The Devil's Advocate

Generally speaking, I despise so-called "Hollywood". Literally speaking, 99%+++ of what they have produced is not fit for the lowest of human filth to view, much less decent folk - and yes, I am just brash enough to make the distinction between the worst and the better among us in this era of "it's all good" relativism. But there is that almost infinitesimal proportion of work the conception and execution of which has been so keenly inspired as to nearly excuse the hopeless wreckage of all its sibling productions. One of those is "The Devil's Advocate" with Al Pacino and so surprisingly, Keanu Reeves, whose next best accomplishment in terms of film was "Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure".


The Devil's Advocate contains many small gems of sorts - most of them setups for larger coups, but all of them worthy. There are, however, the two passages delivered by Pacino's perfectly cast character that drive this film to yon dizzying stratospheric heights. Between the two, there is the exchange between Pacino and Reeves about free will, another gem.


My purpose in posting these here is that these two vignettes within a larger story so very adeptly distill the most strident of all human proclivities in such a way as to drive home with something of the most slightly understated fury why humanity is in such deep trouble, why They are winning the battle for the future of the human race, why liberty-oriented people are losing, and to be depressingly blunt why things are likely not going to work out too well for us on the whole. There is always a chance that the tiger may change its stripes, but let us not ignore the statistical reality in the process of hoping for the best.


If perchance you have never seen this film, unlike most others I can recommend this one highly. The language and some of the notions are coarse, so be warned if perchance that sort of thing offends you. I deem it all well worth cutting through to get to the good stuff, which is very good.


This first gem is from the scene where Reeve's character is relaying to Pacino's the message from "Eddie Barzoon" about maybe ratting the firm out to a government commission investigating them, the Devil being the speaker:


"You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire.


You build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor; becomes his own god.


Where can you go from there?


As we're scrambling from one deal to the next who's got his eye on the planet as the air thickens, the water sours? Even bees' honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity; and it just keeps coming, faster and faster. There's no chance to think, to prepare.


It's buy futures... sell futures... when there is no future.


We got a runaway train, boy. We got a billion Eddie Barzoons all jogging into the future. Every one of them is getting ready to fist-fuck God's ex-planet, lick their fingers clean as they reach out toward their pristine cybernetic keyboards to tote up their fucking billable hours.


And then it hits home. You got to pay your own way, Eddie. It's a little late in the game to buy out now. Your belly's too full, your dick is sore, your eyes are bloodshot and you're screaming for someone to help.


But guess what?


There's no one there! You're all alone, Eddie.


You're God's special little creature."


The second comes right after Reeve's character's wife commits suicide and his mother confesses to him who his father is (Pacino's character). This one is dialogue and in order to more fully understand it, you will need to watch the film:


"[Devil] You were right about one thing. I have been watching. Couldn't help myself. Watching. Waiting. Holding my breath.
But I'm no puppeteer, Kevin. I don't make things happen. Doesn't work like that.

[Lomax] What'd you do to Mary Ann?

[Devil] Free will. It's like butterfly wings. Once touched, they never get off the ground. I only set the stage. You pull your own strings.

[Lomax] What did you do to Mary Ann?

[Devil] A gun? In here?

[Lomax] Goddamn it, what did you do to my wife?

[Devil] Well... on a scale of one to ten, ten being the most depraved act of sexual theater known to man, one being your average Friday night run-through at the Lomaxes', I'd say, not to be immodest... Mary Ann and I got it on at about seven.

[Lomax] Fuck you!(starts shooting the devil multiple times)

[Devil] Got me! Got me! Yes! Step it up, Son! Come on! That's good! You got to hold on to that fury! That's the last thing to go! That's the final hiding place. It's the final fig leaf.

[Lomax] Who are you?

[Devil] Who am I? Who are you?

Never lost a case.

Why?

Why do you think?

Because you're so fucking good?

[Lomax] Yes.

[Devil] But why?

[Lomax] Because you're my father?

[Devil] I'm a little more than that, Kevin.

Awfully hot in that courtroom, wasn't it?

'What's the game plan, Kevin? It was a nice run, Kev. Had to close out some day. Nobody wins them all.'

