26 Oct Abbey’s Road Revisited by Bill Buppert

“Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”

-Edward Abbey

I am opposed to the government death penalty; I am also pro-life which makes me blessedly consistent.  I don’t trust the government to be able to have the responsibility to mete out the severest penalty and to do it either professionally or with no ill intent.  In the smaller sense, the evidence is massive of the queue of innocents who have been shot, hanged and poisoned for crimes they did not commit.  In the larger sense, government puts us all on death row and it is just a matter of time before the cops kill you in your home or vehicle or we suffer a massive die-off in America from an EMP burst that takes us from zero to 1850 in one second.

I use this preamble to frame my severe skepticism of the state doing the right thing…ever.

I am not opposed to the death penalty in my house if an intruder comes in to do harm to me or mine.  I am a Flinter in temperament and predisposition.  Most of the laws on the books are noxious, useless and liberty-draining in their essence.  Malum prohibitum is the state saying don’t do that because I told you not to.  A monstrous fallacy whose logic only serves to reduce subject populations to assessed rentals on their freedom that can be wrested away at the drop of the constabulary’s hat.  I daresay that one could throw every statute book into the bonfires across the nation when Americans finally wake up and throw off their shackles of serfdom from the local to the national level and folks would not find themselves in danger but would stumble into prosperity.

Will commerce and everyday living really come to a screeching halt because the cops don’t show up to work or the sloth-like city landscaping crews refuse to shamble from their abodes to dawdle at make-work throughout the burgs of America?  All of a sudden, the economic illiterates peopling the municipalities across the nation go on strike for higher wages and more vacation time for weeks, nay months; will the country stagnate and fold onto itself?

Things would be difficult for about 24 hours and then voluntarism, persuasion and cooperation would emerge as the factors that make life worth living.  No utopia this and there would be scores settled and inevitable failures but only the individuals would be responsible and not the nameless strangers who lord over every facet of our lives like pawns on a macabre chess board.  The heavy hand of the state and its shambling yoke-tenders would be out of work and the country would revitalize itself.  Tens of thousands of Americans would wake up the next morning and look to the east and exclaim:  “You can go away now; we have awakened from our prison slumber.” Ed Abbey made me say this.

I found Edward Abbey’s 1959 thesis on “ANARCHISM AND THE MORALITY OF VIOLENCE” over the weekend while reading a small tome entitled “Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist” by James Bishop, Jr.  I have been an Abbey reader most of my adult life and found his books amusing and penetrating.  He held a lifelong distrust of all authority, especially the state and the thesis provides an insight into the flame that burned in him at a rather tender age.

What one learns about personal political evolution is that a road traveled to the right is far more traveled than the opposite direction.  It is rare indeed for folks to age and yearn for more government instead of less.  I am a skeptic of the Left-Right paradigm but use it to simply illustrate the purpose.  It is far more descriptive to chart one’s philosophical predisposition on a quadrant chart at whose corners are interventionist, collectivist, non-interventionist and individualist on whose map I am located within the nexus of the last two.  Abbey was a strange brew at times but consistency escapes most of us for everything we believe.

He was a desert dweller who found the vast emptiness, solitude and sheer ferocity of nature to be a welcome refrain from dealing with the hubbub of civilization and the attendant disease of intrusive government.  His books are lyrical, intense and peppered with brilliance.  Kirk Douglas starred in a screen treatment of Abbey’s novel, “The Brave Cowboy” in the early 1960s called “Lonely Are the Brave”.  It is a powerful and stark film treatment of a  cowboy (the unacknowledged unconscious anarchist in American history)  marooned in a 20^th century which continues to ”fence me in”.  Douglas looked at it as one of his favorite roles in his film career.

Abbey was fond of saying that “sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul”.  He discovered anarchism at a tender age and sought to find the evolutionary blueprint for it in the earlier writings of Greek philosophers and everyone in between which his thesis is peopled with and he asks a central question:  will violence lead the people from their subject braces and chains into freedom?  He thought the answer was no but he was no pacifist, he was a staunch supporter of gun rights and considered himself something of the cactus in which one could only get injured if you screwed with something or somebody.  If you read “The Monkey Wrench Gang” and later “Hayduke Lives”, his growing frustration got the best of him as some of his characters started to break the First Rule in the Code:  Harm No One.

He captured the paradox that causes ethical anarchists the world over no end of consternation.  If one wishes to build a society based on cooperation and non-violence, how do you get there when the obstacles are erected by the most violent and sociopathic structures that man has created – government?  Thoreau and Gandhi broke the code but one certainly can’t patent the methodology nor hail its success everywhere.

A slight departure:  Please don’t mistake this sentiment to be in concert with the hippy-drippy allegedly antiwar Left of fable and fairy tale.  They are the creatures who authored the political and philosophical underpinnings of ALL the great abattoirs of history:  their sick and sweaty fever-dream of ultimate domination to create their beloved Homo Sovieticus.  Is it not interesting that the antiwar movement of late has all but dried up with the installation of Obama’s Marxoid-inspired kakistocracy and yet the war on the world continues apace?  The trail of tears and path of destruction has a sorrowful record burned into the annals of Western and Eastern recorded history.  Written in blood and stacked on hundreds of millions of corpses, the state is the Goliath that straddles across the corpus of man.  Abbey saw this.

Abbey also realized that the pacifist is road-kill.  He realized that the porcupine is the premier fauna of liberty.

So what do we do?  Gold, guns and groceries because that is a storm on the horizon;  everything you know and hold dear will be wrested from you in the next few years and it is up to you to decide what you want to replace it with.  More of the same or a brave new individual world?  You can easily loose your fetters and simply hand them to your children, or better yet, teach them how to wear them with resignation and helplessness.  Or better yet, you can fight and teach them to fight for self-ownership, autonomy and a well-oiled set of rules that seek to harm no one but bring hell on Earth to those who seek to enslave you…again.

“Grown men do not need leaders.” – Edward Abbey

20 Oct Secession Talk – “Good Morning, Mr. President” and Other Essays by Bill Buppert

A little over two years ago, I inaugurated the first of several conversations about secession on Lew Rockwell’s site.  The first essay is published below and the accompanying essays are linked below that.  Mordor on the Potomac can NEVER be reformed.  You can send good people but they will be sucked into a system of corruption and servitude that is unrivaled in the last thousand years in the magnitude of treasure and blood expended outside of large conflicts.  Buppert’s Corollary to Acton’s Axiom is that “Power attracts the corruptible and absolute power…”.   Rare is the ruler in any annal of history whose psyche is not possessed of a severe psychopathy or sociopathy;  they rule and seek to do so because they wish to control others ultimately through any means necessary.  Five millennia of chronicled history is unimpeachable – government, whether secular or religious, is the source of ALL slavery and the fount of most violence leading to the abattoirs like Nazi Germany or the USSR.  We are on the road ourselves.

