Publisher’s Note: It is now less than a week to Libertopia in San Diego, Kalifornia. I will be speaking on FRI and SAT and I will be on a panel on SUN. It would be wonderful if some of my readers showed up. You can register here: https://libertopia.org/ -BB
“The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Occupy Wall Street is about conformity and compliance. The males (not men) and women that people the protests are consistently collectivists and apologists for state violence with heads expensively filled by overpriced universities with the most economically illiterate and toxic nonsense a state-dominated college education system could produce. Just as fashion is not about individual tastes but mass appeal, the protests are about the Free Stuff Army much as the antiwar protests dwindled to near zero with the end of the draft, the same applies here. As soon as these scholars-in-hock get loan forgiveness for their easily earned degrees, the cries for social justice will diminish except for the professional protestors and the true believers of collectivism whose life mission is to enslave humanity in an even more effective slave state than we have built so far in America. Where did these protestors come from?
The New left was at an intellectual crossroads in the 1960s. The fork in the road would either embrace totalitarian collectivism or anarchistic individualism and they chose the former in droves. In a world dominated by bipolar military industrial complexes in both the US and the other USSR at the time, communism was still seen by the chattering intellectual classes in the West as the only just and righteous organizing principle for societies except for the lone voices like Koestler and Conquest. Up until 1989, the leading introductory textbook on economics penned and edited by Paul Samuelson was still trumpeting the superior efficacy of Communist delivery of goods and services over the free market.
“By the thirteenth edition (1989), Samuelson and Nordhaus declared, “the Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed; a socialist command economy can function and even thrive” (13:837). Samuelson and Nordhaus were not alone in their optimistic views about Soviet central planning; other popular textbooks were also generous in their descriptions of economic life under communism prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
Today, the third generation of this totalitarian temptation has taken the form of fashionable collectivists shambling about their camp-hives on Wall Street and the satellite protests scattered across the nation. Adam Kokesh has provided a brilliant snapshot video record of the sheer inanity and clouded thinking of the moron-a-thon known as Occupy Wall Street but strip it of all the florid protestations and mewling about “fair share” and “distribution” and it comes down to one single operative principle: a monopoly on the threat and use of force must be employed to bring order and justice to human conclaves.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
-H. L. Mencken
In the etymological sense, all societies are democracies. No government could remain in power, even with the support of the police and the military, if every citizen were simply to pick up a rock and throw it. Therefore, any government which remains in power has the tacit consent of the people, or at least a plurality of motivated people.
It seems that the American government is losing this tacit consent. The Occupy Wall Street protests and the copycat movements across the country are evidence of that. These protesters are not a majority of the people. They are not a plurality of the people. They do, however, represent one majority opinion: that the nature of the present relationship between government and high finance is intolerable, and must be changed.
The rest of the protesters’ message is unclear, because it is unfocused. Polling would indicate that the protesters want more government regulation, but determining the nature of that regulation would be left to existing powers – leaving us exactly where we are now, albeit with shiny new lipstick on our pig of a financial system. And what of the wars, against “terrorism” and “drugs?” Have those been forgotten, or are the prison-industrial and military-industrial complexes simply a smaller threat to our well being than the undefined greed of the “1%”?
The Occupy Wall Street movement is composed of people who have every reason to be angry. Their property has been appropriated, their opportunities are repeatedly limited by government interference. They’ve been sold a package of unjust wars, useless education, and dubious protection from threats less real than the Bogeyman. To be sure, crony corporatists and congressman have colluded to commandeer the future of this country, and of the entire world. But OWS doesn’t seem to be about that. OWS asks for more regulation, more government meddling in our affairs. They ask evil to protect them from evil, and don’t understand the similarity between the 1% of high finance and the 1% of government.
Mencken’s snide dismissal of democracy is too kind. These common people, these “99%,” don’t really know exactly what they want. Unfortunately, the getting will be just as “good and hard” regardless.
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
~ Thomas Jefferson
Whenever speaking of free and voluntary societies I’m often asked, “What would we do about this”, or, “who would take care of that.” I used to rattle off answers to these questions that were supplied by minds sharper than mine without even examining the questions. Then I realized I was focusing on the wrong part of the question. I was simply explaining how a different system would work, and hoping the ones asking the question would be won over with the clever and well thought out answers I had either memorized, or thought of myself. I have been trying to persuade people away from their system using the promise of a new and improved system. I realized I was no different than any other philosophical political peddler, and I would no longer tempt people with “our system.”
