Taking Back The “L” Word

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In the United States, liberalism took strong root because it had little opposition to its ideals, whereas in Europe liberalism was opposed by many reactionary interests. In a nation of farmers, especially farmers whose workers were mainly slaves, little attention was paid to the economic aspects of liberalism. Thomas Jefferson adopted many of the ideals of liberalism but, in the Declaration of Independence, changed Locke’s “life, liberty, and property” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

As libertarian-liberals. As anarcho-liberals. As individualist liberals. As true liberals. Let us correct that alteration at once. Let us all agree that from now on, American liberalism shall also include property as essential as life and liberty. Let the former period wherein property rights were an unknown ideal be known as the Great Deviation.

As industry became a larger and larger part of American life; beginning in 1829, during the term of president Andrew Jackson, economic questions rose to the forefront. The economic positions of the time were almost universally the ideas of classical liberalism. Freedom was maximised because the government took a “hands off” attitude toward industrial development and supported the value of the currency by freely exchanging paper money for gold.

The ideas of classical liberalism remained essentially unchallenged until a series of depressions, led to economic hardships from which many residents demanded government relief. Classical liberalism remained the orthodox belief among American businessmen until 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression. The Great Depression saw a sea change in liberalism, leading to hijacking of liberalism by egalitarian socialists and advocates of government provided public relief of the poor funded by currency devaluations and personal income taxation.

Gaining in power and influence, the egalitarian welfare socialists saw an opportunity to further harness the mechanisms of government because of the growing complexity of industrial conditions. They further began to restrict the rights of industrialist property owners by engaging in increasing government intervention. They claimed to violate these property rights in order to assure more equal opportunities and a more egalitarian outcome for all. The social welfarists continued to devalue the currency and confiscate private property in order to build an even larger social welfare state. A state in which the national government has unlimited authority to maintain high levels of employment in the economy, to supervise standards of life and labour, to regulate the methods of business competition, and to establish comprehensive patterns of wealth redistribution to the poor and to workers of an advanced age.

PREAMBLE
As Liberals, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.

We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the unlimited range of endeavors that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any other authoritarian power.

In the following paragraphs we have set forth our basic principles and enumerated various policy stands derived from those principles.

STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES
We, the Liberals, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual.

We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.

Governments throughout history have regularly operated on the opposite principle, that the State has the right to dispose of the lives of individuals and the fruits of their labor. All other political associations other than our own grant to government the right to regulate the lives of individuals and seize the fruits of their labor without their consent.

We, on the contrary, deny the right of any government to do these things, and hold that wherever government actors and resources exist, these must not violate the rights of any individual: namely, (1) the right to life — accordingly we support the prohibition of the initiation of physical force against others; (2) the right to liberty of speech and action — accordingly we oppose all attempts by government to abridge the freedom of speech and press, as well as government censorship in any form; and (3) the right to property — accordingly we oppose all government interference with private property, such as confiscation, nationalization, and eminent domain, and support the prohibition of robbery, trespass, fraud, and misrepresentation.

Government, when instituted, must not violate individual rights, and therefore we oppose all interference by government in the areas of voluntary and contractual relations among individuals. People must not be forced to sacrifice their lives and property for the benefit of others. They must be left free by government to deal with one another as free traders; and the resultant economic system, the only one compatible with the protection of individual rights, is the free market.

1.0 Personal Liberty
Individuals must be free to make their own choices and must be made to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. Our support of an individual’s right to make choices in life does not mean that we necessarily approve or disapprove of those choices. No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government.

1.1 Self-Ownership

Individuals own their bodies and have rights over them that other individuals, groups, and governments may not violate. Individuals have the freedom and responsibility to decide what they knowingly and voluntarily consume, and what risks they accept to their own health, finances, safety, or life.

1.2 Expression and Communication

We support full freedom of expression and oppose government censorship, regulation or control of communications media and technology. We favor the freedom to engage in or abstain from any religious or other associations that do not violate the rights of others. We oppose government actions which either aid or attack any religion or association.

1.3 Privacy

Liberals advocate individual privacy and government transparency. We are committed to ending government’s practice of spying on everyone. We support the rights recognized by the Fourth Amendment to be secure in our persons, homes, property, and communications. Protection from unreasonable search and seizure must include records held by third parties, such as email, medical, and library records.

1.4 Personal Relationships

Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity must have no impact on the government’s treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws. Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships. Consenting adults must be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships. Any government involvement in personal relationships will be greatly curtailed, and both parties will be required to conduct their use of the government using their own labor or the labor of experts paid for by themselves.

1.5 Abortion

Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government must be kept completely out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.

1.6 Crime and Justice

Government exists to protect the rights of every individual including life, liberty and property. Criminal laws must be limited to violation of the rights of others through force or fraud, or deliberate actions that place others involuntarily at significant risk of harm. We will repeal all laws creating “crimes” without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes, since only actions that infringe on the rights of others can properly be termed crimes. Individuals are have the right to voluntarily assume risk of harm to themselves and to bear the sole responsibility for any hardships such risks impose. We support restitution and making the victim whole to the fullest degree possible at the expense of the criminal or the negligent wrongdoer. We oppose reduction of constitutional safeguards of the rights of the criminally accused. The rights of due process, a speedy trial, access to legal self-help resources, trial by jury of peers, and the legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty, must not be denied. We assert the common-law right of juries to judge not only the facts but also the justice of the law.

1.7 Self-Defense

The only legitimate use of force is in defense of individual rights — life, liberty, and justly acquired property — against aggression. This right inheres in the individual, who may agree to be aided by any other individual or group. We affirm the absolute right of the individual to keep and bear arms and other self and property protection tools, and oppose the prosecution of individuals for exercising their rights of self-defense. Private property owners must be free to establish their own conditions regarding the presence and use of personal defense weapons on their own property. We oppose all laws at any level of government restricting, registering, or monitoring the ownership, manufacture, or transfer of firearms or ammunition.

2.0 Economic Liberty
Liberals allow for all members to pursue opportunities to achieve economic success. A free and competitive market is proven to allocate resources in the most efficient manner. Each person has the right to offer goods and services to others on the free market. The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, act as the last resort to adjudicate disputes where no private solution is available, and provide a straightforward legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected. All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are herefore abolished.

2.1 Property and Contract

As respect for property rights is fundamental to maintaining a free and prosperous society, it follows that the freedom to contract to obtain, retain, profit from, manage, or dispose of one’s property must also be upheld. Liberals would free property owners from government restrictions on their rights to control and enjoy their property, as long as their choices do not harm or infringe on the rights of others. Eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, governmental limits on profits, governmental production mandates, and governmental controls on prices of goods and services (including wages, rents, and interest) and other abridgements of such fundamental rights will cease. For voluntary dealings among private entities, parties will remain free to choose with whom they trade and set whatever trade terms are mutually agreeable.

2.2 Environment

We support an ordered and natural environment and open source access to all natural resources wherever it is possible to allow mining and harvesting. Private landowners and conservation groups have a vested interest in maintaining natural resources not claimed by individuals interested in living off the land. Pollution and misuse of resources causes damage to the ecosystem. Governments, unlike private businesses, are unaccountable for whatever damage the do to the environment and have a terrible track record when it comes to environmental stewardship. Protecting the environment requires technical expertise and a wide variety of skills. There will be an extensive and consistent enforcement of individual rights in resources like land, water, air, and wildlife. Experts and stewards will be paid by a percentage of proceeds of whatever is extracted from the land. Free markets and property rights stimulate the technological innovations and behavioral changes required to better care for the environment and ecosystems. The air, water, space, and mantle resources will also be monitored and maintained at the expense of those making a living off the commons and unihabited lands. Environmental scientists, laborers, and conservation associations have been proven to be the most effective means of encouraging good stewardship by the public at large.

2.3 Energy and Resources

While energy is needed to fuel a modern society, government must not subsidizing any particular form of energy. We oppose all government control of energy pricing, allocation, and production. The proceeds obtained by providing energy and fuel will be siphoned off at a reasonable level to help fund the government.

2.4 Government Finance and Spending

All persons are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor. We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution, any non-essential programs and services,.and all programs and services which can be adequated provided by technological solutions. Such as a national document scanning and email delivery system, instead of the current paper based home delivery system. The post offices will be converted to self-service models, and provide mainly package and good deliveries, wherever private delivery services are unavailable for purchase. Buildings will be staffed by guards and volunteers provided by local citizenry to the extent possible. We oppose any legal requirements forcing employers to serve as tax collectors or agents of government authority. Government must not incur debt except in unavoidable strictly limited circumstances as was the case prior to 1913. Debt burdens future generations without their consent and contributes to excessive boom and bust cycles and currency devaluations. We support a pay as you go model, where every bill and obligation that comes due is to be paid by the Friday of that week. A weekly “Balanced Budget Accounting” will be prepared and posted to the federal register and online systems, the budget is to be balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, and never by raising taxes or fees.

2.5 Money and Financial Markets

Liberals will ensure free-market competitive banking and commodity based currency options. With unrestricted competition among banks, precious metal coins, and depository institutions of all types. Markets are only free wherever fraud is vigorously combated and neither profits nor losses are socialized. Individuals engaging in voluntary exchange must be free to use as money any mutually agreeable commodity, precioous metal, digital transaction or other items. We will execute a complete halt to inflationary monetary policies and unconstitutional legal tender laws.

2.6 Marketplace Freedom

Liberals support free markets. We defend the right of individuals to form corporations, cooperatives and any other types of entities based on voluntary association. We oppose all forms of government subsidies and bailouts to business, labor, or any other special interest. Government will never be allowed to compete with private enterprise. It will exist only where no other option is available.

2.7 Labor Markets

Employment and compensation agreements between private employers and employees are outside the scope of government, and these contracts must not be encumbered by government-mandated benefits or social engineering. We will not infringe on the right of private employers and employees to choose whether or not to bargain with each other through labor unions or other mechanisms of association. Bargaining must be free of government interference, such as compulsory arbitration or imposing an obligation to bargain.

2.8 Education

Education is best provided by the free market, achieving greater quality, accountability and efficiency with more market choices. Recognizing that the education of children is a parental responsibility, we will restore complete authority to parents to determine the education of their children, without interference from government. Parents will have control of and responsibility for all funds expended for their children’s education. The current schools will be opened 24 hours a day as a community wide resource of education and daycare with a minimal staff of security and volunteers. All current curriculums will be digitized and preserved online. So that any student can continue in their studies with the courses of their choice. Including courses offered across all state lines.

2.9 Health Care

We favor a free market health care system. We recognize the freedom of individuals to determine the level of health care services they want (if any), the health institutions they want, the care providers they want, the medicines and treatments they will use, and all other aspects of their medical care, including end-of-life decisions. All federal impositions will be removed that prevent people from purchasing health insurance across state lines and in whatever way they want. We will assist local communities in opening up extremely limited health clinics that will be housed in current fire and rescue administrative offices throughout the United States. This will provide a back stop and last line of defense, to ensure the population at large has access to basic third world health care services on a payment plan, with payments to begin after the services have been rendered.

2.10 Retirement and Income Security

Income Security and retirement planning beyond barest essentials is the responsibility of the individual, not the government. Liberals will phase out the current government-sponsored Social Security and complex welfare system and transition to a private voluntary system for all but the direst circumstances. The proper and most effective source of help for the poor is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals. We believe members of society will become more charitable and civil society will be strengthened as government reduces its interference and national wealth destruction in this realm.

3.0 Securing Liberty
The protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of government. Government must be constitutionally limited so as to prevent the infringement of individual rights by the government itself. The principle of non-initiation of force must guide the relationships between our government and other governments. And between our government and the people.

3.1 National Defense

We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression. The United States must both avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman outside its borders. We oppose any form of compulsory national service.

3.2 Internal Security and Individual Rights

The defense of the country requires that we have all possible intelligence to detect and to counter threats to domestic security. This requirement must not take priority over maintaining the civil liberties of our citizens. The Constitution and Bill of Rights shall not be suspended even during time of war. Intelligence agencies that are empowered to preserve the security of the nation must be subject to oversight and transparency. We oppose the government’s use of secret classifications to keep from the public information that rightfully belongs to it, especially information that shows that the government has violated the law.

3.3 International Affairs

American foreign policy must seek an America at peace with the world. Our foreign policy must emphasize defense against attack from abroad and enhance the likelihood of peace by avoiding foreign entanglements. We will end the current U.S. government policy of foreign intervention, including military, economic aid, and transnational authoritarian bodies. We recognize the right of all people to resist tyranny and defend themselves and their rights. We will abstain from the use of initiative force, and especially the use of terrorism, against the innocent, regardless of whether we seek to influence governments, political groups, or revolutionary groups.

3.4 Free Trade and Migration

We will execute the removal of all governmental impediments to free trade. Political and property based freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be constrained by government when crossing political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who may pose a credible threat to security, health or property.

3.5 Rights and Discrimination

Liberals embrace the concept that all people are born with certain inherent rights. We reject the idea that a natural right can ever impose an obligation upon others to fulfill that “right.” We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government must neither deny nor abridge any individual’s human right based upon sex, wealth, ethnicity, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference or sexual orientation. Members of private organizations retain their rights to set whatever standards of association they deem appropriate, and individuals are free to respond with ostracism, boycotts and other free market solutions. Parents, or other guardians, have the right to raise their children according to their own standards and beliefs. Any child shall have the right to a local hearing, should they allege they are subject to child abuse or neglect.

3.6 Representative Government

We support election systems that are more representative of the electorate at the federal, state and local levels. As private voluntary groups, political parties must be allowed to establish their own rules for nomination procedures, primaries and conventions. We will end all subsidies to candidates or parties and repeal all laws which restrict voluntary financing of election campaigns. We oppose laws that effectively exclude alternative candidates and parties, deny ballot access, gerrymander districts, or deny the voters their right to consider all legitimate alternatives. We advocate initiative, referendum, recall and repeal when used as popular checks on government.

3.7 Self-Determination

Whenever government becomes destructive of individual liberty, it is the duty of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to agree to such new governance as to them shall seem most likely to protect their liberty.

3.8 Omissions
Our silence about any other particular government law, regulation, ordinance, directive, edict, control, regulatory agency, activity, or machination should not be construed to imply approval.

60 COMMENTS

  1. Pork Priest resigns from his church of safety pulpit
    http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Texas-cop-resigns-after-putting-woman-in-choke-5934775.php

    Texas hero allowed to resign one week after video exposes him putting woman in chokehold
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=45c_1417724449

    Not so long ago we were serfs under religious authority
    Now we’re enslaved under state religious authority’

    The bible is not a good book. The constitution and the bill of rights are not the good word. God-vermin deserve every bit of contempt that the police state deserves. They are our enemies plain and simple.

  2. Xscape
    Everywhere I turn, no matter where I look
    The system’s in control, it’s all ran by the book
    I’ve got to get away so I can clear my mind
    Xscape is what I need, away from electric eyes

    No matter where I am, I see my face around
    They then lie upon my name, and put them town to town
    Don’t have a place to run, but there’s no need to hide
    I’ve got to, find a place, but I won’t hide away

    Xscape. Got to get away from a system. Loose in the world today. Xscape. The pressure that I face from relationships.
    Got to go away. Xscape. The man with the pen. That writes the lies that hassle this man. Xscape. I do what I want to cause. I got to face nobody but me. Xscape.

    Why is it I can’t do whatever I want to? When it’s my personal life then I don’t live for you. So don’t you try to tell me what is right for me. To be concerned about you, I can do what I want to.

    When I go. This problem world won’t bother. Me no more

    Slave To The Rhythm

    Cue creepy seal team dancers…

    She dances in these sheets at night. She dances to his needs. She dances ’til he feels just right. Until he falls asleep. She dances at the crack of dawn. And quickly cooks his food. She can’t be late, can’t take too long. The kids must get to school.

    She’s a slave to the rhythm. The rhythm of love.

  3. A genuinely great idea does not need people who crack skulls, purge, condemn, and exclude. It needs people who explain, edify, listen, and learn.

    A great idea and body of thought shines on its own, without shouting, extremist dogmatism, and the pose of omniscience. Branden never repudiated his objectivism or his deep love for the Rand’s ideas, but he came to wear them lightly as part of a life well lived.

    Rather than an enforcer, he had come to see himself as a servant. He served objectivism well by being a more humane face of the inner circle to which he once belonged.