The wars we now engage in AfPak, Yemen and Iraq are simply more expenditures of blood and treasure on top of the War on Drugs, Poverty, etc.  The Soviet Union was quite vicious but at least they were honest about their form of government.  We are bombarded by the government/media complex on the freedoms and liberties we enjoy.  What?  The attack on 9/11 and our war on Islam is not a response to their antipathy toward the aforementioned freedoms and liberties.  They have simply reacted to decades of war on the Middle East.  We were told they hate us for our freedoms but that charge is more fairly leveled at our own government.

Tom Wood’s advocacy of  nullification is all well and good but the final deSovietization of these united States will only occur when the American fractures, dissolves, devolves and calves off into the inevitable regional enclaves which have been created already through spontaneous order.  Remember that all the analysts were caught flat-footed when the USSR collapsed in 1989.  It can happen here so you had better prepare for the worst because it is coming.  That is not one Black Swan approaching, it is a flock.

The America in the Inland West is significantly different in culture and temperament from the Soviet-lite states of the Northeast.  This country was born in a divorce from the United Kingdom and a secondary revolution in 1860-65 to right fissures that had long been festering and it is time for the country to file for divorce again – from Washington.

I will be speaking on this very topic at the Freedom Summit in Phoenix, AZ on 4-5 DEC 2010.  I would love to see you there.   -BB

“Good Morning, Governor, how might we…”

“Mr. President, I realize you are a busy man so let’s get down to brass tacks…we are calling the ball and withdrawing our support of your Administration and the Federal government in DC. Effective immediately, we have coordinated to place all outgoing receipts to the IRS in a caged account here in Boise…”

“Governor, you can’t do that…”

“Please don’t interrupt while I am speaking as we are from this point onward peers in the family of nations. I hope you have reviewed the diplomatic instruments we sent by courier last night to Department of State which delineates the terms of our divorce.”

“I did receive those and you have no earthly idea the can of whoop-…”

“Please, sir, maintain the decorum of these proceedings so we can move forward to an amicable separation. I give you my personal assurance on the safety and well-being of all Federal personnel we have detained for immediate repatriation to the remainder of these United States. Any non-law enforcement Federal personnel who wish to remain behind will be permitted to do so.”

“I hope you have thought through the consequences of what you are embarking on.”

“Mr. President, we have had over two hundred years to give the rulers on the Potomac a chance but that time has expired. Effective immediately, all so-called Federal lands now belong to the nation of Idaho and we will dispose of these lands at our leisure. In the interest of burying the hatchet, we will not seek compensation for the seizure, abuse and tenure of Federal practices on the aforementioned land and call the balance even.”

“Those are my lands, Governor…”

“In actuality, they belong to neither of us, sir. On to other business, I have alerted my National Guard forces to establish checkpoints at all the main arterials in and out of Idaho. All National Guard forces deployed overseas will return home in the next 48 hours. I would also caution you on the use of military force to convince Idaho and its citizens to forcibly return to the yoke of the Union. Idaho has a well-deserved reputation as a rather well-equipped state in firearms possession and use. As Yamamoto said, you may find a rifle behind every blade of grass.”

“Are you threatening the president of the United States?”

“No, sir, I am simply making an observation about the hazards of one country invading another.”

“You are land-locked, Governor and wholly dependent on federal subsidy for a great deal of employment and infrastructure in Idaho.”

“No longer, the tremendous tax burden across the spectrum formally imposed in our nation as a subject State in your country is now effectively terminated and we are going to unleash the free market to address all of our former shortcomings as a result of the overarching government supremacism practiced here before. In telephone conversations with my neighboring governors, we are on the verge of Confederation negotiations that will pave the way for Idaho embassies in British Columbia, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. We do intend on opening a consular office in DC as soon as we can ensure the diplomatic baggage containing sufficient weapons assures our safety in the greater DC metropolitan area for our diplomatic personnel.”

“Governor, what Constitutional right do you have to secede from the US?”

“Mr. President, the behavior you have exhibited toward the Constitution has been at best characterized by active neglect and abhorrence for the restraint on governance in the Bill of Rights. I am rather surprised you would resort to assuming the document in any way has weight in Washington, DC. I would suggest my rights extend as far as our ability to throw off what has become a government of occupation instead of cooperation. We resign, sir and wish to go in peace.”

“I will use every measure in my arsenal to force you back into the fold.”

“Mr. President, thank you for the heads-up but we have taken certain precautions to ensure that any rash measures on your part have a disproportionate impact in the DC/Virginia corridor. Please don’t press us on the issue. I would like to offer one more rather moderate important proposal to our future business. These United States as administered by DC are now essentially bankrupt. War on the world, out of control spending and borrowing, debt and deficit, non-funded future liabilities in the tens of trillions and a banking infrastructure rotten at every level has pushed the US to an economic abyss from which it cannot shrink. We will provide you a demonstration project of tiny government, free banking and a formerly enslaved citizenry unleashed to realize their potential with no government interference. We simply wish to go our own way untethered from the Remora Nation DC came to symbolize.”

“Governor, this conversation is over.”

“Good day, Mr. President.”

August 9, 2008

Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

More companion essays followed:

Part II:   https://www.lewrockwell.com/buppert/buppert12.html

Secession Discussion:   https://www.lewrockwell.com/buppert/buppert13.html

Secession in ID, One Year Later:   https://www.lewrockwell.com/buppert/buppert20.html

Secession in ID, Five Years Later:   https://www.lewrockwell.com/buppert/buppert28.1.html

Secessionist Bookshelf:   https://www.lewrockwell.com/buppert/buppert21.html

Suggestions on How We Get There:  https://lewrockwell.com/buppert/buppert23.html

Secession Podcast With Lew Rockwell and Myself:   https://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2009/05/12/122-bill-buppert-secession/

My archives contain a variety of treatments on secession in addition to those mentioned above.  Enjoy.

18 Oct A Day in the Life of John Q. Public, Anarchist by Bill Buppert

“We must ask, not whether an anarcho-capitalist society would be safe from a power grab by the men with the guns (safety is not an available option), but whether it would be safer than our society is from a comparable seizure of power by the men with the guns. I think the answer is yes. In our society, the men who must engineer such a coup are politicians, military officers, and policemen, men selected precisely for the characteristic of desiring power and being good at using it. They are men who already believe that they have a right to push other men around – that is their job. They are particularly well qualified for the job of seizing power. Under anarcho-capitalism the men in control of protection agencies are selected for their ability to run an efficient business and please their customers. It is always possible that some will turn out to be secret power freaks as well, but it is surely less likely than under our system where the corresponding jobs are labeled ‘non-power freaks need not apply’.”