The truth is no one knows what “we” will do in a completely voluntary society, there is just no way of knowing. Any answer that is given to questions pertaining to the problems that individuals would face in such a society are purely speculation. I cannot tell you what we would do, I can only tell you what I would do. I would honor my contracts; I would defend myself; I would choose to help others in need; I would expect no one to support me; and I would plan accordingly. I want to be very clear here, I do not disagree with the theory that is being presented on how the logistics of society would be handled. There is no doubt that these organizations and such would arise and be needed in a voluntary society. I disagree with the fact that these theories are being pushed as answers before addressing the only real and true problem; collectivist thought. When those who are curious about voluntarism ask the “we” questions, the underlying collectivist philosophy is still there, and this is what needs to be addressed first before any practical questions can or should be answered. Otherwise, you are just trying to get them to abandon their system for your system.
I’ll admit that getting people to see the gun in the room is a very important and crucial step when trying to win them over, but that is not enough. In my experience, after I have been successful at pointing out the systematized coercion, and institutionalized violence in the current system, the conversation always turns to how we would deal with the practical issues. This is where I would start to explain how we would handle these things, but lately I have been pointing out the “we” in the room. In a revolution of the individual, “we” questions should not be answered. Put the ball back in their court. Ask them what they would do. When human interaction is purely voluntary, there can be no system. It is important to let the ones asking the questions find their own solutions, or what they think might be solutions. I have at 32 years old, accepted that I am probably as free now as I will ever be. I know there is one crucial step that has to be taken before humans are physically free, and that step is to be mentally free. If it will be their decision in a voluntary society, it must be their decision now. I must say, watching my fellow humans squirm when asked to think like a free people is a little disheartening. There is a long road ahead, my only hope is that my children will be the pioneers of this new society.
“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.
“While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and signs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste, haste on decay; not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor; meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught–they say–God, when he walked on earth.”
– Robinson Jeffers, Shine, Perishing Republic
Jeffers, the lyrical and unsung poet of the American West had his finger on the pulse of the war machine in Mordor on the Potomac. He was an opponent of the American entry into WWII (The War to Save Josef Stalin) and this put him on the path to poverty and obscurity. His poetry is among the best America produced in the 20th century but he remains in obscurity because he dared to question the war machine.
There is talk now of entering into a more active conflict with Pakistan. The millions of maimed and murdered bodies that have already been the American offertory for world peace are simply not enough and the US death machine marches onward. This war will come home and not only in the broken minds and bodies of the veterans but in the machinations of our rulers who will find all kinds of new stratagems and toys to better control their cattle here at home. Combine this with the many opportunities afforded by the economic calamities the government has authored and you have a recipe for even worse times ahead.
On reflection, I cannot support a single conflict America has engaged in since 1898 but I do know the only legitimate conflict is fought on one’s own soil to defend your kith and kin from barbarism and enslavement. I am opposed to all initiated aggression on principle but I am no pacifist. I believe in a robust and compelling response to initiated aggression.
We are a people born in conflict and steeped in a culture of self-defense despite the disregard with which our most holy and vaunted Founding Rulers viewed such a culture.
It was on this day, September 30 in 1776 that George Washington wrote a despairing letter to his nephew complaining of the poor performance of his militia.
“I am wearied to death all day with a variety of perplexing circumstances, disturbed at the conduct of the militia, whose behavior and want of discipline has done great injury to the other troops, who never had officers, except in a few instances, worth the bread they eat.” Washington added, “In confidence I tell you that I never was in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born.”
Mighty strong elixir from one of history’s least deserving Battle Captains whose talents for warfare were among the poorest of any field commander. The man who won three of the nine major battles he fought against a foe that was engaged in a global conflict with great powers on the European continent. If it weren’t for the “sideshow” aspect of the North American conflict to the British, military defeat would not have been visited upon them except at the hands of guerrillas. As we see from the letter referenced above, Washington did not think very highly of his most pure volunteers, the militia. No, Washington needed dragooned and conscripted fodder that would better enable his military ambitions.
“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
I have been working on a contract that will come to bind you, dear reader. This contract will give myself, and those I employ, the power to seize your property whenever we deem it to be necessary and proper. This contract can be amended at anytime and can only be interpreted by myself, and those I employ.
You say you would never sign such a contract?
