Certainly as currently constituted, we by no means need "government". We do, however, need governance. The main form of governance, of course, is that of the individual over himself, which is the ideal. We all know, however, that this fails plenty often enough to have long ago become a serious issue.
When one fails to govern his own behavior properly, it then falls to others to govern him in his own stead. This is a most dolorous and taxing necessity, placing a clear and deleterious drag on "society". We might call it a "bad behavior tax". In many cases, individuals take care of the problems that arise from such failures to self-govern by any of several means. Shaming and calling out such behavior is one way, and it used to work quite effectively, at least in the less severe cases - but it seems to have lost much of its power as people have lost their senses of proper shame for committing acts meriting such mortification. Nonetheless, it remains effective in at least a small proportion of instances, most often by parents instilling such senses into their children.
Then there is the good old-fashioned ass-whooping. Sometimes a human being needs to have the crap smacked out of him when he behaves atrociously. A well chosen beating, whether serious or a mere smack in the head, can work minor miracles.
Finally, we come to the far more serious and regrettable levels of correction and defensivee actions in which nobody with a lick of sense wishes to engage and which often leads to catastrophic injuries and even death. The felon, in the commission of his crime, is rightly thrashed to within an inch of his life, or even killed outright when his actions threaten the integrity of another's justly held properties, most significantly his First Property, which we commonly refer to as his "life".
There are, however, many cases where not only is the criminal thwarted in his designs, but he actually survives his felonious stupidity, and having been apprehended alive, the commission of which must be addressed for any of several reasons of accountability and equity.
First and foremost is the question of primary consequence for having committed, or attempted to commit, a felonious act. We do not simply dust the criminal off and send him packing with a stern word about sinning no more. There must be a significant price to be paid for his choice of action as both punishment, as a warning that we, the people, are quite serious about our intolerance of such behaviors, and in some cases as a practical measure for dealing with those who have demonstrated themselves unfit to be in the company of their fellows. There is also the compensatory angle. Despite having been foiled, or by other means called to account for his actions, the criminal may have in any event succeeded, however temporarily or otherwise partially, in depriving another of his freedoms and/or the rights that derive so naturally therefrom. Perhaps he injured his victim directly in a physical manner, or perhaps financially. Regardless of the nature of the injuries sustained by the victim, the criminal must do everything possible to make his injured party once again whole. In cases where it is not possible to do so, or where the criminal is unwilling, the latter must then pay with the currency of highest value known to men: his time in the form of occupying in a prison cell.
For example, if he break the arm of his victim, he must accept and repay all medical expenses incurred to restore the victim's arm to proper function. But once broken, an appendage can never recover quite 100%, and for that irredeemable aspect of his crime, the felon must pay with his time, and plenty of it.
So the question really comes down to how do we, as a collection of individuals we tend to call "society", institute governance in the cases where criminals need to be called to account and be punished for their vile and unjust acts? Are we to leave the various compensations for crimes up to each victim or his chosen agents? Ideally, that would seem the best course, but in practical terms it will not fly well, human beings being what they tend. A kid tosses his baseball through your costly plate-glass living room window: do you execute him as your notion of necessary repayment? Let us hope not. But the little darling must be held accountable. What to do? How about courts? Seems like a decent idea, but there are problems, as we are all able to readily see.
There is talk in libertarian, anarchist, and similar philosophical circles, of "private" courts. The way this idea is peddled tends to emotional appeal, but I can assure you that such courts would be no different that those of the so-called "state". Why? Glad you asked. Because humans. We have "government" courts, and in far too many cases we see the various corruptions in those dens of the crapshoot, whether it be incompetence, malice, the avarice of blind ambition, revenge, or some other bias that sets men's hearts afoul of the good and the just. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that private courts would play out any better, all else equal, once again because humans.
The answer lies not in whether the courts are public or private, but whether and how they are held accountable for their actions. For example, if a prosecutor is compelled by Law to produce to the court all exculpatory evidence, yet fails to do so, there are currently few consequences of any significance to be risked. But if the punishments be truly draconian, how many prosecutors will be willing to risk them for the sake of winning a case they know is bad in the first place by virtue of such evidence? Very few in my estimation, and when the injured parties of such perfidy are free to bring charges against such a prosecutor and the courts are given no choice but to try them, perhaps prosecuted by a party of the victim's choice, justice is likely to be best served, if even then imperfectly.
This is but one aspect of governance. Perhaps there are others, but by all means this is the bulk of it.
