Thursday, October 5, 2017

Mass Murder

Earlier this week we were treated to the worst mass shooting in American history with nearly sixty people murdered and hundreds wounded.  The bodies weren't counted before certain interests were already screaming for more "gun control", as if that were not readily predictable.

Naturally, those same interests are quick to point out that this is a "mostly" American phenomenon, the implication being that the reason for it is that there are so many guns in America.  A more deeply tacit implication is that mass murder doesn't really happen in other nations, which is a bald-faced lie.  But it is not my purpose here to go into the facts about what happens around the world in that regard, but rather to point out a very simple observation in the form of a question: why is it that broader questions regarding possible causes for such horrific events are never raised?

Certainly, we never hear the questions raised in major network media.  Why?  Because they raise the possibility, I daresay the risk, of leading to answers not in good keeping with an agenda of vested political interest that would see the American people disarmed.

What sort of question could this possibly be, that it would be so religiously shunned by those whose ostensive raison d'être is to raise such questions, if only editorially?  After all, such questions are asked by media to the point of people no longer not wanting to hear them when the answers bolster the aforementioned political interests.  This most simple question could be couched in many ways, this being but one of them:

Has anyone considered the possibility that the reason we are seeing more massacres of apparently ever greater magnitude is because of the general environment of repression in which people are being forced to live at the whim of tyrants whose actions have been to circumscribe the rights of men with ever more severity?

 It is not my purpose here to go into a long-winded analytic exposition, but just to raise what I believe to be a most salient question of our time.  While perhaps no causal relationship has been revealed - certainly not in any analysis of my own to date - there appears to be a very strong correlation between political repression and the growing frequency and severity of individuals and even organizations lashing out against either those perceived as their tormentors, or even just anyone perhaps out of a level of sheer frustration and anger that they are no longer willing to contain themselves.

Do we really need a twenty-year, "government" funded scientific study to the tune of billions of dollars to conclude that perhaps the "rats in a cage" phenomenon applies to human beings as well?  Does it require rocket surgery to figure out that when the "state" imposes conditions of repression upon the very people whose liberties it is supposed to protect, some of the individuals are going to one day decide they have had quite enough and lash out?

A shooting occurs and what do we hear from media, "pundits", and so-called "experts"?  "He was mentally ill... blah blah blah..."  and "There are too many guns on the streets; they should be for police and military only... yadda blah blagger..."  That's about it.  In a world heading toward eight billion individual souls, those in media and other corners boil down the most extreme of the expressions of human dissatisfaction to these two hopelessly simplistic lies... and just about nobody seems to notice.

How is it that so many people accept (or reject) these two idiocies as constituting the entire universe of the broader question as to why some people end up "going postal"?  Even the brighter contingent who reject the media inaccuracies and outright lies about mental illness and too many guns fail to ask the deeper question as to why these things happen.  They fail to ask whether perhaps the general conditions under which we are forced to live on pain of the sword's edge might have something to do with the fact that people are "going crazy" with seemingly increasing frequency and severity.  This represents a failure of monumental proportion and so long as it stands, the people of America, not to mention the rest of the planet, will continue down the death spiral as they flee life in a mad race toward mere existence.

It must therefore at least be asked of every man to stop an honest and sincere moment and ask himself whether the ever greater constrictions placed upon the rightful prerogatives of inherently free beings might possibly have some causal place in a scheme of things that leads more and  more people into acts of desperation. Do not depend on network media to do this lifting for you because what I believe to be the clear answers do not lend themselves to the agenda of universal civilian disarmament and even deeper restrictions upon individual freedom.  The collectivist demands the individual be stamped out in favor of the hive.  He will allow nothing that might lead to rearward motion in terms of thought.  This is what "progressivism" actually means: the progression from freedom to full-suit slavery, which in turn requires ever deeper suppression of individuality, resulting in ever deeper anger and frustration as basic human nature is violated ever more cruelly.

Learn the math.  Put two and two together in connection of the dots.  Don't take my word for this, or anything else: learn to do it on your own.  I promise you that you are capable of good analysis.  All it requires is the will to the goal, and that first step of asking the question nobody seems to want to put out there.

Truth will come if you seek it, but you must do so honestly and with courage because the potential always exists that your world view may end up on the ground in shards.  But have no fear, save for the possibility of continued ignorance.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Reality Check Time, 31 August 2017.

This is an exchange I had on another site, for what it is worth.  The intentions of the original poster are all well and good, but they do not accord well with today's reality, I am sad to say.  But read and decide for yourself.  The gist of the OP was that those who seek freedom need to get out there and be more active.  My responses are in non-quoted text.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Originally Posted by *************** 
We have to stop being keyboard warriors
Good luck with that. The one thing for which credit must be given to the snowflake generation is this: they are getting out there in pursuit of what they believe to be right. The wholesale fallacy of that for which they stand cannot erase credit due.


and make small changes that we can repeat all across our nation to make real change.
(Good luck with that.)^2 Had we engaged in such action 50 years ago, hell, even 20 or maybe even 10, we may have stood a chance of succeeding. Now, I just do not see it. Either we have crossed a barely sensible threshold, or are about to at any moment. Once that boundary is violated, we no longer have the option cited, the choice having become binary: fight or cave. It is possible we're not there yet, but I would be surprised to find it was so. And even if we are still on the other side of it, I'm not seeing the sorts of talk that will put our circumstance in better footings. Quite the opposite, in fact. Sure, the "white majority", who are now openly vilified with the most outrageous lies imaginable, are beginning to push back. In the last three months, for example, I have seen presumably white people calling black ones "******" (« there goes that childish filtering crap again!) more openly and unapologetically than I have in the past 20 years. It is remarkable.

This is the sort of talk that drives us further toward the precipice from which nobody wants to fall. And yet, here "we" go, pedal to the metal as we speed headlong for a result some of us think we want. What few seem to realize is that the affairs for which so many seem now to pine (open warfare and other very serious physical conflict), is that the non-linearity of such engagements guarantees nobody the win. Besides, what does winning even mean here? The "right" would have a better sense of it than the "left", I admit; but would it be satisfying once achieved? I don't know. The "left", of course, in its typical way has no clue.

Consider BLM and their calls for the extermination of the white race. Even if they could affect that result, which is just this side of laughable, they seem to labor under the ill-considered impressions of what the aftermath would be like. Let us now speak plainly in dispense of all PC nonsense: most black people in America would die in a few short months absent the infrastructure upon which their knowledge-bereft lives depend. Who among them would know how to maintain the roads? Who would build and run the CNC machinery that produce the goods to which they feel entitled? Whence their food? Medicine and medical care? The list is long, their knowledge very short. Shorter still, their motivation to avoid devolution into their African roots of rape and pillage, rather than to become knowledgeable in the various professions, arts, and crafts that have kept men alive for millennia. The post-white BLM world would be a nightmare that IMO would as likely lead to their own extinction as to any more positive (in their eyes) result.

The same broad analytic result stands for the other "left" leaning groups such as antifa. Without the presence of the people whom they hate with such bitterness, they would not be long for the world - certainly not the one they think they want. Just consider the reality once again: they claim to want a world where people are not "RAYcis", and so forth down their dreary litany of unicorn-poo virtues; the ones for which they would see you dead in order to have. This is a presumably orderly world, but order requires not only discipline, but knowledge of very specific skills that produce that order. I see no evidence of those abilities in any of these rioting, tantrum-pitching infants. The only thing holding them together is their vaporously ill-defined hate. It appears to be literally the only thing they possess. I have yet to witness a coherent and sufficiently constituted account of the vision of the world they want. "Income equality" doesn't quite cut that muster.