– Friedman, David. “The Machinery of Freedom Guide to a Radical Capitalism” 2nd Edition, Chapter: “The Stability Problem” p. 123-124

an·ar·chy

-noun

1.  a state of society without government or law.

2.  political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy.

3.  a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.

4.  confusion; chaos; disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith.

Again and again, people are shocked by even the hint of the elimination of large swaths, wholesale portions and the complete abolition of government at every level.  I do not advocate for reduction or cost effectiveness, I advocate for the complete withdrawal of government and its attendant violence out of lives.  I have mentioned before that there is no such thing as limited government; that is simply the hothouse for the future prosperity of the expansion of government.

I do advocate self-government but that is the only self-limiting government in human affairs. Mind you, this is a dystopian vision in which the individuals, businesses and entities will fail and even perish but is nothing compared to the bureaucratized slaughter that has been the story of man for time immemorial under the illusion that GOVERNMENT COERCION AND VIOLENCE IS THE SOLE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE OF HUMANITY.

I want to take the time today to illustrate why anarchy is no stranger in human affairs and is, in fact, the ordinary everyday principle by which most of us conduct our business.

John wakes up in the morning and prepares to go to work in the house he purchased for an extraordinarily inflated price due to the fiat currency, building regulations and property taxes forcibly extracted from him to turn the community’s children into shambling illiterate and innumerate morons who will respond obediently to the beat of the government society they are yoked to.

In spite of this, John elects to pursue a career to bring the forty percent of his total earned income home and do the right thing with it.  He is a middle class American struggling to make ends meet.  John is proud to be a producer and resents mightily the high taxation and regulatory tangle that has become life in America.

He goes on to eat his healthful breakfast which is the direct opposite of the Food and Drug Administration’s soothing recommendations to ensure he does not truncate the end of his life.  After breakfast, he takes the prescription drug illegally stored in an unmarked container on his way out the door.  The children are home-schooled so there is no necessity to wake them up from their slumber.  He is eager to ensure the government does not get their claws into his children to turn them into to the aforementioned urchins of the state.

He grabs his briefcase and pack and heads out to his truck.  Under Arizona law, he is practically unrestricted in his travel with a weapon and ensures that the Glock stored in the truck is fully operable and ready for social work knowing that the cops are far more interested in ticketing drivers than catching genuine criminals.  By their nature and incentives, the police cannot protect him in 99% of circumstances and he is on his own.  He dials the cell-phone and sets up his meetings for the day and ensures his lunch appointment is still on.  He pulls the truck onto the unimproved road and drives to the highway to head for work.  He drives as he wishes on his private road but knows that once he has hit the pavement on the government built road he will be in constant danger of being stopped by the armed tax-eaters for violations as minor as having a license plate light out to provide the impetus for a fishing expedition by the constabulary to exact new monies or escort him into the prison system.

When he gets to the intersection, the entire signal system is inoperable due to a power outage but he simply waits his turn and eventually motors onto the interstate.  He is a polite driver not because of the law but because he realizes that cautious and defensive driving is in his own self-interest.  A woman on the side of the road is having to change a tire so he stops to render assistance.

Once he arrives at the office, he strolls in and views with amazement the huge wall-space dedicated to the mandated posting of all manner of government foolishness concerning minimum wage (none at his office make anything approaching that even the interns), harassment and all kinds of silly mandates which do their best to retard progress and blunt effectiveness.  He shakes his head at the sheer waste and furrows an angry brow when he thinks that almost sixty cents of every dollar his company takes in goes to one government entity or another and he is not even paid or reimbursed for the collection service he is obligated to perform under penalty of fines or jail or worse.

After corporate income taxes and the strangling regulatory burden, one third or more of his employees are directly paid to deal with tax accountancy and regulatory compliance.  He is consistently amazed at the sheer anti-business attitude of all levels of government from local to federal.  They seem to attract not only the kind of folks who never met a payroll but people for him business is a dirty four letter word.  Ironically, their very plush lifestyles are underwritten in part by the tremendous tax receipts robbed from productive enterprises everyday.  He remembers reading “I, Pencil” and briefly being amazed at the depth and magnitude of the spontaneous order needed to produce such a simple consumable – all with no coercion or violence whatsoever.

He goes onto lunch later on and orders a burger “under the table” which is not cooked to the shoe-leather standards of the idiotic Health Department regulations.  In conversation with his usual lunch crew, they engage in friendly rhetorical contests about the latest political chicanery and the looming election that will change – nothing.

After lunch, he heads back to work to spend the afternoon not pursuing profit but to deal with the latest ingenious move by the local government to exact more monies from his company’s wallet.  They are pursuing the age-old nostrum of all politicians – to extract wealth from the producers to provide for their various captured parasite groups they have assembled who are their most loyal constituency.

John later calls it a day and heads home through the traffic snarl called public roads.  He is contemplating whether the new 8.2 mile private toll road is worth the monthly expense and decides to give it a try.  He was told by a contractor friend that private roads in new developments take an extraordinarily shorter amount of time to finish and do it under budget every time.  Of course, the local government has been more aggressive in annexing (a nice word for seizure) these roads shortly after construction which then leads to cops prowling for revenue enhancement.  One study reported that most signs removed improved driving instead of making it unsafe;  in America, it is a simply a pretense to end-run civil liberties for ticketing although no one has yet caught a cop on or off duty coming to a full stop at a stop sign.

John miraculously makes it home without being pulled over and wearily walks into his house to greet his wife and family.  She is a bit frazzled having spent the day home-schooling but glad to see the hunter return.  After a healthy dinner which again violates every nostrum of the vaunted FDA, he asks after his sons and daughter and the wife relates the verities of the day.  After a brief conversation, John proceeds to go to his shop to work on his gunsmithing hobby with his lads for the evening and then hit the rack in preparation for another day.

John and Jane Q. Public do not consciously realize it but they are practicing anarchists every day.  Despite the shaping of their minds by twelve plus years of government education and the nearly constant barrage of government supremacism in the media, even the most hardened collectivists tend to realize that their personal behavior is largely driven not by fear of punishment for doing the wrong thing but the moral compass which starts to crystallize at an early age for taking the hard right over the easy wrong.  This is not to say that fear, the sine qua non, of all government is not ever-present.  It has continued to warp and fracture individuals every day in their pursuit of productivity and happiness.