    He also sought to serve his readers, and he was busy putting out a nice shelf of books himself. He came to see the philosophy of Rand not as a Gnostic teaching intended only for purists but as a gift to the world, a perspective that illuminates the potential of the human person and the dangers of all barriers to self-achievement.

    He learned that being principled does not require being a jerk, and that having convictions does not mean shouting down and insulting your opponents.

    In many ways, he was a survivor and the lessons he learned in life were hard won. For the rest of his life after his break with Rand, he endured decades of slings and arrows from Rand’s closet followers. He could never really escape her.

    Wherever he was and whatever he did, he would forever be defending Rand against her enemies while defending himself against Rand’s most dedicated followers.

    But he didn’t seem to let this harsh turn of events demoralize him. He kept working and kept producing, with high spirits and brave persistence.

    He never fired back at his enemies after he was purged, not even against Rand herself, about whom he continued to speak of with genuine affection and respect.

    There are lessons for everyone that are revealed in the course of Nathaniel’s life and work. He learned over time that true ideas do not need gatekeepers to cast out nonconformists, much less crusaders dedicated to crushing deviants.

    Rather, the truth needs sincere hearts that believe with genuine conviction, public intellectuals who are willing to share ideas generously while never being closed to new ideas, and adherents that shine the light of truth for all who are seeking it.

    There is much for everyone to learn from his journey.

    Nathaniel Branden R.I.P.
    http://tucker.liberty.me/2014/12/04/nathaniel-branden-rest-in-peace/

  4. Let us celebrate today the anniversary of the ratification of the 21st Amendment, which was the repeal of the 18th Amendment, aka Prohibition, the “Dry” Run.
    Of course the gunvermin was not as honest with the War on Drugs, and just passed a bunch of laws and created a bunch of regulations, w/o acknowledging that they were not authorized

  5. Buddhist Compassion Relief – Tzu Chi
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-R_oDZXPcU

    Homeless in Silicon Valley

    USA Tzu Chi
    http://www.us.tzuchi.org/us/en/

    The Vow of Tzu Chi
    Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation carries out the missions aiming to help the poor and educate the rich by reverently accepting Buddha’s teaching of “expressing great kindness to all sentient beings, and taking their suffering as our own”, and aspiring to “being committed to Buddhism and to all living beings”.

    With loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity, we dedicate ourselves to helping the afflicted by bringing them happiness and relieving their suffering, as well as creating a pure and clear world of Tzu Chi. With well-rounded wisdom in handling everything and facing everyone, we invite people around the world to cultivate a field of blessings, and to plant tens of thousands of lotus hearts to build a loving society. Our work is to carry out charity, medical care, education and humanities concurrently.

    Our spirit is sincerity, integrity, faith, and honesty. We believe that all beings are equal and everyone has an innate Buddha-nature. Practicing kindness and compassion, one can see Buddhism clearly; carrying out the missions, the rich give and feel joyful from giving, the poor receives and experiences relief from receiving.

    The world is impermanent and life dwindles every day, we shall cherish this life and take time to plant good seeds and enjoy the harvest. Thus we won’t be feeling a void within our lives.

    The Tzu Chi community is united by wisdom and supports each other with love. We walk on the Bodhisattva path hand in hand. We constantly keep in mind sharing the Buddha’s compassion, thus, our thousand eyes can see the sufferings; we dedicate ourselves to the Buddha’s commitment as to our own, therefore, our thousands of hands can reach out and help. We hear the cries of all sufferings and provide the aid with peace and joy.

    We take part in four missions with pure hearts and clear minds. Buddha sees all beings with kindness and teaches everyone the Dharma; thus, everyone is inspired to bring out the best in one another. What a compassion and wisdom it is! All members of Tzu Chi carry out the missions with right belief and right mindfulness.

    We will serve others, come to realize the essence of birth, aging, illness, and death, and understand the meaning of formation, continuation, destruction, and extinction.

    Working together to carry out these missions and pass on these traditions, we are going to leave our footprints today and the generations who are to come will be proud of what we are doing.

    “What was done in the past dictates the present, and what is done in the present determines the future.” We are most blessed to be born human, and we shall proceed vigorously with courage on the Bodhisattva path.

    May our society be filled with love and cycled with virtues. It is our responsibility to have the right belief and the right mindfulness, and to continuously cultivate the blessings and wisdoms.

    I wish to share these beliefs with all members of Tzu Chi.

  6. The Deprogrammers is an episode of The Outer Limits TV that aired in May of 1996.

    Earth is under alien occupation, and for two years the human race has been conditioned for slavery, unable to think for itself or disobey an order. One human, the slave of an important ruler, is captured by a small band of rebel humans who try to break the conditioning and restore his free will.

    Opening narration
    “ At what point does a human being’s free will cease to exist? And if we have forfeited our free will… are we still human?

    Evan is a slave in the mansion of a harsh-ruling alien who he refers to as “Milord”. Like all other slaves, he has been “programmed” to not feel anything, and to take everything his master says, as a fact without question.

    Later, the human slave is captured by a resistance movement, who call themselves the Vindicators, or the Deprogrammers. At first, Evan is completely vegetative towards them. Nothing will make him flinch.

    Little by little, the resistance manages to wake up the parts of his mind that have been silenced by the programming. He is slowly introduced to his past life, a successful career, and a wife, who is also working with the resistance movement.

    The resistance aims to restore the meaning of what it means to be a human. Finally, when Evan comes to realize that his master actually was responsible of killing all the children of the world, including his daughter, he becomes apparently sympathetic to the goals of the vindicators, despite occasional quirks in his thinking.

    Evan returns to the mansion of the alien, bringing with him a vial that is camouflaged as a vial of Seragon oil. He drops the vial into the bath the alien is taking, and combines it with another substance, making the bath become solid, trapping the alien there. Then he kills him, and returns to the place of the vindicators, carrying the head of the alien with him in a bag.

    At the moment of apparent joy and success, another alien steps in, and the human slave Evan then asks if “Milord” is pleased.

    Apparently Evan had been a slave to this other alien all along and the so called resistance was being used for this other alien’s purposes. Evans is then reprogrammed again. At least his wife seems able to resist the programming.

    Closing narration
    “For centuries philosophers have wrestled with the question, “Is man able to decide his destiny through his own actions or does fate have the final say?”

  7. A Good Person Will Resist An Evil System

    The declaration of independence. The constitution. The founding fathers. The magna carta. The common law. How can anyone deify any part of their filthy satanic church? Their bloodsoaked altars of federalism and houses of common vampires and werewolf lords voting on who is to be sacrificed to whom.

    At least David admits he is a religious fanatic.

    Will you ever stop clinging to the whole rotted maggot-infested carcass of the America Experiment in Civil Witchcraft and Sorcery?

    How can you stand the stench of it all? The crime. The cops. The judges. The blood. The robed rituals. The witnesses to the horrors. The satanic legal scriptures. When will you tire of propagating this ancient superstitious trickery and start living your own lives?

    • Yup, “A Good Person Will Resist An Evil System” which means, it seems, we’re surrounded by evil sum bitches. [Whoa, Willie Wonka was beyond his time?]

      “Their bloodsoaked altars of federalism and houses of common vampires and werewolf lords voting on who is to be sacrificed to whom.”

      The monsters prevail.

      It’s no wonder the shows on TeeVee are what they are.

      A reflection of the humanity which walks.

      How can they stand the stench of it all? The crime. The cops. The judges. The blood. The robed rituals?

      It’s simple:

      They. Love. Death. …And, They are Monsters.

      • The first thing is understanding how bad they are. The next thing is knowing how dumb they are.

        It would be just as valid if they violently organized the world on the basis of height.

        You’ll need a visa if you live in the 6’0″ Union and want to visit 5’2″ Union territory. It’s the law. Morality is of course tied to stature, as it has been throughout history.

        All hail our founding six footers. Have mercy on the five foot two’ers, every different stature has something to offer, that’s the wonder of diversity.

        Average Male Height, meters, feet

        6.0 Union
        Netherlands 1.838 6′ 0.25″
        Denmark 1.826 6′ 0″
        5.11 Union
        Norway 1.824 5′ 11.75″
        Germany 1.81 5′ 11.25″
        Croatia 1.805 5′ 11″
        Czech Republic 1.8031 5′ 11″
        Slovenia 1.803 5′ 11″
        5.10 Union
        Luxembourg 1.799 5′ 10.75″
        Iceland 1.798 5′ 10.75″
        Slovakia 1.794 5′ 10.75″
        Austria 1.792 5′ 10.5″
        Estonia 1.791 5′ 10.5″
        Belgium 1.786 5′ 10.25″
        Poland 1.785 5′ 10.25″
        Serbia 1.785 5′ 10.25″
        Greece 1.783 5′ 10.25″
        Finland 1.78 5′ 10″
        Spain 1.78 5′ 10″
        Sweden 1.779 5′ 10″
        Ireland 1.775 5′ 10″
        5.9 Union
        Lithuania 1.772 5′ 9.75″
        Israel 1.77 5′ 9.75″
        New Zealand 1.77 5′ 9.75″
        United Kingdom 1.77 5′ 9.75″
        Hungary 1.765 5′ 9.5″
        Ukraine 1.765 5′ 9.5″
        United States 1.763 5′ 9.5″
        Italy 1.76 5′ 9.25″
        Lebanon 1.76 5′ 9.25″
        Russia 1.76 5′ 9.25″
        France 1.756 5′ 9.25″
        Switzerland 1.754 5′ 9″
        Uzbekistan 1.754 5′ 9″
        Bulgaria 1.752 5′ 9″
        Canada 1.751 5′ 9″
        Senegal 1.75 5′ 9″
        5.8 Union
        Australia 1.748 5′ 8.75″
        Saudi Arabia 1.746 5′ 8.75″
        Romania 1.74 5′ 8.5″
        Turkey 1.74 5′ 8.5″
        South Korea 1.7374 5′ 8.5″
        Portugal 1.737 5′ 8.5″
        Argentina 1.7348 5′ 8.25″
        UAE 1.734 5′ 8.25″
        Brazil 1.731 5′ 8.25″
        Syria 1.73 5′ 8″
        Morocco 1.727 5′ 8″
        Taiwan 1.727 5′ 8″
        5.7 Union
        Tunisia 1.723 5′ 7.75″
        Algeria 1.722 5′ 7.75″
        Mauritamia 1.72 5′ 7.75″
        Turkministan 1.72 5′ 7.75″
        Azerbaijan 1.718 5′ 7.75″
        Jamaica 1.718 5′ 7.75″
        Uruguay 1.718 5′ 7.75″
        Libya 1.713 5′ 7.5″
        Mali 1.713 5′ 7.5″
        Chile 1.71 5′ 7.25″
        Japan 1.707 5′ 7.25″
        Cameroon 1.706 5′ 7.25″
        Singapore 1.706 5′ 7.25″
        Egypt 1.703 5′ 7″
        Iran 1.703 5′ 7″
        Thailand 1.703 5′ 7″
        Ivory Coast 1.701 5′ 7″
        Malta 1.699 5′ 7″
        5.6 Union
        Colombia 1.695 5′ 6.75″
        Ghana 1.695 5′ 6.75″
        Pakistan 1.693 5′ 6.75″
        Kazakhstan 1.69 5′ 6.5″
        Paraguay 1.69 5′ 6.5″
        South Africa 1.69 5′ 6.5″
        Venezuela 1.69 5′ 6.5″
        Mongolia 1.684 5′ 6.25″
        Cuba 1.68 5′ 6.25″
        Gambia 1.68 5′ 6.25″
        5.5 Union
        China 1.67 5′ 5.75″
        Mexico 1.67 5′ 5.75″
        Malawi 1.66 5′ 5.25″
        North Korea 1.656 5′ 5.25″
        Iraq 1.654 5′ 5″
        Bahrain 1.651 5′ 5″
        Panama 1.65 5′ 5″
        5.4 Union
        India 1.647 5′ 4.75″
        Malaysia 1.647 5′ 4.75″
        Peru 1.64 5′ 4.5″
        Nigeria 1.638 5′ 4.5″
        Sri Lanka 1.636 5′ 4.5″
        Ecuador 1.635 5′ 4.25″
        Nepal 1.63 5′ 4.25″
        Cambodia 1.625 5′ 4″
        5.3 Union
        Vietnam 1.621 5′ 3.75″
        Philippines 1.619 5′ 3.75″
        Bolivia 1.6 5′ 3″
        5.2 Union
        Indonesia 1.58 5′ 2.25″

  8. I Hate The State

    Murray Rothbard, was no stranger to controversy and libertarian infighting. Rothbard found himself at odds with other libertarians because of his principled view of libertarianism rooted in Austrian economics, the deviance from which, he believed, seems to almost defeat the purpose.

    I am with Rothbard in his battles against David Friedman, the Koch Brothers, and many others.

    For whatever reason, I find myself opposite of Murray Rothbard as far as Ayn Rand and religious mysticism. As well as siding with Sam Konkin and the validity of agorism and counter-economics.

    Studying these conflicts has been enlightening, and helped further my own understanding of the philosophy, as well as the nature of the conflicts I find myself in, although I am certainly no intellectual or disciplined scholar.

    I have other ideological and tactical differences with Rothbard, but one in where I am in complete agreement with him is in his debate with David Friedman. You can find this debate: “Do You Hate The State?” on LewRockwell.com.

    To this question, I enthusiastically answer “Yes! Of course I do! How could I not?” before even reading the piece. As I read the article, which itself was a critique of Friedman’s “The Machinery of Freedom“, I have to remind myself not everyone feels this way.

    Unlike Rothbard, I find it exceedingly difficult to overcome my contempt for so-called libertarians who merely feel the state does a poor job allocating scarce resources, or whatever else their position is.

    Now, certainly, whatever one’s reasons for desiring freedom, I should hope to be able to work together towards achieving it with them.

    Without question, one who hates the State, and one who just thinks it does a poor job of accomplishing its stated goals, will nonetheless find themselves with a great deal of common ground from which to build upon.

    I see this as one of the most important and defining distinctions among different factions of libertarians.

    I HATE THE STATE. I would hate it even if it actually accomplished all its noble sounding purported purposes. If tomorrow the welfare State actually managed to lift the poor out of poverty after centuries of claiming to try and failing, I would still hate it.

    If the day after that, military interventions into a foreign lands really did liberate some distant cultures somewhere, I would still hate it.

    If the day after that, a law effectively removed all individual inequality and truly did provide equal opportunity to all, I would still hate it.

    If by some magic, some group of noble-minded politicians honestly won a popularity contest, and then used their violence mandate to alleviate all my problems and discomforts, I would still hate the State.

    Now, of course, there’s no risk that any of this will happen. So perhaps the point seems moot to some, but I do not see the State as a failure.

    Our study of economics should have taught us that failure does not long persist. When one fails, even the most inept among us realize that it is time to try something else. Those who do not hate the State would tell us the State is somehow not subject to this economic law.

    They would pretend, that somehow the State is able to fail and repeat ad infinitum. They find it comforting to brand the State and its agents as merely inept, as misled fools making poor decisions, as bumbling stooges to be pitied and mocked. I find the reality of the state to be far more terrifying.

    I believe the State is a remarkable success. It has done an amazing job of convincing the masses that it is a just and noble institution. It has made its victims dependent upon their oppressors and abusers. It has killed, destroyed, and sabotaged, with amazing efficiency. It is not malfunctioning, this is its design. The misery, death, and deception of the State are not bugs, they are features.

    This malevolent nature of the State the only rational explanation for such a long and sordid history of carnage. No rational thought process could lead one to believe that a group of people built mass stockpiles of weapons, hired mercenaries, and sent them off to murder innocent people, by accident.

    When every real or perceived action of a foreign entity is deemed a threat to the national interest, the only conclusion one can reach is that war is the goal.

    There is no logical analysis of the tax code that could lead one to believe it became impossible to understand through some series of mistakes.

    When laws are so numerous, frivolous, and complicated, that an average, honest person is committing three felonies a day on average, the only conclusion one can reach is that the State wants everyone to be subject to their victimization.

    When a “war on poverty” starts, and a gradual lessening of poverty ends, and the course does not change, the only logical deduction is that a decrease in poverty was undesirable to the true goals of the State.

    The fact that those who rob, kidnap, and murder, convince the people they rob, kidnap, and kill, that their intentions are noble, has no bearing. That people believe this obvious falsehood, is equally irrelevant. Those in the organized crime business rarely tell the truth about their intentions, and calling it “the public sector” does nothing to change this.