These people, much like the ISIS folks, and all other ravening revolutionaries who are willing to put to a sword any and all who do not comport themselves sufficiently with the new orthodoxy, always end up turning on one another. When ISIS gets their Islamic world, will they be able to turn off their mad lust to saw off heads? Highly unlikely, meaning they will always be on the hunt for apostates. Antifa, BLM, and so on are no different because in this way people are no different.

Some might be tempted to cite Cuba or China, but they would fail because those states are precisely this way. The "state" is ever present in the lives of the common man in ways few want. Step outside of the orthodoxy - hell, just APPEAR to - and it is off to trial with the predictable guilty verdict; then off for execution, long prison stays, or the ever popular "reëducation".

So guys, if you want to murder all white people, fascists, what-have-you, then by all means have at it. If I live long enough through it, I know I will have the opportunity to sit atop my little mountain here in WV, laughing until the tears gush as I watch you either lose your bid, or fall into the most predictable end of mass autogourmandization.

So go for it. You never know, I might be wrong on every point.

End digression.


We can't do it bottom up though.
Top-down? This presumes facts not in evidence.


We need tangible results to present to any elite that this is a bad course we are on, and it must change.


Now THIS is top-grade foolery. An elite, almost by definition anymore, gives no shyte about what YOU think, want, feel, etc. Theye are, again almost by definition, mad as hatters. Where once Theye appeared to possess rationality and some form of sanity, today it seems they have walked away from all that. Granted, it could be all smoke and mirrors (prob. is IMO), but what if it is not? Going to your ultimate murderer with the "facts" makes as much sense as two monkeys humping a football.

The presumption that those in Congress or wherever, would be open to facts, reason, and sane rationality is FAIL^FAIL. It is senseless. Yes you have your Thomas Massies, that population countable on two hands with fingers left over in a sea of 500+ federal legislators. Do the arithmetic. States may fare better, but how much so, especially when from the other side of the coin you have the baby-brigade screaming for unicorn-poo and threatening to light the world ablaze if they don't get it? To whom does anyone with an IQ in the positive integers thinks that the "elites" in question are going to choose your side over the other? On what basis do you believe it?

Consider again the reality: if Theye ignore you, pretty well nothing happens... at least not immediately. Ignore the brigadiers and it's instant rioting. Even an honest "elite" does not want to be viewed as the guy who brought us burning cities. Therefore, he rightly gets on his knees and services the far squeakier wheel. When, in living memory, has it ever been different with any significance? Right.

Why would they want to rule ashes?
One man's ash is another man's paradise.


That's what their adherence to the prog system is. It's power but it's civilizational suicide.
If it's suicide now, it was suicide back when. So long as you can hold off the day of reckoning until three seconds after you pass from this life, all is good in the eyes of the insane.


We can only find a patron if we have something tangible to show them. We have ideas, we need programs and we need the practice.
This flies right into the idiotic. The FAIL is strong in this one, I see. Firstly, the dependence on a "patron" fails. Even the Ron Paul crowd has failed in this self-same way. Looking for a messiah is FAIL^FAIL^FAIL. It is ultimate FAIL and the reason why Empire societies are apparently inherently incapable of living anarchically. Put people into an Empire context and they go crazy in this way, always seeking to pawn off their responsibilities upon the shoulders of others. This is the prime example of a division of labor FAIL. This is why some form of authority is necessary in order to keep the general population from devolving into a race of tantruming infants. It is a sad, sad truth about the human animal. But then, there is the problem of corruption of those in positions of trust. Mr. Rock, allow me to introduce Mr. Hardplace.

The only hope, then, lies primarily in the attitude of the people. Clearly, however, people cannot as a rule be trusted not to go down the rocky path of entropic decay in terms of attitude. The temptations of entropy are just too great. Therefore, if we are to retain the basic Empire societal schema, a proper structuring of the conceptual elements regarding governance is, IMO, absolutely essential. This brings us back to notions such as a Canon Of Proper Human Relations, as well as a sacrosanct corpus of specification and rules for governance and how to deal with violations of the public trust.  This is all doable. I've done it, which proves the case. But without proper attitude, even that ultimately fails.  But I also believe there is a way to best ensure the survival of attitude in synthetic social arrangements that are by their nature anathema to such world-views.

One of them is mandating two sessions of primitive living, one during childhood and once again in adulthood. For a full year, you live in poverty.  No cell phones, no supermarkets, nice clothing. In short, you live like a cave-brute, scratching out an existence for yourself with no guarantee of survival. If you survive, chances are fair to middling you will have come to a greater appreciation of not only your freedoms, but of the results of the free cooperations between men. And on the off-chance that you might lose sight of those lessons, you are once again called to spend another year as a young adult, prior to age 25 perhaps, doing it all again just to make sure you've not fallen into any badness.

It's not a perfect solution, but perhaps it is the best with which we can come up because if people have proven nothing else about themselves, it is that there is no bottom too low to which they will not fall, given the chance.

Just a thought, anyhow.

The storm is growing. Be a lighthouse.
Now with THIS I am fully on board.


/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

End Text.

So there you have it, for what it may be worth.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.



Monday, June 26, 2017

The Method Of Rule By Policy




“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”
― James Madison

My knowledge of history is far from complete, and while I do not know when men began employing the Method of Rule by Policy, I do know that the Romans used it.  The Method fell from common use after Rome's fall, but appears to have regained popularity with the rise of the so-called "nation state".

The kings of yore were typically ill-educated and generally lacked a sense of long term, all-encompassing strategy to ensure their legacies survived the ages, despite the efforts of some to establish perpetuities.  Therefore, their dynasties rarely lasted beyond a very few generations.  It was not until the rise of the nation-state, which corporatized governance, that governmental "dynasties" began to stabilize over many generations with the potential to continue in what for all practical purposes is perpetuity.  The Roman Church is perhaps the preeminent example of the potential for longevity of well managed corporate governance.  The Third Reich is an equally good example of what happens when such governance loses its way, or comes against forces it cannot resist, despite seemingly very promising beginnings.  The Soviet Union and Red China are examples of how flagrant tyrannies are able to accomplish endless horrors and maintain themselves for extended periods well beyond the span of an ordinary lifetime.

As is typical in basically all cases of political power, governance becomes corrupted in one way and degree, or another.  The motives are as numerous as the stars and though we may generously assume the best of intentions, the propriety of the plots driven by such intentions is rarely very good.

The one thing that tyrants have had increasingly in common since perhaps the seventeenth century (just a rough estimate) is the use of the Method of Rule by Policy, to which James Madison refers in the opening quote.

What is the Method?  It is simply this: the drafting of bills so voluminous and/or incoherently worded, that once enacted, the "state" stands at its leisure to interpret its meaning as it pleases.  Rule by Policy provides tyrants end run around any more definite notions of "Law" that would otherwise limit power and hamper political designs that would otherwise rest in clear violation of such Law.

So-called "Obamacare" is one example of the Method in practice.  It is both voluminous, thousands of pages in length, and in places worded in such ways as to become practicable only through the "guidance" of state interpretation, which leaves those in power with leeway far broader than would otherwise be the case.  Sarbanes-Oxley is another relatively recent example, many of its specifications worded so vaguely that mere changes in policy from one moment to the next is all that is required to enable administrators and other instruments of the "state" to radically alter the practical mandates forced upon the people.  In effect, the Method allows for governance by whim, which is all that policy has ever been, and can ever be.