No one welcomes the flashing red lights in their mirror in which they think the worst case could be their death in spite of the fact that they are decent and rule-following folk.  They have read the stories and know that ALL cops are concerned about today primarily is obedience and not criminality.  If you doubt this, drive on and disregard the flashing lights.

We all rue the day (or months) spent laboring over the income tax compliance madness that is unclear at best and saps our energies even further.

If you think you are free, go fly on an American airline…or stop paying the HOA dues to the petty collectivist tyrants that are on your local board…or stop paying any of the thousand cuts known as taxes everywhere…or refuse to submit to the wanton and often vicious behavior of regulatory agencies if you are ensnared in their traps as a small businessman…

Government is not the glue that holds society together.  It is the savage adhesive that bonds subject populations to their rulers through the use of violence and the threat of violence to milk every possible liter of unearned succor to support the imperious warfare/welfare state that is so commonplace today.  The genius of the mechanism is the endless parade of useful idiots and willing slaves, especially in all facets of the media, who sing endless serenades to their keepers and controllers.  A somewhat Hobbesian version the Stockholm syndrome et large.

While I subscribe to the first and third definitions mentioned above, I do quibble with absence of law asserted in the first variation.  Laws aren’t necessarily codified only by government.  Countless large and small variations on the laws originated in spontaneous order occur every day.  The small business owner knows that cutting corners may afford short-term gains but will lead to long-term losses.  The family man knows that the care he affords his children is also a long term investment.

Honor is a gift a man gives to himself.

You participate in anarchy every day, simply expand the practice and prove to friends and family that a life lived without a yoke is a better life worth living.

Notes in the Margin: I have employed the word anarchist in this essay and avoided the term abolitionist which I had discussed in a previous essay.  The reason for the semantic employment is that I consider the use of the term anarchist in this essay to be descriptive of a state of mind both conscious and unconscious.  I think most humans have a natural tendency to resist being told what to do UNTIL the fear, deliberately and by chance, is wielded by external agencies.  The abolitionist recognizes their servitude and chooses to do something about it.

13 Oct The Fork in the Road by Bill Buppert

The Road to Serfdom

I have been incredibly busy with life, work and distractions that have kept me from posting on the blog on a regular basis and that will stop.  More ramblings are forthcoming.  The blog acts as a catharsis for the frustration I feel as the world tumbles toward a figurative sun on a bloody and futile path brought to you by the mean ambition of politicians and the warped societies these creatures nurture.

We live in a statist nightmare which feeds upon itself with the cannibalistic fervor of self destruction so common to their kind.

I was once a collectivist but saw that the reduction of human beings to cattle in a feedlot to serve the needs of the rulers to whom the populations have surrendered is a twisted and psychopathic fever dream.

I was once a Constitutionalist who joined the tired chorus of parchment worshipers who would mewl and wax nostalgic of old days they had no concept of.  I read the Constitution, I steeped myself in the arcana of the Founding Era, and I read the Federalist Papers and then took the antivenin of the Anti-Federalist papers.  I then went back and read the “failed” Articles of Confederation.  I studied further and discovered that the Constitution was a political coup designed to make all the states mere political subsidiaries of the central government…and to put THE gun in the hands of the national state…and to claim the same taxing authority of unlimited means and aggrandizement that the usual suspects both Left and Right sputter on about today.  We have been subjected to a heady and sophisticated propaganda effort from the ratification in 1791 to today to believe we are free in our homes, wealth and property yet a cursory glance at our history will reveal a sordid and grisly story of convincing a captive population that their financial exsanguinations and obedience to the state in all its guises will result in a heaven on earth.

A thought experiment:  What would America look like if two classes of tax eaters did not exist – tax collectors and law enforcement?  How could the state become the Constitutional leviathan it is today if not for these two institutions?  While the former is hidden from view through clever media manipulation, the latter is lionized, idolized and canonized.  Yet a review of the available data and the horrific video footage of police brutality show a coast to coast total disregard for the basest civil liberties and a teflon coating on the guilty armed tax eaters who act as concierges into the American penal system.

I then became a minarchist believing in smaller government.  I believed that a custodial government or a caretaker apparatus which would only build our roads and provide for courts and law enforcement would be necessary.  How bloody naive.  But guess what – no such creature has ever existed in the whole of human history.  EVERY smaller government grows larger and more oppressive over time.  The great westward migration in the nineteenth century in America wasn’t a frontier expansion; it was a massive exodus to escape the grasping and bloodied tentacles of government and the Constitution that had created the monster on the Potomac.  People wanted to be left alone, to no longer submit to the seductive vampiric embrace of the State with its empty promises and inevitable track record of failure, incompetence and bloodshed.  The State cannot exist without encouraging and enhancing its own ability to maim and kill its cattle whether domestically or in ill-destined adventures overseas.

There is no such thing as limited government.

I then became an anarchist believing that the world would be better off embracing voluntarism, cooperation, free markets and persuasion in EVERY enterprise of human behavior.  To take the position not of a pacifist which always works in favor of government but the steely-eyed and well-equipped warrior whose watch word is the total adherence to the philosophy of initiated non-aggression but a hellish response to being screwed with.

Never initiate force against another. That should be the underlying principle of your life. But should someone do violence to you, retaliate without hesitation, without reservation, without quarter, until you are sure that he will never wish to harm – or never be capable of harming – you or yours again.

– from THE SECOND BOOK OF KYFHO  (Revised Eastern Sect Edition)

Anarchist is a word whose misfortune is in its widespread misinterpretation and conflation with “bomb throwers” and violence by the self described anarchists since the 1990s who have robbed the word of all meaning;  twisting it to have the same descriptive value as unconstitutional, in other words, none.

I then became and remain an abolitionist.  Whether the glorious inspiration of Wilberforce or the forceful declarations of the brilliant individualist anarchist, Lysander Spooner, I am opposed to ALL slavery.  The conscription for war, the chattel slavery of human bondage, and the tax slavery we labor under today or the worst slavery of all – the savage misperception that servitude is freedom and that we are our brother’s keeper but only under the lash.

From communism to national socialism to neo-conservatism and every other bloody shirt waved by the starry-eyed collectivists the vision remains the same – one nation under the yoke of absolute power and the vast planetary feedlot known as mankind.

Fear is not only the mind killer; it is the key to your own serfdom.  Liberate your mind from the notion that it is right or virtuous to enslave your fellow man and the road to redemption begins.  As long as the State maintains the capacity to fine, detain, jail, maim and kill you, you have ZERO self-ownership.  And if you don’t own yourself, somebody else has the title.

What will you do with that freedom?

Notes in the Margin: I would like to thank my friend, Kaiser, for revising and improving the look of the blog.  More updates to come and all barbs and arrows are welcome.