    We all know that politicians lie. We all know that the more efficient liar wins the election, and that when the election is won, the politician will use this advantage to do ill to human society. That this would go on for thousands of years resulting in hundreds of millions of violent deaths, and immeasurable economic calamity, all without any meaningful improvement, demonstrates not ineptitude, but systemic malice.

    I would not attempt to reason with chainsaw wielding men in hockey masks. I would not attempt to love a rapist into giving up his need to victimize women. I would not join the mafia in hopes of lessening their theft and murder rates. In none of these cases would I accept their assurances of noble intentions as valid excuses for their violence.

    I would instead treat them as exactly what they are, malicious threats to my safety and the safety of those I care about. The State is no different than any other psychopaths.

    It is with good, deeply considered, reason that I HATE the State, root and branch, and I QUESTION the sanity and morality of those who do not.

    • A good example of how ‘failure’ persists is the Gunvermin Indoctrination Centers, which do NOT teach children how to read, etc. Note, I did not say ‘cannot’ as for decades before the invention of the ‘See-Say’ method children did learn to read using phonics.
      But if someone CAN read, they might actually do so. This would greatly reduce the odds of them becoming a complacent member of the sheeple flock. Too dangerous a prospect to allow.

      • My parental wardens ponied up a few shekels so I was able to serve my sentence in a Godvermin Indoctrination Center run by Catholics.

        I was a helion on wheels, but this worked out well because they had the time and inclination to bring me to heel, rather than just neglect and/or manhandle me the way the statists likely would have done.

        It was also only a few blocks away and this meant I had the house to myself each day for a few hours after class. Most of the staff were hippies and not shawshank redemptionists, which was also a lucky break for me.

  9. Learning To Convincingly Argue How A Libertarian Society Is Different

    Libertarians want to move more products and services from being provided directly by government, to being provided privately. And for those that are provided privately, libertarians want to weaken regulations. These changes would increase liberty.

    Libertarians tend to offer arguments that are relatively abstract and theory-based. That is, they focus more on why more liberty is more moral, or why it should in theory give better outcomes. They focus less on showing that liberty has in practice worked out better.

    When libertarians do focus on data, they tend to be very broad, or randomly specific. That is, they talk about how West Germany is better than East Germany, or South Korea better than North Korea. Or they pick on very specific examples, like regulations limiting eyeglass ads, and leave audiences wondering how cherry-picked are such examples.

    Libertarians focus too much on trying to argue abstractly that liberty would be better, and not enough on just concretely describing how liberty would be different.

    Yes for you the abstract arguments seem best; they persuade you plenty, and they bring the most prestige in your circle. But typical libertarians today are a distinct personality type; most people are not like you.

    Most people just cannot be comfortable with a proposal for change if they cannot imagine it in some detail, and imagine that they’d like that detail. Such people don’t need more abstract arguments and examples; they instead need credible concrete descriptions.

    True, people have sometimes written fiction set in libertarian settings. But such fiction doesn’t usually come with a careful analysis of why one should believe in its many details.

    Yes, part of the attraction of liberty is that it frees up people to innovate in ways that one can’t anticipate in advance. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t go a long way to better describe a world of more liberty.

    When many people try to imagine more liberty, they mostly draw on a limited set of iconic comparisons, such as comparing airlines, trucks, and phones before and after US deregulation, or comparing public to private schools and mail in the US. This leads to a worry that libertarians cherry-pick such examples to support conclusions they like.

    Libertarians should be able to do much better than this. By now there are is vast amount of literature discussing many industries in many places before and after regulation or deregulation, and describing specific times and places where certain products and services provided directly by governments, or provided privately.

    From this vast literature, libertarians should be able to identify many concrete patterns and “stylized facts” about how government-provision and heavy-regulation tends to change products and services.

    I recall these suggestions for typical features of industries with more liberty:

    Less “gold-plating” in materials and methods
    More product variety, including more low quality versions
    Faster innovation and product cycles
    Fewer guarantees to workers or customers
    Price, features vary more with customer features
    Workers have less school and seniority
    Less overhead spent on paperwork

    Some people should work to extract patterns like these from the vast related literatures – I’ve looked, and there just aren’t many such summaries today. With such patterns in hand, libertarians would be in a much better position to credibly describe how familiar products and services would concretely change if we were to provide them privately, or to regulate them less.

    And such credible concrete descriptions might allow many more people to become comfortable with endorsing such expansions of liberty.

    This sort of project seems well within the abilities of many students of liberty. It doesn’t require great creativity or technical skills. Instead, it just requires methodically surveying and summarizing related literature.

    Perhaps libertarians shy away from such methodical approaches in hopes of impressing via more moralistic and philosophical methods. But surely there must be many lovers of liberty for whom this sort of project is a good match.

  10. The Walking Dead Economics

    Not only is there little exchange going on in The Walking Dead, but there is also nothing resembling money in the show. In fact, the show never mentions money of any kind at all. Without money, people can only trade by bartering—that is, exchanging one good for another—a highly cumbersome method “very much clogged and embarrassined in its operations.”

    For barter to work, you have to want what someone else is willing to trade at the same time he or she wants what you are willing to trade. Bartering is inefficient because it only allows you to trade with people who both want what you have and have what you want. True Money gets around this by allowing you to sell your goods to someone who wants them and then use the money you made to buy goods from someone else.

    For example, imagine a survivor in the zombie apocalypse who has lots of canned food but is running low on ammo. He encounters a family that has lots of ammo, but isn’t interested in his canned goods. In Smith’s word, “No exchange can, in this case, be made between them. He cannot be their merchant, nor they his customers; and they are all of them thus mutually less serviceable to one another.

    Without true money, the survivor has to first figure out what the family with ammo would accept in trade for it, then find someone with that good who is willing to trade it for canned goods. Suppose the family needs medical supplies. With luck, the man with canned goods manages to find a woman who has extra medical supplies and needs canned goods. After making that trade, he must then go back to the family with ammo and hope the family is still willing to trade the ammo for the medical supplies.

    True Money simplifies this process tremendously. With money, the survivor only has to find someone willing to buy his canned goods and someone else willing to sell ammo. Money helps make trade easier by allowing people to trade any good for money and then trade money for any other good. This eliminates the need to spend time and energy finding someone who wants to trade the goods you want for the goods you have.

    Money is also much easier to store and transport than most other goods in an economy. To illustrate, imagine raising a herd of pigs in the zombie world that you plan to use for food and to trade for ammo and medical supplies. In order to grow your herd, you have to expend many resources (food, water, land, labor, etc.) simply keeping your herd alive and well fed prior to the time of trade.

    Without a fungible method of exchange, true money, it would be incredibly difficult to amass much trading power through livestock. A sudden zombie attack could force you to flee at a moment’s notice, possibly losing your entire herd to hungry zombies. If you were fortunate enough for your herd to live long enough to trade for other goods, you would still have the problem of safely transporting your livestock to the location of trade, facing many risks along the way. In contrast, money holds its value over time, is easily portable, and can be exchanged for nearly any other good.

    So this raises the obvious question: why there is no money in The Walking Dead? Didn’t the characters have experience living in modern America before the zombie outbreak? Why don’t they just choose something to use as a store of value?

    The difficulty is that true money has to be something other people will recognize and accept as having value. In TWD, people would likely turn to some commodity that has inherent value for use as money.

    Each person will tend to collect “some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse.” One advantage of this sort of commodity money is that because the commodity has intrinsic value itself, it can always be consumed by its owner or bartered for something directly if others don’t accept it as a form value storage.

    Besides inherent value, other characteristics of good commodity money include divisibility, uniform quality, and high value relative to weight. Possibilities of potential commodity money in The Walking Dead might include gasoline, bullets, canned food, batteries, and so on.

    Gas is divisible, but has low value relative to weight. Bullets are divisible and have high value relative to weight, but are not of uniform quality.

    Canned goods and batteries are getting closer to the mark, but would have to be checked for quality prior to trading, which could become time consuming when it comes time to trade.

    A historical example of commodity money is cigarettes being used as money by Allied prisoners in German prison camps during World War II. Cigarettes met all three criteria of commodity money—divisibility, relatively uniform quality, and high value to weight.

    They also had the inherent value of being able to be smoked and enjoyed if a prisoner could not find something to trade for them. Also, if another prisoner would not accept them as currency, an owner of cigarettes could still trade them through barter just as they would any other good.

    So why has no commodity emerged in The Walking Dead? In this post-apocalyptic world, there is little contact between survivors, and when there is contact between strangers, it tends to be violent. This low frequency of interaction with others and the high risk of these encounters may create a situation in which a form of commodity money never has the opportunity to emerge.

    Or, this may be one element that the show actually gets wrong in its storyline. There is no reason to expect the natural human propensity to “truck, barter, and exchange” to suddenly disappear in a post-apocalyptic world. When strangers meet, they would likely be much more predisposed toward trading than the show portrays.

  11. It’s almost as if this Exxon-Mobile ad is based on Leonard Read’s 1958 essay, “I, Pencil.”

    Exxon Mobil TV Commercial – ‘Enabling Everyday Progress’ – I, Egg.

    Our modern world, though not perfect, works so incredibly and so consistently well for the great majority of people that we take the marvels of our daily lives for granted.

    These marvels are nearly all the product of unplanned human cooperation that spans the globe and involves the creativity and efforts of literally hundreds of millions of people.

    A distinguishing feature of this marvelous market-created world of ours is that not only do you not know how to make any of the individual goods and services that you consume, but no one knows how to make any of these things.

    With rare exceptions (almost all involving intimate personal services), everything that each of us moderns consumes daily requires the knowledge and information possessed by multitudes of strangers – knowledge and information that is not and cannot possibly be contained in a single mind or place.

  12. A knowledge market is a mechanism for distributing knowledge resources.

    Uclue – Answered Questions
    http://uclue.com/?section=all&filter=answered

    There are two views on knowledge and how knowledge markets can function. One view uses a legal construct of intellectual property to make knowledge a typical scarce resource, so the traditional commodity market mechanism can be applied directly to distribute it.

    An alternative model is based on treating knowledge as a public good and hence encouraging free sharing of knowledge. This is often referred to as attention economy. Currently there is no consensus among researchers on relative merits of these two approaches

    Intelligence modalities

    1 Musical–rhythmic and harmonic
    This area has to do with sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, tones, and music. People with a high musical intelligence normally have good pitch and may even have absolute pitch, and are able to sing, play musical instruments, and compose music. They have sensitivity to rhythm, pitch, meter, tone, melody or timbre.

    2 Visual–spatial
    This area deals with spatial judgment and the ability to visualize with the mind’s eye. Spatial ability is one of the three factors beneath g in the hierarchical model of intelligence.

    3 Verbal–linguistic
    People with high verbal-linguistic intelligence display a facility with words and languages. They are typically good at reading, writing, telling stories and memorizing words along with dates. Verbal ability is one of the most g-loaded abilities. This type of intelligence is measured with the Verbal IQ in WAIS-III.

    4 Logical–mathematical
    This area has to do with logic, abstractions, reasoning, numbers and critical thinking. This also has to do with having the capacity to understand the underlying principles of some kind of causal system. Logical reasoning is closely linked to fluid intelligence and to general intelligence (g factor).

    5 Bodily–kinesthetic
    The core elements of the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence are control of one’s bodily motions and the capacity to handle objects skillfully. Gardner elaborates to say that this also includes a sense of timing, a clear sense of the goal of a physical action, along with the ability to train responses.

    People who have high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence should be generally good at physical activities such as sports, dance, acting, and making things.

    Gardner believes that careers that suit those with high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence include: athletes, dancers, musicians, actors, builders, police officers, and soldiers. Although these careers can be duplicated through virtual simulation, they will not produce the actual physical learning that is needed in this intelligence.

    6 Interpersonal
    This area has to do with interaction with others. In theory, individuals who have high interpersonal intelligence are characterized by their sensitivity to others’ moods, feelings, temperaments and motivations, and their ability to cooperate in order to work as part of a group. According to Gardner in How Are Kids Smart: Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, “Inter- and Intra- personal intelligence is often misunderstood with being extroverted or liking other people…” Those with high interpersonal intelligence communicate effectively and empathize easily with others, and may be either leaders or followers. They often enjoy discussion and debate.

    Gardner believes that careers that suit those with high interpersonal intelligence include sales persons, politicians, managers, teachers, counselors and social workers.

    7 Intrapersonal
    This area has to do with introspective and self-reflective capacities. This refers to having a deep understanding of the self; what one’s strengths/ weaknesses are, what makes one unique, being able to predict one’s own reactions/emotions.

    8 Naturalistic
    This area has to do with nurturing and relating information to one’s natural surroundings. Examples include classifying natural forms such as animal and plant species and rocks and mountain types. This ability was clearly of value in our evolutionary past as hunters, gatherers, and farmers; it continues to be central in such roles as botanist or chef. This sort of ecological receptiveness is deeply rooted in a “sensitive, ethical, and holistic understanding” of the world and its complexities–including the role of humanity within the greater ecosphere.

    9 Existential
    Some proponents of multiple intelligence theory proposed spiritual or religious intelligence as a possible additional type. Gardner did not want to commit to a spiritual intelligence, but suggested that an “existential” intelligence may be a useful construct. The hypothesis of an existential intelligence has been further explored by educational researchers.

    Recent advances in current theory and research on the structure of human cognitive abilities have resulted in a new empirically derived model commonly referred to as the Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory of cognitive abilities.

    CHC theory of cognitive abilities is an amalgamation of two similar theories about the content and structure of human cognitive abilities.

    There are 9 broad stratum abilities and over 70 narrow abilities below these. The broad abilities are
    1 Crystallized Intelligence (Gc): includes the breadth and depth of a person’s acquired knowledge, the ability to communicate one’s knowledge, and the ability to reason using previously learned experiences or procedures.
    2 Fluid Intelligence (Gf): includes the broad ability to reason, form concepts, and solve problems using unfamiliar information or novel procedures.
    3 Quantitative Reasoning (Gq): is the ability to comprehend quantitative concepts and relationships and to manipulate numerical symbols.
    4 Reading & Writing Ability (Grw): includes basic reading and writing skills.
    5 Short-Term Memory (Gsm): is the ability to apprehend and hold information in immediate awareness and then use it within a few seconds.
    6 Long-Term Storage and Retrieval (Glr): is the ability to store information and fluently retrieve it later in the process of thinking.
    7 Visual Processing (Gv): is the ability to perceive, analyze, synthesize, and think with visual patterns, including the ability to store and recall visual representations.
    8 Auditory Processing (Ga): is the ability to analyze, synthesize, and discriminate auditory stimuli, including the ability to process and discriminate speech sounds that may be presented under distorted conditions.
    9 Processing Speed (Gs): is the ability to perform automatic cognitive tasks, particularly when measured under pressure to maintain focused attention.
    10 A tenth ability, Decision/Reaction Time/Speed (Gt), is considered part of the theory, but is not currently assessed by any major intellectual ability test. For this reason, it does not appear in cross-battery reference materials.

    Decision/Reaction Time/Speed (Gt): reflects the immediacy with which an individual can react to stimuli or a task (typically measured in seconds or fractions of seconds; not to be confused with Gs, which typically is measured in intervals of 2–3 minutes).

    Extensions to CHC theory, include
    12 Domain-specific knowledge (Gkn)
    13 Psychomotor ability (Gp), and Psychomotor speed (Gps).

    In addition, additional sensory processing abilities are proposed, including 14 tactile (Gh), 15 kinesthetic (Gk), and 16 olfactory (Go).

  13. 89% funding of the site achievement unlocked. Come on Pie Chart!

    Quotations From Chairman Zhu
    https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/

    Quotations from Chairman Zhu, is a collection of political observations by free market anarchist Bevin Chu, in the manner of Ambrose Bierce, Oscar Wilde, and H.L. Mencken.

    Bevin Chu’s name, is transliterated as “Zhu Bingwen” according to the Hanyu Pinyin system used on the Chinese mainland. Quotations from Chairman Zhu will be updated whenever the Muse inspires.

    America: a once prosperous nation founded on July 4, 1776, toppled by a coup d’etat on September 11, 2001.

    Axis of Evil: The USG, the EU, and NATO. Not Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, as alleged by George W. Bush.