The Method, while powerful, is not quite perfect.  Courts, for example, can prove a great fly in the ointment of capricious and tyrannical fiat in governance.  There is a considerable body of examples where the capriciously altered requirements of a given act have been challenged in court such that those courts have ruled the legislation void and without force of law due to vagueness.  Similarly, courts have in some cases zeroed in on a single, far more specific interpretation of legislative language such that those in seats of power have become visibly displeased with the rulings due to "wrong" interpretations, as well as greatly narrowed channels of political power.  This is part of the risk that tyrants run when using the Method, but overall it appears that it has been a marvelous tool for foisting the most egregiously and dangerously violative idiocies on people.  On the whole, the Method has yielded benefits grossly outpacing the comparatively few and meaningless losses.

Therefore, one should keep his eyes focused for such bills, knowing what they are when encountered.  Nothing good can come of such legislation and every effort should be made to thwart all efforts to enact them.  Be neither fooled nor intimidated by the seemingly esoteric language found in virtually all legislation.  Learn to read the jargon of political nonsense and chicanery, and know without any doubt whatsoever that any time you encounter bills longer than a few pages or written in language most PhDs are unable to decipher, you have on hand an example of the Method of Rule by Policy, without a doubt an instrument whose enforcement will result in nothing good for everyone, save perhaps a select few.

If you are one not to believe in the conspiratorial nature of the legislative process, then consider that the only alternative is that those who draft such legislation are at best incompetents lacking the most basic qualifications for such work, and who merit nothing better than immediate impeachment for their gross and flailing ineptitude in such matters.

Be certain of one thing: men of good character and proper ability draft legislation that the average man can read in a short time and walk away with a strong and unambiguous understanding of what has been written.  So long as you hold on to that fundamental truth, you will almost always be able to tell when you are being sold a bill of goods by "government".

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Friday, May 12, 2017

Freedom And The Meaner

Today I would like to address a subject most people avoid the way men attempted to escape the Black Plague: Freedom and the Average Man, what I call the "Meaner".

Freedom is a two-edged (or more) sword.  Flight is a great illustrative analog.  On the one hand, there is the thrill of non-restriction - soaring high above it all in whichever direction one chooses, the ability to go where one wishes, when one wishes, taking the path one wishes, and usually with a dispatch that earth-bound transit will not allow. Those are what we might term as the basic thrills of flying.

Then there are the "costs" or "demands" of flight, which would include the various responsibilities and risks associated therewith.  For example, one must maintain minimum velocity and a sufficient awareness of his position in relation to the earth and other objects including other possible air traffic, lest he fall from the sky or  crash into another thing, resulting in grave injury or even death to oneself, others, and property.  In order to fly competently, one must be ultimately responsible for his state of mind while flying, as well as the attendant actions.

Bringing us to the issue of practical human flight, which requires aircraft and other human artifice,  the question arises as to why so few people so much as learn to fly, much less engage in flight on anything that could be called a regular basis.  One thing of which I can assure is that it is not money that keeps people from flying, but rather all the other costs associated with it, including fear.

The Meaner has no interest in flying sufficient to motivate him to learn because the thrill of the freedom it represents is far and away outpaced by his aversion to the demands it places upon him.  The practical human pilot must be well disciplined through his training.  He must understand the basics of aerodynamics, as well as navigation, communications, emergency procedures, and legal issues regarding restrictions upon his prerogatives as a pilot.

The artifice of human flight carries with it risks that strike great unease, if not paralytic fear into the hearts of average men such that they could give the least damn about the freedom to be found there.  Such men prefer the lie that is the false sense of security provided by their earthbound, foot-shuffling confinement to the ground.  The thrill and exhilaration of the freedoms of flight hold insufficient charm for him because it demands that which lies beyond the timid metes and bounds dictated by his morbid addiction to lassitude-driven convenience, his aversion to responsibility, and his crippling fear of, and aversion to risk.

And so may this analog be extrapolated to map to the broadest senses of human freedom.  The thrills and the potentials of actual freedom hold no sufficient allure for Johnny Average because the associated costs he regards as too high.

To be free is to be wholly accountable for what you think, do, and feel.  This demand of accountability is perhaps the most prominent element to which the Meaner blasts his fear-riddled, anger-laden voice of rejection.  The justifications he concocts pursuant to his counter-blasts represent such creative fecundity that, were he to make the same applications to his other pursuits, I daresay the great maladies of humanity would have fallen away from his shoulders long ago.

And so the mean man has contrived for himself this elaborate system of lies and other false reasons for rejecting freedom in favor of systems of slavery and their associated tyrannies.  He furthers his crimes against himself and his fellows with the added mendacity of calling the prisons into which he relegates himself and those around him, "freedom".  The irony of it burns with a hateful misery in the eyes of thinking men of integrity and honor, to drive them to the edges of despair.

Men's individual notions of "freedom" are almost as manifold as their numbers.  The one thing such notions carry in vast common is their false quality.

In a properly free society, men stand in apprehension of their positions in the grander scheme of things on  planet earth.  They know they are owed absolutely nothing, save that gained through their various acts of valid labor, whether singly endeavored, or severally.  They know that if they succeed at whatever it is to which they apply themselves, the fruits of endeavor are theirs and nobody else's.  They know equally well that if they fail, no man is compelled to render aid and assistance.  Therefore, they understand and accept the risks (a form of cost), of their freedom, as well as the benefits.

By extrapolation, they understand that not all of their fellows will "make it" in life, whether in pursuit of success in business, or even their ability to physically survive for another day.  Being generally decent sorts, average men chafe at the prospect of their fellows dying at the hands of circumstance.  The difference between today's Meaner, who is a Weakman, and the Freeman is that the latter understands that there is no conceivable social good that lends the least authority at any time to one man such that he may lord over and restrict the rightful prerogatives of another.

People of just about any stripe one might care to name appear readily willing to violate the property rights of their fellows pursuant to their pet social cause, whether it be hungry children, roadways, national security. "social" security/order,  natural disaster, religion, or any of a great host of other transparently false justifications for the violence-laced expropriation of property and violation of rights.  They care no whit about that, so long as they get to ease their consciences at someone else's expense.

The timid "liberal", quaking in bladder-emptying fear of potential violence, is more than willing to employ cruel and rampaging terror against his fellows through the instrument of "the state" in order to quell the riotous machinations of his fevered mind, running amok with panic and alarm.  Hence, he is wildly eager to see "gun control" legislation enacted in violation of a man's sacred right to the means of defense, as well as a vast host of other statutes in similar violation of the rights of men in order that his delicate sensibilities be spared the horrors of reality.

The so-called "social conservative" would have the homosexual censured and perhaps even imprisoned for having the temerity of upsetting his white-picket-fence vision of the social order.  Once again, his delicate sensibilities prove more important to him than any sense of equity and respect between men.  After all, we know all too well that the scourge of the queer presents a clear, present, and mortal danger to all and must, therefore, be stamped out sans the least hint of equivocation.

The clue-bereft "environmentalist", apparently oblivious to the hypocrisy of his pseudo-Luddite positions would see the world reverted to stone-age conditions for no other reason than to ease his falsely troubled mind regarding issues of habitat that he has taken from what is reasonable and dragged into the distortions of ignorant extremes, the rights of those around him be damned.

The so-called "social justice warrior" (talk about irony) would literally see his fellow men slaughtered in waves to make the likes of Mao Tse Tung and Joseph Stalin weep tears of bitter envy for sheer numbers, pursuant to their petty and tepid visions a perfect world devoid of risk and hurt feelings.  Heaven forbid anyone utter a word that meets with his disapproval.  Best to see such utterances met with the most draconian response, rather than so much as risk someone's feelings being nudged.