Copyright © 2010 by hezekiahwyman.com

21 Sep Village Praxis: Transition to an AR Family for .223 and .308 by Bill Buppert

Never initiate force against another. That should be the underlying principle of your life. But should someone do violence to you, retaliate without hesitation, without reservation, without quarter, until you are sure that he will never wish to harm – or never be capable of harming – you or yours again.

– from THE SECOND BOOK OF KYFHO  (Revised Eastern Sect Edition)

It is official;  the local village is moving to the AR series for both carbine and battle rifle calibers.  We have been a FAL family for the longest time but as technology and evolving family needs change over time, we discover different requirements.  Two of my children and my wife will NEVER field a .308 rifle; therefore, a change in armory composition is in order.

An aside: I have a philosophy of single gun usage for various purposes, we are Glock-only for all the family and the village does the same.  As we all know, in the event of unpleasant circumstances or the need to conduct social work, one will never be able to think through a fight.  One relies on battle drills and muscle memory.  You will never exceed your highest level of training.  The adoption of a single standard sidearm speaks to this need.  In other words, one will not hesitate to draw and think:  what are you wearing today.  With four mods (plug, stainless steel guide rod, tritium sights and extended slide release), every pistol in the house is identically kitted and housed in the same kind of holster.

The AR will serve the same need.  There will be both .308 and .223 ARs but they will be slung the same and modded the same.  The internals and controls are very similar on both platforms.

The village armorer, Skip L,  offers the following advice:

Ten Second Rigs: https://www.tacticaltailor.com/minimav.aspx

I can load up 5.56, 7.62, and .40 S&W, depending on the mission… my standard is not to travel beyond 30 minutes from my MBR without a 30 second rig for whatever gun I am carrying so that I can fight my way back to my rifle (thank you, Jeff Cooper). The 10 second rig suits this purpose like a weekend camping trip and one sits next to my bed-stand with three spare .40 magazines and an extra Sure Fire.

I can wear two Mini-Mavs bandoleer-style for minimal low-profile CCW operations (I have worn it loaded with empty magazines at work to test this), or I can throw on the minimav directly over the MAV, increasing my normal ammunition load without having to adjust my kit, whatsoever.

Combat Rigs: https://www.tacticaltailor.com/mavvestbody2piece.aspx and https://www.tacticaltailor.com/xharness.aspx

I can adjust the MAV forward for chest carry (urban ops); underneath the arms for heavy full-combat loads, or for low profile extended CCW operations as well.

7.62 Versus 5.56 Carrying Protocols:

Also, while reviewing various potentials for family kit, the age-old 5.56 vs. 7.62 magazine pouches kept rearing its ugly head.

I want kit that is simple and readily adjustable… when I began exploring magazine pouches, I fell into two basic approaches:

1. Standard 5.56 shingles (single mag pouch) for everyone, including me, and a separate 7.62 shingle setup for what I am calling my SPR, or “one gun”.

2. Multi-caliber shingles called the “taco” by HSGI: https://www.hsgi.us/proddetail.asp?prod=HSG%2DTACO&cat=16

There are a few things I do not like about bungee-cord retaining configurations… Hot dry climates do not like them… But I did find the technique intriguing.

[BB adds:  We are also building what we call “Michael Collins Rigs” for wear under street clothing for both rifle and pistol.  If you look at the conflicts during the Easter Rebellion in Ireland in 1916 and the guerrilla activities in occupied Europe during the War to Save Josef Stalin, certain operations will demand the use of  civilian clothes instead of mall ninja accouterments.}

See the following build templates for an AR transition:

Family Kit

The Essential AR-Platform Cleaning Kit

18 Aug Home Rule! by Bill Buppert

We do not need to borrow any of the tactics from the post-WWII IRA (both Provisional and Official) because it morphed into a terroristic and Marxist cabal starting after its seduction by socialism in 1926 leading to the Troubles in the 1960s, Bloody Sunday and the final sheer exhaustion on both parts that led to the standing truce in 2005.

The IRA even went so far as to as to help the Germans craft an invasion plan for Northern Ireland call Plan Kathleen during the War to Save Josef Stalin (1939-45).

History shows that socialism and collectivism never lead to peace.  It is no mean coincidence that socialist Presidents like Wilson and Roosevelt maneuvered America into wars and privation of liberties.

Terrorism is politically motivated violence against non-combatants.  A non-starter for any successful and peaceful divorce.  We will leave that kind of behavior to our rulers because that and the threat thereof is the only way they maintain power. Period.  Whether strategic bombing or the tax code, the government sanctioned definition I just described is the modus operandi of our betters in the Federal government.

The storied and fabled struggle against British tyranny is in part front and center in the American psyche because of the number of Irish emigrants in America’s history and a shared language.  While historical distance and sappy literature and music make for a romantic struggle as exemplified in the brilliantly written but historically challenged film “Michael Collins”, the violent aspects are certainly a last resort for America.

The important lessons to draw are in the establishment of a Home Rule movement, a shadow government and the initiation of a diplomatic corps.  Each of these will in turn complement each other to achieve an overwhelming synergy movement in concert with an organized and synchronized secession mechanism.

Home Rule must become the rallying cry because the cause of secession is linguistically challenged in America thanks to decades of government education which has erased the true nature of the Second American Revolution (1861-65) and the 12 year military occupation afterward in the South.  Every American except members of the US nomenklatura were consigned to plantation duty and it has only gotten worse over time.  Slavery never ended, it was simply assigned to every subject in the land no matter their skin color.

Home Rule speaks to the unimpeachable observation that a township or county knows its business much better than satellite occupiers astride the Potomac issuing their Kremlinesque diktats and regulations.  This is not to say that political corruption does not occur at the local and county level.  On the contrary, some of the worst and dimmest in these burgs rise to the top of the political pile and until Americans discover that the fear they have of running their own lives without elected and appointed apparatchiks holding their hands or threatening their lives is unnecessary, this will continue.  This certainly does not obviate the need to get yet another layer of bureaucratic parasites and looters eliminated from the vertical hierarchy.

One layer at a time needs to be disposed of and the Federal level of governance is the most important issue for the purposes of this essay; hence the necessity for a Home Rule movement.  I have the utmost respect for the nerve and verve of the Texas sovereignty movements and they need to move in this direction.  They need to envision not only the probable but the possible and reverse plan from there.  Secession movements across the nation need to market a vision of why the Federal government must be ignored and expelled from their respective subsidiary political entities.  The history is vast and rich with anecdotes and empirical examples of why the Union must be rent asunder for the sake of freedom and liberty.  After a cycle of over two hundred years, we are exactly where we started on the eve of the First American Revolution but worse.  The Federal leviathan has had decades to refine its techniques of oppression and control.  Keep in mind that the Land of the Free is waging war on the world and itself, torture is official policy and it has a fiscal responsibility that would bankrupt it in moments in the private sector.  We have hit the iceberg and we are sinking and if the states and their various political units don’t start to consider the possibility of calving off the most monstrous financial calamity in human history, it will go to the bottom with the USS DC.