No worries, your signature is not needed. I have, in good faith, taken the time to have many of my Friends and Neighbors sign it. Those who have signed it, have, with their signatures, legally bound you to this contract. I know, I know, it seems unfair and perhaps somewhat unjust. That is why I will provide you with arbitration, and I promise I will see to it that this method of arbitration will be as objective as possible. This Arbitrator will be paid by me through funds I have stolen…errr…extracted from you through the barrel of m….errr…through taxation. You see, I only sign the paychecks, the money comes from you; it’s more than fair this way. You couldn’t possibly be competent enough to use your own money to buy your own arbitration, so I must force it upon you. This Arbitrator, this Judge, will be addressed as “The Honorable”, or, “Your Honor” and he will have almost unlimited powers within his court. If you choose to disrespect or disrupt “the Court” you will be caged for an indeterminate amount of time. However, before you are thrown into a cage, you will have a chance to grovel at the feet of the Court. Maybe this most Honorable Man will show mercy on you, or perhaps not. Even though your money and property is extracted to pay for this Public Servant, it is not your place to question him in his court. All dissenters must be punished, this is the only way to maintain the absolute authority of “the Court”.
You say this contract would never be upheld in a court of law?
Publisher’s Note: September 17 is the day the serfs in the tax jurisdiction known as America celebrate Constitution Day. We hear all the usual ill-informed and ahistorical notions celebrating what was in essence one of the most savvy and lucrative political coups in Western history. The Antifederalists were right, the Constitution was an elegant trap to shackle an entire nation to a system to empower the few over the many and the banksters over the entire system of commerce. The respective states which had signed separate peace agreements with the United Kingdom in 1783 were merely political and inferior subsidiaries to the greater national power emerging in Mordor on the Potomac. The Constitution created a Soviet style system well before the Bolsheviks were even contemplating such a scheme. Whenever you hear some of your friends and neighbors extolling the virtues of the Constitution, read them Spooner’s quote and see how they address that particular conundrum. -BB
By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.
~ James Madison
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”
~ Lysander Spooner
Today, 17 September 2009, is Constitution Day. There will be paeans, abundant commentary and church-like observances of the glories of this document in making us the most blessed nation on planet earth. This essay suggests a contrarian thesis. The Constitution is an enabling document for big government. Much like the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain is a fraud. In this case, for all the sanctimonious handwringing and the obsequious idolatry of the parchment, it sealed the fate of our liberties and freedoms and has operated for more than 200 years as a cover for massive expansion of the tools and infrastructure of statist expansion and oppression. Among the many intellectual travels I have undertaken, this is one of the most heart-breaking I have ventured on. I want to acknowledge the compass-bearers who sent me on this journey: Kenneth W. Royce (aka Boston T. Party) and his seminal book, The Hologram of Liberty and Kevin Gutzman’s Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution. For most of the political spectrum in America, the document represents their interpretation of how to make this mortal coil paradise. Even in libertarian circles, it is taken as an article of faith the Constitution is a brilliant mechanism to enlarge liberty and keep government at bay. That is a lie.
The document was drafted in the summer of 1787 behind closed doors in tremendous secrecy because if word leaked out of the actual contents and intent, the revolution that had just concluded would have been set ablaze again. They were in a race against time and did everything in their power to ensure that the adoption took place as quickly as possible to avoid reflection and contemplation in the public square that would kill the proposal once the consequences of its agenda became apparent. They were insisting that the states ratify first and then propose amendments later. It was a political coup d’état. It was nothing less than an oligarchical coup to ensure that the moneyed interests, banksters and aristocrats could cement their positions and mimic the United Kingdom from which they had been recently divorced.
The original charter of the drafters was to pen improvements to the existing Articles of Confederation. Instead, they chose to hijack the process and create a document which enslaved the nation. Federalist in the old parlance meant states rights and subsidiarity but the three authors of the fabled Federalist Papers supported everything but that. Their intent and commitment was to create a National government with the ability to make war on its constituent parts if these states failed to submit themselves to the central government.
As Austrian economists have discovered, bigger is not necessarily better. The brilliant and oft-dismissed Articles of Confederation (AoC) and Perpetual Union are a testament to voluntarism and cooperation through persuasion that the Constitution disposed of with its adoption. Penned in 1776 and ratified in 1781, the spirit and context of the Articles live on in the Swiss canton system and are everywhere evident in the marketplace where confederationist sentiments are practiced daily. The confederation’s design divines its mechanism from what an unfettered market does every day: voluntary cooperation, spontaneous information signals and the parts always being smarter than the sum A. confederation according to the Webster’s 1828 dictionary is:
The act of confederating; a league; a compact for mutual support; alliance; particularly of princes, nations or states.