We could go down a very long list of groups whose visions of social paradise readily call for the restriction, violation, and even destruction of what is often vast numbers of their fellow men.  Fundamentalist Muslims cry for the extermination of Jews and other "infidels".  Some Christians would impose their beliefs upon all, as would some Jews.  Communists, socialists, scientologiests, flat-earthers, "futurists", Luddites, animal-rights activists, Democrats, Republicacns, men, women, gays, lesbians... the list is long, arduous, and representative of mankind's worst and most dangerous enemy: itself.

Such people are steadfastly opposed to accepting freedom from the one side of their mouths, while spewing "we're FREE!!" from the other.  They want only that which appeals to them, vociferously and often violently rejecting all that holds no shine for their eyes, no matter what anyone else might think or want.

So long as Joey Meaner gets what he wants from life, the rest of mankind can go straight to hell, willing to use whatever means he deems fit to oppress the rightful prerogatives of those around him and whose desires might vary beyond his narrow-between-the-eyes notions of what is desirable.

In this, human beings are almost universally corrupt.  I can think of but the smallest handful of individuals with the vision and decency to allow others their lives, so long as the rights of all are held sacrosanct by each.  That in part means accepting the horrors of life, as well as the beauties.  There is nothing wrong with helping those in dire straits.  Crime comes not in rendering aid, but in forcing one's neighbors to do so where the inclination is absent.

Will people ever learn the Golden Rule, which is nothing fancier than "live and let live"?  I cannot say for certain, but if our history is any indicator, then I must conclude that the prospects do not look good.

Freedom is at once both beautiful and horrifying; appealing and revolting.  The weal must come with its attendant woe; the benefit with the cost; the right with the responsibility.  As we engineers learned in all our studies of energy systems, beginning with thermodynamics, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." (TAANSTAFL).  Everything in this life costs.  Everything.  That includes freedom.  If one wishes to enjoy the thrills of flying high, one must accept that which is required in order to be able to do it, and accept the associated risks.  There is no one without the other, no matter how hard one might wish it to be otherwise.

Things will always go wrong; people will always abuse or otherwise act wrongfully.  There is no possibility of eliminating such developments.  Furthermore, I boldly assert that were it possible, such a world would be so boring a place that people would go out to injure themselves or others just to escape to drabbery of it.  Yes, I just made up "drabbery".  Get over it. :)

The sooner men of more ignorant and/or timid bents come to accept that life is not all bunnie, light, and unicorn poo, the more quickly will the world of men heal and come to optimum realization of its best potentials.  Until that time, the human fabric will always be significantly less than what if might become.  Fear, Avarice, Ignorance, and Lassistude (FAIL), no matter how devotedly one may cling to them, will never produce the results so many think possible.  Our reflexive approaches to "improving" the world are akin to feeding salmonella cultures to those dying of food poisoning with the intention of curing them.  It is not even remotely possible.

Life requires courage, lest it be reduced to mere existence unworthy of its own appellation.  It requires generosity of a sort that leaves people their rightful prerogatives intact, as well as smarts and a certain brand of industry, if it not to devolve and decay into an affair of poverty, violation, disease, chaos, misery, and living death.

Freedom is the only path that can optimize the human condition.  It is beautiful, but it can be scary, demanding, and outright horrifying at times.  But it is the only path toward humanity's apex, all others leading to Davey Jones' locker, whether sooner, or later.

So please, be of a generous spirit toward your fellows.  Be generous toward yourself through the rewards of courage, strong and honest intellect, and the drive to achieve for yourself, not to mention the will to allow others to do the same.  I promise you on my sacred word that this is the only good way forward.  It is the way of the Freeman in rejection of that of the Weakman.

Be free.  The payoff is well worth the cost, one hundred-fold.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Friday, May 5, 2017

Super-Organized Societies And The Warrior Culture

Human societies have existed for a long time, between 100,000 and 200,000 years, if the archaeologists are to be believed.  For the vast temporal majority of our tenure, people have lived in simple tribal societies, if the current interpretations of the anthropological record are to be taken as credible and true.  Once again, depending on whether the anthropologists have it right, so-called "super-organized societies" did not come into being until comparatively very recent times.

Even if we assume that the settlement at Çatal Höyök in modern Turkey was a super-organized society, that would place the emergence of such entities at only 9,500 years, a comparatively small chunk of humanity's time on earth, thus far.


Today I would like to address the concept of the "super-organized society" and discuss the advantages, as well as the drawbacks of such entities.

First, we must have on hand a definition for "super-organized society"(SOS).  This definition is not quite so easily conjured, but let us begin with the notion of a "superorganism" which one dictionary defines as:









noun

1.
a form of life composed of mutually interdependent parts that maintain various vital processes.
2.
a form of life considered as an entity; an animal, plant, fungus, protistan, or moneran.
3.
any organized body or system conceived of as analogous to a living being:

As is readily apparent, the definition may include almost any "higher" living creature, including individual human beings.  We will have to pin this down with greater specificity.  However, definition 3 appears to come very close to that which is pertinent.

It is of some value, however, to note that such organisms are generally constructed with components that are both specialized in their functional role as part of the greater body and that they are generally not well equipped to survive on their own, having become highly dependent upon the totality.  These characteristics are readily identifiable in the super-organized society in that there is a division of labor to such an extent that survivability of any randomly chosen individual is likely to be low in the extended absence of the whole.

Therefore, we may provisionally define "super-organized society" as one of such an architecture where we see specialization of knowledge and skill taking the place of generalized abilities in the individual pursuant to serving the various roles required toward the achievement of super-human endeavors, which are themselves defined as those not readily accomplished by individuals.

One might call it a step in the evolution of men.  Of course, others might call it something very different.

If we take this as the absolute minimum sufficient definition, we may then have a bare minimally sufficient, if still somewhat vague, notion of what constitutes a Super-Organized Society.

For the sake of clarification through comparison, consider the "primitive" society of the tribal anarchy where the populations tend to be small, usually counted in the hundreds or even less, and where the division of labor and the attendant specializations are far less evident.  In such societies, while there were certainly the hunters, as well as a small number of other broad specializations, these were very few in number when compared with what we see today.  Where, for example, the "medicine man" of ancient times embraced a broad avenue of responsibilities, today's analogs inhabit any one of a fairly large number of specialities such as oncology, podiatry, internal medicine, pediatrics, gynecology, ear nose and throat, nephrology, and so on down a considerable list of divisions.

When considering these differences, we see that one of the advantages of the SOS is the vastly augmented base of human knowledge.  Our technologies, whether medical, engineering, or what have you, could not be maintained in a tribal anarchic society because the body of knowledge is itself far too vast for such small numbers to retain in both memory and the ability to apply.  Even with modern cybernetic technologies, a general practitioner of medicine does not break out a how-to video and suddenly find himself capable of performing brain surgery.

When knowledge crosses some foggily defined threshold in terms of volume, complexity, and subtlety, it becomes necessary for humans to pick and choose relatively small chunks of it as vocation in order to be able to accomplish the goals of practice.  A brain surgeon's bailiwick is so complex and subtle, despite being so narrow in the grander scheme of human medical practice, that few if any are able to engage themselves in other specialties precisely because the demands of mastering the needed skills are so very high.

Super-Organization has lead to super-human capability where SOSs are taken as gestalts.