Even the most challenged graduates of government schools can grasp the essential distillate of Home Rule.  I will leave it to firmer adherents of the Constitution than myself to make this argument on Tenth Amendment grounds.  I happen to think the Constitution is the very blueprint that got us here in the first place.  If you doubt it, look around.  See anything that appears to be unconstitutional?  You won’t because that word has no descriptive power.  This nation has turned in to the Soviet-style colossus it is under the aegis of that fabled document.

Secession is a four letter word, less so as we advance into the 21^st century but Home Rule is a better word and a clearer step to get to the point where we can peacefully dissolve the yoke and fetters adorning the American citizenry courtesy of our overlords in DC.  Call them Home Rule Committees or Committees of Correspondence but the Sons of Liberty need to come back.

After this has been accomplished, shadow governments must be erected.  A shadow government mimics the duties and characteristics of the corresponding departments and administrative bureaucracies of the Federal leviathan.  The Irish rebels did this very thing under the leadership of the slippery Eamon de Valera. For instance, the Home Rule committees would establish their own mirror image of the respective bureaucracies within sensible limits.

If we mimicked all the bureaucratic agencies, there may not be enough humans in one state to represent them.  The Home Rule Committee would establish a Minister of Education who would describe how they would behave once they are relieved of the burden of obeying the Federal Department.  In the best of worlds, the Minister would go on to describe a reduction and elimination plan to strike the root and privatize ALL education functions and the Minister would close the door and turn off the lights never to return.  Full disclosure:  I want no government remaining anywhere but I simply aim high.  The same process would animate the entire coterie of shadow government representatives.

Imagine, for instance, a shadow government in the state of Texas with the role of Secretary of the Treasury.  During the hugely unpopular bailout of the banksters, this alternative shadow office would demonstrate through speeches and research why the health of the nation would be even worse after the rescue of the zombified corporations and Wall Street cronies who now undeservedly still shamble across the economic landscape of America.  It would make a dandy bully pulpit to electrify those who were paying attention that alternatives exist and a diversified, privatized and devolved America would rise like a phoenix.

Finally, the Home Rule and secession movements must pay attention to a vital part of meticulously planned state revolts and secession movements:  a sophisticated attitude to international relations and the nurturing of future diplomatic ties and relationships with influential nation states sympathetic to the yearnings for peace and prosperity.  The most likely states to finally find the courage to leave the Union are now in the inland West and Texas.  There is a future confederation in the Rocky Mountains and parts west.  Since there is Marxism in the Pacific Ocean, don’t expect cooperation in emancipation from the states of California, Oregon and Washington.  Like the Northeast, the chains and manacles that adorn most of these populations are polished and worshiped.

These are vital first steps to make this a reality.  The usual suspects in Mordor on the Potomac will say the right to treat with foreign nations lay exclusively with the Congress and the Executive per the Constitution but that very document is the sine qua non of all their power and until Americans wake up to the chains and fetters the Constitution enables, efforts to free ourselves will always be stymied.  Imagine a world with less government or better yet, no world order; at all.

13 Aug Freedom Fest 2010 Debate with Bill Buppert Thrashing the Constitution Finally Online!

Video and audio of the debate is now available in the Media and Interviews Tab at the top of the front page…

Links are dead and anyone has a copy of the debate, I would be obliged.

I am technologically challenged and through the good offices of my friends, Gypsy and Kaiser, I have finally managed to get a copy of the video of my debate on the Constitution v. the Articles of Confederation uploaded.  I happened to champion the latter.

The research I had to steep myself in to prepare for the debate was eye-opening and mind-altering.  I wish I had the entire afternoon to debate this with Dr. Howe.  He was an engaging gentleman but I think he severely misjudged his opponent and his audience.  Since I am an un-credentialed historian and thinker, he may have underestimated the power of the self-learned.  I also think his consistent motif of government’s overweening ability to crush dissent and force progress was not what the audience at Freedom Fest 2010 would applaud.

I am probably one of the only humans in the state of Arizona who has read 85 of the Anti-Federalist Papers and one of the only humans in America to read all three volumes of “The Emerging Nation: Foreign Relations of the United States 1780-1789”. All 3000+ pages…  Guess what?  During that brief period of time and after 1783, the states did not go to war with each other.

Please take a gander and let me know what you think.  More importantly, please disagree with me and show me where the logic is flawed because only through vigorous discussion can we take the scales from our eyes and realize that we have been propagandized and lied to since the end of the 18^th century.  Besides the Anti-Federalist papers, if you read one book, read American Aurora.  Not only will you get a sense of the sophistication of the thinking and writing at the time but you will see that America started sinking into the liberty-stealing mindset in its central governance immediately following the ratification of the Constitution.

Thanks, Kaiser. -BB

25 Jul The Constitution as Legalized Theft

Mr. Rose has produced a brilliant video on how the Constitution enables the legalized theft of your time and wealth,  The former especially if you withhold the latter. -BB

DI

See:

https://www.brasschecktv.com/page/900.html

This extractive power is UNLIMITED in the original document.  By the tenth anniversary of the ratification of this regrettable document, the taxes levied on excises, land, homes, slaves and document was well under way as established law.  Later to be rubber stamped by the “independent” Federal judiciary.

I urge you not to take my word for it nor that of the eminent Mr. Rose.  Read the Constitution.  Read the Anti-Federalist papers.  Read the Articles of Confederation.  Ignore anything you see on the television; as a matter of fact, cut off your cable or satellite immediately.

Here is my challenge to every one of my readers:  prove me wrong.  Show me that the Constitution lost its way and it was originally a blueprint for limited government.  Good luck, you will need it.

And as a a corollary to this investigation, answer this innocent question: what government in Western history has ever limited its power and grown smaller and weaker over time?

Government is never the solution, it is always the problem.  -BB

23 Jul Kosovo the Giant Slayer: International Law Declares Freedom from Bullying by Bill Buppert

“…Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better– This is a most valuable, — a most sacred right — a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world…”

-Abraham Lincoln 1848

We Have a Dream...

