number of times in my readings. Many fellow hard money advocates have identified it as a confession blurted out in a rare moment of candor.

            Basically Keynes let the cat out of the bag, and gave the whole monetarist scam away with that single quote! It was a literal description of the century old scam foisted upon an unwitting public by the international banksters who met at Jekyll Island in 1910.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu_VqX6J93k

            • Hi Bevin,

              In re “enhanced interrogation”:

              Another term that traces back to National Socialist Germany.

              Just like “Homeland” (Heimat, auf deutsch).

              Curious, isn’t it?

          • Morning, Jeremy!

            I just wanted to take a moment to welcome you here – and also to thank you for your excellent, well-written comments. What a counterpoint to Clover’s imbecile blatherings!

          • Dear Eric,

            Thank you so much for your welcome and your kind words. I would also like to thank you. This blog is one of my “go to” sites every day. I really appreciate the intellectual discourse and free exchange of ideas that happen here. You should be immensely proud of your achievement.

            As a side note, I’m often confused how to respond directly to a comment. Why is the “reply” button only active on some posts?

            Cheers,
            Jeremy

          • Jeremy,

            IIRC, the reply button will only go (3 or 4) levels deep.

            I think this is to prevent the replies being squeezed into smaller and smaller columns of space. Wider columns are generally easier to read.

  13. I remember a glorious 4th a few years ago.

    Now here in Indiana, fireworks have always been legal. There are firework stands all over the state. Any landlord with a vacant storefront will have a tenant in June if they are willing to rent it by the month (and the town doesn’t try to block it).

    Setting them off was a different story however. You had to “sign” a card saying you would only set off the fireworks in a location set up by the seller of the fireworks. It was a huge farce and everybody knows it. It was extra stupid, since a good amount of the fireworks cross the state line into the peoples republic of Illinois were fireworks are illegal for the great unwashed, but that is a different story.

    Now most places really didn’t do anything about setting off private fireworks, (like they could). Some towns did “allow” it setting legal hours etc with town ordinances. Some outright banned them. Few of course, followed the constitution (remember that piece of paper?).

    But the Indiana Supreme Court found all fireworks ordinances unconstitutional. Just before the 4th to boot. And they prohibited towns and police departments from enforcing ANY fireworks ordinances until they passed constitutional muster. So for a glorious 4th there were NO LAWS about fireworks.

    Clovers all over the state were horrified when calling the police to complain about their neighbors fireworks that the police were going to do nothing. Most even refused to send an officer out.

    Was there more fires, injuries, deaths etc then usual? Of course not.

  14. The Clovers here in Boston will line up on the morning of the 4th to be scanned, searched, and groped to celebrate their “freedom” at the Esplanade concert without one bit of irony. How sad; Adams, Jefferson, Washington, etc. must be weeping in their graves to see what the “cradle of liberty” has become – a totally welcomed police state. I think the founders cared more about freedom than their saaaafety, Ben Franklin certainly did. Most of these sheeple will be wearing and waving flags as though that proves they’re “free”. They should watch the old newsreels from the 40’s and see how similar that is to the Nazi rallies festooned with flags and cheering fools, only difference now is the being used. Haven’t gotten to mass murder in the “homeland” yet, though we practice it on lots of foreigners in their countries. The re-education FEMA camps are ready, I guess the gas chambers will come for those of us who can’t be convinced of our master’s authority.

  15. *Why don’t school busses have to have seat belts?

    Given the configuration of bus seats more harm than good would bw done.

    * If guns are so dangerous, how come politicians are surrounded by cordons of heavily armed men?

    Because they are terrified of the people they misrule.

    * How did the good ol’ USA become the “homeland”?

    ‘Homeland” is an insider’s Joke of the Elite. The Sheeple are opening being mocked for their craven inability to resist.

  16. Unjust laws exist: Shall we be content to obey them?

    or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded?

    or shall we transgress them at once?”

    H D Thoreau

    American Transcendentalism Club
    http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/thoreau/

    The Internet’s Own Boy – Aaron Swartz
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58

    R W Emerson – American Transcendentalist
    http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/emerson/essays/index.html#conduct

    Wealth

    The temples rose, the towns, the marts,
    The shop of toil, the hall of arts;
    Then flew the sail across the seas
    To feed the North from tropic trees;

    The storm-wind wove, the torrent span,
    Where they were bid the rivers ran;
    New slaves fulfilled the poet’s dream,
    Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam.