The disadvantages of the SOS are at least as significant as the advantages.  Loss of independence is a major problem from several standpoints.  Firstly and most likely is the fact that interdependence has been very effectively used as a means of political coercion.  Menacing a highly specialized man such as a brain surgeon with removing his ability to purchase food would be a literally life-threatening act. How many brain surgeons do we know who are also capable hunters and gardeners, able to raise their own food?  How many such men would be able to manage both the professional demands, as well as those of their continually emptying stomachs?  Few, if any.

Besides the high potential for political chicanery, there is also the threat of natural disaster.  When such events occur, the specialized people of the SOS are often helpless in the aftermath, incapable of performing for themselves the most basic life-sustaining tasks such as securing food and shelter.  Disasters such as hurricane Katrina bear stark and frightening witness to the dire nature of the straits in which typical men find themselves when all of a sudden the supermarket shelves are empty or no longer accessible.

Broad but relatively shallow knowledge is more valuable under circumstances where self-sufficiency becomes the primary factor in determining one's survival.  Narrow and deep knowledge holds greater value when circumstances are "normal".  Men can take greater risks because the means of minimizing the consequences of failure are at hand.  By this virtue are men able to accomplish greater things.  But when the fundamental infrastructure of the SOS is disrupted sufficiently, the highly specialized knowledge of the average man threatens to become virtually useless to the purposes of one's immediate survival.

And let us once more reiterate the threat posed by tyrants in pursuit of that which they desire.  Such men will use the weaknesses of super-specialization against individuals and even communities in order to have their ways, in the event such people prove resistant to the will of "authority".

Empire is an example of super-organized society.  Empire must perforce be of a super-organized architecture precisely because of the power required to establish and maintain such a society.  One cannot engage in the erection of huge edifices and monuments on individual bases, though there appears to be one or two examples extant where single individuals have managed such feats by means that remain unpublished.  That being the wild outlier, it is safe to say that temples of stone, huge statues and the sort could not have been erected without not only large numbers of bodies, but also very specialized knowledge of various crafts such as stone quarrying, cutting to dressed size, transport, and so forth.  We will, therefore, refer to such activities as being of a "super-human" nature, for the most part.  That is, they require capabilities beyond those of individual men.

Acquisition of all the resources required for the undertaking of super-human endeavors is no mere matter of wishing them into existence.  Gathering them takes work that in early times could be done only by other men, as well as draft animals; most often lots of them.

Human nature being what it is, most people undertake a given activity only if there is some payoff for doing so.  Working for a lifetime cutting stone for a temple is not an easy life.  Therefore, the payoff for choosing such a path would likely have to be pretty good for the average man.  That, or the threat to his life sufficiently grave.  Slavery of one form or another has been one of the key and defining characteristics of the SOS since time immemorial, or so it seems.  Empires undertook vastly superhuman endeavors, whether building temples and monuments, or conquering other people.  Only super-organization  can provide the power necessary to the exercise of such volumes of power, and when the average man was predictably reticent to become involved, the strong man became the tyrant and enslaved him by one means or another.

There appears some question as to whether the earliest walled cities such as Sumer were built with forced labor.  It is certainly arguable that it had not been, for in those days it seems that all a man needed do was walk away in the night, for there were perhaps no cages yet into which to place reluctant souls, and by definition there were no walls.  But even if the earliest cities were built on a purely voluntary basis, it seems that some men rapidly expanded their wills to include the use of force to build the monuments in honor of themselves, if nothing else.

The seemingly necessary enslavement of the populations of Super-Organized Societies has, in fact, become its obscured hallmark, which remains to this very day.  We have, as yet, failed as a species to contrive a super-organized societal architecture that does not base itself upon a hierarchical master-slave paradigm.  To this very day there are those who claim authority over the rest, all disagreement be damned.  And where the disagreement crosses a line scribed in the societal sand, most often arbitrarily and with capricious viciousness, "authority" responds with violence in some form and degree.  It is a pattern as predictable as the phases of the moon.

This, then, raises the question of whether there exists the potential for establishing a culture where the freedoms of men are fully respected while delivering all the promise of super-organization.  To that, I suspect the answer is "yes".  But in order to realize such a social order, one must have in hand the basic knowledge required, as well as the will and integrity not only to make it so, but to maintain it in the face of the unavoidable less-pleasant aspects of freedom, which most people appear overly eager to escape.  Few men are even aware of such considerations, much less possess the knowledge, but that is a discussion for another day.

Another requirement for such societies is abundant energy for all that is so low in cost that it is effectively "free".  Coupled with this is the need for sufficient advancement of human technology such that most, if not all, of the various labor-intensive endeavors to which men apply themselves would be carried forth to realization by machinery, rather than flesh and sinew.

We could, of course, return to a hunter-gatherer paradigm wherein each man did his thing, the division of labor was very broad such that most men were jacks of many trades, and live the simple life of our distant ancestors.  The probability of that, barring a Reset Event (meteor strike, Jesus returns, genocidal warfare, aliens landing on the South Lawn, etc,), is vanishingly small such that we can call it impossible for all practical purposes.  Therefore, if we are to live as free men without the hobnailed boot of some random tyrant upon our necks, we absolutely must evolve our technologies such that our hunger for "advancement" can be satisfied without trampling upon the lives of men in the process.

But that is only a necessary condition, being by no means sufficient.  Sadly, some people seem to have been born with the gnawing need to run the lives of others, no matter how materially wealthy they might be.  Call it a defect of character, genes, or whatever you wish; it matters not.  What counts is that such people would continue to work toward the acquisition and cultivation of political power in order to call themselves "boss" such that they bark and the rest jump.  That brings us to the notion of the Warrior Culture, which I will be addressing in some detail at a later date.

Warrior Culture is one based upon the principles of the "true" warrior.  Adjectives such as "true" have proven very sticky wickets in the past, but what I have in mind here is very specific and shall be defined and described in full detail elsewhere.  Suffice to say that in a Warrior Culture, the very notion of one man attempting to subdue the rightful claims of another, whether by force, fraud, or any other criminal means, would be regarded as utterly intolerable.  Any such violations of one man by another would be met with unequivocal resistance, up to and including the taking of life in cases where the perpetrators show continuing determination to commit violations against another despite having been warned away.

While political chicanery would not likely be eliminated in a Warrior Culture, it would take on a rarity so great and a character so different from that to which we are currently subjected, that the deeper threats posed by today's political machinery would be rendered effectively extinct.  This is because the skullduggery so common today would become so immediately and existentially risky for anyone attempting even the most innocuous seeming (by today's standards) usurpation, that they would fear for their lives at the very thought of it.  The cost of violating the rights of another would become so high in comparison to the reward, that nobody in their right mind would so much as waste their time thinking about such things.  Those who did would be taught rapid, harsh, and potentially fatal lessons in social Darwinism.

Not every man would have to be a warrior, but the more such men there were, the better.  There would, however, have to be a critical mass of such men who would act as the guardians of the rights of all.  I speak not of police or anything "governmental", but strictly of those who would make certain that the principles of proper human relations remained sacrosanct and in full, unyielding force.  Any man could be a warrior.  Any child, as well.  The more warriors, the merrier, so long as the understanding of equal authority to act remains clear and unchallenged.

In such a society, for example, rather than having police who enforce the arbitrary statutes of some equally arbitrarily constituted body claiming authority over the rest, all men would in effect be able to act as police in the defense of the rights of not only themselves, but of all their fellows as well.  There would be no special privileges or arbitrarily assigned super-authorities doled out to uniformed and badged men.