I would advise the readership to use the 1828 Webster’s dictionary to accompany any primary source research you may undertake to understand American (& British) letters in the eighteenth century. It is the source for the contemporary lexicon. It is even available online now.
Here is a simple comparison of the two organizing documents:
`
Articles of Confederation
Constitution
Levying taxes
Congress could request states to pay taxes
Congress has right to levy taxes on individuals
Federal courts
No system of federal courts
Court system created to deal with issues between citizens, states
Regulation of trade
No provision to regulate interstate trade
Congress has right to regulate trade between states
Executive
No executive with power. President of U.S. merely presided over Congress
Executive branch headed by President who chooses Cabinet and has checks on power of judiciary and legislature
Amending document
13/13 needed to amend Articles
2/3 of both houses of Congress plus 3/4 of state legislatures or national convention
Representation of states
Each state received 1 vote regardless of size
Upper house (Senate) with 2 votes; lower house (House of Representatives) based on population
Raising an army
Congress could not draft troops, dependent on states to contribute forces
Congress can raise an army to deal with military situations
Interstate commerce
No control of trade between states
Interstate commerce controlled by Congress
Disputes between states
Complicated system of arbitration
Federal court system to handle disputes
Sovereignty
Sovereignty resides in states
Constitution the supreme law of the land
Passing laws
9/13 needed to approve legislation
50%+1 of both houses plus signature of President
Note that the precept of individual taxation was an end-run against state sovereignty from the very beginning. If the Congress does not wish to violate state sovereignty, then they will simply prey on the individuals in the states. It should be obvious that the AoC was not a recipe for government employees from top to bottom to use the office to enrich themselves so a scheme was afoot to precipitate and manufacture dissent over the present configuration of the central government apparatus which for all intents and purposes barely existed. The AoC was intolerable to a narrow panoply of interests and the Federalist Papers appeared between October 1787 and August 1788 to plead the case for a newer form of “Republic” authored by three individuals: James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton. The British had sued for peace in 1783 and the AoC were still in effect until 1790. Time was ticking to erect the new government apparatus that would strengthen the central government to eventually mimic the very tyranny which caused British North America to put the English Crown in the hazard. The Anti-Federalists rose up in response and provided what I consider one of the most splendid and eloquent defenses of small government penned in our history.
When the Constitutional Convention convened on 1787, 55 delegates came but 14 later quit as the Convention eventually abused its mandate and scrapped the AoC instead of revising it. The notes and proceedings of the cloistered meeting were to be secret as long as 53 years later when Madison’s edited notes were published in 1840.
“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” – George Orwell
We all experience the world through the shared stories and anecdotes that illuminate who we are and where we come from. Our educations, both formal and informal, drive the worldviews we develop over time. These are influenced universally by the transmission mediums we listen to or read about. Whether we are reading books (an increasingly uncommon practice), watching television, interacting on the internet or engaging in conversation with friends and family, all of these activities consistently and irrevocably develop and refine the way we view the world around us. First and foremost, our language and employment thereof has the most significant impact on us. I do not want to bother with the noxious collectivist apologias familiar to the deconstructionists like Chomsky and Foucault who profess that literary texts and contemporary conversation are freighted with the various Politically Correct bugbears like race, class and gender which to me is a neat but erroneous substitute for thinking things through. But they do make an important point: our language, in this case, English, informs and prejudices cogitation in an unconscious fashion that can short-circuit clear and conscious thinking.
For example, prior to 1860, the use of the phrase “the United States are” was far more common than the post-1865 notion of the “the United States is”. Mark Twain “observed that the Civil War was fought over whether ‘United States’ was singular or plural”. Some attribute this to Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, Professor of Greek at Johns Hopkins University, who wrote in 1909 that “if I chose (sic), I might enlarge on the historical importance of grammar in general and Greek grammar in particular. It was a point of grammatical concord that was at the bottom of the Civil War – “United States are,” said one, “United States is,” said another.”
“You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments: rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws….”
~ John Adams
As I have mentioned before, I am an Auto Mechanic. As part of my job I test drive customer vehicles to verify a complaint, and to recheck my work when it’s completed. The other Technicians I work with do the same thing, so when Law Enforcement has set up a speed trap, or are actively running radar in the area where most of us test drive, word spreads like wildfire.
