End the War on Freedom

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost." -- Gustave Flaubert

From muth:

"Once upon a time a Republican candidate for president named George W. Bush painted his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, as a reckless big spender whose fiscal policies would mean that 'the era of big government being over is over.' Elect Gore, the Republican predicted, and before you know it the federal government would be as bloated and malodorous as a beached whale under a hot sun.

"...So where do things stand three years later? Federal spending is growing faster than at any time since LBJ, the budget is hundreds of billions of dollars out of balance, and the president appears to support new or expanded government programs for just about every voting bloc in America. . . . (T)he fiscal debauchery of the Bush administration is no joke."

- Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby

Supreme Court Overturns Gore's Endorsement Of Dean: Transfers Nod to Bush in 5-4 Decision - Hahahahaha. Satire, folks. [smith2004]

Just moments after former Vice President Al Gore endorsed former Vermont Governor Howard Dean for President in Harlem yesterday, the Supreme Court overturned his endorsement by a 5-4 margin.

The Court, finding the former Vice President's endorsement of Mr. Dean unconstitutional, transferred his endorsement to President George W. Bush instead.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said, "There's really no explanation necessary -- we're the Supreme Court, and if you don't like it, you can stick it where the moon don't shine."

Frank Ragoczy at Rocky Frisco' Liberty In Our Time - The Observable Truth About Human Behavior - power corrupts. Always. Don't miss the rest of the essays on the Liberty In Our Time site.

Humans have shown remarkable intelligence and ability to adapt and shape themselves and their circumstances, except in one particular area: in general, humans are despicably lousy at being able to govern, to rule and to represent.

You have undoubtedly heard the saying, "Power corrupts." The fact is there are many kinds of power that do not corrupt a person. The one form of power that always corrupts those who use it is the power to control other people's lives. Without exception, this always eventually drives the possessor insane.

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In the social climate I was born into, in 1937, having money was a VERY important thing to people, since that was toward the end of the Great Depression. Then, about the time I graduated from High School, in 1955, having money became the MOST important thing. I look around me now and I see that now, having money is the ONLY thing. Lots of money will easily purchase either "Justice" or Injustice, therefore everything now has a price, even things that were formerly held to be priceless, like loyalty, ones personal word, ones integrity.

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The greater the concentration of the power to use force and fear and murder to control others, the greater the potential for terrible widespread harm and crimes against humanity. The most dangerous thing in the world is government. Government is by definition the concentration of the power to initiate and use force. It is therefore the power to do evil and should be used with great trepidation and care, like fire or explosives or poisonous chemicals. Government sends bright young men and women into harm's way, wielding weapons of fire and steel and lead and plutonium against the bodies of babies, children and old people who have no part in the battles. This also does grievous harm to the young men and women who carry out these orders, even if they never receive a physical wound. Without the concentration of the power to do harm, this would be unthinkable and impossible. The awful anomaly of "terrorism," where humans become deluded into imagining that the Holy Creator requires that they murder strangers, is merely an attempt to respond in kind to what governments do as a habit, and have always done, historically.

Frank Ragoczy at Rocky Frisco's Liberty Page - Dope - why humans need drugs, why prohibiting them is the worst possible "solution" to that non-problem, and why the prohibitionists can't help themselves (their behavior gets them high).

Since pendulums don't just stop at the middle right away, it's only natural that a person or cultural group when first encountering one of these biochemical bypasses might go a bit crazy and perhaps overdo it at least for a while. On the other hand, because of the way we are wired and plumbed, the pleasure to be gained from fulfilling one of these ancient longings is self-limited. The point of diminishing returns is soon reached. If the supply of the medicine is constant and consistent, most of those who undergo this process will either finally graduate from it or establish a small non-incapacitating maintenance dose to ameliorate the original lack. In this process, sometimes a person may gain the ability to be consciously detached from the biochemical dance, and sometimes may gain control of the process and learn to restore the natural flow restricted in infancy.

As resilient and tenacious as humans tend to be, just about the only sure way to prevent this process from achieving its successful conclusion is to halt the process by forcibly withholding the medicine from the person, which reintroduces the original problem, greatly magnified, focusing all the efforts of the person on the attempt to obtain the medicine. The agency withholding the medicine becomes the enemy, the medicine becomes valuable and hard to get, and the cycle is locked permanently into place, unfinished.

The above account describes the situation with narcotics and stimulants. The psychedelics are an entirely different matter. Rather than bypass the biochemical programming, each of these makes its own distinctive end-run around, or leap over, the monolithic unconsciousness at the heart of the personal identity. Usually, the more consciously aware of the patterns and paradigms one's behavior stems from, the less obsessively-constrained one is by the programs. This opens up the possibility that one may learn to feel the fear but refuse to run away; feel the aggression but refuse to act aggressively. Practicing this diligently finally results in no longer feeling the fear or aggression. Our deep programs, hidden under our ground of being, influencing and directing and commanding our behavior, can be immensely powerful when first confronted consciously, sometimes producing panic and distress, which largely accounts for the fear sometimes engendered by these medicines. For this very reason, they have been the tool and test of the visionary, mystic and religious seeker in many cultures throughout our species' history.

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How cruelly ironic that the source of all this violence and persecution is the need in certain citizens to promote and proclaim and enforce their own standards of righteousness upon others by means of conquest and punishment, a need based on the satisfaction they obtain from their own resultant favorite endorphinal fix, the high that comes from a hit of their own personal inner dope-supply. In the final analysis, when it comes to violence and compulsive antisocial behavior, heroin and cocaine don't hold a candle to the endorphins and hormones associated with self-righteous meddling.