But such a social order would require great dedication to the principles in question, which would in its turn place significant demands upon the individual that the current trend of self-absorption cannot support.

Super-organized societies enable men to accomplish that which would clearly be impossible through individual effort.  Super-organization was necessary to the bootstrapping of human technologies much beyond flint-knapping and stone hammers.  However, the paths taken to super-organization by nearly all "leaders" has been rife with force, violence, and the threats thereof.  Why this has been the nearly universal historical case remains open to discussion, but is irrelevant to the question of whether force is necessary in order to achieve and maintain super-organization.  It is clearly not necessary, which means that given the proper knowledge and political/cultural will,  states of super-organization can be achieved and maintained without resorting to coercion in order to marshal the resources needed for achieving super-human objectives.

The other issue remaining revolves around the question of who should motivate, implement, and manage the establishment of human super-organisms.  Assuming such organizations are both desired and justifiable, should the "government" create and manage such social structures, or should their establishment and dissolution be left to individuals who choose to come together and, perhaps, go their own ways?  Perhaps there are roles for each in such matters, so long as men are not coerced into action by forces unworthy of a land characterizing itself as "free".

So long as super-organizations conduct themselves in accord with the principles of proper human relations, there is no need to fear them.  The issue of self-regulation has, of course, been problematic, failures having prompted government interference which have proven deleterious to the quality of men's lives, on the average, bringing us right back to the importance of Warrior Culture.

Without a population properly oriented to freedom and dedicated to living their lives in accord with the principles that best support it, tyranny shall continue as our daily reality, all good intentions to the contrary notwithstanding.  That is what is required in order to live in super-organized societies while retaining our freedom.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

The FAIL-plex

I've been using this sparingly for a few years, but am now of the opinion that it should be spread far and wide.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce the FAIL-plex, denoted as FAIL^FAIL.

What is a FAIL-plex, you ask?  It is the ultimate in FAIL, both in quantity and quality.  It could be called "ultra-FAIL" as well.  It is infinite amounts of the most intense FAIL possible in this, or any other, universe.  

Ultra-FAIL used to be an uncommon phenomenon, but with the dawning of the "modern" age (makes one wonder what "modern" actually means) it has become ever more prevalent, now to the point that it threatens to become the new normal.  

In times past, deeds that qualified as a FAIL-plex were usually of a self-correcting sort.  That is,  those who engaged in such acts usually did not live long enough to tell the tale.  Today, however, the vast infrastructural web now protects most people from the fate that Darwin's theories would dictate: extinction from the gene pool.  It shall be interesting to see where this all leads, ultimately speaking, and for how long we as a species shall be able to maintain the conditions that allow the individual to indulge in such acts without suffering the natural and rationally expected consequences.

This growing rate of the instances of the FAIL-plex has behooved me to introduce the world to this heretofore obscure term.  Where an interface will allow it, the superscripted "FAIL" should be entered as such, but where that is not possible, "FAIL^FAIL" will be acceptable.

Consider this part of my bequeath to humanity.  

You're welcome.

As always, please accept my best wishes.  Methinks we are going to need them.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Lysander Spooner's "Natural Law"

The writings of Lysander Spooner, a man characterized by one source as "an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, essayist, pamphlet writer, Unitarian abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century†", are worthy pursuits for all men with an interest in freedom and the objective principles of human liberty and should make it onto their reading lists. 
Spooner was a man after my own heart in that he had a penchant for getting right to the heart of a matter, explaining and discussing it in direct, clear, and essential language.  This work, "Natural Law", among other things, exposes the fraud that all statutory law represents.

Please enjoy and, until next time, accept my best wishes.

NATURAL LAW.

PART FIRST.

CHAPTER I.: THE SCIENCE OF JUSTICE.

Section I.

The science of mine and thine—the science of justice—is the science of all human rights; of all a man’s rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is the science which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the rights of any other person.
It is the science of peace; and the only science of peace; since it is the science which alone can tell us on what conditions mankind can live in peace, or ought to live in peace, with each other.
These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.

The second condition is, that each man shall abstain from doing, to another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as,  for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another.

So long as these conditions are fulfilled, men are at peace, and ought to remain at peace, with each other. But when either of these conditions is violated, men are at war. And they must necessarily remain at war until justice is re-established.

Through all time, so far as history informs us, wherever mankind have attempted to live in peace with each other, both the natural instincts, and the collective wisdom of the human race, have acknowledged and prescribed, as an indispensable condition, obedience to this one only universal obligation: viz., that each should live honestly towards every other.
The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: “To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due.

This entire maxim is really expressed in the single words, to live honestly; since to live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due.

Section II.

Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenceless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will, perform them. But of his legal duty—that is, of his duty to live honestly towards his fellow men—his fellow men not only may judge, but, for their own protection, must judge. And, if need be, they may rightfully compel him to perform it. They may do this, acting singly, or in concert. They may do it on the instant, as the necessity arises, or deliberately and systematically, if they prefer to do so, and the exigency will admit of it.

Section III.

Although it is the right of anybody and everybody—of any one man, or set of men, no less than another—to repel injustice, and compel justice, for themselves, and for all who may be wronged, yet to avoid the errors that are liable to result from haste and passion, and that everybody, who desires it, may rest secure in the assurance of protection, without a resort to force, it is evidently desirable that men should associate, so far as they freely and voluntarily can do so, for the maintenance of justice among themselves, and for mutual protection against other wrongdoers. It is also in the highest degree desirable that they should agree upon some plan or system of judicial proceedings, which, in the trial of causes, should secure caution, deliberation, thorough investigation, and, as far as possible, freedom from every influence but the simple desire to do justice.

Yet such associations can be rightful and desirable only in so far as they are purely voluntary. No man can rightfully be coerced into joining one, or supporting one, against his will. His own interest, his own judgment, and his own conscience alone must determine whether he will join this association, or that; or whether he will join any. If he chooses to depend, for the protection of his own rights, solely upon himself, and upon such voluntary assistance as other persons may freely offer to him when the necessity for it arises, he has a perfect right to do so. And this course would be a reasonably safe one for him to follow, so long as he himself should manifest the ordinary readiness of mankind, in like cases, to go to the assistance and defence of injured persons; and should also himself “live honestly, hurt no one, and give to every one his due.” For such a man is reasonably sure of always having friends and defenders enough in case of need, whether he shall have joined any association, or not.

Certainly no man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire. Nor can any man be reasonably or rightfully expected to join, or support, any association whose plans, or method of proceeding, he does not approve, as likely to accomplish its professed purpose of maintaining justice, and at the same time itself avoid doing injustice. To join, or support, one that would, in his opinion, be inefficient, would be absurd. To join or support one that, in his opinion, would itself do injustice, would be criminal. He must, therefore, be left at the same liberty to join, or not to join, an association for this purpose, as for any other, according as his own interest, discretion, or conscience shall dictate.

An association for mutual protection against injustice is like an association for mutual protection against fire or shipwreck. And there is no more right or reason in compelling any man to join or support one of these associations, against his will, his judgment, or his conscience, than there is in compelling him to join or support any other, whose benefits (if it offer any) he does not want, or whose purposes or methods he does not approve.

Section IV.