    CCP: former abbreviation for ‘Chinese Communist Party.’ Currently believed to stand for “Chinese Capitalist Party.” See also: CPC, Capitalist Party of China.

    The Cold War was transformative. It transformed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) into Russia, and America into the United Socialist States of America (USSA).

    More Communists can be found on American university campuses than in all of mainland China.

    The consent of the governed: the consent of the victim.

    The consent of the governed: the consent of some of the governed, the non-consent of all the rest.

    The consent of the governed: an offer you can’t refuse.

    The Constitution: a scrap of paper that magically gives strangers the right to demand your obedience and your money.

    Corporations are not creatures of the state. States are shell companies of the corporations.

    Corporations are not creatures of the state. They are the state.

    Corporations don’t own the government. They are the government.

    Criminals don’t obey gun laws. They write them.

    Criminals don’t obey laws. They write them.

    Democracy: the most successful long con in history.

    Democracy: a progressive political system that enables slaves to choose their masters.

    Champions of democracy made the world safe for democracy. Champions of freedom must make it safe from democracy.

    Champions of democracy made the world safe for democracy. The victims of democracy must now make the world safe for freedom.

    I am a champion of freedom, therefore I am an enemy of democracy.

    I am an enemy of democracy because democracy is an enemy of freedom.

    The electorate: flattering term for willing victims.

    Free and fair elections: an equitable political arrangement that allows victims to choose which armed thug they will obey.

    Fractional Reserve Banking: Newspeak euphemism for legalized counterfeiting.

    Government is cancer. Limited government is early-stage cancer. Totalitarianism is late-stage cancer.

    Government: strangers you don’t know from Adam who think they have the right to tell you how to live.

    Government: a gang of thugs that demands obedience and money at gunpoint from everyone unlucky enough to live inside a line it drew on a map.

    Government of the people, by the people, and for the people: abbreviated form for “government of the people in government, by the people in government, and for the people in government.”

    The government is a crime family with a flag. The social contract is an offer you can’t refuse.

    The government will never protect the public from evil. The government is the evil the public needs protection from.

    The government will never protect the public from evil corporations. The government is an evil corporation.

    Unless you are on the guest list for the annual Bilderberg gathering, the government is not your government, it is their government.

    Gun control is not the control of guns. It is the control of people. Gun control is people with guns controlling people without guns.

    Gun control: the control of people without guns by people with guns.

    Gun control: the control of people who surrendered their guns by the people who collected their guns.

    Gun free zone: a zone in which people with guns are free to shoot people without guns.

    What most gangs call turf, the gang known as “The Government” calls jurisdiction.

    Law-abiding citizen: willing victim.

    Law Enforcement Official: what the crime family with a flag calls its legbreakers.

    Liberal democracy: illiberal democracy. Is there any other kind?

    Limited government: early onset unlimited government.

    Limited government: early onset totalitarianism.

    Minarchism: early onset maxarchism.

    Monetary policy: euphemism for legalized counterfeiting.

    Money is not the root of all evil. That distinction is reserved for fiat currency.

    The greatest mystery in the world is why people feel obligated to obey a gang of strangers, merely because the gang calls itself “The Government.”

    Organized Crime: the term The Government applies to crime groups less organized than itself.

    A public servant is not a servant of the public. He is a servant of higher-ranking public servants.

    The public interest is a skillfully rebranded special interest.

    The purpose of public education has never been to facilitate understanding. The purpose of public education is to ensure obedience.

    The duty of the police is to protect and serve – their superiors in government.

    Quantitative easing: euphemism for monetary policy, which is a euphemism for legalized countefeiting. Quantitative easing is a euphemism of a euphemism.

    The rule of law: rule by those who write the laws, interpret the laws, and enforce the laws.

    Registered voter: confessed victim.

    The social contract: a contract not worth the paper it isn’t printed on.

    The social contract: an offer you can’t refuse.

    I am an enemy of the state, because the state is an enemy of the people

    Taxation is legalized robbery. Inflation is legalized counterfeiting.

    Totalitarianism: late stage limited government.

    Universal suffrage: a political arrangement in which no one is denied the opportunity to choose his slave master.

    Voting: a sacred rite by which slaves choose their masters.

    Voting: the privilege of choosing which vetted puppet of the political elites will be one’s master.

    Refusing to vote is also a vote. It is a vote that says “I refuse to rubberstamp my own enslavement.”

    • “America: a once prosperous nation founded on July 4, 1776, toppled by a coup d’etat on September 11, 2001.”
      No, Tor. You’re late on the 2nd date. The coup took place in 1789 with the ratification of the Constitution.

      • I loathe the Federalist Era and its American Capitolism
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Era

        1789-1801 was a time when the Federalist Party was dominant in American politics. This period saw the adoption of the United States Constitution, the expansion of the federal government, and its move to Washington D.C., the newly created national capitol.

        In addition, the era saw the growth of a strong nationalistic government under the control of the Federalist Party. Among the most important events of this period was the foreign entanglements between France and Great Britain, the assertion of a strong, centralized federal government, and the creation of competing political parties.

        I’d prefer a return to the Age of Piracy than seeing the castrato world government progress another inch. Standing military and enforcers are mere pirates in disguise. Let them each hoist their black flags and pursue their plunder openly and and with lively abandon.

        Let the oceans become free for alls of every brazen anarchy so that the lands may yet again enjoy relative peace and sovereignty.

        The Golden Age of Piracy (1650-1730) covers three separate outbursts of piracy:

        The buccaneering period of approximately 1650 to 1680, characterized by Anglo-French seamen based on Jamaica and Tortuga attacking Spanish colonies and shipping in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific,

        The Pirate Round of the 1690s, associated with long-distance voyages from Bermuda and the Americas to rob Muslim and East India Company targets in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, and

        The post-Spanish Succession period extending from 1716 to 1726, when Anglo-American sailors and privateers, left unemployed by the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, turned en masse to piracy in the Caribbean, the American eastern seaboard, the West African coast, and the Indian Ocean.

        Black Sails – STARZ
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3lIEqDZ_EA

        Black Sails Wiki
        http://black-sails.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Sails_Wiki

  14. The ONLY chance you have to be free in this lifetime, is to take the first step and COMPLETELY unburden yourself of each and every Judeo-Christian Value. The second step is to ignore every formulation of COUNTER Judeo-Christian Values. The reason you MUST do this is to sufficiently free your mind and body to truly recognize your enslaved condition and to begin to make your ESCAPE from what I would call the Fiat Green Supremacists.

    It is open to debate how much tyranny has been imposed by SLAVE TRADERS, THIEVES, PILLAGERS, PLUNDERERS, PATRIARCHS, COMMUNISTS, NATIONALISTS, SOCIALISTS, MILITARISTS, and INDUSTRIALISTS.

    I believe it is not open to debate, but rather is a consensus here, that the tyranny behind all the theft, prohibitions, and social duties we each labor under has become too much.

    If you agree with that, then this means ALL FIAT GREEN SUPREMACY doctrine must be absolutely and completely rejected. The perpetrators of this RAG and LINEN paper tyranny must be recognized, unmasked, and all sentiment and LIVESTOCK-HOLM attachments to them must be cut. TRADING WITH REAL VALUE has been made EXTINCT by the STATE RELIGIONISTS, the CHRISTIANS, the JEWS, and the MUSLIMS. It is of no consequence that many are secularly religionists. Both are equally destructive to your ability to enjoy peace and quiet enjoyment of your life. You MUST REJECT both the current inhuman fiat pronouncements, and ALSO the former humanistic fiat proclamations. The results have been clear. Total and absolute devastation of anyone who wants to be left alone in freedom.

    This HAS TO mean you utterly reject every word of the Declaration of Independence. That you do not hold any of its enumerated truths to be self-evident. That you are UNCONVINCED all men are created equal. You do NOT AGREE that men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

    As a SELF-OWNER You are neither for nor against such ideas. Instead, you are awake and alert to the reality that these are Judeo-Christian MYTHS. Imagine if you will, some alternate founders in a parallel universe might have similarly said: the Heavenly Easter Bunny has hidden his wisdom throughout the fields of this great nation. We are endowed by him with the right to pursue his eggs of wisdom to the benefit of ourselves and our posterity.

    Imagine a universe where it was known that Santa Claus had made the heavens and the earth for mankind’s benefit. He did this so we could learn to reject the ways of the naughty. And to pursue the one true happiness that comes from being nice. That is why we choose not to shout, and choose not to cry. The bright blessed RED ROBED otherworldly being sees us when we’re sleeping or awake. HE knows if we are bad or good, and so we’re good, for goodness sake.

    Being a self-owner, I am neither for nor against these beliefs. I do not consider myself bound by a SINGLE one of them. Nor am I bound to contradict them. This means I am free to desecrate ANYTHING allegedly being sacred. And also not do so.

    I advocate the repetition of these mental power-lifts because I don’t want to be a beast of burden of some other man’s ideas and beliefs. And I hope to not be alone in this condition. I especially find it demeaning, when I see you BENDING a knee to someone that’s been dead hundreds or thousands of years. Or carrying a heavy load for beings who NEVER EXISTED, and instead were nothing but myths. I want to be my own self-owner. And I don’t want to be the only one.

    There may or may not be any kind of what they define as happiness to pursue. Whatever there is, it is my concern. I am not tied to any other’s definitions of human love, creative work, and play as they understand them. I do not honor God-given Life, Liberty and or Creativity in the way they coerce and proscribe. It is clear to me the seeds of American social justice that were fleshed out in the U.S. Constitution and planted by an elite through some kind of firstmen consensus reasoning and commonly accepted sense, are neither crops I want to harvest, nor weeds I want to pull up by the roots.

    I reject BOTH the New and the Old World, and all of their dysfunctional religious and secular traditions. I have no fondness for ANY law of Old Europe. Nor a SINGLE law of New America. I do not agree there has been separation of church from state here. Rather it has been more of the same. I allow an equal place for the Bible’s morality and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress’s morality. And the right to participate or avoid either one. A civilization using either GOD or HEINLEIN as a font of founding documents and laws, and as a source for values and culture, is equal valid or invalid as the one I’m held for ransom in right now.

    The Founding Fathers were religious in a distinctive way, a Judeo-Christian way, and were the liberals of their day by deducing that political and human rights come from a power higher than human government, and that just government power can only derive from the informed consent of the governed. And that those founders were of conservative Deist Biblical morality. If this kind of submission to a group code is required for success, then I seek the right to live apart and to fail.

    I neither acknowledge or reject there is a connection between God and Liberty: That this myth is the author of so-called Liberty may or may not be true. It is ironic that American Conservatives claim to champion this idea, as one of the core liberal founding principles; and then are so unaware of the connection with the liberal ideas of this republic of myth and shared delusion. It is also ironic that American Liberals have somehow severed the formerly required connection between God and Liberty. Yet kept all the other myths intact, and even embellished them to require citizens to forcefully spread the originating ideals even upon the unwilling.

    It is up to each individual what if any code he adheres to. It is up to each of us to enforce the ones we hold dear. Each man decides what values he holds sacred. The only thing not on the bountious table of possibility is mass murder, wars of aggression, armed subjugation of captives, and human suffering purposely inflicted on the defenseless to maintain the Hegemony of the Fiat Green Currency Protocol of the “Free World” Master Race.

    Any man who in any way support the Fiat Green Master Race in any way is my sworn enemy. I do not recognize his standing to prevent me from encouraging disorder, poverty, rape, theft, wealth destruction, lying, looting, mooching, freeloading, con-game playing, ponzi scheme launching, or property violations.

    I do not agree that our Liberty has been bequeathed by the King of the Universe. Nor have I any interest in proving it was not so bequeathed. I recognize no golden rules. No forced decency. No common courtesy. No abstinence from taking advantage or encouraging theft. No fealty pledge to being honest. To conforming to Peer-pressure notions of not being a wolf or a maggot or any such mind games that serve only to continue the current Fiat Green Master Race dominance.

    I am an AMATEUR, and unskilled, so at times, out of mental weakness, I rebel against people, and situations, rather than ideas.
    I hope to be corrected where I am wrong. And I hope to reword these things to be only ideas, not dependent on any people, situations, or any other finite matters of space, time, and circumstance.

    I am not a manscout who will do my best to live up to the Master Race Oath. To measure my achievements against any high standards. To do any duty. To seek in anyway to serve. To teach respect to any of our culture as it currently exists. To help keep the United States a strong and fair nation by learning about our system of government and your responsibilities as a citizen. To being part of any family or community. To working to improve my community or my home, and by extension serve my Master Race. I MIGHT do some of these things. I MIGHT not.

    I may or may not help other people at any time. Be there when people need me. Have a cheerful smile or a helping hand to ease the burden of those who claim to need assistance. By helping out whenever possible, to do my part to make this a better world. To keep myself physically strong. To take care of my body so it will last what the Master Race deems its lifetime. To eat nutritious foods, to get enough sleep, to exercise regularly to build strength and endurance. To avoid harmful drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and anything else that can harm my health. To avoid things that are risky and possibly harmful. To develop my mind in a way that enables me to interact with them. To be curious or care about anything around me, to work hard to make the most of my abilities. To have an inquiring attitude and a willingness to ask questions. To worry about what they say is the world, or what my role in it might be. To be morally straight. To be a person of strong character, to be in relationships with others that are honest and open. To respect and defend the rights of all people. To be clean in my speech and actions, to remain faithful to my religious beliefs or ideal moral code. Even to work towards a life of virtue and self-reliance. I might do some of this or none of this. I have NO duty to God, nor the city, state, or country wherein I am held against my will. I have NO duty to other people, NOR Duty to self as well.

    These are the first two CRUCIAL steps that must be undertaken to become free. Unless you take them, all of your efforts are likely to be in vain. You’ll wise up to one form of the collectivist con, and then just as rapidly become hopelessly MIRED in a new version of the collectivist con.

  15. Hey White People! Children of Ferguson. High BP alert, be careful.
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d18_1410313047

    St. Louis police release video, audio of
    deadly police shooting (graphic)
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=df3_1408576637

    Michael Brown Eye Witness Crime Scene Video, FULL
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e94_1408294281

    Marlon Horton Shot in Chest by off-duty Chicago Police
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=514_1409506619

    James Foley FAKE Execution analysis
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=097_1408853926

  16. Porn Star “Clover” At Center Of Syphilis Scare Turns Out Not To Have Syphilis. Posted: 08/08/2013

    Porn star Clover of the LA adult film industry has been declared syphilis-free after a press release identified him as a potential patient zero in a recent syphilis scare.

    Adult performer Clover received an inconclusive test result for syphilis on Saturday and immediately contacted his agent.

    Clover then produced a list of the actors with whom he worked since his last clean test, and the agency reached out to them.

    Clover has since taken two separate tests — including one that is more sensitive than a standard syphilis test — that both found he does not have the infection.

    Before Clover had conclusive results, Michael Weinstein, the president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), said the case reflects a failure to enforce a new LA county condom mandate, which requires that condoms be used on porn shoots. AHF authored the new law.

    “The county has not done a single inspection and is defying the will of 1.6 million voters and failing in their public health responsibility,” Weinstein told HuffPost on Wednesday. “As long as the industry resists condoms, thousands of performers will remain at risk. Testing is not prevention.”

    The LA County Department of Public Health also determined that there was not a positive syphilis case, based on an investigation that included lab testing.

    “I thought it was of the utmost importance to act as fast as possible by contacting my agent,” Clover said in a statement. “This way all involved could begin acting accordingly. I respect the adult industry and believe it is important for everyone to work together to create the safest environment possible.”

    The industry actor and blogger, praised how Clover handled the situation in a post on his blog Wednesday:

    “I have nothing but praise for Clover. Nobody wants to see any STD in this biz, but it’s going to happen condoms or not and what will define us is how we handle it when it does. Clover handled it with responsibility and professionalism.”

  17. James Douglas Muir Leno is dyslexic. He needs only four to five hours of sleep each night. Jay has been married since 1980 and has no children by mutual agreement. He spends most of his free time visiting car collections or working in his private garage. He owns approximately 169 automobiles and 117 motorcycles.

    During the 2005 trial of Michael Jackson over allegations of child molestation, Jay was one of few celebrities who appeared as a defense witness. Regarding a call by Michael’s accuser, Leno testified that he never called the police, that no money was asked for, and there was no coaching – but that the calls seemed unusual and scripted.