    Then docks were built, and crops were stored,
    And ingots added to the hoard.
    But, though light-headed man forget,
    Remembering Matter pays her debt:

    Still, through her motes and masses, draw
    Electric thrills and ties of Law,
    Which bind the strengths of Nature wild
    To the conscience of a child.

    • I wrote the following as a sort of response, meandered off topic, and not sure where I’d end up – but I need to finish work stuff and go to sleep so I can get up in 5 hours and do this same old Stuff again.
      I leave the following as a sort of examination of the “answers” I (don’t) have.

      Ultimately, the only way to decentralize things is to shred any centralized power source: Water, food, ammo, means of production, mediums of exchange of value (money), etc. And power-seekers will always exist. No way to kill them all off. But dispersing the puppet-masters would be a big help, I think.

      ++++ Stream of consciousness warning. 😉 +++++++

      I’m not so sure about it being by nature centralizing of power. In a general sense, the fall of Rome WAS a revolution. So was the Enlightenment.

      In a sense, my concern on the centralization is that the TRUE POWER, fi you will, IS being centralized – and the responsible parties are getting further and further distanced and isolated.
      So, let’s use names to make it easy. Kardassian = the power behind the throne. Obummer = The puppet in the Political Catbird seat. Rabble = everyone NOT seated on the VIP Dais.
      Rabble yells, screams, throws a fit; in revolution, Rabble goes after the Obummers. Puppets get damaged, removed, some escape as “war criminals” or refugees or whatever. Kardassians are already backing the new Obummer and helping him/her/it “lead” the sheep right into the wolves’ den again.

      If that’s what you’re referring to, and what I think Rockwell is referring to? Maybe. Meantime, the “decentralization” mentioned? Accomplishes nothing of import, in terms of true freedom or escape. Kardassians, never being in the open, never being the target? Can throw their influence, money, propaganda, behind whatever puppet does what he’s told.
      The Rabble get their new doodads and forget all about what was important. They have POWER, they showed the MAN, they stream movies on their ipads while they commute to their milking station… I mean, cubicles. And they thank the puppet Obummers for the chance to work… because the sheep on the neighboring farms have it SO MUCH WORSE….

      There was a collection of companies not too long ago, Edison General Electric, US Steel, I forget all of them, Morgan’s and Carnegie’s and Ford’s empires. Broken up as monopolies, decried as “Robber Barons”… But all they did was streamline production and control (as the government wants to) prices, economics, and means of production. Being capitalists, they actually had a REASON to make sure people got a decent wage and that they produced goods and services at the lowest cost: They wanted to SELL to their workers. It’s no use to make a consumer product for only the ultra-wealthy, like early cars were. Model T, though, “anyone” could own one.

      We have a parallel here. We are centralizing wealth if we ignore the puppet masters: Carnegies, Rothschilds, Morgans, et al.
      But a shadow revolution? Can’t STOP these beasts (banks, for example), but you don’t make them STOP – you just need to change the direction. Remove the head, the direction (vision) is altered through succession. Repeat as needed. Most people (Rabble) will continue to curse the gods and puppets regardless of whether god(s) exist or the puppets are good or evil.

      Fall of Rome only changed WHO was in power (As the article points out WRT Cromwell et al. Transfer of power. So, Suisse Bank or INC or Credit Suisse or Lehman Brothers or Citibank, who cares? Same evil.)
      OTOH, running battles with whatever rabble is around? ALL guns turned against whatever central authority wants to tell you what to do, “OR ELSE,” “For YOUR OWN GOOD…” ? Worked against Britain. We don’t have the sort of hale and hearty we need, anymore – but the engineered collapse will likely change the whole deal. The weak will go to FEMA or internment/re-education camps. (Whether they exist now or not is irrelevant, they WILL exist if TSHTF/TEOTWAWKI. The End Of The World As We Know It.