No objection can be made to these voluntary associations upon the ground that they would lack that knowledge of justice, as a science, which would be necessary to enable them to maintain justice, and themselves avoid doing injustice. Honesty, justice, natural law, is usually a very plain and simple matter, easily understood by common minds. Those who desire to know what it is, in any particular case, seldom have to go far to find it. It is true, it must be learned, like any other science. But it is also true that it is very easily learned. Although as illimitable in its applications as the infinite relations and dealings of men with each other, it is, nevertheless, made up of a few simple elementary principles, of the truth and justice of which every ordinary mind has an almost intuitive perception. And almost all men have the same perceptions of what constitutes justice, or of what justice requires, when they understand alike the facts from which their inferences are to be drawn.

Men living in contact with each other, and having intercourse together, cannot avoid learning natural law, to a very great extent, even if they would. The dealings of men with men, their separate possessions and their individual wants, and the disposition of every man to demand, and insist upon, whatever he believes to be his due, and to resent and resist all invasions of what he believes to be his rights, are continually forcing upon their minds the questions, Is this act just? or is it unjust? Is this thing mine? or is it his? And these are questions of natural law; questions which, in regard to the great mass of cases, are answered alike by the human mind everywhere.*

Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike, or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.

It would be no extravagance to say that, in most cases, if not in all, mankind at large, young and old, learn this natural law long before they have learned the meanings of the words by which we describe it. In truth, it would be impossible to make them understand the real meanings of the words, if they did not first understand the nature of the thing itself. To make them under stand the meanings of the words justice and injustice, before knowing the nature of the things themselves, would be as impossible as it would be to make them understand the meanings of the words heat and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness, white and black, one and two, before knowing the nature of the things themselves. Men necessarily must know sentiments and ideas, no less than material things, before they can know the meanings of the words by which we describe them.

CHAPTER II.: THE SCIENCE OF JUSTICE (Continued)

Section I.

If justice be not a natural principle, it is no principle at all. If it be not a natural principle, there is no such thing as justice. If it be not a natural principle, all that men have ever said or written about it, from time immemorial, has been said and written about that which had no existence. If it be not a natural principle, all the appeals for justice that have ever been heard, and all the struggles for justice that have ever been witnessed, have been appeals and struggles for a mere fantasy, a vagary of the imagination, and not for a reality.

If justice be not a natural principle, then there is no such thing as injustice; and all the crimes of which the world has been the scene, have been no crimes at all; but only simple events, like the falling of the rain, or the setting of the sun; events of which the victims had no more reason to complain than they had to complain of the running of the streams, or the growth of vegetation.

If justice be not a natural principle, governments (so-called) have no more right or reason to take cognizance of it, or to pretend or profess to take cognizance of it, than they have to take cognizance, or to pretend or profess to take cognizance, of any other nonentity; and all their professions of establishing justice, or of maintaining justice, or of regarding justice, are simply the mere gibberish of fools, or the frauds of imposters.

But if justice be a natural principle, then it is necessarily an immutable one; and can no more be changed—by any power inferior to that which established it—than can the law of gravitation, the laws of light, the principles of mathematics, or any other natural law or principle whatever; and all attempts or assumptions, on the part of any man or body of men—whether calling themselves governments, or by any other name—to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion, in the place of justice, as a rule of conduct for any human being, are as much an absurdity, an usurpation, and a tyranny, as would be their attempts to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion in the place of any and all the physical, mental, and moral laws of the universe.

Section II.

If there be any such principle as justice, it is, of necessity, a natural principle; and, as such, it is a matter of science, to be learned and applied like any other science. And to talk of either adding to, or taking from, it, by legislation, is just as false, absurd, and ridiculous as it would be to talk of adding to, or taking from, mathematics, chemistry, or any other science, by legislation.

Section III.

If there be in nature such a principle as justice, nothing can be added to, or taken from, its supreme authority by all the legislation of which the entire human race united are capable. And all the attempts of the human race, or of any portion of it, to add to, or take from, the supreme authority of justice, in any case whatever, is of no more obligation upon any single human being than is the idle wind.

Section IV.

If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth; what rights are, therefore, inherent in him as a human being, necessarily remain with him during life; and, however capable of being trampled upon, are incapable of being blotted out, extinguished, annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his nature as a human being, or deprived of their inherent authority or obligation.

On the other hand, if there be no such principle as justice, or natural law, then every human being came into the world utterly destitute of rights; and coming into the world destitute of rights, he must necessarily forever remain so. For if no one brings any rights with him into the world, clearly no one can ever have any rights of his own, or give any to another. And the consequence would be that mankind could never have any rights; and for them to talk of any such things as their rights, would be to talk of things that never had, never will have, and never can have an existence.

Section V.

If there be such a natural principle as justice, it is necessarily the highest, and consequently the only and universal, law for all those matters to which it is naturally applicable. And, consequently, all human legislation is simply and always an assumption of authority and dominion, where no right of authority or dominion exists. It is, therefore, simply and always an intrusion, an absurdity, an usurpation, and a crime.

On the other hand, if there be no such natural principle as justice, there can be no such thing as injustice. If there be no such natural principle as honesty, there can be no such thing as dishonesty; and no possible act of either force or fraud, committed by one man against the person or property of another, can be said to be unjust or dishonest; or be complained of, or prohibited, or punished as such. In short, if there be no such principle as justice, there can be no such acts as crimes; and all the professions of governments, so called, that they exist, either in whole or in part, for the punishment or prevention of crimes, are professions that they exist for the punishment or prevention of what never existed, nor ever can exist. Such professions are therefore confessions that, so far as crimes are concerned, governments have no occasion to exist; that there is nothing for them to do, and that there is nothing that they can do. They are confessions that the governments exist for the punishment and prevention of acts that are, in their nature, simple impossibilities.

Section VI.

If there be in nature such a principle as justice, such a principle as honesty, such principles as we describe by the words mine and thine, such principles as men’s natural rights of person and property, then we have an immutable and universal law; a law that we can learn, as we learn any other science; a law that is paramount to, and excludes, every thing that conflicts with it; a law that tells us what is just and what is unjust, what is honest and what is dishonest, what things are mine and what things are thine, what are my rights of person and property and what are your rights of person and property, and where is the boundary between each and all of my rights of person and property and each and all of your rights of person and property. And this law is the paramount law, and the same law, over all the world, at all times, and for all peoples; and will be the same paramount and only law, at all times, and for all peoples, so long as man shall live upon the earth.

But if, on the other hand, there be in nature no such principle as justice, no such principle as honesty, no such principle as men’s natural rights of person or property, then all such words as justice and injustice, honesty and dishonesty, all such words as mine and thine, all words that signify that one thing is one man’s property and that another thing is another man’s property, all words that are used to describe men’s natural rights of person or property, all such words as are used to describe injuries and crimes, should be struck out of all human languages as having no meanings; and it should be declared, at once and forever, that the greatest force and the greatest frauds, for the time being, are the supreme and only laws for governing the relations of men with each other; and that, from henceforth, all persons and combinations of persons—those that call themselves governments, as well as all others—are to be left free to practice upon each other all the force, and all the fraud, of which they are capable.

Section VII.

If there be no such science as justice, there can be no science of government; and all the rapacity and violence, by which, in all ages and nations, a few confederated villains have obtained the mastery over the rest of mankind, reduced them to poverty and slavery, and established what they called governments to keep them in subjection, have been as legitimate examples of government as any that the world is ever to see.

Section VIII.

If there be in nature such a principle as justice, it is necessarily the only political principle there ever was, or ever will be. All the other so-called political principles, which men are in the habit of inventing, are not principles at all. They are either the mere conceits of simpletons, who imagine they have discovered something better than truth, and justice, and universal law; or they are mere devices and pretences, to which selfish and knavish men resort as means to get fame, and power, and money.

