“But we have everywhere courts of injustice — open and avowed injustice — claiming sole jurisdiction of all cases affecting men’s rights of both person and property; and having at their beck brute force enough to compel absolute submission to their decrees, whether just or unjust.Can a more decisive or infallible condemnation of our governments be conceived of, than the absence of all courts of justice, and the absolute power of their courts of injustice?”
– Lysander Spooner
I’ve had to deprogram myself with thousands of hours of autodidactic inquiry to dispel and destroy the hundreds of myths drilled into my head during years of government schooling. This indoctrination has only one primary purpose: to destroy critical thinking facility and replace it with an imbecilic faith in the state to right every wrong and provide cradle to grave excuses for not being a self-led individual. Collectivism builds vast gulag-care systems that institutionalize sloth, group-think and a callous disregard for those who disagree with you. From the sports-obsessed militarists to the nationalistic evangelical Israeli-firsters to the forever-lost collectivist true believers, American tax cattle love their bread and circuses. The American myth is based on a number of assumptions that beggar belief and challenge basic humanity. They clothe the barbarism in parchment idolatry and the lionizing of men, particularly the Presidents.
I have always thought the annual celebration of the best to worst presidents was foolish at best and academically challenged at worst. The court historians had a tendency to fellate the state and top-list the warmongers and those who expanded government and the list continued to diminish from there. From a libertarian perspective, most are monsters incarnate and from my abolitionist perspective, all are monsters but I had an enduring faith a few had good intentions among whom was Grover Cleveland who has been a favorite top drawer listing among the libertarian commentariat.
I highly recommend you take the time to read Lysander Spooner’s letter to Grover Cleveland.
Alas, further examination reveals him to be a collectivist beast like all the rest. It all begins with the railroads in the 19th century, which were given land grants of nearly ten percent of the total land in the country and the tremendous wealth earned by the railroad companies and their ancillary support elements. Cleveland was concerned about the natural corruption that attended big business married to big government and he managed to get the Supremes to rule 6-3 in Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway Company v. Illinois in 1886 that the states did not dictate nor interpret the Commerce Clause of the wretched Constitution but the Federal government did. In other words, the Fedes were THE final arbiter in all commercial trade.
After the Lincolnian project had sealed the fate of any extra-Constitutional attempt to break free from the continuing tyranny of the Federal government: Cleveland managed to find the one enduring notion that would buttress and nourish the growing regulatory apparatus of the national state; in essence, he authored the most effective nursery for the emerging fourth branch of Federal regulation. This led to the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. I had often thought that the 1942 Wickard v. Filburn ruling had accelerated the growth of the regulatory state in the US but the Cleveland-sponsored devices were the true embryonic path that caused the national state to accelerate in control and grasping at power that would eventually do everything but extinguish commercial liberty in the US. Wickard v. Filburn incredibly regulated commerce that never left its source of production, a nefarious and economically illiterate interpretation but to be expected of the “Red Court” during FDR’s reign. The 1942 was the final nail in the coffin for any free markets in the US.
When I speak to economic illiteracy, I refer to the fascistic Keystone Keynesian notions that have dominated the bureaucratic nomenklatura in the US since the Theodore Roosevelt administration.
The further one plumbs the origins of the maximum state in America, the more you discover the truth that the Constitution built the cobbled Frankenstein monster that is the USA. The Hamiltonian construct that terrified the Anti-Federalists goes beyond the reaction to the Whiskey Rebellion, the American Aurora horror that illustrated the existential challenge to freedom that the Aliens and Seditions Act represented and the evil train of laws that got Constitutional approval on a consistent basis. Sixty two years later, the Second American Revolution would be the last gasp at unharnessing the Constitutional straitjacket and it would fail and lead to the utter consolidation of the Supreme Soviet in Mordor on the Potomac. None of it went away but simply provided the progressive mortar that would eventually lead to the totalitarian infrastructure that is America today.