But this time was different….
My buddy walked down to me and explained to me that he had just got stopped by the cops. I thought to myself that he must have been speeding, or committed the heinous crime of rolling through a stop sign, or some other arbitrary traffic infraction so I asked him what he had done. He told me that he had done nothing wrong, but a roadblock had been set up, and he went through it. He told me that the road was blocked off in either direction, and they were stopping both sides of the road. He explained the roadblock was rather large, and it was a collaboration between Local and State Law Enforcement. I asked if any Military was present, he said no, but said they sure did look and act like the Military.
He was not in his personal vehicle when they stopped him, and he was also wearing gloves. Technicians wear gloves to protect themselves from chemicals, and other substances that could cause harm. He was asked to produce his license and registration. He pulled out his license, and held up the work order explaining to this Jackboot that this was not his vehicle. He pointed to the Honda emblem on his shirt, and also pointed out the rest of his uniform. The Officer then asked if there was anything in the van that he should know about. My buddy responded, again, that this was not his vehicle, and he has no idea what’s in the van. The Officer then noticed that he was wearing gloves, and for some odd reason became very alarmed. The officer asked him why he was wearing gloves. He said it’s for protection from oil, brake clean, and other harmful fluids in the shop. The officer then asked him if he was sure that was the reason he was wearing gloves. My friend, at this point puzzled, responded with yes. The Officer then took his license and work order and walked away. He came back in about two minutes and told him he was “cleared to leave”. It’s important to note that the armed State Employee who was busy interrupting the daily commerce of everyone who happened to drive down that road was concerned by my friend’s uniform. How bizarre, an armed man standing in the middle of the road with the rest of his armed gang was alarmed my a man trying to fix this person’s vehicle.
“ATF is supposed to be the sheepdog that protects against the wolves that prey on our southern border, but rather than meet the wolf head-on, we sharpened its teeth and added number to its claws. All the while, we sat idly by watching, tracking and noting as it became a more efficient killer.”
– ATF Agent John Dodson, August 2011
Sheepdog or government lapdog?
The promotion of the three primary Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) should come as no surprise. The government is the entity in everyday life that usually rewards venal, unprofessional and vicious behavior on the part of its apparatchiks because that is the primary means by which government gets things done. The Fast and Furious Operation was designed as a sting by the ATF to allow straw purchases to flow to Mexico through the border states like Arizona where I live even though it has also been linked to a dozen crime scenes in the US. This clown posse intended to allow the semi-automatic weapons to get into the hands of the drug cartels so they could be traced and used to identify who was who in the evil narco-conglomerates in the greater failed state known as Mexico.
I use the term failed state in the common patois but as far as I can see it is a wildly successful state – a government dominated economy rich in agricultural and natural resources squandered by the Soviet-style central planning that has informed Mexican politics since the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) took over in 1929. The 1917 Constitution was an inspiration for the 1918 Russian Constitution for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Even though the PRI lost in 2000, the country continues to be a collectivist cesspool dominated by restriction on the most basic human rights. It was not until 1992 that Mexico started to extricate the state from religion and lifted severe restrictions. By Communist standards, Mexico is a close approximation of that wretched idea and like China, has been one of those rare Marxoid nations whose territorial ambitions have been rather muted and lazy beyond their contiguous borders. I would suggest part of this lies in the unique brand of military incompetency that places Mexico among the worst armed forces in the history of mankind, a circumstance that has greatly benefited America’s yen for expansion into the southwestern portion of North America.
The ATF conducted their bumbling operation without even informing the American embassy in Mexico City which later came to bite them badly. Let’s step back a moment. A straw purchase is a violation of American gun laws because it allegedly permits a potential felon or other ineligible owner of firearms to get a firearm by having another person purchases it for them much like the idiotic alcohol consumption laws in America where an adult will purchase beer or wine or liquor for someone under age. I have stated before that we don’t need to enforce the 271 Federal gun laws on the books, we need to get rid of them and the thousands of state and local laws this has created such as the urban hellholes like DC and Chicago where gun possession by the lawful is rather problematic but not for criminal who…ahem…break laws for a living. We need to strive to make America number one in gun freedoms and not number nine behind the Khyber Pass, Finland and New Zealand where these countries have no restrictions on suppressors, for instance.