CHAPTER III.: NATURAL LAW CONTRASTED WITH LEGISLATION.

Section I.

Natural law, natural justice, being a principle that is naturally applicable and adequate to the rightful settlement of every possible controversy that can arise among men; being, too, the only standard by which any controversy whatever, between man and man, can be rightfully settled; being a principle whose protection every man demands for himself, whether he is willing to accord it to others, or not; being also an immutable principle, one that is always and everywhere the same, in all ages and nations; being self-evidently necessary in all times and places; being so entirely impartial and equitable towards all; so indispensable to the peace of mankind everywhere; so vital to the safety and welfare of every human being; being, too, so easily learned, so generally known, and so easily maintained by such voluntary associations as all honest men can readily and rightfully form for that purpose—being such a principle as this, these questions arise, viz.: Why is it that it does not universally, or well nigh universally, prevail? Why is it that it has not, ages ago, been established throughout the world as the one only law that any man, or all men, could rightfully be compelled to obey? Why is it that any human being ever conceived that anything so self-evidently superfluous, false, absurd, and atrocious as all legislation necessarily must be, could be of any use to mankind, or have any place in human affairs?

Section II.

The answer is, that through all historic times, wherever any people have advanced beyond the savage state, and have learned to increase their means of subsistence by the cultivation of the soil, a greater or less number of them have associated and organized themselves as robbers, to plunder and enslave all others, who had either accumulated any property that could be seized, or had shown, by their labor, that they could be made to contribute to the support or pleasure of those who should enslave them.

These bands of robbers, small in number at first, have increased their power by uniting with each other, inventing warlike weapons, disciplining themselves, and perfecting their organizations as military forces, and dividing their plunder (including their captives) among themselves, either in such proportions as have been previously agreed on, or in such as their leaders (always desirous to increase the number of their followers) should prescribe.
The success of these bands of robbers was an easy thing, for the reason that those whom they plundered and enslaved were comparatively defenceless; being scattered thinly over the country; engaged wholly in trying, by rude implements and heavy labor, to extort a subsistence from the soil; having no weapons of war, other than sticks and stones; having no military discipline or organization, and no means of concentrating their forces, or acting in concert, when suddenly attacked. Under these circumstances, the only alternative left them for saving even their lives, or the lives of their families, was to yield up not only the crops they had gathered, and the lands they had cultivated, but themselves and their families also as slaves.
Thenceforth their fate was, as slaves, to cultivate for others the lands they had before cultivated for themselves. Being driven constantly to their labor, wealth slowly increased; but all went into the hands of their tyrants.

These tyrants, living solely on plunder, and on the labor of their slaves, and applying all their energies to the seizure of still more plunder, and the enslavement of still other defenceless persons; increasing, too, their numbers, perfecting their organizations, and multiplying their weapons of war, they extend their conquests until, in order to hold what they have already got, it becomes necessary for them to act systematically, and co operate with each other in holding their slaves in subjection.

But all this they can do only by establishing what they call a government, and making what they call laws.

All the great governments of the world—those now existing, as well as those that have passed away—have been of this character. They have been mere bands of robbers, who have associated for purposes of plunder, conquest, and the enslavement of their fellow men. And their laws, as they have called them, have been only such agreements as they have found it necessary to enter into, in order to maintain their organizations, and act together in plundering and enslaving others, and in securing to each his agreed share of the spoils.

All these laws have had no more real obligation than have the agreements which brigands, bandits, and pirates find it necessary to enter into with each other, for the more successful accomplishment of their crimes, and the more peaceable division of their spoils.

Thus substantially all the legislation of the world has had its origin in the desires of one class of persons to plunder and enslave others, and hold them as property.

Section III.

In process of time, the robber, or slave holding, class—who had seized all the lands, and held all the means of creating wealth—began to discover that the easiest mode of managing their slaves, and making them profitable, was not for each slaveholder to hold his specified number of slaves, as he had done before, and as he would hold so many cattle, but to give them so much liberty as would throw upon themselves (the slaves) the responsibility of their own subsistence, and yet compel them to sell their labor to the land-holding class—their former owners—for just what the latter might choose to give them.

Of course, these liberated slaves, as some have erroneously called them, having no lands, or other property, and no means of obtaining an independent subsistence, had no alternative—to save themselves from starvation—but to sell their labor to the landholders, in exchange only for the coarsest necessaries of life; not always for so much even as that.

These liberated slaves, as they were called, were now scarcely less slaves than they were before. Their means of subsistence were perhaps even more precarious than when each had his own owner, who had an interest to preserve his life. They were liable, at the caprice or interest of the land-holders, to be thrown out of home, employment, and the opportunity of even earning a subsistence by their labor. They were, therefore, in large numbers, driven to the necessity of begging, stealing, or starving; and became, of course, dangerous to the property and quiet of their late masters.

The consequence was, that these late owners found it necessary, for their own safety and the safety of their property, to organize themselves more perfectly as a government, and make laws for keeping these dangerous people in subjection; that is, laws fixing the prices at which they should be compelled to labor, and also prescribing fearful punishments, even death itself, for such thefts and trespasses as they were driven to commit, as their only means of saving themselves from starvation.

These laws have continued in force for hundreds, and, in some countries, for thousands of years; and are in force to-day, in greater or less severity, in nearly all the countries on the globe.

The purpose and effect of these laws have been to maintain, in the hands of the robber, or slave holding class, a monopoly of all lands, and, as far as possible, of all other means of creating wealth; and thus to keep the great body of laborers in such a state of poverty and dependence, as would compel them to sell their labor to their tyrants for the lowest prices at which life could be sustained.

The result of all this is, that the little wealth there is in the world is all in the hands of a few—that is, in the hands of the law-making, slave-holding class; who are now as much slave-holders in spirit as they ever were, but who accomplish their purposes by means of the laws they make for keeping the laborers in subjection and dependence, instead of each one’s owning his individual slaves as so many chattels.

Thus the whole business of legislation, which has now grown to such gigantic proportions, had its origin in the conspiracies, which have always existed among the few, for the purpose of holding the many in subjection, and extorting from them their labor, and all the profits of their labor.

And the real motives and spirit which lie at the foundation of all legislation—notwithstanding all the pretences and disguises by which they attempt to hide themselves—are the same to-day as they always have been. The whole purpose of this legislation is simply to keep one class of men in subordination and servitude to another.

Section IV.

What, then, is legislation? It is an assumption by one man, or body of men, of absolute, irresponsible dominion over all other men whom they can subject to their power. It is the assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to subject all other men to their will and their service. It is the assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to abolish outright all the natural rights, all the natural liberty of all other men; to make all other men their slaves; to arbitrarily dictate to all other men what they may, and may not, do; what they may, and may not, have; what they may, and may not, be. It is, in short, the assumption of a right to banish the principle of human rights, the principle of justice itself, from off the earth, and set up their own personal will, pleasure, and interest in its place. All this, and nothing less, is involved in the very idea that there can be any such thing as human legislation that is obligatory upon those upon whom it is imposed.

Sir William Jones, an English judge in India, and one of the most learned judges that ever lived, learned in Asiatic as well as European law, says: “It is pleasing to remark the similarity, or, rather, the identity, of those conclusions which pure, unbiassed reason, in all ages and nations, seldom fails to draw, in such juridical inquiries as are not fettered and manacled by positive institutions.”—Jones on Bailments, 133.

He means here to say that, when no law his been made in violation of justice, judicial tribunals, “in all ages and nations,” have “seldom” failed to agree as to what justice is.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner