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I recently happened upon a question posed to a group of us that asked:

"What I fail to understand is that if there is no personal reincarnation, thus no Karmic retribution or reward, and without the promise of Heaven or the threat of Hell, what does it matter to me in the long run to behave ethically during this lifetime?"

A good question indeed and one I have discussed with others at some length.  What is implied by the question is the position of the nihilist, which essentially contends that there is nothing but the here and now; there is no other life for a given individual and there is nothing more to our makeup other than this apparent flesh.  If that is indeed true, what reason would there be for me not to kill my neighbor and have my way with his rather fetching daughter?

What purpose would ethics serve in such a reality?  What incentive?  None that I can see.  In the world of the pure materialist, nihilism becomes the unavoidable conclusion.  With that there is no reason I should not kill and screw my way through life, taking what I want and destroying that which gets in my way.

One might even accept this as a possible truth, were it not for one thing: it goes against the force of LIFE itself a force that is absolutely universal in all living things found on this world of ours.  No sane and rational man can deny the force of life - the will to continue itself against all countervailing factors.  This suggests something either beyond meat or inherent to it, though I am doubtful of the latter in the sense that that is all there is to it.  Either way, however, the universal desire of life to continue and propagate itself lies in diametric opposition to the unavoidable result of nihilism, which is the utter destruction of all human life until the last man is left standing, alone, dick in hand and thumb up butt because there is nobody left to rape, rob, beat, or murder. 

The very fact that all things want to live implies the right to defend those lives.  This right to defend one's claim to life, equal to the claims of all others, leads to the basic principles of just and proper human behavior which underpin all ethics and drive all ethical considerations.

The reason that ethics exist and are legitimate is rooted in the purest pragmatism: we all want to live and none wish to have their claims (rights) to life violated.  Most of us also hold  the means of defending those rights, i.e. the inborn ability to devise or otherwise acquire the means of destroying those who trespass against the birthright to endeavor to continue one's existence.  Because peaceable coexistence is, for the most part, the best way of  attaining the goal of passing from one day into the next unfettered by the trespasses of others, it follows that the adoption of and the adherence to a system of ethics that enables and encourages "proper" behavior is itself just and proper.  It is pragmatism itself.

That so stern a drive is placed upon the continuance of life from within one's very fabric points to something far greater than flesh alone, for it begs the question of source.  It does not seem logically consistent in even the smallest measure to conclude that life = meat and nothing beyond that.  The notion that we come into the world, grow, live, die, and were at all turns nothing more than the sum of the atoms that made up our bodies seems as ridiculous as the assumptions that the materialist/socialist mindset uses to justify vomiting forth such obviously self-contradicting nonsense. 

In fact, the very question as captioned above reveals the inherently nihilistic nature of the socialist/materialist/communist philosophies and their attendant political positions.  The inherent nihilism of those positions lies in diametric opposition to the "moral" talking points such as "class struggle" and so forth.  These are the inconsistencies that the materialist tyrant conveniently ignores as he rants and spews forth his litany of trite, tired, boring, and clapped-out one-size-fits-all drivel.  If life is so strongly inhered with the will to continue and propagate, one must ask "whence originates such single minded drive?"  Inanimate atoms?

It is the contradiction of this sort that needs to be discovered by each individual through adept analysis (with perhaps some help in some cases) and exposed by courageous hearts so that it may at least be said that the world has been offered a greater truth.  As to whether they will choose it, that is a question for another day.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

The Seemingly Paradoxical Nature of Human Freedom

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A paradox of human life is that in order to have peaceful and free living, one must be prepared for war; not just with arms but with attitude, knowledge, and the will to become a frightful enemy in the face of trespass.  This keeps people polite, hands to selves.  It is as things must be, for the passive and timid tend to become the slaves of the tyrant, or fertilizer for his next year's crop.  The twentieth century alone demonstrated this in the most stark and non-equivocating fashion.

Despite the butchery of hundreds of millions of innocents within but the handful of years we call the "twentieth century" and despite the enslavement of nearly everyone else, a great proportion of humanity (particularly in the United States where people are supposed to know better - shame on them) remains insistent upon denying the characteristics and qualities that constitute the necessary attitudes and preparations for becoming and remaining free of tyrants and all other oppressions.

Consider the massively bloodthirsty collectivists for the "greater good" under the tyrannies of the Soviet Union and China; the unapologetic and rapaciously murderous parties of the various blood feuds of Africa and even parts of Europe (!!);  the endlessly bloody and numerous "revolutions" of the countless banana republics of the tropical Americas and the Caribbean; the leaden and hopelessly grey and oppressive tyrannies of the now-openly socialistic Europe and especially Great Britain; or the far more subtle and candy-coated tyrannies of the USA and Canada.  That so large a proportion of the world's people still refuse to accept the truth of what is required to achieve and maintain their freedom begs the question of just how deep must a psychosis be to support such bald-faced denial of that which stares one unflinchingly in the eyes?  How willfully and defiantly ignorant must one choose to be in order to maintain such slavish devotion to remaining passive in the face of so-called "states", (AKA "governments") raiding, raping, and murdering their ways across their lives with apparent impunity?

While being peaceful in one's habits, endeavors, and desires, one must be prepared for, and willing to become as warlike as any power-mad dictator in order to defend what is rightfully his when the trespass of others threatens.  To reject the absolute need of proper preparedness in defense of self, family and community against the predations of others while at the same time espousing one's desire to remain free constitutes an irreconcilably irrational and self-contradicting position.  It is to flirt, dance, and ultimately invite destruction and suicide to one's door.  This is not indicative of sound intellectual processes or, more likely, of intellect at all, particularly in the face of human history, which serves up a nauseating and practically endless litany of examples of tyrants running roughshod over peaceable people, taking what they want and killing those their fancy and whim may capriciously dictate.

Why is this acceptable?  Ask yourself why is it that people do not strike down the tyrants as they rise? Why is it that in the very few cases where they do, the victors almost universally become the new tyrants?  It has happened even in the United States, with its apparently ever growing police-state aspirations.

When one steps back from the current circumstances and widens their gaze across a far broader expanse of human existence, it becomes ever more difficult to hold an opinion that the race is destined for nothing better than sheer and unvarnished doom.

What, then, is the solution?  Is there one? I am not sure, but if even one exists I suspect that it revolves around much smaller population centers where like-minded, freedom loving individuals come together in proper preparation for liberty such that the prospect for third parties of interfering with them becomes highly unattractive.  At this point I can think of no better ways to address this plague of one man presuming to master another and under which the human race has suffered at ever increasing rates for thousands of years.

I pity the children.

A Commonly Overlooked Risk To The Willing Slave

Having just read a blog on RightsWriter.com about the looming shellacking the USA stands to take resulting from Obama's fawning and obsequious apology to Guatemala for experiments conducted on some of their citizens in the 1940s, the specter of an additional problem with the choice to be a willing slave arose.