      Got to eat. Got to sleep. Can’t be on guard all the time. Can’t always feed the family. But they’ll take the Mark of the Beast to feed their family, regardless of the other costs. (Mind control, anyone? Re-education by causing pain from certain stimuli, such as NOT being watched by Big Brother? Etc.)
      Remember, circa 1990 we were talking about Ericsson phones, or Iridium’s satellites. But what have these things done, save centralize power while appearing to disperse it?
      Centralize data, metadata: allow for harvesting and examination of your actions, locations, thoughts, habits – to determine if you are a threat to the powers that be. JP Morgan, Carnegie, Lehman, et al. They can always make a new country – with themselves at the helm yet again. Maybe change names in the “loss of data” and “chaos.”
      Whether it’s Cesar or The Pope, or FedGov, or E-Rep, or Norsefire, if there’s a POLE to draw towards – that’s a 360 degree “revolution,” yes – the Poles are the same in form, in action – they look different at first, that’s all. Look at the Pigs on Animal Farm, and look at the Humans… and there’s not a difference to discern.

      But a bunch of Kentucky Riflemen? Who want to TRY to get a tank in there? More like drones and a “nuclear incident” due to “terrorists.” (And yes, we’re full circle, as the same people are STILL pulling the strings.)

      Unless we ignore the puppets and find ways to fight the real powers…. AND their replacements… AND the ones who would replace them….? And so on, ad infinitum?

      We are able to support WAY too many people now. Tourism is still a huge deal (How, I do not comprehend.) But if there is a planned crash or “realignment”? Well, which is more profitable? Prop up the debt-structure, or collapse it? And wiping out puppets accomplishes nothing, it’s just dog-and-pony shows. But “dispersing” the Blue Blood types? Maybe, might accomplish something. Can’t see the future. (If I could, I’d be one of the “Haves (Way too much).” 😉

      but we cannot face this enemy at the ballot box, or through blatant political action (QV Tea Party Republicans, corrupted, distorted, twisted back on to the party line. ) Might get some traction, but we even as a full “society” couldn’t turn the tide.

      I don’t want to REPLACE TPTB. I want to REMOVE all of them, AND their successors, for a while….
      But as mentioned elsewhere, referencing Daenerys Targaryen, and the freed slave who wanted to get BACK into slavery – for the respect, the home he’d lived in… He was UNABLE to think outside that arrangement.

      Depressingly – what if that’s REALITY? What if we who CAN think, who WANT to be free, are simply that “other Pole” and would ONLY be able to effect the change we wish, by “leading” these MUST BE slaves?

      Thanks, now _I’m_ depressed.
      😛

      We can decentralize stores of knowledge, but not physical things. Only so much property, desert, ocean, sun, rain, food, water, air. Can’t breathe coal; literally, can’t BURN air. At this point, though, we CAN decentralize the accumulators. I think maybe we’re quibbling over “how” ? And how to deal with the aftermath?

      Make the Elites live amongst us. They used to… Make sure that Clinton, for instance, KNOWS what it means to be BROKE. DEAD broke. For years, even. Or remove key pieces from the playing board entirely, and see where things lie afterwards….
      Whereas it seems most here think they can influence the game by “playing better.” If the game is “OW MY BALLS!” the only way to “win” is to not play – take your balls and go home. 😉 Let them all kick each other.

      Our impasse is, the Kardassians won’t ALLOW the Rabble to leave. We MUST play THEIR game, and enrich them in the process, using THEIR currency. Hence, Clover.
      Flamethrowers handle Clover; maybe the same here applies?

      As to “cost”: If the plan is to profiteer from our misery, massive numbers of population must die anyway. Say, 80-90%. Agenda 21?
      Die on your feet, or live on your knees. Most people will choose to “live” on their knees. We can’t “go west” anymore; even if we could, Clover is there, waiting, with nets and mind-control chips for our children, and handcuffs for us.

      There is an ongoing cold war revolution in our country. Disruption of the “status Quo” (Who is pulling the strings) is the farthest I’ve gotten to date.
      I’m open to better suggestions…

      • Ha!, an, “examination of the “answers” I (don’t) have.”

        I’ll have to read that in its entirety on the flip side. Ya. 5 A.m. comes quick.

        I dunno at this point wHAt your response was, but thanks for it anyway.

        Also, did you notice the chick in the white dress on the right? “1 Cheat for Men Over 40”?

        She’s nice, but whoa, wHAt a line.

        • The short version occurred to me before shutting down for the night:
          1. Some people WANT to be slaves; they cannot deal with freedom.
          2. I don’t want to replace one system with another; I want to encourage people to be free. To reach out and take life by the balls. (Need to reconcile 1 &2.)
          3. Status Quo is same as revolution: Always the same people pulling the strings, and the same show, and the same puppets get blamed; only the names change.
          4. Property and wealth are being centralized, yes, and knowledge is now free – but the attention of Average Joe is directed at his toys, not the man behind the curtain.