Strip away the blinders and tune out the white noise of patriotic bilge that is pumped throughout the airwaves and internet daily and know that the entire construct of the American Dream and the fantasy generators in the universities and the government media complex are sophisticated propaganda organs to convince a slave people they are free.
I stand corrected, there are no good American Presidents. Seduced by the totalitarian impulse, every occupant of the Offal Office has been instrumental in ratcheting the restraints and manacles on the American booboisee.
The dissolution of the American state is the only possible answer.
“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”– HL Mencken
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
It’s only a matter of degree, of course. This came to pass with the election of George Washington, I believe.
ML, fair enough, I will gladly accept that.
[Grin]
Always said Aaron Burr was one of the greatest heroes who lived, and always get a blank stare every time. Who can read the Federalist Papers and not see that Hamilton et al were lying through their teeth while clawing to get their tyrannical writ endorsed by the people’s referendum.
I do have to disagree about Presidents though; John Hancock (the First President btw, Washington was number 14) always struck me as honestly striving for the government we were promised in grade school (and never got.)
I, too, agree on Burr. You do mean John Hanson, right? Technically, Samuel Huntington was the first under the AoC; he was a bridge between the Continental Congress and the AoC.
Hamilton and the Federalists were thieving collectivists, no doubt.
Every February we should celebrate John Wilkes Booth Day! My only lament is that he did not do us the favor in 1861, instead of 1865!
Huzzah! A slayer of tyrants.
If Cleveland was concerned about the corruption resulting from big business being married to big government then why did he favor the 1886 SCOTUS ruling that severely limited the rights of the states to control interstate commerce?
My point exactly.
You’re tearin’ it up, Bill. From the subtle—“Lincolnian project”…
…to the sublime—“Strip away the blinders and tune out the white noise of patriotic bilge that is pumped throughout the airwaves and internet daily and know that the entire construct of the American Dream and the fantasy generators in the universities and the government media complex are sophisticated propaganda organs to convince a slave people they are free.”
One sentence, covers a lot.
Thanks, Jim, you are partly responsible for the content of my scribbling.
I’m with you Jim, Bill is a true firebrand. Awesome. Bill you are really on the money. Talk about being inspired. A toast to your reason and cause, I hope more and more people become enlightened by your work.
Hillsdale College has an interesting essay posted on “The History and Danger of Administrative Law”, the writer speaks about the rise and power of the American Nomenklatura class of executive tyrants and the idea the Constitution was written to prevent the totalitarian power of unaccountable decree and diktat.
It is a thoughtfully laid out argument for limited government, certainly an indictment of the heinous power of the executive, of the leviathan itself. I think this author misses something essential to his argument, in that the Constitution is itself administrative law in its own right. Its very purpose was to “administrate” what is “law”. That in itself, opened the door for what we have today.
Now I could have this wrong, but to me, what Bill contends as the tyrannical nature is obscure but inherent in the framing of the US Constitution, its framers intent to deny the hard-won sovereignty of the free states and their people, what Bill and other thought leaders of total liberty and abolition of the state contend is true.
I don’t think I am far off the mark here. My argument that the Constitution is itself a specious contract for administrative tyranny written solely to empower a ruling class with omnipotent power disguised as rule of law and a contract cunningly contrived to mollify and suck in reluctant sovereign free entities making them instant vassal states with promises of their primal right to exist as libertarian sovereignty.
The proof of my argument is the truth my liberty is diminished in every conceivable manner. There is not an aspect of my life in which the ruling class and their apparatchiks of their Nomenklatura meddle in my affairs, stick their noses in my business and conveniently create “less” which turn me into a criminal.
Constitution my arse! Its con and subsequent grift is second only to the the usurpers who infest every aspect of the state today.
Just as there is no voting our way out of this, there is not nor ever been a way to use Constitutional law to free ourselves from tyranny. Proof of that observation lies in the results of secession of the southern tier states and subsequent war for sovereignty in 1860-65. There simply has not been or could be a grander and more legitimate event of just resistance to tyranny where if the US Constitution was a legitimate document written for guaranteeing liberty above all else there would be states and people who live free of the absolute power of the state.