    Jay donated $100,000 to the Feminist Majority’s campaign to stop gender apartheid in Afghanistan. His wife Mavis Leno is on the board of the Feminist Majority.

    Jay donated $100,000 to a scholarship fund at Salem State University in honor of Lennie Sogoloff, who gave Leno his start at his jazz club, Lennie’s-on-the-Turnpike.

    Leno auctioned his Fiat 500 for $385,000 with all the proceeds going to a charity that helps wounded war veterans recover by providing them temporary housing.

  18. ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
    “I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”

    “All great and precious things are lonely.”

    “But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”

    “And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”

    ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

    “I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”

    “Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? …Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

    “Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.”

    “A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.”

    “An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There’s a punishment for it, and it’s usually crucifixion.”

    “A man without words is a man without thought.”

    “Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.”

    “It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.”

    “..it’s awful not to be loved. It’s the worst thing in the world…It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.”

    “Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”

    “There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.”

    “After a while you’ll think no thought the others do not think. You’ll know no word the others can’t say. And you’ll do things because the others do them. You’ll feel the danger in any difference whatever-a danger to the crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men…Once in a while there is a man who won’t do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They’ll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you can’t finally give in, they’ll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside–neither part of themselves, nor yet free…They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can’t allow a question to weaken it.”

    “The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.”

    “Look now — in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, “use it well, use it wisely.” We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.”

    “He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.”
    ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

  19. The Language of Empire. Abu Ghraib and the American Media – Lila Rajiva
    http://monthlyreview.org/books/pb1196/

    In 1978, William Bonner created what is now known as Agora Inc. It has grown to be one of the largest and most successful consumer newsletter publishers in the world
    http://www.agora-inc.com/about-william-bonner

    n 1999, Bill founded The Daily Reckoning; he continues to write for it daily. The Daily Reckoning weaves information about the financial world, investing, and everyday life into an educational and entertaining format. Today, more than 500,000 subscribers receive Bill’s daily columns.

    Agora Subsidiaries & Affiliates: Agora Financial, Common Sense Publishing, Contrarian Profits, Laissez Faire Books
    The Oxford Club, The Sovereign Society, Wall Street Daily, Stansberry & Associates Investment Research

    • Sorry Helot, didn’t see you here amid all the echoes in my echo chamber. Heloo… Heloo…. Echo….. Echo……

      Yes, it is crazy how thoroughly the Capitol of each nation supersedes the Capital of its individual entrepreneurs and creators.

      Drones should be the greatest boon to the world. But they’re not, so inventing tech capable of bringing unwanted drones to the ground might be the best that can be hoped for.

      Short and Depressing Article of Who Is Behind the England’s Tyrannny. And also our own.
      http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-eu-versus-the-un-who-makes-the-rules.aspx

      Increasingly, trade rules are set above the level of Brussels

      In today’s speech on the European Union, previewed in this morning’s Times of London, Owen Paterson, the former environment secretary, will make a surprising and telling point.

      It is that many of the rules handed down to British businesses and consumers by Brussels have often and increasingly been in turn handed down to it by higher powers. This means, Britain would have more influence outside the EU than within it. It could rejoin some top tables.

      One example is the set of rules about food safety: additives, labeling, pesticide residues and so on. The food rules that Britain has to implement under the EU’s single market are now made by an organisation that sounds like either a Vatican secret society or a Linnean name for a tapeworm: Codex Alimentarius.

      It’s actually a standard-setting commission, based in Rome.
      Codex is a creature of the United Nations. Its rules are in theory voluntary but since the EU turns Codex’s decisions into single-market law, and since the World Trade Organisation (WTO) judges disputes by Codex’s rules, Britain in effect is lumped with what Codex decides.

      It’s Brussels that represents us on many of the key committees, so England has little chance to influence the rules in advance.

      Codex has two sister organisations, which deal with animal and plant health. As environment secretary, Mr Paterson discovered on a visit to New Zealand just how powerless other countries perceive us to be. There was a particular new rule about a sheep disease that the New Zealand government wanted to persuade one of these bodies to amend.

      It had got Australia on side, and planned to enlist Canada and America, but when asked by Mr Paterson if Britain — Europe’s leading sheep producer — could help, the New Zealanders replied: no point, you’re just part of the EU. He felt stung by the implication of that remark.

      In effect, if an organisation such as Codex changes its rules about food labels, Brussels is powerless to do anything other than follow suit. This goes much deeper than just a few veterinary and food issues. In 1994 the EU adopted the world trade system that required all signatories to adopt international standards in preference to their own.

      Take another example. The rules followed by the banking industry when assessing asset risk are decided not by the EU but by a committee based in Switzerland. Then there’s the Financial Stability Board, chaired by Mark Carney and based in Paris. It’s a creature of the G20. It is supposed to set the standards for financial regulation worldwide.

      Britain’s car industry is vital to our economy. Yet the single market standards of the EU for motor manufacturing are derived from regulations produced by (take a deep breath) the World Forum for the Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations, a subsidiary of the UN.
      Ask yourself: is it likely that Britain, with its disproportionate interest in fish, car manufacturing, banking and sheep, will have seen these topics aired to our best advantage by some suave suit from Malta or Lithuania acting on behalf of the entire EU? Not a chance.

      There’s plenty of other supranational bodies on which we are represented separately, and don’t need to leave the EU to join. There’s Nato, and the UNclimate change framework, whose chief (Christiana Figueres) says she wants to use it to achieve “centralised transformation” of the world economy if she can get a world treaty. So, to an increasing extent, the EU is just one of the spider’s webs in which we are entangled — but it’s often the only one that represents our interests.

      At the weekend I looked up the latest review of the WTO’s Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (I’m a sad case, I know, but it was raining and there was not much on the telly) and, sure enough, it lists lots of comments it has received from countries such as New Zealand, Malaysia, Japan, Switzerland, even Cuba. Not a single EU country is mentioned because of course our comments were relayed by the European Union.

      In the past, “ministers had to travel to Brussels to make their case, and to keep an eye on new laws”, Mr Paterson will say in his speech, “but with the advance of globalisation we now need to be represented in Geneva, Paris, Berne, Rome and elsewhere.”

      No wonder Eurosceptics (including Nigel Farage) say we have less international clout than Norway, which sits on all these committees. It plays a big role in the Codex Alimentarius, hosting a key committee about fish. Very few of these international rule-setting bodies are based in Britain. If we left the EU, we would at least get to be like Switzerland — a place favoured by UN agencies to base themselves. There’s jobs in polishing the shoes and limos of UN-crats.

      This is good news for those Europhiles who sound so touchingly worried that they might lose the opportunities for racking up room-service bills while on business in Brussels. They can relax, and vote “out” in a referendum. The hotels in Switzerland are just as good.
      And conversely, the supranational world is not an entirely comforting point for Eurosceptics to make.

      If we left the EU, we would not find ourselves in some sunlit meadow where we could make up any rules we wanted, as Ukip likes to imply. We would be still be just as subject to all these international standards and intrusions if we wanted to trade with other countries. And although we might get a bit more influence over rule-making in the areas that matter to us, we would still be regularly outvoted.

      We are often told to fear leaving the EU because it would lead to “fax diplomacy”: learning about new laws without having had a chance to comment on them first. (The MEP Daniel Hannan has memorably expressed his puzzlement at the archaic way that Europhiles express themselves: who still uses fax?) But Brussels is also receiving such faxes. Leave the EU and we could be sending some of the faxes to Brussels ourselves. And perhaps even hosting a few of the fax machines.

      More generally, the EU is increasingly a problem in the multilateral, supranational world. The inexorable drift towards co-ordinated world government is indeed happening, but the European Union is looking more like an oxbow lake, rather than the stream. Let’s get back in the main channel.

  20. There are many talking the talk experts on this site. Experts in moral conduct. Good governance. Political analysis and upcoming event prognostication. All of these are fields of Capitolism I would argue.

    Who here is an expert in how this site actually functions. Who here are the experts in walking the walk. Experts on the logistics of long distance communication conduct. Good platform maintenance. Entrepreneurial analysis and upcoming opportunity forecasting. The money, science, and all the myriad fields of Capitalism.

    Eric is able to do for us. Aid us making more prudent decisions about the machinery and technology we all encounter in our lives.

    Is anyone able to reciprocate in that arena. Is anyone able to apply the golden rules on an elementary physics basis. Are there any mechheads and techheads here. Or just textheads?

    Rome wasn’t built in a day. It certainly wasn’t built with a bunch of high minded words and feel good aphorisms we can carry in our pockets while going door to door like Aristotle’s Witnesses.

    I was wrongheaded about nearly all I’ve said before. You can’t merely hate the state and spread that hate or any of that and just expect things to magically improve.

    We have to become producers. We have to accrue capital of our own.

    It is not our destiny to take back the Capitol.

    It is not our destiny to destroy the Capitol.

    It is our destiny to devalue the Capitol. And all their Hunger Games. We are our own Mockingjays. And we tell and live our own story.

    We’re off script here. We’re not consumers making the best decision about what product or service we want to consume. It’s more than just Capitolism Bad. Capitalism good.

    It’s about our own Capital. Freed capital that isn’t yoked to today’s Capitol. Or tomorrow’s revolutionary Capitol either.

    Like Bill and Ted said, “Be Excellent to Each Other.” Other means only the ones we except as We. It means for now we are in diaspora, and there is no homeland for us to flee to. We face a long journey of imagining and then bringing to life our Own Promised Land.

    Zion isn’t in South America or anywhere right now but in our hopes and in our dreams. We must amass product wealth known as capital. We alone will have to build our dreams. We alone will have to hire our own protectors.

    Perhaps among the 1.5 million US gang members there are some we could hire and employ for our ends. They would of course have to retire and to act ethically in our employ.

    We would build a NAP gang. A new breed that only uses violence defensively to protect our movement. A gang that produces things and doesn’t steal value from others through bullying and threats.

    I’m way outside the box here, and this might just be more fecal grey matter. But something real can be done. We can learn from others who survive amid the state. That is what we must do survive. In order to live under free capitalism instead of slave under coercive capitolism.

    And isn’t that, really, what this is all about? Being. Not just the Saying. There are many here with far more ethics and principles that can do the Saying.

    I don’t discount thier importance in the least. But I am also interested in the Being. And Being is going to require some immediate action. Some kind of Doing. My hope is that all my crap will somehow in some small way help in the fertilizing of what ever is determined by those best qualified. To be the Doing.

  21. 1 consider the system we write in is called jackdaws. Because… jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.

    2 Further imagine a closely related system one might write in is called kedlfxt. Because kedlfxt muwi nz coh trjopy. The kedlfxt system is derived quiet simply. Each consonant is substituted for its folower consonant and each vowel is substituted to the next subsequent vowel. Wrap around to the beginning if you reach the end of the alphabet.

    3 easy peasy as they say in jackdaws. Or ietz qietz as they say in kedlfxt. A rather fine kettle of fext for human consumption yet not pervious to an AI as I understand them.

    Monitored terms are in kedlfxt.

    How to buy Xiequpt, Fsaht 100% anonymous.

    5 Buy bitcoins. Google is your friend. Its very easy to do.
    Download Tor browser. This is a free way to get anon and is needed.

    https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy.html.en

    Paste this link when you have opened tor: http://agorabasakxmewww.onion/register/mmJ6y6gVid

    6 As you can see it ends with “.onion” and Tor is built so you can open this files. Register a free account with this link.
    Find your bitcoin-adress in Agora market and transfer your bitcoins to it.

    7 Now you’re good to go, if you don’t want to send secret information so somebody can read it, then also go to https://privnote.com/.

    8 Tor exists because it helps the spooks. Use in moderation and with open eyes. Don’t go full retard there of course. Only about 80% of the time does one get what one orders off international gray markets. The other 20% just grin and bear it. Don’t go full retard if you get screwed. No good comes of snitching. Find another way to do things and move on.
    http://cryptome.org/0003/tor-spy.htm

    9 This is only a kedlfxt test. Don’t really do any of this. Posted for amusement purposes only.

  22. Tip #22. BE A CRIMINAL. Break all of the rules. Not the above rules. EVERY rule.

    Artists steal, kill, lie, and play. Isabelle Allende says, “once a writer is born into a family, the family is over.” Be a killer.

    And then I met the girl and she fell in love with me and we lived happily ever after.

    sorry, left off the most important rule of all.

    If this song were redone as Proud To Be A NAP Libertarian I would still hate it. Probably hate it more actually. Even if it became the anthem of our new 500 acre microstate of an American Monaco. A state where everything we think we want has been achieved. (Proud To Be An American. Lee Greenwood.)

    – Elvis bless us all. Everyone.

  23. Things aren’t going that great. Times are tough (in relative terms, not in absolute terms). I have only myself to blame, because I now lack sufficient wealth and power to blame even those of the lowest station in life and get away with it.

    I was a manager of one employee for many years. She got caught by the owners doing something and they called the cops on her. She was already in custody and being questioned when I showed up at 1 O Clock as I had for years to a job as far as the absentee owners knew I showed up at 8 am to. Too say I was being let go that day, is a huge understatement.

    These are 2 powerful Jews worth tens of millions of dollars. One was on the board of Beverly Hills institutions and things. They had to answer to about 40 other powerful people. One of them is a famous Jewish fitness guru who you’d recognize if I named. The kind of guys one does not trifle with in a Sicilian sense.

    I had no knowledge of what she had been up to, but that didn’t stop these two Old Gougers from having a festive go at a Goy’s expense. Especially one they probably considered giving a beatdown to. In a million years, no one would have suspected I was anything but the straightest of arrows. This revelation would be PBS bigwigs learning that Mr Rogers had been doing coke with Russian hookers and mobsters all these years.

    I ended up having someone bring me $11,000 in cash to hand to them so that I could walk out that day in disgrace without also ending up in custody. This payment also bailed out my employee, which seemed the right thing to do, since I was responsible for her.

    The payment was to pay back a raise my boss had approved for me. But the owners claim they hadn’t been notified of this raise, rather than escalate things, I took it as a kind of karmic debt I owed them for not working the hours I said I worked.

    Since then, nearly every employer in town(my industry is a small insular world it turns out) seems to be in on what appears to have happened.

    I still have friends there. The standing order is anyone who calls about me is to be forwarded to the owner’s executive secretary in all cases. I’m sure its so she can make me look absolutely terrible to anyone seeking a reference. These guys have grudges that pass from generation to generation. Why would my little betrayal pass by unnoticed.

    One of things I consented to, was sign this ridiculous admission statement of all kinds of terrible things that were going on that I didn’t do, but were things someone in the organization had done.

    It’s ironic, because early in my career there, I had found conclusive damning evidence that the guys in charge before me had siphoned 1 1/2 million out of the company to spend on pet projects the absentee owners had no knowledge of.

    I did this by becoming an expert in their financial operations, which is by no means my strong suit or what I was hired for. The thing is they trusted me and it made me feel good to give them something they really wanted. Proof of being betrayed so they can get blood in the water and win concessions and intimidative fealty, and do the Jewish Shark thing their race is allegedly so famous for.

    To my mind, this is how it should be. I have no love for any German floating about on their warmachines and sinking in the open waters. I only wish the Jews could have bloodsucked them further and humbled them more.

    These Jews are the kinds of guys that buy and hold 50,000 acre parcels at interstate intersections. Who make contributions to politicians and get deals done, or make competitive deals die. These are the kind of guys that dwarf me and my humble little life.

    There is a class system that exists and should continue to exist if we want to continue to enjoy a prosperous world. Its not the PTB concept per se I have a problem with.

    Its that the kind of weirdos that have infiltrated the PTB. The PTB a hundred years ago were hardnosed brasstacked wealth and power accumulator guys like my former Jewish bosses. Now they’re concerned with things like eliminating smoking worldwide.

    They’re fetishistic dictators of a kind that bewilders me and makes my skin crawl. I think fiat banking has made America a stooge for a bizarro world order beyond all imagining. Replacing them with NAP adherent guys is not a goal of mine.

    It might be that NAP propagation leads to greater wealth, prosperity, and happiness. And only in that biological factual circumstance, do I hope NAP becomes more widespread. NAP has to compete successfully in the evolutionary/agora arena and come out better than the alternatives. Otherwise it deserves to be scrapheaped and replaced with something better.

    I am well satisfied with what little I still have, and perhaps I am a minority of one with my “out there” beliefs. I’m only relating who I am because thats all I really know about. I doubt I know a single true thing about Obama, Putin, Cameron, Merkel or any political world leader. And I doubt I ever will see how the puppet show works.