          So I don’t know how to solve it, and it’s now very depressing.

          BTW, running adblock, so no idea what chick you’re talking about. That’s what the Internet is for though. The Internet is for porn…. 😉 (Google if you’ve never heard it.)

  17. Google Declares War on Self Protection Market
    http://www.infowars.com/google-declares-war-on-the-firearm-industry/

    There’s nothing worse then a World Saver. It seems there is to be no economic freedom left in America. Just how is one to go about fighting the chained-market while preserving the free-market. Another uncomfortable Dependence-Day question. It’s madness.

    A skeptic worth remembering
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/814581/posts

    red white and blue
    http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6i4zpgs0F1rtnktbo1_1280.jpg

    brace yourselves
    https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/6394549504/hB7185A16/

    that’s us
    http://breakbrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/totally-murica-exercise-induced-anaphylaxis.jpg

    murricat patriot
    http://breakbrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/mericat-fat-fat.jpg

  18. * Has anyone ever showed you the “social contract”?

    Yeah, it looked an awful lot like the barrel of a gun.

    * How come there are no “senile citizen checkpoints”?

    Gawd Eric, don’t give them any ideas…

    • * How come there are no “senile citizen checkpoints”?

      Gawd Eric, don’t give them any ideas…

      Because they’d be checking goernment stooges left, right, and center.
      But they’ll just declare non-government stooges to be mentally incompetent anyway.
      (I’ve read that when you request a lawyer, you are in fact admitting legally that you’re incompetent to stand trial yourself. Reducing your “self” to a legal fiction, like the corporations are, then makes you subject to the same laws. Note though that while the law might even be applied evenly in such an understanding of it, YOU go to prison, while GE doesn’t even have a rank-and-file in prison…)

      I want to put together tombstones for the BoR and a coffin for the Constitution, and display them on the front lawn. Or better yet: outside the police department…

      • Mao was close, but inexact.

        Power comes from control over the means of production of the guns. And over distribution. And the right of prohibition.

        Bastiat was close, but incomplete.

        The ideal state control borders to stop guns and state competition from entering except on its command. The perfect state decides when it is time for goods to cross borders, and when its time for armies.

        The market must be smashed and crippled. That way every day is Dependence Day. Every word and rite of central rule, is nothing but a declaration of state dependence.

        Ask not where your government has gone wrong. Ask instead when was it ever right? And how were you so foolish as to ever believe such a fatal fiction?

        • The answer lies in understanding that it is NOT your government and it never was. It is a business with an alleged monopoly on violence propped up by lies and deceptions going back hundreds of year.

          Most businesses, especially those prone to corruption, prefer monopolies. They want their “marks” dependent upon them for critical material and services. Easier to make money and eliminate any competition that way.

          • I agree that the goal is monopoly. Monopoly over the means of production. The term for this is rent-seeking? Fedgov is a corporation most likely, but it seems too far exceed the bounds of mere business. Not sure, but this seems an important matter to discuss.

            Something purely a business can only attempt to offer the best product or service at the best lowest price in the agora.

            Otherwise it becomes business+. The word business has now become a package-deal. An anti-concept. It is worthless to describe reality.

            Perhaps what is needed is a continuum of entities. Perhaps google is 10% business, and 90% government cartel for example.

            I wouldn’t say women are in the business of male companionship. Being a courtesan is an ancient profession, but so is women closing ranks and forming a cartel and removing all other options from the table except: marriage.

            Cynically and nihilistically. Observe how modern women accept competition from gays and transgenders. But polygamy. Stopping at the gymnasium for meaningless physical sport with a woman who enjoys copulation without obligation? That kind of competition is verbotten.

            A courtesan too can be said to be a business. Unless she goes beyond this role. A courtesan who used her wealth and power to encourage judges to fail to uphold marriage statutes, to thwart women from enforcing their marriage contracts, would likewise be considered to have exceeded the bounds of business.

            To say some businesses are corrupt, and some aren’t concerns me. It sounds like statist reasoning has crept into what should be entirely rational and objective aspects of what a business is and is not.