Administrative “law”, its system of rule of men and insidious intrusion in every facet of the spheres of our lives, it all begins with , begins with, has its roots of power in the lowliest apparatchik, from your gracious DMV to your local building inspector, from your county tax assessors office to your law enforcement official. Without these people who constitute the foundation of the pyramid of tyranny of the state, this leviathan would collapse, it could not project its power, it could not project its threat of force and monopoly of violence for failure to comply with it’s system of decree and exact its tribute.
Where is the US Constitution?
What is it good for?
Show me proof it works as advertized?
When has it ever, in its two entire centuries of existence, created liberty?
I remember libertarian principles and the convictions of those who espouse the idea, is derived from liberty.
No document or man created law can speak to that. They are always forms of limits, controls, and theft of something with which every person is born with, something natural and primal, property of the soul, property of the sovereign essence of men.
No piece of paper takes priority over that.
Never could it.
What need of a piece of paper to prove the legitimacy of ones liberty? It is absurd to believe otherwise. It is the greatest folly of our existence.
It is high time to change that.
Link at:
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/the-history-and-danger-of-administrative-law/
Boon,
Splendid thoughts and I would not trust HC as far as I can throw them when it come to liberty, they are parchment idolators of the highest water.
Read this lovely excerpt from Imprimis:
The Constitution carefully barred this threat, but constitutional doctrine has since legitimized this dangerous sort of power.
WTF! What the hell does that mean? It means the Constitution will be anything big government wishes it to be. Hamilton smiles from his desk-side perch in the Ninth Circle. Spooner would have a party with this torrential flood of illogic and poor thinking.
Please email me Boon at thirdgun AT hotmail DOT com.
Bill
10-4 on the email.
Parchment idolaters’, that’s rich!
At least they are a rung or two up the “evolutionary” ladder of Karl Rove.
What need of a piece of parchment to sanction the legitimacy of ones liberty? The very fact a piece of parchment is required, is a contradiction in terms so outlandish no wonder everyone signed it. And still idolizes it. It is cargo cult writ huge.
What is the timeless axiom about lies, the really big ones? Didn’t Herman Goering of all people have an astute observation on that score.
And who was it that said “truth in a time of universal deceit is a revolutionary idea” ?
In that light, maybe secession in a time of universal administrative “law” is a revolutionary idea.
I think I bit a raw nerve over at Brandon Smiths Alternative Market blog with the comment I posted. Mr. Smith demanded proof of my contention the USC was a con job, and he had a couple of rather pejorative terms for me personally and abolitionists in general.
Truth is a funny thing, speaking it brings out the most surprising things in people. It’s funny too how the truth is akin to apostasy in certain circumstances. But I’m sure I’m not telling you anything there, Bill.
Thanks, Boon.
Gandhi said: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.”
Always like that quote.
Gandhi was fortunate it was the Brits he was up against. The psychopaths running things here would just ultimately kill Gandhi now if they sensed he was approaching the status of leading or a symbol of an unstoppable grass roots movement. Like they did Andrew Brietbart and a number of Americans with the innate leadership that people naturally rally to.
“Splendid thoughts and I would not trust HC as far as I can throw them when it come to liberty, they are parchment idolators of the highest water.”
That’s totally true, but it misses an important distinction—at least they do it on their own. IOW it’d be fair to say they’re “Consensualists,” but they believe in consenting to the Rule of Law, in basic principles congruent with the Founders.
A LOT of people think like that, and it’s not crazy on its own. It may be mistaken for any number of reasons, but it’s different–at least I see it as different–than those Constitutionalists who want more of the same…just their way, that’s all.