There is no doubt that US administrations have been bad actors - very bad in many cases. To this point the moral arguments may go back and forth based in the various theoretic foundations and assumptions. So-called "hawks" on the one hand will often argue the usual claptrap of manifest destiny, often disguised under thin veils of more modern sounding rhetorical composition. The so-called "doves" respond with their typically weak-wrist reasoning of bunnies and light, thereby assassinating what credibility they may ever have held. Both sides hold elements in which they are correct and that are otherwise.

What each side of the moral argument aisle appear to miss is one of the practical risks of our little intrigues: popular culpability. The United States is, at least technically speaking, a representative government. That means that everything our elected officials and their agents do is technically representative of our wishes. Forget about repudiations, because in courts of law those have a long history of failure where very serious supporting evidence is absent. Bear also in mind that courts are run by nothing better than other, utterly fallible human beings whose integrity cannot always be counted upon to prevail when one may need and want it most.

The result of Obama's ill-considered apology has been threats of litigation by Guatemalans who have caught the scent of an opportunity for a free ride on the gravy train. In such a case the only immediate danger might appear to be that the taxpayer will be called upon once again to pay for the sins of administrations past. However, further consideration reveals how this somewhat innocuous appearing result opens doors to risks of a far greater magnitude and gravity.

Because we are a representative government, one of the stipulations of the implied agreement between the people and that government is that the latter acts with the consent of the former. This, of course, may be effectively argued against when a government acts extraordinarily and beyond the limits of its delegated powers and moral rectitude, or covertly. But what about when it does so on an ongoing basis, the people being generally aware of such behavior, yet taking no substantive action to put an end to it? Where this can be established, so can be demonstrated the consent of the governed and with it the establishment of equal partnership in the actions of those directly involved. In other words, we share equal culpability for the illegal, immoral, and criminal actions undertaken by those elected official and the agents we directly or otherwise employ when they act with our knowledge and tolerance. In this case, tolerance is minimally tantamount to acceptance and in some cases may even be established as outright agreement.

By knowingly tolerating the criminal activity of government officials, employees, and agents, in the international arena, we assume equal responsibility for the results of their actions as if they were our own because, in fact, they are. Those agents act on our behalves and we know about it. We may be able to claim innocence for the crimes committed in the 1940s where awareness of the utterly criminal our government was in so many facets was generally and very effectively kept from the people. That justification becomes vanishingly thin when we consider the contemporary situation. 

Ever since the truth about Watergate broke, public awareness of the corrupt nature of government in general, and the US government in particular, has grown with every passing day. This has become especially so as the internet has grown ubiquitous. 

The scandals have been endless, implicating presidents, cabinets members, congressmen, captains of industry, and position holders at just about any level and office of government one may care to name. Unless one has been living in a cave atop a wilderness mountain, there is precious little credible basis for claiming ignorance of the truth. Given this, the question that most prominently arises is: "if you knew, why did you not act to stop it?" This was the essence of many of the questions posed to the defendants at Nurnberg - the questions that, having not been adequately answered in most cases, lead to multiple executions for "crimes against humanity". Indeed, an entire nation had its feet held to the fire for many decades thereafter and to this very day bears the marks of those times upon itself and shall continue to do so for a good time to come.

If the great superpower that was Germany could be held as a nation to account for its general complicity in the actions and policies that lead to the nearly universal destruction of an entire continent and the murder of tens of millions of people, what in principle precludes the same circumstance from befalling the good people of the United States? 

We now live in a time of ever increasing "globalization", which translates into ever decreasing levels of national sovereignty, further implying an ever weakening ability to defend against charges brought by international tribunals. Thus far the only thing that has saved us from being held accountable has been our superior military strength. That notwithstanding and the questions of right and wrong aside, the facts are that with every new administration since Bill Clinton (at the very least), we have seen our sovereignty whittled away as each successive president has been more than happy to put his signature to agreements that further dissolve and dilute the meaning of "The United States Of America" and that place us further under the rule of foreign powers. This is REALITY. It is fact that cannot be controverted by mere verbal claims to the contrary. Piecemeal are we being dissolved in the concentrated acidic solution of globalist "unification" and hegemony.

This slow, yet now accelerating sublimation of our nation into the fabric of the greater whole opens vistas of possibilities that most people have failed to so much as imagine, much less consider with care. As our sovereignty dissolves, so goes our power as a nation, and with that our ability to stand alone, freely, and immune to the results of the crimes that we have tolerated in our elected representatives and their hired agents. As that ability and power falls below a threshold, there is nothing in principle that prevents foreign parties from raising the issues of the "sins" of our past, real or contrived, and holding us accountable. 

If perchance this can be done successfully, the American people as a whole may then be held accountable for the actions of our manifold administrations; many of those actions being heinously criminal in nature, often involving acts of mass murder on scales that would have brought proud tears to the eyes of the likes of Stalin and Mao. It would be an "international" body calling the shots in such cases, thereby rendering the ways in which we might be held to account potentially limitless. The international "community" has demonstrated in spades that its rules and regulations are formulated not on the basis of a sound and principled moral foundation, but rather on the bankrupt and capricious emotionalism so very reminiscent of the great socialist movements of the twentieth century. 

It is clear that the rest of the world does not share the principled view of governance held in the USA. Europe has been long- and well-trained to accept the capricious and arbitrary changes of the rules of the games, so long as they are labeled as being "for the greater good". Who, other than Americans, routinely question the actions of government? Few, if any.

Americans do not, however, do enough to check the actions of their government, most particularly and significantly in the arena of foreign affairs where administrations have indulged in all manner of intrigue and outright criminal action including murder by the millions, the destruction of national economies, "scientific research" on the unwitting subjects of foreign nations, and a whole litany of other equally heinous criminal enterprises. We can legitimately claim ignorance of those undertaken in decades far past, but of the past forty years our excuses become precariously untenable, most especially those of the past twenty and the torrents of information with which the internet has provided us.


We as individuals and as a nation in America have no viable excuses for the tolerance of governmental corruption that we display in 2011.  This truth poses particular threats to our sovereignty and liberty where our foreign policy is concerned. We can no longer naively claim that government is warring here or stealing there without our knowledge or that it is morally justifiable for the good of the nation. Such claims are wholly non-credible at every level and in every manner imaginable.

We know all too well what is going on, yet we sit idly back and let is all happen, most often justifying it under the similarly bankrupt claim that there is nothing we can do - that there is no choice. There is always a choice. That we choose by default is not just a shame upon us - it is a threat and a risk that we now face very directly and imminently as the world around us solidifies into a single, universal political mass. As our government continues to rob, plunder, and murder its way across the face of the planet in the context of an ever strengthening trend toward a world government and the dissolution of nations as sovereign entities, our knowing complicity through the consent implicit in our tolerance heaps equal measures of guilt upon us in the eyes of the world.

So long as out military might enables us to continue, we might choose to do so. But when that might is no longer sufficient to ward off the judgments of foreign powers, whether they be right or wrong, we then stand to be called to account for that which have tolerated. Innocence becomes irrelevant if the authorities and powers over us judge otherwise. It should also be noted that while the "international community" may be wholly antagonistic to the notion of national sovereignty, there is precious little doubt that they will use the issue as a lever to accomplish their ends against the American people if it proves useful.

In short order we shall see the end result of this Guatemalan attempt at shaking us down. If it meets with success for the plaintiffs, you may rest your money on the expectation that more will follow, particularly if there shall be left a wake of apologies from our esteemed leaders moving forward upon which other such parties might use to good advantage.

If we continue on this death march toward the utter dissolution of our nation, the sky will become the limit for foreign looters of every stripe. As Americans continue to resist, those limits will rise arbitrarily until either we capitulate into a new status as bald-faced chattel, or we take up our arms and fight these invasions to the bitter end. Either way the results stand to be terrible. Is this what we want? Why allow things to come to such a pass when today there still remains abundant opportunity to reverse this deplorable situation? Do not, however, conflate abundance of opportunity with that of time, for the latter is in short supply as the former rapidly evaporates before our eyes.

What shall we think if international suits against the American people for the crimes of its government become an accepted standard of remedy by not only the so-called "international community", but our own government? If we hand that much of ourselves over the the global authority, what does anyone think will be the result when we lose in those courts of questionable character and with whom no appeals shall be forthcoming? What will befall us when the amounts of the arbitrarily determined reparations far outstrip our ability as a nation to pony up? The answer is abundantly clear to any student of history and of human nature: the pound of flesh will be taken through collateral means. Perhaps they will "forgive" a crushing debt incurred as the result of international litigation if the people of the United States agree that they never really held any right to keep and bear arms and to surrender all their holdings.

Or perhaps we will be offered forgiveness in exchange for the acknowledgement that the concept of private property is invalid and always has been. Perhaps it will be offered in exchange for some other fundamental right with the explicitly expressed agreement that such a right never really existed in the first place. Desperate people will often make poor decisions when finding themselves between a rock and a hard place.

If perchance the Americans were to demonstrate an unfortunate level of pluck in response to these formally legitimized extortions, there are always military options on the table. Let it not come to anyone's surprise if the first waves of troops turned out to be wearing the uniforms of the American armed forces, including police. The enemy is inside the gates and we put many of them there via the ballot box. Let there be no illusions in our minds about that.

We are being very purposely painted into a corner and the avenues of escape shrink with every passing day. Given all of this, we may then see the nature of the threats posed to us - of the likely results of the more fundamental problem of our tolerance of a criminal cadre in government and of the devolution of our sovereignty as individuals and as a nation to the status of modern day serfdom.

What, then, is the solution?

The practical solution is to remove ourselves from all international intrigues and treaties, bar none, and as a people begin to clean the American house and keep it that way, making our displeasure and intolerance unequivocally clear to all who assume the mantle of the public trust. This is most critically important on the international front. Our foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster of criminal activity that has exposed each and every American citizen to potentially grave harms that threaten our posterity far beyond the foreseeable future.

Culturally and practically speaking, our salvation requires we become a warrior nation where our politics are concerned - ever vigilant and active in the battle between what is right and decent and those who seek to betray the trust of the people, usurp and arrogate to themselves power to which they have no moral claim, trespass upon our sacred liberties and their attendant rights, and dissolve our nation into the undifferentiated mass of the globalist mob.

The time is upon us - right here and right now - to choose. What are we to be? A nation of willing slaves placing ourselves squarely in the cross hairs of the international looters, or one of warriors for our personal liberties, national sovereignty, and principled morality in how we live amongst each other and with other nations? Bear in mind that as the willing slaves of our masters we share in the guilt of those who trespass against our international neighbors and we thereby expose ourselves to the dangers that such trespass risks. As our sovereignty piecemeal fails, we may be called upon to bear the selfsame accountability for the direct actions of those in command and would therefore be in no way immune to the consequences. Is this not enough to spur us to choose the life of the warrior over that of the willing, lazy, and cowardly boot licker?

Forewarned is fore-armed

What is the greatest danger, the greatest threat to liberty?

We, the human race, are the most dangerous threat to our liberty. We are the only threat to it. Nothing else threatens it. Nothing else can protect it. In this, humanity is its own worst enemy and, barring materially superior third party intervention, we are our only saviors. 

Very few people want liberty - real freedom. What they call "freedom" I call slavery. Pretty slavery - the slavery of the gilt cage - the slavery falsely or ignorantly accepted as freedom by the man too timid, too lazy, or too frightened to go for the real thing. The slavery accepted by the grasping poltroon who wants something for nothing , feeling he is owed this and that and is willing to sell his soul to have it. The willing slave who all the while fools himself into believing it is all somehow just and proper to live at the expense of others. The slavery of the man too dishonest to acknowledge his own status as a thief, all the while happy to have someone else do his stealing for him, most often in the name of phony baloney ideals with noble sounding names such as "social justice", "the greater good" and "equality".

But there are those who want real freedom - a tiny cadre of mainly like-minded individuals who not only understand what it is to be truly free without turning one's back on civility and moral principle, but are willing to do what it takes to achieve it and keep it. How can such people survive the mindless, lumbering juggernaut of rank, unvarnished and small-minded mediocrity, of legitimized theft, force, and violence? What do they do? That is the $64 question for which certainty appears to evade many on a grand scale. One thing, however, is certain: at the bottom of it all, at the level of brass tacks, lies brute force. The ability and the willingness to destroy all comers who would violate our sacred and inborn freedom. This must be the underpinning, the very cornerstone of existence for all freedom loving individuals, regardless of their personal feelings on the matter. The reason for this is eminently practical: without the power and the will to visit grievous harm and utter destruction upon those who would subdue you, their slaves shall you become. 

It is in the nature of men, whether nobly intended or maliciously so, to subdue those whose behaviors and beliefs are not sufficiently aligned with their own notions of a proper order of things; to force their compliance; to command them for the sake of command. It is an age-old saw that has never changed in all of the history of human empire, nor is it likely to change in even the distant future. 

We are what we are, and we behave as we tend to. The statistical approach is the only sound one where such issues concern themselves - judging humanity based on the general tendencies of the greater populations. In this, humanity is uncommonly predictable and presents the intelligent man with everything he needs to know about the nature of the beast. 

Because of the nature of the vulgar mob, the free man must gird himself against the advances of the mindless, soulless, colorless wad of dull, yet eminently dangerous humanity whose constituents hold freedom with naught but the deepest hatred. The free man is the willing slave's perceived nemesis, for the free man's courage and aspiration set a standard of attitude and action toward which the volunteer-bondsman refuses to commit himself. The free man must, therefore, be eliminated as the most sore reminder of the cowardice, lassitude, and utter lack of faith in self that is so obviously engendered in the very fabric of the mind of the serf who accepts and even welcomes his bondage. 

The free man is hated by the willing drudge because of his bold willingness to embrace that which demands in return for the greatest gift of all but a single price to which the happy peon refuses to accede and assent: personal responsibility. Those reminders of his own unwillingness to be anything but the least a man might fills the slave with a raging and envy-spiked hatred for those who dare what he will not. For the willing slave there is no fate sufficiently degrading and destructive for such superior men. The superior man, the free man must be wiped from the earth as if he had never existed.

The liberty-minded man, knowing the context of the world in which he lives as such, cannot in all good reason proceed on any other basis but to make of himself the most formidable and merciless foe of the vulgar - of the eager subservient whose only goal in life is to lick the boots of his master under the self-imposed delusion that he is free, all the while resolutely cowering from the truth that he lives at the whim and deign of his superior and is , in fact, worth less than the match with which his master would light him ablaze.

Know ye then this and make thy choice in accord with that for which thou truly wisheth. Thine actions will reveal the sort of man thou art to the world and by the same shall the superior men separate themselves from, and stand above the rest.

What say ye then? What sort of man shalt thou choose to be?

Human Comfort: Challenge And Opportunity For Liberty Advocates

People want comfort.  From a certain standpoint, it can be credibly stated that comfort drives the human animal more strongly than any other factor, though one must be careful when taking the idea to such extremes because he faces the risk of distorting the meaning of "comfort" too wildly.  Suffice it to say that comfort is one of the truly central aspects of a human being's moment to moment existence.

In the interest of knowing better that of which we shall speak, let us once again turn to the dictionary that we may have the definition at hand.  From dictionary.com:



com·fort    [kuhm-fert]

noun


4. relief in affliction; consolation; solace: Her presence was a comfort to him.

5. a feeling of relief or consolation: Her forgiveness afforded him great comfort.

6. a person or thing that gives consolation: She was a great comfort to him.

7. a cause or matter of relief or satisfaction: The patient's recovery was a comfort to the doctor.

8. a state of ease and satisfaction of bodily wants, with freedom from pain and anxiety: He is a man who enjoys his comfort.

9. something that promotes such a state: His wealth allows him to enjoy a high degree of comfort.

11. Obsolete . strengthening aid; assistance.

Origin:


1175–1225; (v.) Middle English comfortien, variant of confortien, conforten < Anglo-French, Old French conforter < Late Latin confortāre to strengthen, equivalent to con- con- + -fortāre verbal derivative of Latin fortis strong; (noun) Middle English < Anglo-French, Old French, noun derivative of the v.


Note the etymological origin of the word, meaning to strengthen, which brings us to the concept of power.  In my experience, all people seek power in one form or another.  Toddlers strive to walk, then run, and as they grow take on new and more difficult challenges, the attainment of each increasing their immediate personal power.  Once again from dictionary.com:


pow·er [pou-er]

noun

1. ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.

Origin:

1250–1300; Middle English pouer ( e ), poer ( e ) < Anglo-French poueir, poer, noun use of infinitive: to be able < Vulgar Latin *potēre (replacing Latin posse to be able, have power).

One can clearly see the interplay between comfort and power.  To be empowered is in some manner to be comforted.

Generally speaking, people will attach themselves to whatever it may be that brings them the comfort they seek. Different people derive that comfort in different ways. Some find it in food, others in drugs and alcohol, religious devotion, love, and even anger and hatred. Paradoxically, others are comfortable often or even only while in a state of some form of discomfort.  There are many dimensions to comfort.

Emotional comfort may stem from relationships, religion, politics, etc., the latter being one of the big sources. In that context, people choose the political views that offer them the best fit for comfort in accord with their needs and desires. This often translates into truth-be-damned adherence to a set of belief, as is most often the case with religion, to cite another example. Comfort is, for many people, far and away more important to them than is truth .  This is readily verifiable by observing how their behavior comports itself with respect to their statements regarding the place that truth occupies in their lives.  One will often find that those who claim truth as ultimately significant often behave in ways that betray the claim as false to greater or lesser degrees.  It may be also observed that the greater the claim of truth's significance is, the greater that degree of falsehood. If the truth threatens their comfort, they often reject it out of hand. In many cases, they will become violent and even kill to protect themselves from truths that threaten their comfort sufficiently.

When some fundamental aspect of a person's comfort is perceived as being seriously threatened, almost anything is possible in the way of a reaction. This can be readily observed in the areas of religion and personal relationships.  The screaming believer, so thoroughly convinced that his "faith" is the absolute and only truth in existence will actively reject any evidence contradicting those beliefs, no matter how undeniably the facts may establish the falsehood of his belief system.  Press the issue with sufficient force of logic and persistence and you may find yourself sporting a radiating shiner.

Consider the housewife whose husband stands accused of molesting their children.  Perhaps as often as not the spouse will stand by her man and remain in utter, stoic denial regardless of the fact that irrefutable evidence has been presented, proving the charges without any room for reasonable doubt.  Because their comfort is so heavily vested in their relationships, to acknowledge the facts present a truth too terrible to accept, and so they hide in the comfort of their fantasies.

And so it is with political beliefs, which in many ways occupy analogous positions to those of the religious in the belief systems of people and the comfort they provide. This fact assumes particular significance when one attempts to engage in the act of altering the most closely held political beliefs of others.  It is, therefore, something that must be recognized and understood by those holding dear the truths of personal liberty.   Many, and perhaps even most, people fail to understand what freedom actually is.  They mistake what I call "pretty slavery" for freedom and regard actual freedom as a state of chaotic and dangerous insanity - of brute anarchy where there are no rules save that of the jungle such that those with the most power rule over the rest without mercy.  What they fail to see is that this precisely describes our current system to a 'T'.

The challenge, then, is to make this apparent to them, and the only way to do this with any hope of success is to discover and understand the relevant factors of comfort as they apply to those in question.  One of the fundamental requirements in the method for bringing such people around to the ways of true freedom is the need to be able to identify and understand a given individual's comfort with respect to his objections to liberty.  One must understand what makes such people tick - what it is that attracts them to whatever flavor of pretty slavery it is to which they cling.  Without this information it is at best very difficult to change anothers' point of view, given the near-religious fervor with which some hold such opinions.

Once one has the basic understanding of the others' comfort in hand, and assuming the person to be convinced is an intelligent, honest, open-minded individual of nominal mental health, addressing and assuaging the threats to his comfort regarding his attachment to slavery becomes the first step toward the elimination of this objections to real freedom.  Getting one to recognize that his version of slavery is not freedom is an uphill battle at best.  If you are going to engage in such efforts, best that you proceed as well equipped as possible because you will likely have your work cut out.

Comfort is of central importance to all humanity, regardless of the fact that it takes on such wildly varying forms between individuals.  We all have those things that "make us tick".  Comfort is very much a two-edged sword that has both helped us and harmed us.  Understanding the form comfort takes in any given person is central to understanding him and key in helping you determine what approach to take with them in your efforts to illuminate them to the beauty and virtues of freedom.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

About that "War on Cops"....

A worthwhile article about the current state of police affairs in America.

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2011/01/about-that-war-on-cops.html

The more things change...

What follows is an excellent article by Albert Jay Nock.  There is, however, a very sad aspect to it. which is that it was written in 1936.  Setting that fact aside, along with the reference to FDR and the "imbecilities" that issued from his administration, the article could have been written about early twentyfirst century America.  It is not a terribly flattering article to the "greatest generation" and the one or two prior to it, but Nock hits the nail dead center, and hard.  Truth can be very unflattering and in this case someone beat it with the Ugly stick.  It is a read well worth the effort.

This article was found at mises.org, and excellent source of material for the liberty-minded individual.

Happy New Year, and may 2011 be safe, happy, and prosperous for all.

[This article originally appeared in the American Mercury in March 1936. An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Donna Orlando, is available for download.]

I believe that when the historian looks back on the last 20 years of American life, the thing that will puzzle him most is the amount of self-inflicted punishment that Americans seem able to stand. They take it squarely on the chin at the slightest provocation and do not even wait for the count before they are back for more.
True, they have always been good at it. For instance, once on a time they were comparatively a free people, regulating a large portion of their lives to suit themselves. They had a great deal of freedom as compared with other peoples of the world.

But apparently they could not rest until they threw their freedom away. They made a present of it to their own politicians, who have made them sweat for their gullibility ever since. They put their liberties in the hands of a praetorian guard made up exactly on the old Roman model, and not only never got them back, but as long as that praetorian guard of professional politicians lives and thrives — which will be quite a while if its numbers keep on increasing at the present rate — they never will.

But though Americans have always known how to make the old-time Flagellants look like amateurs at the business of scourging themselves, it is only in the last 20 years that they have really shown what they can do. The plagues of Egypt, the flies, frogs, hail, locusts, murrain, boils, and blains are as nothing by comparison with the curses they have brought down on themselves in that time, all of their own free will and accord. They diddled themselves into a war to make the world safe for democracy — and look at democracy now!

They took on the war debts and financed the "reconstruction" of Europe — and now they are holding the bag. They fell for the "new economics" of blessed memory and took a handsome fling at jazz-and-paper in the 1920s. They went in strong for Prohibition; and then, even before they came out from under that nightmare, they threw themselves body and soul into the fantastic imbecilities of the New Deal.

What a spectacle! There is no use, none in the world, of pretending that the praetorian guard dragooned, cajoled, or humbugged the people of this country into taking up with all this appalling nonsense, and at the same time pretending that the country is a republic in which the people are sovereign. You cannot have it both ways. If the professional politicians, who are known of all men to be pliant mountebanks when they are not time-serving scoundrels, and are usually both — if these have power to herd the people headlong into such bizarre rascalities and follies against their will and judgment, then the country is not a republic but an oligarchy built on an imperial model, and its people are not citizens, but subjects.

If, on the other hand, it is a republic and the people are sovereign, then the misfeasances of the professional politicians run straight back to the people who elected them. When Golden Rule Jones was mayor of Toledo, a man wrote him for help, saying that whisky had been his ruin. Jones answered his letter, saying, "I do not believe whisky has been your ruin. I believe it was the whisky that you drank."

The reader may take his choice between these alternatives. No matter which of the two is right, the fact remains that the individual citizen, or subject, has lost the best that was in him. Whether he surrendered it or whether he let it be confiscated is not what I am so much concerned with at the moment — although the question is important enough and ought to be ventilated — as I am with the fact that it is gone.

Not only his liberty is gone but something much more valuable: his belief in liberty and his love of it, his power of quick and effective resentment against any tampering with the principle of liberty by anybody. This is as much as to say that his self-respect, dignity, his sense of what is due to him as a human being, has gone, and that is exactly what I mean to say. It has gone into the keeping of persons most notoriously unworthy of such a trust, or of any trust; persons capable of deliberately conniving — and who do connive — at the temporary ruin of their country for political purposes.

I say this with respect to no particular party or faction, for however many nominally there may be of these, there are never actually more than two. As Mr. Jefferson said,

The nest of office being too small for them all to cuddle into at once, the contest is eternal which shall crowd the other out. For this purpose they are divided into two parties, the Ins and the Outs.

In the last conversation I had with the late Brand Whitlock, a few months before his death, we spoke of the remarkably rapid dwindling of the sense of self-respect in America, and he asked me if I remembered how thoroughly the country was worked up by a little incident that took place only 25 years before. I remembered it well, because we had happened to be together at the time, and we had commented on the wholesome general resentment that the outrage provoked.

State prohibition was in force then, and somewhere down south a posse of state officials boarded a train and slashed open the suitcase of a through passenger who had stood on his rights and refused to unlock it. That incident went the length and breadth of the land, and was talked about in good plain language, not by a few doctrinaires, but by Tom, Dick, and Harry on the streets.

Yet, as Mr. Whitlock said, in the America of 25 years later, such a thing would not even be news, and nowhere would there be a breath of indignation against it. Mr. Whitlock died, as an honorable man would wish to do, before he could see the upshot of most of the policies that the people of Prohibitionist and post-Prohibitionist America have inflicted on themselves in the name of good government. Many of us, indeed, appear or pretend not to see it even now.

I think, for instance, that no one has adequately remarked the ease and naturalness of the transition from Prohibition to the New Deal. Someone may have done it, but if so it has escaped me. There is a complete parallel between them. They are alike in their inception. They are alike in their professed intention. As for their fundamental principle, they are so far alike that the one is a mere expansion of the other. They are alike in respect of the quality of the people who support them, alike in respect of the kind of apologists they attract to their service, and, finally, they are alike in their effect upon the spirit and character of the nation.

Alike in their origin, both were brought about by a coup d'état, the work of a determined minority at a time when the country was writhing in one of its recurrent spasms of discreditable and senseless funk — or, I should rather say, when it had passed beyond its norm of imbecile apathy and gone into the stage of vociferous idiocy. Not long ago I had a letter from a French friend who remarked that "quand les Américains se mettent à être nerveux, ils dépassent tout commentaire,"[1] which is indeed true, so I imagine that what I have just said is perhaps the best one can do by way of describing the country's state of mind.

Prohibition came when we were "making a business of being nervous" about the great cause of righteousness that we were defending against the furious Goth and fiery Hun. The New Deal came when we were making a business of being nervous about the depression; that is, nervous about having to pay collectively the due and just penalty of our collective ignorance, carelessness, and culpable greed.

Prohibition and the New Deal are alike in their professed intention, if one may put it so, to "do us for our own good." Both assumed the guise of disinterested benevolence towards the body politic. In the one case we were adjudged incapable of setting up an adequate social defense against the seductions of vicious rum-sellers; in the other, of defending ourselves against injuries wrought by malefactors of great wealth; therefore the State would obligingly come forward and take the job off our hands.

"Both were brought about by a coup d'état, the work of a determined minority at a time when the country was writhing in one of its recurrent spasms of discreditable and senseless funk."  In the case of Prohibition we can now see what those professions amounted to, and we are beginning to see what they amount to in the case of the New Deal; and in either case we see nothing but what we might have seen at the outset — and what some of us did see — by a brief glance at the kind of people engaged in promoting both these nostrums, and a briefer glance at their record. We see now that the promotion of Prohibition was purely professional, and there is nothing to prevent our seeing that so was the promotion of the New Deal.

 

In 1932, the local politicians and the political hangers-on who together make up the "machine" — and of whom there are more in America than there were lice in Egypt in Moses's day — saw a great starving time ahead of them, and when the New Deal was broached, they fell upon it with yells of joy, as one who comes upon an oasis of date palms in a trackless desert. Their dearth was miraculously turned into plenty. Faced with a dead stoppage of their machine from lack of money to keep it going, they suddenly found themselves with more money in their hands than they had ever imagined there was in the world.

Prohibition and the New Deal are alike in their fundamental principle, which is the principle of coercion. Prohibition proposed to make the nation sober by force majeure, and incidentally to charge a thundering brokerage for doing the job. It said to us, "This is all for your own good, and you ought to fall in line cheerfully, but if you do not fall in, we will make you."

The New Deal proposes a redistribution of wealth and is charging a brokerage that makes the Janissaries of the Anti-Saloon League look like pickpockets at a county fair. The national headquarters of the New Deal has a slush fund of something over $4 billion to blow in between now and next November [1937], and about 700,000 devoted heelers on the job of seeing that it is spent where it will bring the best results. All this, we are told, is for our own good, and we ought to appreciate it, but whether we appreciate it or not, we must take it.
The two enterprises are alike also in respect of the quality of the people who support it. There are some statistics available on this. About four years ago — in November 1931, to be exact — Mr. Henry L.
Mencken published in this magazine the results of an elaborate statistical study that he had been making, in collaboration with Mr. Charles Angoff, in order to determine the relative cultural standing of the 48 states. He tabulated his findings in the form of a list of the states, arranged in the order of their approach to civilization, and he has stated publicly that his table has never been successfully challenged.

In 1932 Mr. Mencken compared his table with the returns of the Literary Digest's poll on Prohibition, and found that they fitted precisely. Nearly all the states that turned in heavy majorities against Prohibition stood high on his table, and nearly all that supported it stood low. In the Baltimore Evening Sun of January 13, 1936, he made a similar comparison with the Digest's poll on the New Deal, and got a similar result. The more nearly civilized states are against it, and the more uncivilized states are for it. He says,

In the five most civilized of American states, according to the Angoff-Mencken table, the percentage of voters voting for the New Deal is but 32.32; in the five least civilized states it is 67.68, or more than double… Of the states giving the New Deal less than 30% of their votes (seven in number) all are among the first twenty-two; of those giving it more than 70% (two in number) both are among the last three. Of those giving it less than 35% (thirteen in number) all are among the first twenty-eight; of those giving it more than 65% (four in number) all are clumped together at the bottom. Finally, of those giving it less than 40% (twenty-two in number) all are among the first thirty-three; and of those giving it more than 60% (eight in number) all are among the last eleven.

From this it may be seen that, precisely like Prohibition, the New Deal, as Mr. Mencken concludes,

makes its most powerful appeal, not to the intelligent and enlightened moiety of the American people, but to the ignorant and credulous. It is, in truth, demagogy pure and simple, quackery undiluted. … The states that show a majority for it, including the anomalous Utah, are exactly the states that inflicted the Eighteenth Amendment on us, and most of them are still dry. Also they are the states whose people still believe by large majorities that William Jennings Bryan was a profounder scientist than Darwin, that any man who pays his debts is an enemy to society, and that a horsehair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.

As for its moral effect upon the nation, the New Deal simply carries on Prohibition's work of making corruption and hypocrisy respectable. Both enterprises are bureaucratic, both are coercive, and, as Mr. Jefferson said, the moral effect of coercion is "to make one-half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth."

And what has Prohibition had to show by way of offset? Simply nothing. What has the New Deal to show, so far? Can anybody point to a single one of its policies that has really worked? I know of none. No recovery in business is due to it. It has as many unemployed on its hands as it ever had and as many derelicts. Its agricultural policy is said to have worked, but, as the Supreme Court observed, that simply amounted to the expropriation of money from one group for the benefit of another. In other words, it amounted to larceny, and official larceny always works. The unofficial practitioners of that art who are now in Sing Sing were simply at a disadvantage.
Prohibition and the New Deal, in short, breed straight back to the incredible appetite of the American people for self-inflicted punishment. One wonders how long they can take it and how hard; and above all, one wonders, when the New Deal has gone the way of Prohibition, what more dismal and depraving form of self-torture they will turn to next."

And so the worm turns, generation over generation, the same old corruptions raising its head in an endless cycle of renewal.  It seems we humans never learn and the prospects also seem to point to the overwhelming likelihood that we never will..

What can one say other than until next time please accept my best wishes.

The Canon Of Individual Sovereignty

Greetings once again.

In the essay titled "What Is Freedom?", mention is made of a small set of foundational principles upon which all free living amongst each other is based. I wrote that sharing a common political basis does not entail a morbid lockstep mentality wherein people are forced to live a one-size-fits-all life. Quite the contrary, all that is required is the acceptance and practice of a very small set of fundamental propositions that allow for expansively broad avenues of choice in how one may live. Likewise, those principles impose vanishingly few restrictions that all reasonable people will recognize as rational and obvious.

Our goal here shall be to derive those principles and elaborate upon them in some detail in order to paint what will hopefully be a clear, complete, rational, and truthful picture of the foundations of Freedom and Personal Liberty. This set constitutes what I call the "Canon of Individual Sovereignty" and is comprised of three Cadinal Principles which, were people to live by them, the universe of human affairs would find itself vastly improved.

The one assumption that may be said to underpin these principles is that of equal claims to life, what most people would refer to as "equal rights". This supposition, when considered carefully, is the only one of this sort that makes any sense, particularly when viewed in contrast to its negation, which would assert that people do not have equal right, which is to say equal claims, to life. The assertion of inequality means that the claim to life is different for some people in relation to others. Such an assertion leads to quite a shopping list of very thorny questions whose answers either do not exist or are painfully unsatisfying. For example, if our claims to life are not equal, in what ways are they not? Whose claims are greater? Even if one set of claims is not "greater" than another in any objective sense, they are still different. Given such a difference, who decides who enjoys one set and not another? Upon what basis is the determination made, and who establishes the standard of judgment?  As the typically unsatisfying answers to such questions are made by those supporting such a position, new questions arise endlessly.

The results of rejecting the assumption of equal claim are inelegant, arbitrary, and so very obviously false as to merit no further consideration. Yet, the exercise of raising and answering such questions in demonstration of these truths is indispensable as a device whereby one learns through first hand experience, rather than on blind faith and rote.

Compare that with the opposite proposition, that all people hold equal claims to life. The litany of problem-laden questions never arises, which is one of several indicators that this is, in fact, the correct and sufficient case.

Behold, then, the Canon.

The Canon Of Individual Sovereignty

The natural and self evident status of each Individual Man is that of a Sovereign Being. This truth is particularly important where questions and considerations of the Individual’s existence with and about his Fellows arise, for if he is alone, there is no other to trespass upon him. Man’s sovereign status derives directly from a single fundamental postulate that is at once both elegant and intuitively obvious such that little analytic consideration is required in divining its truth value.  Once accepted, this single assumption leads promptly and axiomatically, to the Body of Principles that apodictically demonstrate and enshrine the complete basis by which One arrives at a more complete Truth. This premise, the Cardinal Postulate, states:

        0. All men hold equal Just Claims to Life.

It serves well to note the reference to “Just” Claims. Whereas, Men may endeavor to confabulate all manner of arbitrary claims upon Life that are of an ill-reasoned and therefore unjust and illegitimate nature that at times borders on the idiotic, there exists a small set of Claims to Life that are just, proper, and are shared equally by all People. A Just Claim, being a Right, the equal Just Claims to Life held by All are otherwise referred to as their Equal Rights.

From the Cardinal Postulate follow the Cardinal Principles of Just Claim.  Behold:

The Principle of Self Ownership. 

        1. Each Individual holds sole and absolute Title to his Life

The Principle of Freedom of Action.

        2. The absolute right to freely think and act in accord with one's own Will

The Principle of Private Property

        3. The right to freely acquire, keep, and dispose of Property

There exists but a single fundamental restriction by which All must abide.

The Cardinal Prohibittion:

        -1 No One may trespass upon  the Equal Rights of Others

Do what Thou wilt, but trespass not upon thy Brethren. No man may own another.  No man may exercise ownership rights upon another nor may he act in a manner tantamount to this.  No man may command another, save by the explicit permission of those over whom he commands.

Thus Endeth the Canon.

What Does It All Mean?

In short, it means that free people are entitled to live as they please, free from interference from anyone, especially members of that often villainous mob to which we refer as "government".  Furthermore, it means that no free man is to be governed in any way whatsoever.  So long as one causes no material harm to others, they are free to do whatever they wish, even if the doing brings harm to oneself.  Freedom of action under will, coupled with the single responsibility not to trespass against others; that is what it means to be truly free.

Governance is only for those who refuse to govern themselves in accord with the basic principles of freedom.  Governance should come into play ONLY after a violation of someone's rights has occurred or while it is occurring.  Instead, we have government interfering with our choices on a daily basis.  It reaches far into our lives, yet so few appear either to notice or they simply accept it as proper for whatever the reason.

Freedom is exhilarating and scary as hell all at once.  It allows for perfect freedom of choice but holds each of us accountable for those we make.  The question facing us today is whether we want real freedom or the gilt cage of pretty slavery, living  at the pleasure and deign of others as we lie to ourselves, calling it "freedom".  Each and every one of us must make the decision as to what it is we really want.  Each of us will make it, whether explicitly or by default.  The question there for each of us is how shall we be heard, by standing tall and making our wills known with strength and clarity of spirit and purpose, or by skulking in the shadows in avoidance of even that much responsibility for ourselves?

What shall it be for you?  What legacy is it that you wish to leave your grandchildren and their posterity?  Freedom is strength and slavery is weakness, yet today pretty slavery is peddled by those in power as freedom.  But if you read the good works of people dedicated to the ideas of true freedom, including those found here, you will have no excuse for choosing ignorantly.  My only admonition to you is the warning to take all due care considering your choice and be very circumspect of that for which you wish because there are no free lunches anywhere in this world to be had.  They do not exist, and therefore you are behooved to regard with great suspicion men bearing gifts.  Everything has its price and no matter how you may  try to avoid paying, pay you shall.  The only question there is what, exactly, are you buying?

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Right To Education

A poster on the Ron Paul Forums asked the following questions regarding a recent Right To Education law passed in India and against which many of the schools have issued complaints.  The law basically says that even private schools shall now be required to reserve 25% of their space for local (read poor) students and shall not be able to do any screening for admissions; nor will the schools be able to exercise any disciplinary action over such students, according to the article that was quoted, though no cite was given.  There are, however, plenty of pages on the issue, this being one of them.

The following captions the original post along with my responses.

Quote:

Originally Posted by prmd142 Hi, I'm an Indian and a regular reader of this forum. I'd like input from you (not as Americans - I know nonintervention and stuff, but as libertarians) on this issue. Where I stand: How can the government interfere with how private schools are run! As if government run public schools were not pathetic enough. Is this what democracy means? There is a huge population (in other words, large number of votes) in India which is poor or worse. Government guarantees them admission to private schools with no strings attached in return for votes. There is no political party which will stand up against right to education bill, coz who doesn't want to come to power! The debate between parties is never whether right to education is right or wrong but how should it be implemented. The working middle class will now have to pay for these people's so called 'right' to education. Is there any way the middle class can protest when they do not have as many votes.

India, like most of the rest of the civilized world, is headed for disaster precisely because of this sort of thinking and its attendant behavior. Mark my words on this.

I would also point out that "right to education" does NOT equate to the right to be provided with an education. It only means a right to access as one's means may allow. So if you come from a poor household and have not the means to send your children for an education, you are shit out of luck. That is another ugly little truth about the seemingly cruel nature of life, but its unpleasant face makes it no less true. Furthermore, just because that truth may strike one as cruel and unfair, it does not follow that it is indeed so. Going further still, it is not within the right of one person to impose his will upon another simply because he perceives some injustice. That is the root of all the social evils of the world - a mob forcing its will upon the rest because they believe that it is for the greater good. Since when does initiated force and robbery serve the good, and where is it established that the "greater good", assuming it can even be determined, is the arbiter of the legitimacy of "state" monopolized force?

Quote:

Can the will of the majority overrule the basic rights of others?

Depends on the basis of your question. In terms of moral principle, no. In terms of actual practice, of course, because most people are morally bankrupt and are therefore willing to apply illegitimate force upon others or tolerate third party application of such force. This is especially true if the outcome benefits them at the expense of others, which is to say that many people are more than happy to accept "free" gifts.

Furthermore, the answer depends in part on the political system in question. In failed states such as the Soviet Union, the central government could do whatever it wanted to whomever it wanted any time it wanted for any reason it wanted to the degree it wanted and by the means it wanted or at least by that which it could get away. Arbitrary rule, which lies at the very core of the definition of "democracy", is the cornerstone of tyranny. That the rule may be by majority rather than some vanishingly small minority adds no legitimacy; nor does it alter the fact that it is tyranny of the purest form. It is, in fact, tyranny of the highest caliber attainable because the fact of the majority will masks it ever so effectively and otherwise renders it resistant to question because it is the "will of the people". This grand nonsense carries with it great persuasive power in large part because for most people the fallacy is too subtle for them to comprehend, much less to identify. Add to this the shrieking that results in the wake of any questioning of the legitimacy of mob-imposed despotism and one finds that such systems tend to be very capable of maintaining that particular status quo.  The fatal factor in such systems appears invariable to lie in economics.

Is India a democracy? The USA is not. It is a constitutionally limited republic, which is supposed to mean that no matter how large a majority may be, they cannot in principle violate the rights of even a one-man minority. At least we have principle on our side.

Quote:

If no, then why is democracy so popular?

Because people are, generally speaking, terminally ignorant of what "democracy" is, due in large part to the endless campaigns of propagandized deceit to which they are subjected by those in "government" and whose stolid and unwavering support the media provide.  They are told that democracy is rule "by the people", rather than the king or dictator.  The key factor of arbitrary and capricious will of the majority in violation of the natural rights of the minority is never brought up, and thereby the great mass of political consumers, unable or unwilling to think critically on an analytical basis, are rendered content with, and proud of the fact that "they" rule the nation.

Quote:

Is there no political system which will protect rights at any cost?

Sure, but such systems depend almost exclusively on the moral fabric of the population. There is no formal system that can do as you ask without the active participation and material support of the people under which such a system ostensibly operates. One may draft the most perfect constitution imaginable but if nobody will abide by its principles and the dictates that follow therefrom, it is effectively nonexistent. Tribal cultures existed for thousands of years wherein the right of each individual was never to be questioned. It is the advent of that abstraction called "the state" in any of its many forms including the ancient monarchies and theocracies, that bore human freedom away on the winds of destruction into the hands of slavery, perdition, disease, and misery. Once the first individual or group thereof convinced the rest that he or they stood above the them, Pandora's box was effectively pried opened and the world would never be the same. At that moment the days of humanity's natural and proper state of individual freedom became numbered. Welcome to the paradise of "civilization".

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Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

American Conservative Talk Media

Once again I forward a response I made to a query in another forum.  For posterity.

 

Originally Posted by Howard_Roark    I don't really know what to make of Alex Jones. On one hand he is a libertarian and a very well-spoken advocate of a lot of libertarian principles. On the other, he seems to be a deranged raving conspiracy theorist who is spreading paranoia and is totally out of touch with reality.

Nor do I much of the time. Alex Jones says many things with which I agree. He speaks some profound truths, then he gets all sounding like a good candidate for the rubber room. He is part of the MSM [edit: Main Stream Media], much as he may rail against it, so I do not trust him on that basis alone. Nobody gets into mainline slots like that without "approval". He may be personally genuine on some level - maybe even on all, but he is then being "handled". He may be on to some very significant truths - it seems this way in some cases. But his raving discredits him and I find it difficult to believe that a man with so large an audience would not be intelligent enough to realize how he compromises his credibility with these modes of expression. Less believable still is that he has nobody on his staff that recognizes this and advises him to get his feet on the ground.

One other point I believe is key here is that I believe "they" believe (and perhaps rightly) that the truths Alex Jones puts out there, as well as all his libertarian posturing, poses no threat to their hegemony. Those like Jones in fact provide great benefit to the elite in that it reinforces the mistaken perception that there is some shred of freedom remaining to us and that these beacons of truth (in the minds of some) offer proof that there is hope for our freedom. Depending on the end game in mind, this may be the perfect thing for the elite because it keeps people always in "it's coming soon" mode in their thoughts.

Ever listen to Beck? That ninny raves on and on about how "its coming". What a load of shit. It ain't coming folks - it's here. Now. Right now, this very minute. If he were to say that, to speak this truth, would it not demand immediate action on our part to save ourselves from the destruction that is upon us? Action is what they do not want, but rather material indolence. Let the proles think all they want if they must, just so long as they lift no finger. I believe these shows ensure just this because they lead people to believe that someone is doing something.

Let us not be gratuitously kind to ourselves - Americans are some of the politically laziest and most stupid people in the world. And do not let the seemingly big number of clued-in people in places such as this forum deceive you into thinking it is otherwise. I have lived all over these United States and it has been my habit to have very broad social circles. My acquaintances range from rocket scientists and true geniuses to street whores, criminals, housewives in curlers, and the homeless. I have sampled a very broad cross section of the American population. There are all kinds of very intelligent and well clued-in people here [USA]. For each one of those, I would estimate there must be close to 50 completely clueless ones. That is the sad truth of my experiences with folks over the last 30 years.

We have come to believe all manner of inexcusably unacceptable bullshit. On top of that, we have fallen into the terminally bad habit of wanting someone else to do our dirty work for us - to wit, our "representative" government and state-run schools where we have placed our balls in the hands of complete strangers, fooling ourselves into believing that they will serve our best interests while we pursue more important issues, like that next line on the mirror. We have fucked ourselves more royally than most people could possibly believe and even fewer would be able to accept. Were they to, they would simply implode - they would go catatonic and would sit in one place until starvation took them. Yes, it really is that bad and we should stop fooling ourselves.... but I digress.

While I'm on it, Beck is really so full of shit, but he is fairly subtly so and I can well see how most people would miss the problems with many of the things he says or that his statements presuppose. His rants sound like patriotic libertarian material, but if you listen and carefully analyze what he really says, he sounds to me like a screaming statist. The same with Neil Boortz, Hannity, etc. The only ones who don't seem completely full of shit are the guys on Freedom Talk Live (and they fuck up routinely in terms of reasoning) and Phil Valentine (though I have not been listening to him long enough yet to get a good feel for who he really is). There is also another guy to whom I have listened only twice... Joe somethingorother... he seemed pretty cool, but it is difficult to say on one or two hearings.

Jones and the others may be examples of the age old game of mixing truth with distortions in order to paint convincing but highly misleading pictures. That is what I most strongly believe about these figures. Part of the evidence that leads me to this suspicion lies in what they do not say. I see no convincing arguments from them about how the Fed must be dissolved, as well as the IRS (though IRS gets far more airplay than the Fed). How about dismantling the public school system? Another sacred cow they don't touch. These prime targets for our wrath and demand are ignored. Again I find it difficult to accept that nobody on their staffs are aware of these issues. I must, therefore, conclude that these issues are being purposely ignored, which means the people in question are either not what they appear or they are simply too stupid to be otherwise trusted.

One needs to be very circumspect in evaluating such public figures. Oh, and while we're at it, the intro to Beck's radio slot refers to his show as the fusion of information and ENTERTAINMENT. Now folks, call me crazy (I've been called worse), but that smacks of rubbing the truth in the noses of people too stupid to figure out that they are being taken down the garden path. Beck is just that - he is an entertainer. IMO anyone taking him seriously in a holistic sense is making a very grave mistake.

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Until next time, please accept my best wishes.