            The government is not a business
            http://www.humanevents.com/2011/07/28/the-government-is-not-a-business/

            One should resist temptation to describe the government as a “business,” or use market capitalist terminology to describe its application of compulsive force.

            The market and compulsive government force must be kept 100% mentally separate, and share no terms in common whatsoever.

            A government need not meet any requirements of a market. It sole action relative to markets, is to totally destroy it as much as is necessary.

            Wherever govt allows a market to exist, its power diminishes and its control is reduced.

          • It depends on what your definition of “business” is.

            http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/business

            As an anarchist (i.e. self ruler), I take a broad view. Basically, all dealings of an economic nature is “business”. By implying that you must use government issued/back “currency” (i.e. Federal Reserve Notes) in all dealings with them or their instrumentalities (e.g. banks, state and local government agencies, etc.), as well as in your everyday commercial dealings, the government hopes to force you to do business with them and their cronies on their terms. By implying a monopoly on the use of force, they up the ante so to speak. They remove the voluntary nature of a civilized, mutually agreed-upon transaction. Part of the solution to this problem can be found in their law at 12 USC 411.

            “12 USC § 411. Issuance to reserve banks; nature of obligation; redemption

            Federal reserve notes, to be issued at the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for the purpose of making advances to Federal reserve banks through the Federal reserve agents as hereinafter set forth and for no other purpose, are authorized. The said notes shall be obligations of the United States and shall be receivable by all national and member banks and Federal reserve banks and for all taxes, customs, and other public dues. They shall be redeemed in lawful money on demand at the Treasury Department of the United States, in the city of Washington, District of Columbia, or at any Federal Reserve bank.”

            You do have a choice to redeem lawful money and remove the presumption that you agree to dealing in their debt instruments. I did this by simply amending my signature card with the bank to state that “All transactions are demanded in lawful money pursuant to 12 USC 411”. Once I showed them the law, the bank had no problem with the change. I know others who have been refused. The solution is to find another bank.

            The nature of debt and money are different. Money has no counter party risk. Debt is just a promise to pay. Logically, it is impossible to actually pay off a debt with debt. Curiously, they will still hand you FRN’s because that is all the banks have on hand but they and the government know the difference, at least at the higher levels.

            The only legitimate role of government is laid out in the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. Legitimate government must seek to protect our lives from the unjust violence of others (including but not limited to them), it must maintain our liberty and it must protect our property rights. You don’t see much of that these days because people think that the government and its written laws lord over them. Most people working in government are happy to go along with the ignorance.

            I celebrate July 4th 1776, everyday.

    • Well, if there were, then here in Arizona (and in South Florida), there would be very little traffic on the road.

      • “business+. The word”

        I’m at a loss to add onto that profound equation.

        Gunverment. Maybe?

        A.k.a. fascism. … Plus populisim? …I guess the modern word for that is, ‘globalism’?
        The stupids cheer on their enslavement. ? W.F.D.

  19. Next article should be something like, “When Did You Lose All Hope For the U.S.?”

    If the Internet was invented today, that too would not be available to the public.
    Even sarcastically calling DMV/IRS victims “customers” is too much.
    And no, men certainly don’t get to enjoy the privilege of “my body my choice”.

    So many problems, seems to make caring at this point worthless.

    • Even sarcastically calling DMV/IRS victims “customers” is too much.

      Yep. Like a rapist calling his victims his “lovers.”

  20. Yes, excellent questions. Many of them are why I started to study history and law to try and figure out what went wrong. I found my answer when I learned that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was listed as the third Organic Law and still in the governments big law book.

    The “nature” question is critical. What is the nature of the Land that the Constitution claims to be supreme law for? That is forever limited by the Northwest Ordinance to land owned by or otherwise under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the United States of America, in Congress assembled. You will find clues lots of places once you start to look:

    Here are a couple:

    28 USC 5 District Courts:
    That list contains things like the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, along with the “states” like Virginia. What is the nature of those areas that is consistent with Organic Laws?

    Boundary Markers – District of Columbia and Maryland place when they laid out DC.
    https://flic.kr/p/9DaSWJ

  21. My uncomfortable question is why do people give any credence to the state whatsoever?
    http://www.christophercantwell.com/2014/06/29/hate-state/

    How do they not hate it? How do they resist punching anyone in the mouth who has anything good to say about it? Who dares defend or normalize it even?

