“Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.”
– Thomas Paine
To perversely paraphrase Bastiat: “The state is the great fiction within whose tax jurisdiction it deems itself free to fine, kidnap, cage, maim and kill its taxpayers and tax clients.” It tends to be more gentle with the latter than the former.
High Tax Commissioner Obama recently ordered the robot murder of two acknowledged American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, in yet another undeclared hostility zone in the Middle East in Yemen. No trial and no appeal, simply the remote control killing of two Americans in a foreign country. No empire in history has ever isolated its more obnoxious and deadly behavior in foreign lands simply to the latest imperial conquest, all the countries have eventually brought it all back to their homelands like disease vectors. Wait for it because all the bloodshed and dismemberment we have visited on the rest of humanity will be brought home and used with vigor and no restraint whatsoever as the powers that be emanating from Mordor on the Potomac become more and more desperate as their economic ignorance and chicanery force their hand at increased savagery to preserve their way of life. The United Kingdom shows what will happen to a nation that seeks to rule the world, is reduced to colonial rock formations dotted around the globe and starts to practice empire on its own citizens.
We are all used to news coming over the transom everyday of yet more innocent women and children maimed and killed by our troops or their proxies in the multitude of statist squabbles around the globe. We are bludgeoned day after day with the news of cops misbehaving violently across the fruited plain. The prisons are bloated with the largest per capita population on Earth in the land of the free. Millions of tax dollars are spent in a death penalty system that morbidly worships a premeditated killing of a human being accused of a capital crime.
When stripped of the gaudy music and patriotic bunting, nation states are simply tax jurisdictions whose primary purpose is the forced redistribution of wealth and privilege. We are vampire nation quite literally as tens of millions of hapless subjects are drained of the proceeds of their labor and investment for no better reason than a lack of recourse to say no to the mugger. The wealth is expropriated through taxes, regulations and work rules that choke efficiency and effectiveness at every turn. The rough analog is the Helot relationship to the Spartan ruling class. You work and follow the rules you did not sign up for in a system rigged to ensure that your compliance is ultimately on pain of death if not followed to the letter. In other words, government promises security in exchange for a disproportionate share of your time and efforts. Slavery is alive and well in America, it is simply of a more ephemeral variety. One is convinced that even though you are not owned directly by a master, your taxing and tithing is necessary to sustain your freedom in exchange for all the good things provided by government. Your non-compliance with any of these diktats from the nomenklatura will result in the aforementioned fining, kidnapping, caging, maiming and killing (one can call this the ladder of slave resistance penalties) depending on the severity of the claim and the resistance of the citizen-slave being taken to task.
In the past, I have often been accused of oversimplification when I point out that the institution and existence of police forces is the one essential element to yoke large herds of humanity to statist plunder. Absent their activities, the politicians would have no means whatsoever to enforce their rapine and murderous ways. None. So let’s peel the onion and examine one of the sustaining beliefs that inform the very essence of police power: the ability of the state to initiate violence. There are reams of busy jurisprudence that speak to the very right of the state to injure and kill its citizens. In order to have the peaceful society that the government insists is its plot and raison d’être, it must have the power to kill. Not only the power for its enforcers to protect themselves but the power to initiate violence; if there were a contract, it would not be one you would sign except under duress (there is a pattern here). The contract would read: you have the right to do what we tell you and if you resist or fail to comply, you are ultimately subject to death at the hands of our enforcers. Period. If said enforcers murder you, they will be subject to investigation by themselves and will most likely go on to enforce more “contracts”. No matter how petty the crime nor how malum prohibitum the offense, the state has invested itself with the power to kill. It has no choice, for who would willingly surrender without threat of violence nearly sixty percent of their income, allow their family members to be sexually assaulted, or not eat foods the government does not approve of?
The only way a state can sustain itself is to employ the necessary apparatchiks who will do the most heinous acts of violence against their fellow citizens and to codify the willingness to initiate aggression and in the end, maim or kill anyone who resists or refuse to comply. Even if that person is an unarmed homeless man who is 130 pounds dripping wet.
The government is barbarism and not civilization. Much like the moral amnesia that allowed slavery to thrive for five millennia, mankind has been hoodwinked, cajoled and coerced into thinking the state is the only way to organize society and any other notion makes you an outlaw. How many times have you ever questioned the veracity of a law in polite conversation only to hear that must be the way of the world and there is no other method?
There is no greater moral government than a man’s self-ownership and there is no greater injustice than denying that very thing to a man .
Resist.
“It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.”
– Etienne de la Boétie
Copyright © 2011 by zerogov.com
“The only way a state can sustain itself is to employ the necessary apparatchiks…….” – BB
Bingo! And that sums it up right there. Without willing and obedient “enforcers”, at all levels, the rat bastards who orchestrate Leviathan could never get their evil plans moving. It only takes just enough bodies to bring a change one way or the other. But you can certainly count on the swine sitting at the top to howl like demons should the hoi polloi actually push back.
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Bill: “…There is no greater moral government than a man’s self-ownership and there is no greater injustice than denying that very thing to a man…Resist….”
Good essay, Bill!
The advantage of declaring oneself sovereign is in his understanding of the ineptitude and patronization of agents of state. You’ve spelled that out rather well. In their stupidity so many of them are exhibiting more and more daily blatant insouciance at best, viciousness on down the scale.
It is obvious the only intrusive acts individual state functionaries can commit directly upon a person (“citizen” ha ha) is when that person stumbles into compliance with one of “nomenklatura’s diktats” (thanks for the insignia). The key is to avoid those “stumbles” wherever possible.
Let the “occupiers” be the gator bait, poor souls. What do they know about the beast??? Leverage the stupidity of Leviathan and its whimpering protestors.
Never allow a state agent get into the position of “permitting” or “denying” your self ownership.
Be free.
Sam
That’s one great essay, Bill. I don’t see any oversimplification at all. Hell, it’s as simple as the closing quote you offer. mot, I think you’re right in your analysis, but the hoi poloi ain’t about to fight back. Let’s not forget that we’re here because the hoi poloi wanted to be here.
I’ve already figured out that the only way to stop all this is creation, not destruction. The irresistible force will have to meet the immovable object, so at least we’ll solve that riddle. Beyond that, I haven’t a clue.
Jim, you are correct insofar as we have what we have because people kept doing the same things expecting a different result. AKA the definition of insanity. I played a small part in the voting charade decades ago until I wised up and saw it for the bread and circuses that it was. Better to live with a clean conscience than be a willing participant in my own rape. Do I wish for peaceful change? Absolutely! Only a mad man would wish otherwise. The sad thing is that I’ve never seen Leviathan “willingly” let anyone out of its clutches unless it had been dealt a logistically expensive kick to the balls. And even then my cynical nature suspects it was planned that way.
I hear ya…”willingly” and “Govco” don’t go together well. I just keep going forward remembering that it’s only my will that moves me anyway.
Shoot, this has been planned for about 6,000 years…in principle if not in detail.
Currently vacationing in Sheridan, Wyoming, one still sees glimpses of individuals taking responsibility for their own actions. But not so much in the youth. They rely on the Government/government to spin their moral compass. It could not be their fault when they hit the deer with dad’s pickup.”I just started texting when the deer committed suicide by vehicle. My bad.” When the west goes it is truly over. “Just saying….”
I was sayin’ 20 years ago that 2 generations of schooling would wrap this up. Here we are. Thank goodness that schooling implies the possibility of unschooling, but not very often these days. It’s an appealing philosophy to many—if you won’t gimme, gimme, gimme, I’ll just take it, take it, take it.
Oh, Jim, it’s been take, take, take for at least the last 5,000 years.
2knives, will you take responsibility for the shitty system that has been handed to us youth, or will it just be our fault when this thing goes TU?
How is this anything than an extreme sellers’ market? Government are effectively landowners competing for tenants except land is so valuable that governments can keep raising the stakes? Libertarians would have no qualms about employers seriously raising the stakes if unemployment is extremely high and workers can be easily replaced.
Depends on what’s being sold, gil. The essential stuff is locked up, a sellers market as you say. But the good stuff is up for sale, and ain’t too many buyers. Soros and all the rest ain’t buyin’ ag land because they’re stupid. Not a bad scheme…get the productive land when nobody’s buying and sell the essential food when nobody’s selling. “Buy low, sell high” is easy when you’ve got armies. For the rest of us, it takes wits.
>>”Not a bad scheme…get the productive land when nobody’s buying and sell the essential food when nobody’s selling. “Buy low, sell high” is easy when you’ve got armies. For the rest of us, it takes wits.”
Brilliant!
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