I don’t get that vibe from Hillsdale folk. It’s one of only two universities in the whole country that refuses any federal loot of any kind, in order that they can stick with their principles. Even as I disagree with many of the writers of Imprimus, I have to give them credit for at least being honest and at least TRYING to stick to principle.
Remember, even in a voluntarist society, there’ll be plenty of Rule of Law floating around from area to area. The simple fact is that most people aren’t willing to accept the Responsibility of self-ownership, let alone the defense of that owned life.
I’m not trying to say that freedom is a matter of degree. I’m trying to say that there are lots of decent, hard-working responsible folk who nonetheless believe Rule of Law is the only way to live freely. They may be wrong about that, but only through voluntarism (consensualism?) will they (or we) ever find out.
Hillsdale College is a neoconservative institution that supports the welfare-warfare state.
They are Claremont’s Midwest satellite college: https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-hillsdale-neocon-foreign-policy-interventionism-academy/
One Imprimis author’s take on libertarianism:
Leiter’s argument is libertarian. He wants to get the government out of the business of deciding whose conscience is worth protecting. This mentality seems to expand freedom, but that’s an illusion. In practice it will lead to diminished freedom, as is always the case with any thoroughgoing libertarianism.
IOW, the state MUST protect rights. History shows what that meme does in practice. See: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/05/laurence-m-vance/the-craziest-neocon-attack-on-libertarianism/
And I do now conflate all Constitutionalists with maximum government supporters because there is no historical evidence whatsoever that limited government is possible so all the sophisticated (emphasis first two syllables) white noise about government protecting rights is logically impossible given the history and economic incentives. They may have all Ludwig von Mises books and papers there but they probably simply dust the room monthly and pay no attention to the contents or message therein.
Sorry, Jim, we agree to disagree.
Nah, I’m pretty sure we agree on the principles, especially that “limited government” is a non-starter. It’s nearly an oxymoron. That’s why phaed has to change the definitions to get there.
And we agree about the “conservative” position, especially as it manifests these days with the Endless War for Morality. Me, I figure the Games start when the commie-libs get knocked out. Those Dems may talk a good game, but it’s Republicans who get things done.
And most of all, of course, we agree that “what gets done” is the very rottenest of human action.
Still, I see nothing but individuals out there. I wouldn’t want neocons taking over any more than Objecti-statists or outright commies. Hell, at least declared communists are honest about it, like how a street thug is far more honest than the average politician. All that said, I still see a difference between the “Hillsdale folk” than, say, maniacs like McCain or Graham. And this, as always, especially about the students as opposed to the teachers.
That’s all I was saying. I think it does mean something that they accept no fed aid at all, a form of resistance itself. And I think it does mean something when anyone at least TRIES to shoot for(!) Liberty. You gotta take one step before you take two.
If being wrong were some disqualification for living in a free society, the readers here would get awfully lonely. Plus…if you believe in the righteousness of business as I do, you gotta have customers.
Jim if you don’t mind, I’d like to interject something.
You know the definition of paradigm right?
I look it up in an old dictionary frequently, find it is intellectually refreshing. Paradigm is defined as a sea change in thinking. An idea that contravenes traditional and accepted thought in which accepted thought blinds those thought leaders to thinking outside their cherished norms or standards.
The thought leaders of the parchment idolaters’ are so hide bound they constitute extremists, as they will die before they change lifetimes and whole careers based on the delusion a piece of parchment and their worship of it bestows some rarified form of priesthood upon them.
In a way the statist barking about right wing extremists has a certain truth to it.
Aside from that, the P.I.’s miss the entire crux of liberty. Its not theirs or a piece of parchment to determine.
It is funny how abolition, its movement and it’s people in particular are just as much, or even more so a threat to the P.I.’s than the leviathan and its actors. We are apostates, outcasts, looked down upon with disdain not unlike that of the intelligentsia shit stirrers running things.
Lord how I despise that term, there is nothing intelligent nor elite about them.