There’s been a stubborn paradox historically. It stands to reason that all nations as they perish and evolve from the ashes over time through their lifecycles are usually born out of separation and independence as secession movements to form their own aggregate nation-states.  Whether the bifurcation of the Roman Empire or the hundreds of other polities born of divorce, the paradox is that nation-states in their death throes (self-awareness of this is not always evident, witness the Soviet death in 1989) jealously and viciously fight the ability of subsidiary parts of their polity to have a peaceful divorce historically.  This has usually ended in bloodshed or enmity that has lasted for generations.  The states which fight the most vociferously have the most to lose.  In the case of these united States, the tax farmers in DC have the most lucrative protection racket ever devised in mankind’s history.  In addition to the tax revenues, they have ingeniously engineered a “fiscal debt” system which allows them to borrow enormous amounts of money with no intention of ever paying down the principle and servicing the deficit with a fiat currency largely “manufactured” out of thin air.  Its demise is economically imminent.

It appears the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that the 2008 secession of Kosovo from Serbia was perfectly justifiable. It was not a violation of any existing international law. While I think that the Serbians were certainly abused and maligned in the late 1990s during our unjustified and violent incursions against them by both the US and NATO, it provides a salutary lesson in independence and secession for all those who desire this watching from around the globe.  Jason Ditz wrote:

ICJ President Owada Hisashi declared that there was no part of international law that was meant to be a “prohibition on declarations of independence.” Serbia had refused to recognize the secession, as had a number of other nations with prospective separatist movements.

Though Kosovo’s declaration of independence is comparatively recent, the nation has been separated from Serbia in practice since 1999, and continues to be occupied by NATO troops to this day, though the exact purpose of the occupation at this point remains unclear at best.

The nonbinding opinion, passed in a 10 to 4 vote by court judges, sets the stage for Kosovo to renew its appeals for further international recognition. The tiny Balkan country has been recognized by 69 countries, including the United States and most European Union nations. It needs 100 for full statehood. I find it bureaucratically obnoxious that you would need 100 other nations to recognize you from a diplomatic and economic perspective in order to grant legitimate statehood in the international arena.  It appears to be an arbitrary standard cooked up by the worthies at the United Nations (UN).

The interesting thing about international law and international relations is that it is essentially a state of anarchy in which there are neither provisos nor organizations in place which would provide for the force or threat of force to compel nation-states to behave in a certain fashion.  Of further interest in this “state of anarchy” is the compelling success of voluntary agreements in stopping warfare between these states.  Certainly a well for further inquiry.

I don’t like the United Nations. I don’t like what they represent as an international cheerleading squad for collectivist despotism and hypocrisy around the globe. I don’t like what they do and I regret their presence on our soil. I don’t like the amount of money that we spend on them nor do I like what the International Court of Justice does in The Hague.

But beggars can’t be choosers.  I have spoken at length before about the absolute necessity for secession and devolution in these united States as a solution to the present problems that we have which originate with the Constitution in these united States.

I would suggest that this ruling be used as yet another intellectual bulwark to make the substantive case for the eventual breakup of these united States. This country is a nation birthed in secession from the United Kingdom in 1775 and the issuance of the Declaration of Independence shortly thereafter.  I repeat, we are a nation birthed in secession.

In 1860, 11 states seceded from the union at the time because of grievances and disagreements which led to this divorce. This led to a five-year conflict in which everything the nation was allegedly designed to do was turned on its head and Lincoln put us on the plantation. In the run-up to the war of northern aggression in 1860, a number of amendments were offered before the Congress to prohibit states from leaving the union. Ironically, it was Lincoln in 1848 that made his famous quote in which he said that if a state or states find themselves dissatisfied with the union and let them go in peace. 12 years later Lincoln and the radical Republicans have started to change their tune after the War of Northern Aggression and regrettable military occupation after, secession fell out of favor as an option to change the way things were evolving in these united States. There were attempts between the founding of the Republic and the Second American Revolution 1860 in which even northern states had floated the idea of secession.  Our beloved Supremes had the following to say in Texas v. White:

…the preservation of the States, and the maintenance of their governments, is as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National government. The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States. When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the States. (74 U.S. at 725-6)

A nice accompaniment to Dred Scott in the annals of bad law. There is an odd confluence between the two in the overarching concept of owning other humans. The Court is saying that one does not need to explicitly ban secession when the entirety of the Constitution blatantly presumes the perpetuity of states in the Union.  This is not my understanding but what permeates the bench as THE interpretation.  It appears that this put the secession bug to bed (as far as our Federal overseers are concerned) so the arguments which will emanate from the ICJ decision is what relevance will this law have to US decisions.  This does not make these decisions correct, of course.  The threat of the new Small Arms Control Treaty is very real because of the unfortunate parity embraced in the Constitution for the Senate treatment of its impact on US law.  Bad laws were meant to be broken.

I would draw your attention to a significant observation from the Paris Treaty which accorded the seceding states their liberation from the United Kingdom, to wit:

Article I of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783:

His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

The treaty EXPRESSLY acknowledges each colony as a sovereign state, and relinquishes Britain’s claim over it. There is no question of Great Britain’s intention.  In comparison, the great coup of 1787 began with the sovereign states and made the Constitution– not the other way around. So the states would each remain sovereign unto itself– unless they similarly made a clear and express declaration to transfer their sovereignty to another nation, and relinquish their own. (Thanks, Brad Anderson)

One can see how quickly the “Perpetual Union” in the Articles of Confederation was dispensed with during the Constitutional coup in 1787-91 with the mere flourish of a pen.

It appears that the International Court of Justice ruling on secession is going to have long-term second and third order effects which I don’t think they’ve taken a good measure of. While secession in third world and developing countries has been a rather frequent phenomenon, this has not been the case in the Western nations in the developed world. What we’re seeing now is schisms starting to develop within these sophisticated Western states to include Europe, Canada and these United States

In Canada, plenty of dissatisfaction is evident in Western Canada versus the eastern provinces. Québec still seeks its own status as a sovereign and independent nation. There is a Basque territory in the northeastern corner of Spain which has been given virtual sovereignty and secession privileges without formal secession because the Spanish have given up on putting the Basques under their boot. In these united States, secession is no longer a four letter word in the Western states. The notion has given to large popular appeal among broad sections of the population. I would not be surprised if this international ruling acts as an accelerator in the movement to finally break apart these united States.

Secession is not treason; treason is what the convened Executive and Congress do every day in DC.  However the political advocates of secession may view the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, this is a critical decision simply because of the diplomatic necessity of the recognition process.  If the secession movement is to be taken seriously as an alternative in an actual political agenda, the recognition of international law and its importance on the success of secessionist movements must be acknowledged immediately. The ICJ ruling should be hailed loud and clear in many quarters especially in the inland Western state in America as yet another brick in the wall.