Thomas Sowell at Townhall.com - Economic 'Power' - is Wal-Mart good for America? The marketplace will decide, and only the marketplace is qualified to do so.

Apparently this giant chain sells 30 percent of all the disposable diapers in the country and the Times reporter refers to the prospect of "Wal-Mart amassing even more market power."

Just what "power" does a sales percentage represent? Not one of the people who bought their disposable diapers at Wal-Mart was forced to do so. I can't remember ever having bought anything from Wal-Mart and there is not the slightest thing that they can do to make me.p
The misleading use of words constitutes a large part of what is called anti-trust law. "Market power" is just one of those misleading terms. In anti-trust lingo, a company that sells 30 percent of the disposable diapers is said to "control" 30 percent of the market for that product. But they control nothing.

Let them jack up their prices and they will find themselves lucky to sell 3 percent of the disposable diapers. They will discover that they are just as disposable as their diapers.

ar15.com - NY State tax forms will have a spot for sales tax from internet and out of state purchases - Apparently, the state of New York has discovered a place to collect more tax without passing any new laws. I came close to getting myself banned with the following. You can read other people's posts on the thread, assuming it still exists, but here are my posts, in case they get deleted.

I certainly won't be using any estimated uncollected sales tax chart on my steal-your-income tax form. I'll simply write in zero. If someone wants to prove that I owe tax, they can be my guest. But they'd better watch their backside.

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I'm sick of choosing my language carefully. I'm sick of having MY money stolen, more and more each year. If the courts won't stop this blatant theft and the cops continue to enforce it, I have no choice but to take it into my own hands. Wish it weren't so.

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You're right. I don't understand the social contract. There IS no social contract. I signed no contract. No constitution that I did not sign, or swear to uphold, applies to me. The Constitution is a limitation on those public officials who have sworn to uphold it. It has no power whatsoever over me except in so far as I am cowed into obeying the so-called "laws" created by these cretins because of their army of men with guns.

And even if I DID believe in this imaginary "social contract", the courts no longer invalidate laws that are clearly unconstitutional. Witness the 20,000 gun "control" laws (which part of "shall not be infringed" do they not understand?) and the recent validation of the campaign finance "reform" law (which part of "Congress shall make no law" do they not understand?).

And you left out choice 3) Shoot the bastards. That choice becomes more attractive with each passing day.

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I often forget which boards are populated by happy slaves or people afraid to publically act otherwise. I'll attempt to remember that about this board in the future and act like a good little slave by avoiding topics where I find it impossible to do so.

Claire Wolfe wrote a few years back that "It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." That was a few years back. Things have gotten worse. Much worse.

As a reminder for those of you who have forgotten the spirit of American liberty and for those who haven't but who like being reminded, I'll quote the Declaration of Independence. Remember, the American Revolution was fought over a six percent tax. The flash point was an attempt by the legal government to confiscate arms. Our Founding Fathers would be called terrorists today.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."

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You have done a stellar job, Hiram, here, and in your earlier "social contract" piece, of describing the dominant paradigm. The schools have done their job well, feeding the inhabitants of the Matrix a steady diet of the blue pill so that the criminal enterprise called "government" can run their protection racket without the public even recognizing that it is a protection racket. Most of the inhabitants don't even know about the red pill and the real world outside the Matrix. And they'll do anything to avoid finding out. Why do you think some drugs are illegal?

But that's all metaphor. Back to reality.

Do you really think I can change anything by voting? I go into the voting booth and the only candidate there whose lever I can pull without vomiting all over the equipment is the Libertarian candidate, who has no chance of winning, and won't have a chance unless the Libertarian party drops its defining principle of the non-initiation of force and morphs into a mixture of Democrat and Republican socialism. Yes, there are third parties with better principles than the dominant two, but none of them has a chance of changing anything. They can't get anybody elected.

"But you can become active in Republican (or Democrat, yuck) politics, change the party from within, and provide real party candidates to vote for," say you. Yes, if I want to take five or ten years of my life and work like a demon, I could probably gain some modicum of control over the local wing of a party and have a real say in who is nominated for a state Senate and Assembly position and, maybe, a U.S. Representative position. Maybe I could even get them elected.

At the state level here in New York, my one guy in the Senate and one guy in the Assembly have Silver and Bruno to deal with. Everyone who's paid the least bit of attention knows that those two guys and Pataki are the only law-makers in New York. Everyone else is just window dressing. And even if there were a normal democratic process in Albany, how much could my two guys accomplish against the scourge of communist legislators from the Big Apple?

And at the national level I've got a similar problem. The medicare prescription drug scheme was dead on arrival in the House. It didn't have enough votes to pass in the normal 15 minute voting period. Only some big-time arm-twisting from the president's men managed to turn the vote of enough Republicans to win the day for this newest mass plunder. And this is business as usual. My guy wouldn't have a chance.

So what have I changed with my years of work? Nothing. Except to soil my conscience by association with liars and scoundrels, and to risk my immortal soul with corruption by power.

But back to the tax issue. Taxation is theft. Having swallowed the blue pill, I doubt that you'll even admit this. Many who do admit it rationalize it away by claiming that taxation is the only way to support government, and government is a necessary evil, so theft in this one case is OK. Bull. If your means are evil, and robbery at gunpoint, which describes taxation to a tee, certainly qualifies as evil, I don't care how lofty your ends might be. You are a criminal. You belong in jail. If your government depends on coercion to survive, it has no right to be.

And taxation remains theft no matter how many people vote for it. Just as the killing of innocents in war, e.g. the nearly 8000 dead Iraqi civilians, remains murder no matter how many people vote for it. One plus one equals two, and no vote can change that reality.

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