But those P.I.’s, they ignore grass roots like plague. As the secession ground swell throws up seedlings, they will treat us like Ebola. Because abolition is the most dangerous of existential threats to all and sunder. To every accepted notions of rule of law and sanction of what don’t need no steenkin’ rule or permissions.
I love ole Andrew Brietbart. How I miss that warrior. Andrew was “the one who brought them all back” He said, culture is up stream of politics, how it is infiltrating and outflanking the sonofabitches.
Liberty is upstream too, abolition is the pure spring of the source.
Naturally I agree with all that Boon, and maybe I shouldn’t have piped up. I see nothing but individuals out there and I think there is a difference among PIs, just as there’s a difference among abolitionists.
So I thought I’d point out that difference, that’s all. Hillsdale peeps were highlighting (some of!) the problems we’re facing long before it was mainstream. To me that deserves an honorable mention, especially considering that its milieu is “intellectual circles,” where those problems were effectively unmentionable.
Probably the best lesson to be learned is how the good should never compromise with evil, because I do agree with Bill about the current Hillsdale positions, at least the ones that are made public.
Jim,
You should always pipe up, we are all the better for it.
Bill
If we don’t pipe up we are truly alone and isolated individuals.
That’s the thing, the parchment idolaters, their ideology not withstanding are a group who stick to their guns and pipe up incessantly about their beloved parchment god that is going to save them and provide redemption for their kind. When staring them right in the face is the answer, when they look in the mirror. But they are so committed to that parchment they can’t see the Forrest for the trees.
I’m a stout proponent for what you so eloquently stated Jim, it begins with each of us.
What came first, liberty or that parchment?
What happened first, abolition of a leviathan, or that creation of that parchment?
What did those seeking secession from the state accomplish first, secession from tyranny or write some cunning administrative law on a piece of parchment?
Maybe one day soon enough people begin to understand abolition is a pretty darn good idea, that no parchment or laws of men can ever substitute the rightful primal liberty that we all ready possess. That maybe, through providence and reason, the idea nobody can better determine that which is best for you but what you determine is best for you, then and only then can we get along on the business of what abolition of the state is truly about. And those dinosaurs of constitutional law become fossils of an intermediary stage in the enlightenment of true liberty.
You can’t blame those thought leaders of the constitution, they are a product like us all of a gentle con. We had it, we had secession and abolition in our hands, we ditched the leviathan, we had everything to gain and nothing to loose, and men with power wanted what they always want, more power, and they sold everyone a false bill of goods, a bill of retainer, that has never relinquished an iota of power, it only provided an illusion of liberty and self determination, while subsequent generations of tyrants hid behind this false paradigm and closed the trap on the idolaters, the unwary, and the ignorant. It was a good run in some ways, but it was a vehicle without brakes on a long downhill grade from the start.
But, one thing born that is undeniable is liberty, and the ideas of liberty. What it I to be a freeman, that lives on, regardless of “laws” or parchment, tyrants or leviathans. Because as you said your self, it begins with each of us. And that is the battle and the beauty of it all. It does indeed begin with each of us. And if your piping up changes one mind, plants the idea of freedom and abolition and liberty in another’s heart as truth only can, than you have changed the world in good ways. You helped another find self determination in its purest form.
“There are no good Presidents….”
As the French might say, “Au contraire, mon ami!” William Henry Harrison was by far the best president ever. Elected in 1840, he gave his inauguration speech in a pouring rainstorm. Immediately after, he fell ill with an upper respiratory infection, which turned to pneumonia. Thirty days later, he was dead. Best president ever! Never started a war. Never suppressed one individual. Never signed one evil act into law…. I suggest we celebrate his birthday as a holiday! And hopefully, every future president follows his shining example.
Paul, thanks for the reminder and well met, I agree.
IvyMike posted an interesting essay by a thoughtful author. In it is the hint of the roots of abolition and those who could very well make secession happen. I sure can identify with it.
https://www.ivymikecafe.com/2014/09/29/kunstler-well-become-isis/