Copyright © 2010 by hezekiahwyman.com

22 Jul Bring Back The Articles!

Ron Holland and I met at Freedom Fest 2010.  He was the moderator in the debate I had with Dr. Daniel Walker Howe. He and I got on famously and found that we had a lot in common as far as our perspectives on liberty and freedom and notably both the First and Second American Revolutions. He penned an interesting and well-crafted essay on LewRockwell today called Back to the Articles!

Here is an excerpt:

Finally, two key points about this proposal need to be discussed. First, it isn’t necessary for all 50 states to go through the state convention process and obtain the necessary majority support to secede from the federal government and then join a restored Articles of Confederation. In fact, it may not be necessary for even one state to actually secede from the current Washington-led forced political union.

Just the birth of a strong “Back to the Articles” movement and the creation of state independence groups with the avowed intention of repudiating the massive national debts placed on this and future generations by political and monetary elites against the will of the people could solve the coming debt and dollar problems. The threat of state independence and debt repudiation together with a new debt-free Articles of Confederation national government could be enough to force Washington and Congress to control the debt and dramatically cut spending themselves.

The other alternative is our efforts will frighten foreign treasury debt holders enough to force Washington to behave responsibly or else they dump the dollar and the debt now rather than after our government has taken our wealth and savings to delay a run on the treasury debt.

Second, a Back to the Articles movement is not necessarily a move to the right or the left in American politics. For example, my friend Tom Naylor in Vermont is leading a Vermont independence movement which is a small is beautiful, progressive and left-leaning movement quite suited to the liberal views of Vermont, while next door, “Live Free Or Die” New Hampshire has the libertarian Free State Project.

He also went on to mention Tom Wood’s excellent book, Nullification, which I commend to everyone out there who is presently reading this. While Tom contends that this is well within the Constitutional framework to use nullification and makes a very compelling case for how it has been used in the past for very virtuous and meritorious reasons and not simply the Progressives’ contention for ensuring that slavery was in place and other such inanities.  BTW, see Tom’s brilliant guerilla marketing for the book here.

I would submit to you that nullification works just as well in an extra-constitutional framework; a framework that dismisses the Constitution as the legal authority of these United States and evolves beyond the present constraints that favor the Leviathan state. I would like to discuss briefly a word that has no descriptive value whatsoever – unconstitutional. I would suggest that unconstitutional has no meaning whatsoever because as we have discovered under the Leviathan state in Mordor on the Potomac there is no limit on governance and the reach of the state. There is no limit on what the state can do to individual Americans. The Constitution was designed with this very notion in mind. The Constitution was designed under Hamilton’s machinations to give the central government, a national government, the ability to have unlimited extractive power of individuals living within the respective states. From the beginning, the document was designed to make all the states mere political subsidiaries of the central government. We see in the decade following the adoption of ratification of the Constitution in 1791 taxes levied on homes, land, slaves, stamps, documents and the list goes on and on. In 1794, the central government is pursuing tax invaders in Pennsylvania with military force. Later in that fetid decade, the Adams administration begins a vicious campaign against any criticisms of the Federalist hegemony in central government in a concerted effort to shut down through force newspapers unfavorable to the expanding tentacles of the Leviathan which had been created.

Again and again, and we hear the pathetic cries from the usual suspects that if we would only go back to the original Constitution all things would be set right. I have heard this worthless admonition at every Tea Party I attend or every convention I go to even those with a libertarian bent.  I am here to tell you we have arrived at the very juncture which was designed in the original Constitution. Since that first decade, a number of Americans have become extremely concerned at the exponential expansion of the state and the concomitant shrinkage of freedom and liberty. The worst rhetorical disservice the freedom movement has done to itself is to embrace, enshrine and idolize a document which sought to yoke them in the first place.

All governments from time immemorial have had one purpose and one purpose only – to yoke the unfortunates caught within their geographical boundaries and farm them as if they were cattle through the forced proceeds of taxation and associated regulations to vertically and horizontally control atomistic human transactions at the most basic level. The only reason we don’t see an income tax in that first decade after the Constitution was established is because they did not have the sophisticated mechanism and compliance machinery in place to track what Americans earned at the time. Of course, we can fast forward to Lincoln during the War of Northern Aggression and the passage of the first income tax in American history. The rest, as they say, is history.

As long as we remain within the boxed confines of the Constitution as the only acceptable paradigm from which to divine our freedom and liberty to escape our current difficulties, we will always be trapped in the same system. It is time to set yourself free, Coppertop, because you have been lied to and manipulated by a government-media complex and indoctrinated by a government education system to work within constraints which would never allow you to free yourself of the shackles and fetters you find about your mind and body. It so, don’t take my word for it, start conducting your own research.   The Internet has liberated memory hole and a search of Amazon will show you all of the forgotten texts and books that give a measure and guidance on what direction we can go. Lysander Spooner, the 19th century individualist anarchist, gave us a terrific vision of why the Constitution is fundamentally flawed and a recipe for big government.

In the end, the basic argument comes down to one simple transaction: is initiated aggression through force or fraud at any time a virtuous position for individuals or governments? I seek not only to abolish the Constitution, I seek to abolish the notion that one man without the consent of another can enslave, yoke, compel, tax or regulate another.

During my debate at Freedom Fest 2010, I contended that part of my affection for the Articles of Confederation was in its very ineffectiveness as an instrument of a state or states. What one finds in the Articles of Confederation, is a much truer representation of checks and balances than one would find in the much heralded Constitution in which I would submit there are no checks and balances. How can a government with three distinct branches not evolve over time to simply be a rubber stamp regardless of the branch for the expansion of their respective power at the expense of the individuals from whom they divine all of their succor and material support?

I am hoping that Ron Holland’s eloquent call to go back to the Articles of Confederation is simply the beginning of a new movement in these united States. One that doesn’t seek to fix an institutionalized system that is forever broken, but one which seeks to liberate all the subsidiary political entities back to their rightful position as masters of their own destiny and captains of their own fate. Ultimately, I favor human devolution in which the state withers away to paraphrase the dreaded Marxism: Philosophy and Economics
, one of the most ignoble and devilish slavers in world history.

Notes on the Margin. I have always been a careful student of language and its influence on how we behave. I used to employ the terms left and right and found them non-descriptive over time. I went on to use the terms collectivist and individualist, interventionist and non-interventionist and employ the concomitant matrices from these descriptions. I’m not satisfied with their descriptive power any longer. I have a better word to describe who the collectivists are and that word is slavers. In the history of yore, the slavers were the people responsible for removing human beings from one place and shipping them to another and putting them in the hands of another human being as the property of that person. That is how government is rationalized today. Simply call them what they are and join me in a new abolitionist crusade. -BB