The advantage here is that every walking and breathing individual human being holds an equal stake in the institution, as well as equal power and authority, assuming equal risks for any improprieties they commit. Properly architected and administered, each man holds equal power in that institution, most particularly where injustices and crimes are committed. Imagine that ANY man or group thereof may call to account any other individual or group who, in their capacities as officials of governance (police, officials of the court including judges and prosecutors, etc.) have committed crimes either of malice or blunder. Imagine how different would be our daily reality. Gone would be the fear of saying the wrong thing or exercising a right in a way that would allow a rotten cop to drag you to the station in cuffs, to face an uncertain fate at the hands of a prosecutor and/or judge whose intentions and competence are not up to proper snuff. When all those in the chain of justice, including defendants, face grave consequences for the commission of errors and acts of malice or other corruptions, the landscape is cleared of the minefields into which the innocent so often and ignorantly wander today, often with terrible results.
Consider the case where a man shoots and kills an attacker. If he innocently admits that he shot the aggressor with the intention of killing him, even if for the sake of saving himself from being killed, rather than of "stopping the attack", he will likely face murder charges. It is precisely this brand of insane and wild corruption on the part of prosecutors that must be put to its proper and abrupt end, the same to be said for all such acts on the part of those who swear oaths of good faith and competent service to the people. The Law is not supposed to lie as a trap in wait for innocent men, yet that is precisely what it has become, having made a mockery of itself and the justice it is supposed to represent.
Make this one fundamental correction and the issue of whether we need "government" evaporates into the aether, as if it had never existed in the first place. By this means and for all practical purposes governMENT is removed, replaced with nothing but the conditions under which proper governance may be implemented and administered. This is the way of an optimally free and civilized society.
We humans are of a sort always to press the boundaries of that with which we can get away. That which we tolerate, we get more of precisely because the perpetrators are always pushing that envelope. This is one of the certainties of life, up there with death and taxes. Therefore, onus rests with each and every one of we who draw breath to define the borders and enforce them with a single minded and dare I say vicious intolerance that leaves the criminals in no state of confusion as to what will be their fate if they trespass. This goes for all criminals, but must be trebly emphasized for those in so-called "government" because the tendency to push boundaries is greatest where the temptations are greatest. Those in "government" live with the greatest temptations of them all, and must therefore be held on the shortest possible leashes, to taste the whip most bitterly when their behavior exceeds their office.
"Govenment" is just a label. There is not such thing in actual, material existence, but only in virtual terms. Never forget this and always bear it in the forefront of your awareness. It is the people bearing that label who must be addressed in terms of their behaviors and how we respond to excursions beyond their duly constituted authority. They must be treated with grim reprehension and retribution that when we are done with them, they will never again hold the least inclination of be otherwise able to make an encore performance. This way, we enjoy the benefits of the protections of those dedicated to such, while minimizing or even eliminating the felonies of abuse, whether by intent or accident. This is the design intent of the 28th Amendment to the Consititution of the United States of America. It is meant to empower every American citizen pursuant to maximizing the individual's ability to stave off the "state" and prevent it from running amok in the ways now so commonly encountered by those agents thereof who believe themselves to hold the authority to commit all manner of heinous crimes against those to whom they have sworn their oaths.
We have the power to crop "government" abuse by vast proportions. Making it so, however, is wholly up to us. There is no cavalry coming to your rescue, so the time is here for you to decide what it is you want, and it it is proper service by those whose jobs it is to protect your rights, then you need to start moving your asses, an Article V convention of the states being the righteous means to that end. We are far from having exhausted our options and civil war is in fact not the only remaining path to liberty as I had erroneously assumed in my frustrations of days and years past. No, ladies and gentlemen readers, the AVC is the answer and i contend that we must endeavor to pressure our state officials to ratify the call that we may, as architects of America's future, correct the errors that time has revealed in our current scheme of governance. The system is broken and it is up to every last one of us to step up to the Good Endeavor pursuant to our statuses as Freemen and for the sake of our freedoms and those of our posterity. The worst we can do is to sit idly in wait for the cavalry to arrive, because they aren't coming. YOU are the cavalry. YOU are the means by which this blessèd land has fallen into such deep troubles, and out of which it must be lifted. Only we, as lovers of freedom, can bring about recovery and actual improvement. We do this by coming to understand liberty; coming to love it in spite of all the scary and difficult bit therein, and becoming the bigger men by forgiving the sins of those whose views with which we do not agree.
By intent or otherwise, those in power have us at each other's throats and it suits them well enough to keep it so. Don't fall for the bait, regardless of how you identify politically. There is an enemy of all humanity: the tyrant and his enforcers. Let us come together in sufficiency to stop him dead in his tracks and ensure that his kind can no longer rise to power. He will always exist, and so it is to the dirt to which we much relegate him, and it is in the dirt to which we must ensure he remains forever. After that, if we want to return to the back-biting, then so be it. But for now, let us be at the very least, strange bedfellows acting in common to displace and render impotent those whose aim is to bring us all to wrack and ruin. We can do it, but we must have the will to do so and to set aside our differences, at least for the time being.
