“The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.”
~ H.L. Mencken
A friend of mine walked up to me one morning looking very upset. He was looking like he needed to get something off of his mind. I asked him what was wrong, and he said in a half joking, half serious tone, “well apparently I’m not a citizen of this country!”
Before I continue with the story I have to tell you the amazing tale of this man’s father. He was a soldier in WWII, and he fought at the battle of the bulge. In a German artillery bombardment, he had one of his legs blown off. As he lay there severely wounded, German soldiers approached him. Seeing this man was still alive, they raked him with automatic machine gun fire at point blank range. I’m not too sure how this man got out of there alive, his son told me that he didn’t remember much after he was shot up by the Germans, only that he remembered waking up in an American field hospital and thankful to be alive. He served with the 101st Airborne Division. Years later he was a foreign correspondent for the Voice of America. While covering the Vietnam conflict, his son, my friend, was born in Thailand. After he came back from Vietnam, he went to work for a newspaper out of Colorado.
My friend came into work one morning to find that a confidential letter had been slipped into his toolbox. It was a letter from the records department informing him that his social security card copy they had on file for him was illegible. This department was in the middle of an internal audit, and they needed him to provide a copy of his social security card that was readable. Returning home that night he retrieved his card and found that his copy had become worn over the years, and concluded it needed to be replaced. He ventured down to the local social security office to see about getting his battered card replaced, and that’s when the fun began. It seems the local bureaucratic tyrant takes his job a bit too seriously. My friend instructed the socialist security bureaucrat that he needed to replace his card. He explained that the card that was on file for him at his employer was illegible, and his current card was unable to be recopied. He said the bureaucrat became very upset about this and he said, “you tell your employer that they are breaking the law by copying social security cards, you tell them I said so! You tell them the Federal Government says so!”
After the bureaucrat was done ranting and needlessly flexing his petty power, he asked for my friends name and social security number. After he punched in his name and socialist tracking number, he looked up at my friend with a shocked look on his face. At this time the bureaucrat motioned to another bureaucrat to come over and observe his computer screen. They both looked at each other and then they went back to looking at the screen. The bureaucrat that was “serving” my friend looked up at him and asked him if he was born in this country, and he responded with a no. The bureaucrat then preceded to tell him he is not a “legal citizen”, and that in fact he is an “illegal alien”. My friend explained that he was born in a military hospital, and that his father was a government employee when he was born. The bureaucrat said he didn’t care about any of that, and he would not help him anymore until he produced a specific piece of paper that was given to his parents in Thailand over forty years ago. He explained to me that he has no idea where this paper is, and he has no idea what to do.
While he was telling me this story, I could see this man’s reality collapsing before him. Everything he thought he was, and everything he thought he knew was just assassinated by some tax sucking bureaucrat. He actually said to me, “Chris, if I’m not a U.S. Citizen, then I don’t know what I am.” I guess a lifetime of paying taxes, and unquestioning obedience doesn’t earn you the right to wear the title of of “citizen” in this country. He explained to me that he was sure that his old man had paved his way for him with his blood, and that was enough to cement his citizenship.
At this point I wanted to tell him that he wasn’t the only one one who was not a citizen. I wanted to tell him none of us are citizens, there are no citizens. The Supreme Court has ruled that the government has no obligation to protect you, therefore you have no obligation to pledge your allegiance to it. A citizen is supposed to be afforded protection for his obligation of allegiance. Since the robed government employees have ruled that the government has no obligation to protect, that makes the government nothing more than a very large protection racket. Inhabiting a specific land mass does not obligate a person to any government, no more than a person would be obligated to pledge their allegiance to the local warlord or other gang of thugs. The word citizen has a political implication, and the very word lends credibility to the idea of a government. Just as monarchies had their subjects and serfs, democracies have their citizens. The words have changed, but the circumstances have always remained the same. There is only free men and slaves. A citizen is only a different form of slavery. Free men choose their obligations, citizens have them forced upon them. Slaves are made in such ways, even if they are enslaved with good intentions.
In the first installment of this story, I had a conversation with a former sheriff’s deputy, and we both agreed to pick the conversation up later. Well, since that time we have had many short conversations, and I have learned that he is a man that would follow almost any order that was handed down to him. We discussed gun laws, and what he would do if he was given the order to confiscate firearms. He said he would be reluctant to follow such orders, but he would do it if he had to. I also asked if he would turn in his personal firearms, and he said he would because he believes the system has provided him the avenues to right these injustices, and to regain lost freedoms. He said in order for this to remain a nation of laws, the law has to be followed, good or bad.
I asked the former deputy how much corruption and crime he had witnessed in his long stretch in law enforcement, and he told me he had witnessed his fair share. I asked him if he ever did anything about it, because in order for his logic to hold the law would have to be applied to all men at all times, or it indeed becomes a nation of men and not of law. I told him if this was the case then the law becomes subjective, and it is as good as having no law. I asked him if he ever arrested people for the same thing he saw his fellow officers doing, and he was reluctant to answer. I knew now I was dealing with a man who cared nothing for the law, and that this was only a paycheck to him. I asked him if there was any order he would not follow; I asked him if he would have been one of the ones who helped bring about Nazi Germany. He said there is no way that would happen here. Unfortunately history is not on his side.
“I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.”
~ Frederick Douglass
Good follow up,thanks! Proof what most of us that are concerned and paying attention already knew of LEO and all the rest of the “gov” kind to the very top.
CIII
I long ago declared that I am not a citizen; I belong to no government.
I feel sorry, very sorry, for anyone whose identity is wrapped up in which government claims ownership of him.
Felt the need to add my 2 cents. a well written article here Chris. it shows that people don’t know what freedom is. No surprise there as very few alive today have ever lived it. Truth of the matter is that most people reject freedom when they claim the title of ”citizen”. That truly is like shouting out how proud they are to be owned by the state. How proud they are to be part of the gang who runs this particular geographical turf.
That cop you talked to is a scary person. He is willing to do what he is told no matter how evil or destructive. The only thing that matters is ”law” says to do it. Law is nothing more then a decree of a person or group of people who claim the right to rule another group of people.
Law is nothing but words on paper. Paper chains enforced by idiots. That cop is willing to destroy his fellow man in order to enforce those words. The only thing that stops his reverence of it is if the rulers suddenly decree it to no longer be valid. overnight that cop stops enforcement of the sacred ”law”. one moment an action is legal, the next it is illegal in essence-crime creation. All based on the will of one person.
Very sad that people like him exist. Hired killers for the state. Brainwashed to stop thinking, stop believing in any moral code the moment a new decree is handed down to him.
People like him allow the state to force its will on the rest of us. people like him murdered 11 million Germans. people like him enforced laws in the south making it illegal for a slave to run away from his ”lawful” master. The greatest evils in the world are committed not by the hand of a tyrant, but by his servants..the cops of the day. Those useful idiots willing to do the bidding of their master even if it means killing millions of people.
Who is more evil? the man who enforces the will of a tyrant or the tyrant himself? The tyrant can only write decree’s on paper, it takes enforcers to do the actual damage. This cop is the enforcer. The enemy of freedom.
Thanks for the feedback, folks. I appreciate it.
Darna, great comment. Your assessment is correct, it takes the tyrant to command it, and the thug to enforce it.
But, it takes the individual to believe it.
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Not to discount the trauma of your friend’s predicament…but I must say that, given the difficulties, time, exit taxes, and other expenses associated with renouncing US citizenship, if I were in his position, I would take the petty tyrant’s verdict and run with it.
I have to say that this a rare opportunity for him to run with a bureaucratic oversight that for him is free and the rest of us is an enormous expense. I concur with Jason.
Good article, sir. Good perspective on citizenship.
And, as much as I honestly don’t like to throw the word around, the only thing that can describe the deputy is ‘pig’. I’ve known enough cops to know they’re not all alike, but this one seems to fit the bill. He’s the kind of asshole we’ll have to shoot before much longer. And it’s the fault of people like him.
Re: the SCOTUS ruling you mentioned…I know of several cases in which they ruled the police have no obligation to come to the aid of a citizen, but is there a case to cite which speaks directly to the federal gov’t having no obligation to do so?
Thanks.
Warren v. District of Columbia
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@Dan iii – although the Warren case deals directly with the obligation of police (or lack of, according to the ratio in the case), other case law, taken in sum, points to the notion that the State’s robed geriatrics will exculpate State actors when they drop the ball.
For example, DeShaney v Winnebago County decided that the DSS is not responsible if it fails to protect a child from abuse (even when its tax-suckers are AWARE of likely abuse); Estelle v. Gamble raised the bar (for the plaintiff) in matters where prisoners alleged a Section 1983 8th Amendment infringement.
In short, the silly medieval set-piece theatre (featuring the aforementioned robed geriatrics) can almost ALWAYS be relied on to find the most restrictive interpretation of the ‘law’ when the appellant is a citizen seeking to have his rights upheld, and the broadest interpretation when it is .gov trying to breach or abrogate one of its citizens’ rights.
Darna’s got it right – it’s not the 1% that the problem but the 95%.
This article just jogged my memory. If I recall… about two years ago I was likewise trying to “find” my old SS card. You remember the one that’s printed with “not to be used for personal identification”. Remember? Anyway… I go to the local office to get a replacement and they do the things they do with their computer terminals and I was told that because I was born overseas, even after providing documentation such as birth certificates and other sundry paperwork from the Air Force base I popped out at, that there might be “problems”. WTF!!! “Are you kidding me?” I asked. Only when I retired did they say it could be a stumbling block… Oh, yeah, well then, guess I need to get the hell out of mickey mouse land before it’s too late, eh? The absurdity of it all was that here was the FedGov with over forty years of my history and they don’t have an evil clue what is going on. What I did learn was that things were only going to get worse down the road. The irony of it all is that after doing this dog and pony show exercise I rediscovered my old card as soon as the new one showed up. Go figure.