    In point of fact, we are NOT Americans. We are united ONLY in being ransomed hostages and long suffering prisoners of war. Descendants of many generations of victims of unspeakable state violence and abuse.

    Would you celebrate the anniversary of the day your grandmother was raped and your uncle was murdered? Would you consider your family Rapicans and Murdericans because of these aggressions? No?

    Then why in the hell would you join these yankee doodle dicksuckers as they so proudly hail the founding of this cutthroat constitutional crime syndicate as something worth memoralizing?

    • Thanks for injecting a bit of humor into this thread Tor. Though I know this is no laughing matter, I couldn’t help but enjoy the tone of your last three paragraphs.

      • The dark 3rd Of June is like an apocalyptic, epic slice of sinister madness exclusive to the Flag recording.

        You won’t find 3rd Of June on a best of and that’s unfortunate. Yello sounds like The Art Of Noise meets Sergio Leone and you would do well to select tracks from their immense, intense oeuvre in an almost a la carte fashion, but do check them out.

        http://scifimusings.blogspot.com/2011/06/yello-3rd-of-june.html

        “Of Course I’m Lying” – Yello
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMaGLnOD5i4

        Her name was Julie. When she took me on a ride in her old Chevrolet. Straight into a dusty sundown.
        I knew she was gonna make up one of her stories.
        And then she couldn’t believe that I told her. How much I love her lies and how much I love her games.

        Riding on the highway. You’re going much too far. You’re lying so much better. When you drive a car.
        You’re lying ’til the sundown. So look into my face.

        Take me to the ballroom. We’re dancing through the night. I’m in your arms, I love your lies. They make me feel so light. You’re lying to your shadow. So look into my face. You’re lying. I love it.

        I need no drugs I love your lies. You hide me from the night. You’re lying, I’m buying. I’m buying every word.
        I love your lies. I love your games.

        Julie stopped her car. The sun had gone and left one of these dark red skies. She looked in my eyes and with a smile in her face she said. Of course I’m lying.
        But I think I love you.

    • I think its important to note the distinction between celebrating our independence from the English and celebrating our enslavement to the Constitution. 1776 was a great moment for liberty; it was the ratification of the Constitution ten years or so later, depending on the state, that ensured the destruction of liberty.

      So keep on your black clothes, not to mourn, but to celebrate casting off oppressive government. Lets remember the true meaning of the 4th of July. It isn’t to celebrate America; it’s to celebrate our right and our duty to overthrow an oppressive regime claiming ownership of our land.

      Don’t stay home and sulk! Go out, pop some fireworks, and wave the black flag high for everyone to see, because the case for anarchy has never been more powerful.

      • I’ve been thinking a lot about what you wrote, ATexasLibertarian.
        I’d like to agree.

        However; RE: “to celebrate casting off oppressive government” there’s this, have “we” really thrown off anything? [Do you see inches when there’s really miles/decades?]:

        “We have gone from an inherited tyrant to an elected one. ”

        Independence Day, 2014

        • Helot,
          Well our mistake in the late 18th century, after ridding ourselves of British rule, was to think “good government” can exist at all. I read Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty over the holiday, and he offers up some truly devastating critiques of small government libertarianism. It was a great book and I would highly recommend it.

          I agree that we dont have our freedom now in the US, and the trend has been going in the wrong direction. I think we’re at the tipping point though with a new surge in libertarianism, even if most of it is the Nozickian small government lot; we should take what we can get.

      • Nice post. Problem in this sentence Eric:

        “Like not ride a helmet while riding his motorcycle, for instance?”

        Can’t ride a helmet 😉

        Anyhoo.. I would also ask:

        Anything that can be licensed is fundamentally lawful already, so why do we need to beg for permission slips (licenses) to do it?

        • Indeed. This is the very thing I’ve pointed out to people time and time again with the same response: a blank look. If you can’t say, “No” without fear of reprisal then you’re nothing more than a slave. Plain and simple. A high functioning slave but a slave none the less.

    • There are exits.

      Mexico, south of the drug war zone, is actually pretty safe, and cops are seldom seen. The one that show up can be bribed to ignore petty crap.

      If you have read Jeff Berwicks Dollar Vigilante blog, he talks about his friends in Acapulco advising him to NOT go to freedom conferences in the US, they tell him the place is a crazy dangerous police state. His friends are right.

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