God bless America, God bless our freedom, God bless you, and as always please accept my best wishes.
When one fails to govern his own behavior properly, it then falls to others to govern him in his own stead. This is a most dolorous and taxing necessity, placing a clear and deleterious drag on "society". We might call it a "bad behavior tax". In many cases, individuals take care of the problems that arise from such failures to self-govern by any of several means. Shaming and calling out such behavior is one way, and it used to work quite effectively, at least in the less severe cases - but it seems to have lost much of its power as people have lost their senses of proper shame for committing acts meriting such mortification. Nonetheless, it remains effective in at least a small proportion of instances, most often by parents instilling such senses into their children.
Then there is the good old-fashioned ass-whooping. Sometimes a human being needs to have the crap smacked out of him when he behaves atrociously. A well chosen beating, whether serious or a mere smack in the head, can work minor miracles.
Finally, we come to the far more serious and regrettable levels of correction and defensivee actions in which nobody with a lick of sense wishes to engage and which often leads to catastrophic injuries and even death. The felon, in the commission of his crime, is rightly thrashed to within an inch of his life, or even killed outright when his actions threaten the integrity of another's justly held properties, most significantly his First Property, which we commonly refer to as his "life".
There are, however, many cases where not only is the criminal thwarted in his designs, but he actually survives his felonious stupidity, and having been apprehended alive, the commission of which must be addressed for any of several reasons of accountability and equity.
First and foremost is the question of primary consequence for having committed, or attempted to commit, a felonious act. We do not simply dust the criminal off and send him packing with a stern word about sinning no more. There must be a significant price to be paid for his choice of action as both punishment, as a warning that we, the people, are quite serious about our intolerance of such behaviors, and in some cases as a practical measure for dealing with those who have demonstrated themselves unfit to be in the company of their fellows. There is also the compensatory angle. Despite having been foiled, or by other means called to account for his actions, the criminal may have in any event succeeded, however temporarily or otherwise partially, in depriving another of his freedoms and/or the rights that derive so naturally therefrom. Perhaps he injured his victim directly in a physical manner, or perhaps financially. Regardless of the nature of the injuries sustained by the victim, the criminal must do everything possible to make his injured party once again whole. In cases where it is not possible to do so, or where the criminal is unwilling, the latter must then pay with the currency of highest value known to men: his time in the form of occupying in a prison cell.
For example, if he break the arm of his victim, he must accept and repay all medical expenses incurred to restore the victim's arm to proper function. But once broken, an appendage can never recover quite 100%, and for that irredeemable aspect of his crime, the felon must pay with his time, and plenty of it.
So the question really comes down to how do we, as a collection of individuals we tend to call "society", institute governance in the cases where criminals need to be called to account and be punished for their vile and unjust acts? Are we to leave the various compensations for crimes up to each victim or his chosen agents? Ideally, that would seem the best course, but in practical terms it will not fly well, human beings being what they tend. A kid tosses his baseball through your costly plate-glass living room window: do you execute him as your notion of necessary repayment? Let us hope not. But the little darling must be held accountable. What to do? How about courts? Seems like a decent idea, but there are problems, as we are all able to readily see.
There is talk in libertarian, anarchist, and similar philosophical circles, of "private" courts. The way this idea is peddled tends to emotional appeal, but I can assure you that such courts would be no different that those of the so-called "state". Why? Glad you asked. Because humans. We have "government" courts, and in far too many cases we see the various corruptions in those dens of the crapshoot, whether it be incompetence, malice, the avarice of blind ambition, revenge, or some other bias that sets men's hearts afoul of the good and the just. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that private courts would play out any better, all else equal, once again because humans.
The answer lies not in whether the courts are public or private, but whether and how they are held accountable for their actions. For example, if a prosecutor is compelled by Law to produce to the court all exculpatory evidence, yet fails to do so, there are currently few consequences of any significance to be risked. But if the punishments be truly draconian, how many prosecutors will be willing to risk them for the sake of winning a case they know is bad in the first place by virtue of such evidence? Very few in my estimation, and when the injured parties of such perfidy are free to bring charges against such a prosecutor and the courts are given no choice but to try them, perhaps prosecuted by a party of the victim's choice, justice is likely to be best served, if even then imperfectly.
This is but one aspect of governance. Perhaps there are others, but by all means this is the bulk of it.