    I also know next to nothing about the fiat money system in existence from 1913. And the malinvestment worldwide dictatorship it is helping to install. This system has rules, but is still a puppet show, just a mechanistic one.

    Until we distance ourselves economically from all this, we’re just making small talk. Pillow talk really, as we each lay in our beds and await the visit from whatever noble want to have a go at our wives, our children, or our backside directly.

    Years ago, I was a manager of couple of handfuls of guys. They all hated my guts, because I compared them to each other. To their faces. And to top managment and the owners. I still haven’t changed much, being an old dog too curmudgeonly to learn new tricks.

    Amazing Tips To Be A Better Writer – James Altucher
    http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2014/11/21-or-22-yet-even-more-amazing-tips-to-be-a-better-writer/

    Tip #4: STEAL. If you see a line you like in another book, figure out how you would rewrite it, even slightly, and then steal it. It’s still beautiful.

    Tip #5: I TOOK THIS TIP OUT WHEN I REWROTE THIS. It was bullshit.

    Tip #17: GET PAID, GET LAID, LOSE WEIGHT. If you write non-fiction, those are the three things people like to read most.

    Tip #18: BLOOD TRANSFUSION. Even though you’re bleeding your own blood, make sure it’s the same color as everyone else’s blood.

  24. “Alpha-male chimps are not truly leaders of their groups. They perform some public services, such as mediating conflicts. But most of the time, they are better described as bullies who take what they want.”

    I think this is largely true for humans as well. I reject all words, and instead watch closely what the results of evolutionary biology are to guide my thinking. It is because of science that I don’t advocate a govt attempting to be significantly more moral than humanity at large. This notion backfires, and soon we’re worse off than having any kind of govt.

    What would be best is to construct a system where the greatest inventors, accomplished entrepreneurs, and compelling visionaries tend to reach the very top. And leave them free to govern with limited resources and power. Limit the scope of their influence logistically.

    I am an anarchist out of desperation. Everywhere, the wisest and most enlightening people sooner or later come down to some kind of gut feeling, and live by some cult of their interior intuition. These guts never quite get it, even the brightest and wisest among us seem to irrationally pursue either altruism, whim worshipping, or both.

    The alpha-chimp quote is from Haidt’s book.

    Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
    https://philosophynow.org/issues/101/The_Righteous_Mind_by_Jonathan_Haidt

    We humans are not very far removed genetically from chimps; we are much more like them than it seems to us from our self-aware perch. Even mere dogs know acting in a certain way and playing the social game among humans is better for their survival and living conditions. Much more so are chimps nearly as wise as us.

    Alpha-male (and female) humans who seek and gain positions of political ‘leadership’ in human society are best thought of in the same way as Haidt describes alpha-male chimps.

    Without exception, anyone who seeks a position of political dominance ‘leadership’ does so largely for self-interested reasons. And with rare exception, those who succeed in gaining such positions – especially positions at the highest (“national”) ranks – are individuals who are especially unscrupulous about imposing their wills on others and are inordinately good at marshaling physical violence, or threats of such, to impose their wills.

    There is nothing at any level that is uplifting or good or noble or praiseworthy about politics. It’s a nasty, corrupting, soul-destroying business. Politics is the province, not of civilized men and women but, rather, of brutes in suits.

    Because I see Ron Paul still filled with vigor at his advanced age, I believe him to be the rarest of rare exceptions. At best, in this imperfect world of ours, entering politics is excusable only if the genuine goal is to reduce the role of politics as much as possible.

    The great majority of people who enter politics, regardless of what they say (for they are nearly all skilled in the dark arts of deception), do not do so in order to diminish the role of politics but, instead, to extend that role or to change the details of the application of government force (or both).

    These are people who arrogantly wish to dominate others, and who are happy to have the lazy assent of the masses who labor under the ages-old superstition that human society must be formed and guided by force wielded by Great Men and Great Women.

    – – –
    Objectivism contends that by upholding reason and the value of the individual, a culture is able to reject the “primitive mentality that cowers before the forces of nature” and “the dictates of mystical authorities.”

    There is a worldwide push in the present day to restore the aforementioned “medieval mentality” under the guise of tribalism, multiculturalism, and environmentalism. This is leading to an anti-science and anti-technology mentality everywhere, even in this blog.

    Objectivism views primitive states of existence as being “savage” and marred in mysticism, fatalism, ignorance, superstition, poverty, passivity, and collectivism. The cure to such a society Objectivism holds is Western civilization, capitalism and modernity, which in its view brings with it reason, individualism, science, industrialization, and ultimately wealth.

    I am evidently a Post-Randian Objectivist and extinct breed of liberal, because I absolutely do reject the Golden Rule, Reciprocity, and the Categorical Imperative as things I should submit myself to voluntarily, rather than follow Personal Ethical Egoism (which is the belief that only I should act from the motive of self-interest, and have nothing is tp say about what motives others should act from.)

    Ethical Egoism
    http://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/ethical_ego.html

    Rejection of the Primitive – Ayn Rand
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism%27s_rejection_of_the_primitive

    “Native Americans were savages”, and that as a result “European colonists had a right to seize their land because native tribes did not recognize individual rights”, was one of Ayn Rand’s views that “particularly outraged libertarians.”

    I think todays Native Americans are a different kind of savages. Ut might still be best if a coalition of less savage people like the Swiss/Japanese/Israeali/French/Italian/Chinese all worked together and evicted as many Americans as necessary rom their lands until they could take over and stop the destructive American Juggernaut State in its tracks.

    “Palestinians have no rights and it is moral to support Israel, the sole outpost of civilization in a region ruled by barbarism”.

    Americans have become a kind of debt palestinians. Out of bounds and beyond all reason. Incapable of admitting the plain truth, and instead feverishly asserting their capacity for leadership, when in reality they have been rejected by the productive and value exporting world 40 years ago now.

    – – –
    Dutch move 122 tons of gold out of US NY Fed Vault
    http://www.cnbc.com/id/102206925#.
    – – –
    WikiLeaks founder: Google has sophisticated AI that read, analyze, and summarize all your electronic purchases, internet searches, blog postings, voice calls, and text messages on behalf of the US Govt.
    http://en.itar-tass.com/world/763927

    Ed said on 9/19/2013
    ‘A Hitleresque hardass while Gov of California, Reagan never passed up a chance to stomp on a hippy, or to shit in the punchbowl and ruin everybody’s party.”

    He was also a snitch for Hoover’s FBI during his career as a B-actor in dismal B-movies. He sic’ed the feds on his fellow actors causing ruination of their careers due to his reports to the feds on “communist activities” in the film business.

    Fuckin’ Reagan. There was a little poetic justice for him, though. After skating away from messes his subordinates created by claiming that he “didn’t recall” details of their wrongdoing or his own involvement, he lost his cognitive abilities to Alzheimer’s.’

    – I am convinced what ever afflictions and debilities you acquire are to some extent earned or deserved. While I don’t subscribe to the theory that I owe anyone any kind of reciprocal conduct, I do believe that over time screwing people over starts to accumulate.

    Perhaps it is rather like the poker game “Texas Hold-Em.” Part of what happens to you is that game is random luck of the deal. But only a moron would fail to realize it’s still within your power to make the most out of whatever cards you are dealt.

    Even if you are consistently dealt terrible cards, you can use bluffing, courage, human psychology, discipline, imagination, and mathematics to your advantage, and still come out a big winner anyway.

  25. 2nd Draft:

    PREAMBLE
    As Self-Owners, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.

    We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

    Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the unlimited range of endeavors that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any other authoritarian power.

    In the following paragraphs we have set forth our basic principles and enumerated various policy stands derived from those principles.

    STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES
    We, the Self-Owners, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual.

    We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.

    Governments throughout history have regularly operated on the opposite principle, that the State has the right to dispose of the lives of individuals and the fruits of their labor. All other political associations other than our own grant to government the right to regulate the lives of individuals and seize the fruits of their labor without their consent.

    We, on the contrary, deny the right of any government to do these things, and hold that wherever government actors and resources exist, these must not violate the rights of any individual: namely, (1) the right to life — accordingly we support the prohibition of the initiation of physical force against others; (2) the right to liberty of speech and action — accordingly we oppose all attempts by government to abridge the freedom of speech and press, as well as government censorship in any form; and (3) the right to property — accordingly we oppose all government interference with private property, such as confiscation, nationalization, and eminent domain, and support the prohibition of robbery, trespass, fraud, and misrepresentation.

    Government, when instituted, must not violate individual rights, and therefore we oppose all interference by government in the areas of voluntary and contractual relations among individuals. People must not be forced to sacrifice their lives and property for the benefit of others. They must be left free by government to deal with one another as free traders; and the resultant economic system, the only one compatible with the protection of individual rights, is the free market.

    1.0 Personal Liberty
    Individuals must be free to make their own choices and must be made to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. Our support of an individual’s right to make choices in life does not mean that we necessarily approve or disapprove of those choices. No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government.

    1.1 Self-Ownership

    Individuals own their bodies and have rights over them that other individuals, groups, and governments may not violate. Individuals have the freedom and responsibility to decide what they knowingly and voluntarily consume, and what risks they accept to their own health, finances, safety, or life.

    1.2 Expression and Communication

    We support full freedom of expression and oppose government censorship, regulation or control of communications media and technology. We favor the freedom to engage in or abstain from any religious or other associations that do not violate the rights of others. We oppose government actions which either aid or attack any religion or association.

    1.3 Privacy

    Self-Owners advocate individual privacy and government transparency. We are committed to ending government’s practice of spying on everyone. We support the rights recognized by the Fourth Amendment to be secure in our persons, homes, property, and communications. Protection from unreasonable search and seizure must include records held by third parties, such as email, medical, and library records.

    1.4 Personal Relationships

    Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity must have no impact on the government’s treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws. Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships. Consenting adults must be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships. Any government involvement in personal relationships will be greatly curtailed, and both parties will be required to conduct their use of the government using their own labor or the labor of experts paid for by themselves.

    1.5 Abortion

    Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government must be kept completely out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.

    1.6 Crime and Justice

    Government exists to protect the rights of every individual including life, liberty and property. Criminal laws must be limited to violation of the rights of others through force or fraud, or deliberate actions that place others involuntarily at significant risk of harm. We will repeal all laws creating “crimes” without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes, since only actions that infringe on the rights of others can properly be termed crimes. Individuals are have the right to voluntarily assume risk of harm to themselves and to bear the sole responsibility for any hardships such risks impose. We support restitution and making the victim whole to the fullest degree possible at the expense of the criminal or the negligent wrongdoer. We oppose reduction of constitutional safeguards of the rights of the criminally accused. The rights of due process, a speedy trial, access to legal self-help resources, trial by jury of peers, and the legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty, must not be denied. We assert the common-law right of juries to judge not only the facts but also the justice of the law.

    1.7 Self-Defense

    The only legitimate use of force is in defense of individual rights — life, liberty, and justly acquired property — against aggression. This right inheres in the individual, who may agree to be aided by any other individual or group. We affirm the absolute right of the individual to keep and bear arms and other self and property protection tools, and oppose the prosecution of individuals for exercising their rights of self-defense. Private property owners must be free to establish their own conditions regarding the presence and use of personal defense weapons on their own property. We oppose all laws at any level of government restricting, registering, or monitoring the ownership, manufacture, or transfer of firearms or ammunition.

    2.0 Economic Liberty
    Self-Owners allow for all members to pursue opportunities to achieve economic success. A free and competitive market is proven to allocate resources in the most efficient manner. Each person has the right to offer goods and services to others on the free market. The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, act as the last resort to adjudicate disputes where no private solution is available, and provide a straightforward legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected. All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are herefore abolished.

    2.1 Property and Contract

    As respect for property rights is fundamental to maintaining a free and prosperous society, it follows that the freedom to contract to obtain, retain, profit from, manage, or dispose of one’s property must also be upheld. Self-Owners would free property owners from government restrictions on their rights to control and enjoy their property, as long as their choices do not harm or infringe on the rights of others. Eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, governmental limits on profits, governmental production mandates, and governmental controls on prices of goods and services (including wages, rents, and interest) and other abridgements of such fundamental rights will cease. For voluntary dealings among private entities, parties will remain free to choose with whom they trade and set whatever trade terms are mutually agreeable.

    2.2 Environment

    We support a vibrant and natural environment and open source access to all natural resources wherever it is possible to allow mining and other materials extraction. Private landowners and conservation groups have a vested interest in maintaining natural resources not claimed by individuals interested in living off the land. Pollution and misuse of resources causes damage to the ecosystem. Governments, unlike private businesses, are unaccountable for whatever damage the do to the environment and have a terrible track record when it comes to environmental stewardship. Protecting the environment requires technical expertise and a wide variety of skills. There will be an extensive and consistent enforcement of individual rights in resources like land, water, air, and wildlife. Experts and stewards will be paid by a percentage of proceeds of whatever is extracted from the land. Free markets and property rights stimulate the technological innovations and behavioral changes required to better care for the environment and ecosystems. The air, water, space, and mantle resources will also be monitored and maintained at the expense of those making a living off the commons and unihabited lands. Environmental scientists, laborers, and conservation associations have been proven to be the most effective means of encouraging good stewardship by the public at large.

    2.3 Energy and Resources

    While energy is needed to fuel a modern society, government must not subsidizing any particular form of energy. We oppose all government control of energy pricing, allocation, and production. The proceeds obtained by providing energy and fuel will be siphoned off at a reasonable level to help fund the government.

    2.4 Government Finance and Spending

    All persons are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor. We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution, any non-essential programs and services,.and all programs and services which can be adequated provided by technological solutions. Such as a national document scanning and email delivery system, instead of the current paper based home delivery system. The post offices will be converted to self-service models, and provide mainly package and good deliveries, wherever private delivery services are unavailable for purchase. Buildings will be staffed by guards and volunteers provided by local citizenry to the extent possible. We oppose any legal requirements forcing employers to serve as tax collectors or agents of government authority. Government must not incur debt except in unavoidable strictly limited circumstances as was the case prior to 1913. Debt burdens future generations without their consent and contributes to excessive boom and bust cycles and currency devaluations. We support a pay as you go model, where every bill and obligation that comes due is to be paid by the Friday of that week. A weekly “Balanced Budget Accounting” will be prepared and posted to the federal register and online systems, the budget is to be balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, and never by raising taxes or fees.

    2.5 Money and Financial Markets

    Self-Owners will ensure free-market competitive banking and commodity based currency options. With unrestricted competition among banks, precious metal coins, and depository institutions of all types. Markets are only free wherever fraud is vigorously combated and neither profits nor losses are socialized. Individuals engaging in voluntary exchange must be free to use as money any mutually agreeable commodity, precioous metal, digital transaction or other items. We will execute a complete halt to inflationary monetary policies and unconstitutional legal tender laws.

    2.6 Marketplace Freedom

    Self-Owners support free markets. We defend the right of individuals to form corporations, cooperatives and any other types of entities based on voluntary association. We oppose all forms of government subsidies and bailouts to business, labor, or any other special interest. Government will never be allowed to compete with private enterprise. It will exist only where no other option is available.

    2.7 Labor Markets

    Employment and compensation agreements between private employers and employees are outside the scope of government, and these contracts must not be encumbered by government-mandated benefits or social engineering. We will not infringe on the right of private employers and employees to choose whether or not to bargain with each other through labor unions or other mechanisms of association. Bargaining must be free of government interference, such as compulsory arbitration or imposing an obligation to bargain.

    2.8 Education

    Education is best provided by the free market, achieving greater quality, accountability and efficiency with more market choices. Recognizing that the education of children is a parental responsibility, we will restore complete authority to parents to determine the education of their children, without interference from government. Parents will have control of and responsibility for all funds expended for their children’s education. The current schools will be opened 24 hours a day as a community wide resource of education and daycare with a minimal staff of security and volunteers. All current curriculums will be digitized and preserved online. So that any student can continue in their studies with the courses of their choice. Including courses offered across all state lines.

    2.9 Health Care

    We favor a free market health care system. We recognize the freedom of individuals to determine the level of health care services they want (if any), the health institutions they want, the care providers they want, the medicines and treatments they will use, and all other aspects of their medical care, including end-of-life decisions. All federal impositions will be removed that prevent people from purchasing health insurance across state lines and in whatever way they want. We will assist local communities to open up their public service buildings to a self-help system where citizens serve themselves. Extremely health facilities might be be housed in current fire and rescue administrative offices throughout the United States, depending on individuals recorded preferences. This will provide a means to ensure that everyone is being taken care of to enable property owners to peacefully enjoy themselves without fear. This will likely be less than basic third world health care services even. And will require a payment plan, with payments to begin immediately after the services have been rendered.

    2.10 Retirement and Income Security

    Income Security and retirement planning is the responsibility of the individual, not the government. Self-Owners will phase out the current government-sponsored Social Security and complex welfare system and transition to a private voluntary system. The proper and most effective source of help for the poor is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals. We believe members of society will become more charitable and civil society will be strengthened as government reduces its interference and national wealth destruction in this realm.

    3.0 Securing Liberty
    The protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of government. Government must be constitutionally limited so as to prevent the infringement of individual rights by the government itself. The principle of non-initiation of force must guide the relationships between our government and other governments. And between our government and the people.

    3.1 National Defense

    We support the maintenance of a sufficient military technology and manpower to defend the United States against aggression. This capacity will be entrusted to appropriate manufacturers and technicians proficient in the use and maintenance of this technology. They will be adequately compensated as deemed appropriate. Any technology deployed beyond our shores will serve in a peaceful capacity of trade, monitoring, assistance, and tourism. They will only be weaponized in defensive response to aggression. Other factory and assembly plants will be kept at the ready to build what is needed on the fly. And dismantle it when it is no longer needed. The United States must both avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman outside its borders. We oppose any form of compulsory national service.

    3.2 Internal Security and Individual Rights

    The defense of the country requires that we have all possible intelligence to detect and to counter threats to domestic security. This requirement must not take priority over maintaining the civil liberties of our citizens. The Constitution and Bill of Rights shall not be suspended even during time of war. Intelligence agencies that are empowered to preserve the security of the nation must be subject to oversight and transparency. We oppose the government’s use of secret classifications to keep from the public information that rightfully belongs to it, especially information that shows that the government has violated the law.

    3.3 International Affairs

    American foreign policy must seek an America at peace with the world. Our foreign policy must emphasize defense against attack from abroad and enhance the likelihood of peace by avoiding foreign entanglements. We will end the current U.S. government policy of foreign intervention, including military, economic aid, and transnational authoritarian bodies. We recognize the right of all people to resist tyranny and defend themselves and their rights. We will abstain from the use of initiative force, and especially the use of terrorism, against the innocent, regardless of whether we seek to influence governments, political groups, or revolutionary groups.

    3.4 Free Trade and Migration

    We will execute the removal of all governmental impediments to free trade. Political and property based freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be constrained by government when crossing political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals by the property owners in border areas. They will be paid appropriate for their additional service of monitoring anyone who may pose a credible threat to security, health or property to their property or the rest of the nation.

    3.5 Rights and Discrimination

    Self-Owners embrace the concept that all people are born with certain inherent rights. We reject the idea that a natural right can ever impose an obligation upon others to fulfill that “right.” We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government must neither deny nor abridge any individual’s human right based upon sex, wealth, ethnicity, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference or sexual orientation. Members of private organizations retain their rights to set whatever standards of association they deem appropriate, and individuals are free to respond with ostracism, boycotts and other free market solutions. Parents, or other guardians, have the right to raise their children according to their own standards and beliefs. Any child shall have the right to a local hearing, should they allege they are subject to child abuse or neglect.

    3.6 Individually Representative Government

    We support election systems that are completely representative of the electorate affect by votes at the federal, state and local levels. As private voluntary groups, political parties must be allowed to establish their own rules for nomination procedures, primaries and conventions. Markets will be open to technology and personal service companies who are able to determine the preference of every single one of our citizens. Many social media companies have already developed it for online purposes. We’ll roll that out to the world at large. We will end all subsidies to candidates or parties and repeal all laws which restrict voluntary financing of election campaigns. We oppose laws that effectively exclude alternative candidates and parties, deny ballot access, gerrymander districts, or deny the voters their right to consider all legitimate alternatives. We advocate initiative, referendum, recall and repeal when used as popular checks on government. The more technology becomes available, the more everything that can’t be privatisied will at least have a response recorded by every single constituent directly.

    3.7 Self-Determination

    Whenever government becomes destructive of individual liberty, it is the duty of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to agree to such new governance as to them shall seem most likely to protect their liberty.

    3.8 Omissions
    Our silence about any other particular government law, regulation, ordinance, directive, edict, control, regulatory agency, activity, or machination should not be construed to imply approval.
    — —

    Early Americas Under New Management Timeline:

    1507 – Nonsequitur term America was first used
    1513 – Juan Ponce de Leon discovered hostile Calusa Tribe in Florida
    1519 – Cortez butchered the Aztec Empire
    1534 – Jacques Cartier surrenders New France to the Mi’kmaq & Iroquois tribes
    1539 – Fernando De Soto smokes peace pipe with Indians in Mississippi and enlarges New Spain
    1540 – Coronado travels the Midwest is first Eurotrash to see Grand Canyon & Colorado Rivers
    1540 – The first recorded Native American baptism
    1565 – Smoking tobacco first introduced to Europe
    1565 – First permanent invasive species white colony forms
    1587 – Roanoke Island Colony forms & disappears in NC

    1607 – Jamestown, VA is settled
    1619 – The first British African & Irish slaves arrive
    1620 – The first North American Congregational Church is established
    1636 – Harvard is Founded
    1639 – Orders of Connecticut – the first colonial constitution decreed
    1640 – The first colonial book printed – the Bay Psalm Hymnal
    1644 – Roger Williams writes The first great democratic note
    1664 – Slavery act in MD negates London decree freeing Christian converts
    1675 – First business corporation
    1675 – King Phillip’s War
    1677 – Separation of church and state enacted in Quaker Colony by William Penn

    1706 – Benjamin Franklin was born
    1741 – The Great Awakening starts and Eurotrash veneration is abandoned
    1766 – The Stamp Act to pay for Brit Protection Repealed by Parliament
    1770 – Boston Massacre by British Heroes occurs
    1773 – The Tea Act, Boston Tea Party, and Coercive Acts
    1774 – Peyton Randolph elected first president of Congress
    1775 – Revolutionary War Begins
    1776 – The Declaration of Independence Signed
    1777 – Articles of Confederation adopted
    1780 – Pennsylvania violently abolishes slave-owners’ property
    1783 – Treaty of Paris signed
    1788 – Last president of Congress, Cyrus Griffin, resigns
    1789 – George Wash. 1st Prez. gets 43,782 popular votes amid 2.4 million citizens & 600,000 slaves.

  26. Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal. June 1968, Murray N. Rothbard

    First there was the old order, the ancien régime, the regime of caste and frozen status, of exploitation by a despotic ruling class, using the church to dupe the masses into accepting its rule.

    This was pure statism; this was the right wing. Then, in 17th and 18th century western Europe, a liberal and radical opposition movement arose, our heroes, who championed a popular revolutionary movement on behalf of rationalism, individual liberty, minimal government, free markets, international peace and separation of church and state, in opposition to throne and altar, to monarchy, the ruling class, theocracy and war.

    These—”our people”—were the left, and the purer their vision the more “extreme” they were.

    Socialism arose as a confused middle-of-the-road movement, influenced historically by both the libertarian left and the conservative right.

    From the individualist left the socialists took the goals of freedom: the withering away of the state, the replacement of the governing of men by the administration of things, opposition to the ruling class and a search for its overthrow, the desire to establish international peace, an advanced industrial economy and a high standard of living for the mass of the people.

    From the right the socialists adopted the means to achieve these goals—collectivism, state planning, community control of the individual. This put socialism in the middle of the ideological spectrum. It also meant that socialism was an unstable, self-contradictory doctrine bound to fly apart in the inner contradiction between its means and ends.

    Today in 1968, vestigial interest in liberty or in opposition to war and imperialism are now considered deviations to be stamped out without delay. Yet there are millions of Americans, I am convinced, who are still devoted to individual liberty and opposition to the leviathan state at home and abroad, who feel that something has gone very wrong with the old anti-New Deal and anti-Fair Deal cause.

    Something has terribly gone wrong: the right wing has been captured and transformed by elitists and devotees of the European conservative ideals of order and militarism. Captured by witch hunters and global crusaders, by statists who wish to coerce “morality” and suppress “sedition.”

    America was born in a revolution against Western imperialism, born as a haven of freedom against the ancient tyrannies and despotism, the wars and intrigues of the old world.

    Yet we have allowed ourselves to sacrifice the American ideals of peace and freedom and anti-colonialism on the altar of a crusade to kill communists [and now terrorists – TL] throughout the world; we have surrendered our revolutionary birthright into the hands of those who yearn to restore the Golden Age of the Holy Inquisition. It is time that we wake up and rise up to restore our heritage.
    – –

    List of Liberal Theorists
    1.1 Laozi
    1.2 Aristotle
    3.1 John Locke
    3.6 Voltaire
    3.7 Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    3.12 Adam Smith
    3.18 Thomas Paine
    3.19 Thomas Jefferson
    3.30 Frédéric Bastiat
    3.33 Ralph Waldo Emerson
    4.1 John Stuart Mill
    4.5 Herbert Spencer
    4.7 Auberon Herbert
    4.8 Carl Menger
    4.25 Ludwig von Mises
    4.31 Friedrich Hayek
    4.32 Karl Popper
    4.40 Milton Friedman
    4.43 Murray Newton Rothbard
    4.44 Ayn Rand
    4.51 Robert Nozick

    In the United States, the primary use of the term liberal is at some variance with European and worldwide usage. In the United States today it is most associated with the definition of modern liberalism which is a combination of social liberalism, public welfare and a mixed economy, which is in contrast to classical liberalism.

    In the 1800s liberalism was not a common term in American philosophy or politics, partially because the two main parties were a mixture of populist and nationalist elements. Conservatism was also not a common term until the 1950s.

    In the US, the Democratic Party was the party of free trade, low tariffs and laissez-faire entrepreneurialism.

    The US Republican Party advocated national citizenship, transparency and government efforts to stabilize the currency.
    – –

    Liberalism in the United States was hijacked by the self-proclaimed liberal presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. While the emphasis on mutual collaboration through liberal institutions as an alternative to the threat and use of force remained consistent with international liberalism, United States liberals also claimed that individuals have a right to expect the government to guarantee social justice.

    This was in part a consequence of the influence of the ideas of British economist John Maynard Keynes on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The New Deal had the effect of stealing the thunder of social democratic forces and the necessity to prevent social unrest strengthened this development.

    As McCarthyism gave the terms socialism and even social democracy a meaning synonymous with communism in the U.S., many to the left of center moderated their views, aligning with the New Deal liberals.

    The modern Democratic Party is now identified as the liberal party within the broader definition of liberalism thus putting it in contrast with most other parties listed here. Democrats advocate more social freedoms, affirmative action, and a mixed economy (and therefore modern liberalism). The Republican Party experiences a somewhat fractured economic viewpoint with some members supporting strong free-market and libertarian views (and therefore economic liberalism) and others championing pro-business stances, though both sectors typically mix their fiscal views with strong aspects of social conservatism. The Libertarian Party is the third largest political party in the United States, (though still only getting 1–2% of the vote in congressional elections), and particularly centers itself on free markets and individual liberty, which is more in line with classical liberalism. (Main article: Liberalism in the United States and Modern liberalism in the United States)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_liberal_theorists
    – –
    List of Libertarian Theorists
    – –
    Liberalism has a strong tradition in both Australia and New Zealand.

    In Australia, the Liberal Party is a party considered to be of the centre-right. Within the Liberal Party of Australia, conservatism and monetarist economics are both in a position of dominance.

    Many would argue that this party is indeed a liberal party, simply a classical liberal party and that it is the perception of what liberalism is that has changed, not the Liberal Party (which promotes the free market approach that liberals worldwide used to promote before the 20th century).

    In New Zealand, Liberalism is not organized anymore, although the Liberal Party was the first organised political party, and the Liberal Government from 1891 to 1912 was responsible for many reforms.

    Liberalism nowadays refers to a support for individual liberties and limited government. The term is generally used with a reference to a particular policy area, e.g. “market liberalism” or “social liberalism”.

    Unqualified liberalism is less common; in its extreme form it is known by the American term libertarianism. The left of centre New Zealand Democratic Party takes a more or less progressive liberal position in the spectrum, but lost popular support. ACT New Zealand is a classical liberal or libertarian party.

  27. I really enjoyed this Tor thanks for all the content you add to this site ! Not that I agree with everything, but lord would it be a relief to live in the world you describe.

  28. Quotes of British liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman from 1898-1907.
    1
    Liberal politics means the politics of common-sense. What is right is what gives the freest play to the individual, energy, initiative, and character. What gives the largest liberty both to producer and consumer. Trade is injured when it is not allowed to follow its natural course, and when it is either hampered or diverted by artificial obstacles. We believe in free trade because we believe in the capacity of our countrymen. That at least is why I oppose protection root and branch, veiled and unveiled, one-sided or reciprocal. I oppose it in any form. Besides we have experience of fifty years, during which our prosperity has become the envy of the world.
    2
    What do we mean by this Liberalism of which we talk? … I should say it means the acknowledgement in practical life of the truth that men are best governed who govern themselves; that the general sense of mankind, if left alone, will make for righteousness; that artificial privileges and restraints upon freedom, so far as they are not required in the interests of the community, are hurtful; and that the laws, while, of course, they cannot equalise conditions, can, at least, avoid aggravating inequalities, and ought to have for their object the securing to every man the best chance he can have of a good and useful life. (no redistribution mentioned. rather an admonition to follow the principle that laws shouldn’t make things worse than they are, nor tend to cause the haves to have more nor the less to have less)
    3
    Is it to be Britain’s policy that now that we had got the men in South Africa we had been fighting down, we should punish them as severely as possible, devastate their country, burn their homes, break up their very instruments of agriculture.

    Are we to sweep – as the Spaniards did in Cuba the women and children into camps…in some of which the death-rate has risen so high as 43%. I do not agree to that for a moment, because I do not think for a moment, that this is the deliberate and intentional policy of His Majesty’s Government.

    At all events, the policy has been to act in the name and by the authority of the most humane and Christian nation. Yesterday I asked the leader of the House of Commons when we would be told what was happening in the Boer war. My request was refused.

    Mr. Balfour went into a discussion on the nature of war. A phrase often used is that “war is war”, but when one comes to ask about it one is told that no war is going on, that it is not war. When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.
    4
    What is the constitutional bearing of the Brussels sugar convention stipulations? …It is perfectly monstrous…It means that we abandon our fiscal independence, together with our free-trade ways; that we subside a Vehmgericht which is to direct us what sugar is to be traded at, that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer in his robes shall obey the orders he receives from this foreign convention, in which the Britisher is only 1/10th, and the House of Commons humbly submits to the whole transaction.

    Shame, Sir, of all the insane schemes ever offered to a free country as a boon this is surely the maddest.
    5
    The concentration of human beings in towns is contrary to nature, and this abnormal existence is bound to issue in suffering, deterioration, and gradual destruction to the mass of the population…countless thousands of our fellow-men, and still a larger number of children…are starved of air and space and sunshine.

    …This view of city life, which is gradually coming home to the heart and understanding and the conscience of our people, is so terrible that it cannot be put away. What is all our wealth and learning and the fine flower of our civilisation and our Constitution and our political theories – what are all these but dust and ashes, if the men and women, on whose labour the whole social fabric is maintained, are doomed to live and die in darkness and misery in the recesses of our great cities?

    We may undertake expeditions on behalf of oppressed tribes and races, we may conduct foreign missions, we may sympathise with the cause of unfortunate nationalities; but it is our own people, surely, who have the first claim upon us…the air must be purified…the sunshine must be allowed to stream in, the water and the food must be kept pure and unadulterated, the streets light and clean…the measure of your success in bringing these things to pass will be the measure of the arresting of the terrible powers of race degeneration which is going on in the countless sunless streets.
    6
    Henry Campbell-Bannerman was not merely admired and respected; he was absolutely loved by us all. I really cannot trust myself to say more. The masses of the people of this country, especially the more unfortunate of them, have lost the best friend they ever had in the high places of the land.

    His sympathy in all suffering was real, deep, and unaffected. He was truly a great man—a great head and a great heart. He was absolutely the bravest man I ever met in politics. He was entirely free from fear. He was a man of supreme courage. Ireland has certainly lost one of her truest friends, and what is true of Ireland is true of every section of the community of this Empire which has a fight to maintain against powerful foes.
    David Lloyd George upon Campbell-Bannerman’s death.

    • Hi Tor,

      18th century liberals such as Jefferson and Paine were my kind of people. Not perfect, but generally on the right path, with good intentions (which I define as consciously trying not to be an asshole toward others).

      “Liberal” is a destroyed word, though. Like “gay.” The modern meaning has supplanted the original. It’s too much work to edumacate people about the original (correct) meaning.

      Libertarian (or voluntaryist) conveys the same meaning with much less advance work!

      • eric, “conservative” was really set on it’s ear when first taken from the original conservative democrat by what I’d call, just plain backward Republicans. It was only those “conservative” democrats who held a limited govt. view. Now look what that word means, at least to most living today.

        In the early 80’s I was called a “liberal” by some co-workers so I asked them if believing in smaller govt. was liberal. Well no but……No buts fellas, just answer. Not believing in wars of aggression is “liberal” or conservative? No answer. Having no use for cops, liberal or conservative. Then they were all shaking their heads and actually THINKING about it.

        • Paine & Jefferson. Different servants of a different Milord is all they every were. Perhaps we really are all Jollum. We are here to serve.

          Josie The Outlaw. 18 hours ago
          A quick message to the people who wear the badges.

          You’ve probably noticed that more and more people distrust, fear, and hate the police. Have you ever asked yourself why that is? Has the whole world turned into malicious criminals, who just can’t stand you dishing out “righteous justice?” Or are YOU doing things which are giving more and more people good reason to resent and despise you? If someone was talking about having to forcibly defend themselves against ME, I would at least wonder if I was doing something to deserve that. Do you hear people talking about forcibly resisting plumbers, or mechanics?
          I don’t. Why is that? If you’re only here to protect people, and to perform a service, why do you suppose more and more people are arming themselves – mentally and physically – for a possible violent confrontation with you?

          You CAN choose not to do something that makes so many people hate you. Good people won’t need to forcibly resist you if you choose not to inflict injustice on them in the first place. And saying it’s your “job” doesn’t make it okay, and won’t make your victims or their families any more happy about it.

          The fastest, most peaceful way for this oppression and murder to end, is for agents of the state to refuse to commit it.

      • eric, I just had this hilarious thought. I recall(don’t know where this came from)seeing Pat Boone once sing “No More Mr. Nice Guy”. And he did it pretty well, staying close to the original. It might be findable on YT but I gotta roll. Later everyone.

      • That all makes sense. If I ever get to that second draft, I’ll alter it to reflect it as a personal quest to take back the word liberal. Not write as if the label I’ve chosen – “liberal” – is anything to be encouraged over any other labels. Just something to be considered, or tolerated. Even in Britain, the Liberal Party ceased to exist in 1988.

        based on googul dictionary
        libertarian as a noun means
        1. an adherent of libertarianism.

        – that’s already a problem for me as an anarchist*. I am not an “adherent” of libertarianism. Nor am I an “adherent” of anarchism for that matter.

        lib·er·al as an adjective in Googul means [I’ve omitted much that was in conflict]
        1. open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.
        2. in a political context favoring maximum individual liberty
        3 forward-looking, forward-thinking, enlightened, radical
        4 regarding many traditional beliefs as dispensable
        5 concerned mainly with broadening a person’s general knowledge and experience
        6 at home when things are broadly construed or understood; not strictly literal or exact.
        7 flexible, broad, loose, rough, free, general, nonliteral, nonspecific, imprecise, vague, indefinite
        8 given, used, or occurring in generous amounts.
        “liberal amounts of wine had been consumed”
        9 abundant, copious, ample, plentiful, profuse, considerable, prolific, plenteous
        “a liberal coating of paint”
        “Sam was too liberal with the wine”
        10. a person of liberal views.

        Being this is a worldwide forum, you might want to consider terminology. Isn’t the United States definition of libertarian a kissing cousin of the word – football. For 95% of the world, demanding your listener understand your use of the word football or libertarian in a conversation might be a poor choice.

        Also, limiting ourselves to only having a discussion about our local theoretical plantation of 317 million taxcattle, might mean conceding most of the battle before we even begin. I use that word “our” in a liberal manner. Since you might not accept me as fully being one of you.

        Though I live in today’s United States, I certainly don’t limit myself to the thought tradition of the US. Nor even to today’s times. I have no more connection to Paine or Jefferson than I do with Plato or Laozi. Or with the future civilization of Ceres, that permits imports and digital transmissions of no other written materials than the novels of Heinlein.

        I simply ignore the fact that my body is bureaucratically confined in the so-called United States against my will, and let my thoughts roam freely anywhere it is able. Perhaps some day soon, all the peaceful national borders will become anachronisms, and the world will be interconnected, and low cost travel unregulated travel will be available throughout most of the world and solar system.

        The intro of this article by GMU professor/attorney D. Boudreaux better explains where I’m coming from: Liberalism Unrelinquished

        “Regular patrons will not be surprised to read me describe myself as a liberal. Of course, not ”liberal” as that term is popularly understood now in the United States. Today’s mis-named “liberals” are not liberal. And liberals of my stripe – that is, people who are liberal according to the original meaning of the term “liberal” – are decidedly not conservative. .

        Perhaps it’s quixotic, but I refuse to give up the term “liberal.” -DB
        – – –
        All You Zombies – Robert Heinlein. Movie based on this work [Predestined] made by the Australian Govt will be released in Jan 2015.

        unrepentant old whig – F A Hayek.

        googul definition of anarchist
        from mid 17th century: Greek anarkhos ‘without a chief’
        – – –
        *qualifier: I’m not for the destruction of the state, merely for lessening or eliminating the state’s grip. That lack of commitment to force might disqualify me from being accepted as an anarchist.

        anarchy (noun)
        1530s, from Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek anarkhia “lack of a leader, the state of people without a government” (in Athens, used of the Year of Thirty Tyrants, 404 B.C., when there was no archon),

        noun of state from anarkhos “rulerless,” from an- “without” (see an- (1)) + arkhos “leader” (see archon).

        Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is … death! Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement. The choice lies with you! [Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921)]

        • Nice article Tor. I don’t know how you churn out so much information. It blows my mind. How about “prolific liberal”?

          You have a point that libertarian may not be well understood outside of our relatively small circles. Imo the beltway libertarians are trying their damnedest to muck up the waters of that word. Their position of “do no harm” and attempting to justify anti discrimination laws and ordinances is a complete joke.

          On the other hand, as Eric points out, liberal is a trashed word, at least in our geographical locale. It’s the problem with words, I suppose. There are always schemers looking to hijack them. And most of the world is less than inclined to darken a dictionary.

          • For some time, this was the masthead here at EPautos…

            “Eric Peters Autos – Cars, Bikes and the Politics of Self Ownership”

            Perhaps Self Owner is a good solid term to use in its stead in my individual case.

            I think liberal is a word that best describes me. But ONLY in an apolitical sense.

            I would say it is only liberals who can point to “capitolist” successes historically.

            The Golden Age of Liberals, is that time period when everyone had an abundance of sorts. The elites had the best stuff. But the lower classes had a cheaper version of stuff as well. Scarcity was nearly banished wherever liberals held power.

            IMHO all these regs and high handed tactics, are a way to bring back scarcity as a way of life. To end the Liberal Age entirely. There will be fatal gaps in the lower class’ stuff. And they will be back to begging the elites again for what has been forbidden them.

            Then whether libertarians win the culture war or fail, it won’t matter. The elites will again be the only ones with the entire required list of stuff one needs to survive and thrive in this world.

            Liberal from 1828 Webster’s…
            http://webstersdictionary1828.com

            Liberal
            LIB’ERAL, adjective [Latin liberalis, from liber, free. See Libe.]

            1. Of a free heart; free to give or bestow; not close or contracted; munificent; bountiful; generous; giving largely; as a liberal donor; the liberal founders of a college or hospital. It expresses less than profuse or extravagant.

            2. Generous; ample; large; as a liberal donation; a liberal allowance.

            3. Not selfish, narrow on contracted; catholic; enlarged; embracing other interests than one’s own; as liberal sentiments or views; a liberal mind; liberal policy.

            4. General; extensive; embracing literature and the sciences generally; as a liberal education. This phrase is often but not necessarily synonymous with collegiate; as a collegiate education.

            5. Free; open; candid; as a liberal communication of thoughts.

            6. Large; profuse; as a liberal discharge of matter by secretions or excretions.

            7. Free; not literal or strict; as a liberal construction of law.

            8. Not mean; not low in birth or mind.

            9. Licentious; free to excess.

            Liberal arts, as distinguished from mechanical arts, are such as depend more on the exertion of the mind than on the labor of the hands, and regard amusement, curiosity or intellectual improvement, rather than the necessity of subsistence, or manual skill. Such are grammar, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, music. etc.

            Liberal of praise or censure; liberal to the poor.

  29. Token Black Female FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is filleted and grilled by reddit.

    I am FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. Ask Me Anything!

    Top Rated Question:

    kbjwes77 6758 points
    This AMA looks to me like a political stunt to say something along the lines of, “Yeah, I went on that interweb thing and talked to the American people! We had discussions about everything from Net Neutrality to Eminem!”.

    However, I haven’t seen one solid, thought out answer to any of the big questions here. The majority of your replies, Ms. Clyburn, seem to me to be rushed, half-assed, and quite vague. Here is a quote from one of the top-voted questions:

    Why do I only have one option for high speed internet and television at my house?

    Your answer, which really fell flat in terms of answering the original question, was packed with buzz-words and fluff:
    ‘Our goal is to create incentives for more competitive options, particularly as technologies transition. For example, some electric utilities have started to offer broadband service. Wireless and satellite companies are offering alternatives, and their services continue to improve. We hope that over time, sound policies will lead to more choices.’

    You’re working on making sound policies over a period of time? Excuse my french, but NO SHIT. That’s not what that guy asked. That’s not what the internet asked. This is the top-voted question, which means a lot of people agree or appeal to this question.

    So, in other words, we want to know why Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon were allowed to get so huge in the first place, and why we don’t have any competition. We are not looking for consolation here, we are wondering why the FCC was so incompetent in the first place as to let these companies treat their paying customers like trash, and stifle competition so those same paying customers had no alternatives; nowhere to turn in terms of a second (or third) choice in Internet Service Providers.

    Sure we want this issue fixed, we hope you really are looking for “sound policies” and solutions to the ISP-monopoly problem. But in the mean time a straight-forward answer to the question at hand would do everyone a lot of good.

    When these questions are left half answered and we have to ask secondary, follow-up questions to decipher/get more info, it seems like you don’t care. I understand you said you were having technical issues with your internet connection (ironic to say the least), but you can at least try and make up for that right?

    Clyburn’s worst rated responses

    MClyburnFCC -52 points 12 hours ago
    I disagree completely. Your voices are being heard and your comments are being read.

    MClyburnFCC -95 points 12 hours ago
    We had a few technical glitches, but I look forward to doing this again.

  30. Good stuff, Tor. I might disagree on a few details, but in general, bravo.
    Just to nit-pick a bit, I have questions about the details of Sections 2.2-2.4.
    Also, Section 2.9 and your ‘backstop’ health care system.
    A more serious disagreement in Section 2.10 – I would delete the phrase “beyond the barest essentials.”
    Re Section 3.1, the “sufficient military” should not include ANY standing army, and any navy would be only for patrolling our coastlines. It could include voluntary regional militias.
    3.4 -“we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who may pose a credible threat to security, health or property.” But who is to determine that?
    And representative government (3.6)? I think that has been tried and failed.

    On another note, I do find it interesting that most of the leftists, whom those on ‘the right’ call liberals, do not consider themselves as such, but call themselves ‘moderates.’ To which I say, “Moderate compared with what?”
    Those who are now called ‘liberals’ are liberal only with OPM (other people’s money). And ‘conservatives’ are interested only in conserving the power they have accumulated over others.

      • The whole 60s ignore your elders thing is madness. In normal societies elders are often doting liberals with wisdom of a great value.

        Here theyre just seen as nuisances spoiling our breakneck joyride to the cyberspace gleaming utopia braindeath. Everything that was is or will be that’s of value must be conserved. Not gramps addled flashbacks of riding around the countryside cursing every foreigner and snot nosed urchin on the earth

      • ol’ WFB, the CIA flash-fried chicken-hawk? I’ve thrown such ideological migratory raptors in the woods. Let them roost and nest out there in some warbird national security preserve as predatory servitors of state power projection and empire.

        I did find this by the capitolist WFB:

        On Legalizing Drugs … With William F. Buckley

        THE OPEN MIND. William F. Buckley, Jr. Aug96

        William F. Buckley, Jr. has been called the guru, the patron saint of American conservatives, which has made it particularly hard for some of us to identify him with the call for decriminalization or legalization of drugs. Buckley is, astonishingly enough, joined with Milton Friedman, George Schultz, and other leaders of his conservative establishment in calling for drug legalization.

        BUCKLEY: My position on drugs is that they are, the drug laws aren’t working, and that more damage net is being done by their continuation on the books than would be done by withdrawing them from the books. The question is: How do you diminish the net harm done by drugs?

        BUCKLEY: Well, how do you measure the net damage done by the existing situation? Well, you begin by people who take drugs, their damage. Then you add to that the number of people who are engaged in trying to prevent them from doing that.

        BUCKLEY: That’s 400,000 policemen. Then you add whatever dollar measurement you wish to attach to derivative losses in liberty and security. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who can’t safely cross the park at night because they would likely run into a drug marauder, have lost something tangible. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who need to lock up at night, have lost something tangible. To the extent that you can talk about cities being imperiled, they are imperiled by what? By people who need either to sustain their own habit or who wish to profiteer from the weaknesses of others who have that habit, which means that they are robbing or stealing approximately 100 times the pharmaceutical cost of that drug. Now, I’ve seen varying estimates of what that cost figure is. I’ve never seen one that’s less than $500 billion. And we’re spending $125 or $130 billion in our war on drugs. I would infinitely prefer to reduce that net loss to the cost of looking after people who have the habit and who need care, which would take us down to $20-30 billion a year, and have the relative liberty that would flow from a situation which half of America isn’t constipated by worrying about drug-takers and by drug-sellers, and by people who rob and steal in order to profiteer from the situation.

        BUCKLEY: We pulled out of Vietnam, and we pulled away from prohibition. We pulled away from a number of compulsory blue laws, all of them in the last few years, by the way. This doesn’t mean that you encourage a defiance of the commandment that you shall keep holy the Sabbath. It simply means that it doesn’t become church business, state business.

        BUCKLEY: Three-and-a-half million are current addicts.
        The illegality of drugs, does not actually affect the quantity of their consumption. As one person put it to me only last Fall, it’s easier to buy marijuana in Cambridge than it is beer. Why? Because if somebody sells you illegal beer, he forfeits his license, and his license might have cost $200,000, whereas people who peddle marijuana can do so furtively with no overhead.

        I don’t think anybody would maintain that if you want drugs you can’t find them. The very fact that they’re imported and consumed in such quantities simply defies that assertion.

        BUCKLEY: Okay, if I were the drug czar, I would say, “Okay, here are the five or six popular, illegal drugs. You can get them at the federal drug store for just more than the pharmaceutical cost of producing them. Enough to sustain the overhead, but enough also to discourage a black market in them. But before you go in there you’re going to have to read a description of what this drug does to you. Go ahead and take some crack cocaine, because the probability that you will be seriously affected by this is up around eight, ten percent.” So therefore I would give them all the warning that they needed about the toxicity that they were able to accept in indulging this habit, but I would not let the price rise to where Mr. Middleman decides that he’s going to sell you that crack cocaine, and in order to get it he’s going to fumble around in people’s living rooms or steal women’s purses or mug people.

        BUCKLEY: We need to await the day when a politician with national prestige says, “Look, this hasn’t worked.” Now, I don’t predict that day’s around the corner, but I think there is an increasing natural sense that it hasn’t worked. We got an awful lot of mail and only four or five percent said, “You shouldn’t have even brought the subject up.” So I think there’s a lot of latent feeling out there.

        HEFFNER: What damage do you see that National Review is doing to the war against drugs, which you diminish?

        BUCKLEY: Oh, we can hardly damage the war against drugs, because the war against drugs is futile.

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