The advantage here is that every walking and breathing individual human being holds an equal stake in the institution, as well as equal power and authority, assuming equal risks for any improprieties they commit. Properly architected and administered, each man holds equal power in that institution, most particularly where injustices and crimes are committed. Imagine that ANY man or group thereof may call to account any other individual or group who, in their capacities as officials of governance (police, officials of the court including judges and prosecutors, etc.) have committed crimes either of malice or blunder. Imagine how different would be our daily reality. Gone would be the fear of saying the wrong thing or exercising a right in a way that would allow a rotten cop to drag you to the station in cuffs, to face an uncertain fate at the hands of a prosecutor and/or judge whose intentions and competence are not up to proper snuff. When all those in the chain of justice, including defendants, face grave consequences for the commission of errors and acts of malice or other corruptions, the landscape is cleared of the minefields into which the innocent so often and ignorantly wander today, often with terrible results.
Consider the case where a man shoots and kills an attacker. If he innocently admits that he shot the aggressor with the intention of killing him, even if for the sake of saving himself from being killed, rather than of "stopping the attack", he will likely face murder charges. It is precisely this brand of insane and wild corruption on the part of prosecutors that must be put to its proper and abrupt end, the same to be said for all such acts on the part of those who swear oaths of good faith and competent service to the people. The Law is not supposed to lie as a trap in wait for innocent men, yet that is precisely what it has become, having made a mockery of itself and the justice it is supposed to represent.
Make this one fundamental correction and the issue of whether we need "government" evaporates into the aether, as if it had never existed in the first place. By this means and for all practical purposes governMENT is removed, replaced with nothing but the conditions under which proper governance may be implemented and administered. This is the way of an optimally free and civilized society.
We humans are of a sort always to press the boundaries of that with which we can get away. That which we tolerate, we get more of precisely because the perpetrators are always pushing that envelope. This is one of the certainties of life, up there with death and taxes. Therefore, onus rests with each and every one of we who draw breath to define the borders and enforce them with a single minded and dare I say vicious intolerance that leaves the criminals in no state of confusion as to what will be their fate if they trespass. This goes for all criminals, but must be trebly emphasized for those in so-called "government" because the tendency to push boundaries is greatest where the temptations are greatest. Those in "government" live with the greatest temptations of them all, and must therefore be held on the shortest possible leashes, to taste the whip most bitterly when their behavior exceeds their office.
"Govenment" is just a label. There is not such thing in actual, material existence, but only in virtual terms. Never forget this and always bear it in the forefront of your awareness. It is the people bearing that label who must be addressed in terms of their behaviors and how we respond to excursions beyond their duly constituted authority. They must be treated with grim reprehension and retribution that when we are done with them, they will never again hold the least inclination of be otherwise able to make an encore performance. This way, we enjoy the benefits of the protections of those dedicated to such, while minimizing or even eliminating the felonies of abuse, whether by intent or accident. This is the design intent of the 28th Amendment to the Consititution of the United States of America. It is meant to empower every American citizen pursuant to maximizing the individual's ability to stave off the "state" and prevent it from running amok in the ways now so commonly encountered by those agents thereof who believe themselves to hold the authority to commit all manner of heinous crimes against those to whom they have sworn their oaths.
We have the power to crop "government" abuse by vast proportions. Making it so, however, is wholly up to us. There is no cavalry coming to your rescue, so the time is here for you to decide what it is you want, and it it is proper service by those whose jobs it is to protect your rights, then you need to start moving your asses, an Article V convention of the states being the righteous means to that end. We are far from having exhausted our options and civil war is in fact not the only remaining path to liberty as I had erroneously assumed in my frustrations of days and years past. No, ladies and gentlemen readers, the AVC is the answer and i contend that we must endeavor to pressure our state officials to ratify the call that we may, as architects of America's future, correct the errors that time has revealed in our current scheme of governance. The system is broken and it is up to every last one of us to step up to the Good Endeavor pursuant to our statuses as Freemen and for the sake of our freedoms and those of our posterity. The worst we can do is to sit idly in wait for the cavalry to arrive, because they aren't coming. YOU are the cavalry. YOU are the means by which this blessèd land has fallen into such deep troubles, and out of which it must be lifted. Only we, as lovers of freedom, can bring about recovery and actual improvement. We do this by coming to understand liberty; coming to love it in spite of all the scary and difficult bit therein, and becoming the bigger men by forgiving the sins of those whose views with which we do not agree.
By intent or otherwise, those in power have us at each other's throats and it suits them well enough to keep it so. Don't fall for the bait, regardless of how you identify politically. There is an enemy of all humanity: the tyrant and his enforcers. Let us come together in sufficiency to stop him dead in his tracks and ensure that his kind can no longer rise to power. He will always exist, and so it is to the dirt to which we much relegate him, and it is in the dirt to which we must ensure he remains forever. After that, if we want to return to the back-biting, then so be it. But for now, let us be at the very least, strange bedfellows acting in common to displace and render impotent those whose aim is to bring us all to wrack and ruin. We can do it, but we must have the will to do so and to set aside our differences, at least for the time being.
God bless America, God bless our freedom, God bless you, and as always please accept my best wishes.