[Lomax] What are you?

[Devil] I have so many names.

[Lomax] Satan.

[Devil] Call me Dad.

[Lomax] Mary Ann, she knew it. She knew it. She knew it, so you destroyed her.

[Devil] You're blaming me for Mary Ann? I hope you're kidding.

Mary Ann, you could have saved her anytime you liked. All she wanted was love.

Hey, you were too busy.

[Lomax] That's a lie.

[Devil] Face it, you started looking to better-deal her the minute you got here.

[Lomax] That's not true. You don't know what we had!

[Devil] Hey, I'm on your side!

[Lomax] You're a liar!

[Devil] There's nothing out there for you! Don't be such a fucking chump! Stop deluding yourself! I told you to take care of your wife!

What did I say? 'The world would understand.'

Didn't I say that?

What did you do? 'You know what scares me, John? I leave the case, she gets better and then I hate her for it.'

Remember?

[Lomax] I know what you did. You set me up!

[Devil] Who told you to pull out all the stops on Mr. Gettys? Who made that choice?

[Lomax] It's entrapment. You set me up.

[Devil] And Moyez! The direction you took! Popes, swamis, snake handlers, all feeding at the same trough. Whose ideas were those?

[Lomax] You played me!

[Devil] It was a test! Your test! And Cullen! Knowing he was guilty! Seeing those pictures! What did you do? You put that lying bitch on the stand!

[Lomax] You brought me in. You put me there! You made her lie!

[Devil] I don't do that, Kevin! That day on the subway, what did I say to you? What were my words to you?

Maybe it was your time to lose. You didn't think so.

[Lomax] Lose? I don't lose! I win! I win! I'm a lawyer! That's my job! That's what I do!

[Devil] I rest my case. Vanity... is definitely my favorite sin.

Kevin, it's so basic. Self-love. The all-natural opiate.

It's not that you didn't care for Mary Ann, Kevin... it's just that you were a little more involved with someone else. Yourself.

[Lomax] You're right. I did it all. I let her go.

[Devil] Don't be too hard on yourself, Kevin. You wanted something more. Believe me.

[Lomax] I left her behind and just kept going.

[Devil] You can't keep punishing yourself."

Snip some comparatively irrelevant dialogue and it continues:

"[Lomax] What do you want from me?

[Devil] I want you to be yourself.

You know, I'll tell you, boy... guilt... it's like a bag of fucking bricks. All you got to do is set it down.

I know what you're going through.

I've been there.

[Lomax's "sister"] Just come here. Come here. Let it go.

[Lomax] I can't do that.

[Devil] Who are you carrying all those bricks for?

God?

Is that it?

God?

I'll tell you... let me give you a little inside information about God.

God likes to watch. He's a prankster.

Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do? I swear, for his own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time.

Look, but don't touch.

Touch, but don't taste.

Taste, but don't swallow.

And while you're jumping from one foot to the next, what is He doing? He's laughing his sick, fucking ass off! He's a tightass! He's a sadist! He's an absentee landlord!

Worship that? Never!

[Lomax] 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,' is that it?

[Devil] Why not? I'm here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began!

I've nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have! I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him!

Why? Because I never rejected him,in spite of all his imperfections! I'm a fan of man! I'm a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.

Who, in their right mind Kevin, could possibly deny the 20th century was entirely mine? All of it, Kevin! All of it. Mine. I'm peaking, Kevin. It's my time now. It's our time."



And there you have it. Humanity statistically wrapped up neatly in a concise and frighteningly precise nutshell.


The question that remains to be answered is this: are there enough good people left who are willing to do what needs doing - the ugly things; the abominal things; the monstrous things to set this world free? And if so, is the race worth freeing? What of it? What is the likely reality of a freed, technologically enabled, self-absorbed humanity? All of we who presume to hold the goal of human freedom, even if only in America, need to sit quietly and alone or perhaps with a small number of trusted and like-minded friends and family and think about this very carefully. I am not sure that the spectre is particularly appealing.

As I see it, the simple freeing of humanity would be an unmitigated disaster. Why? Because people have no experience with actual freedom but only with the pretty slavery wherein the Master's beneficent hand guides the "free man" at the boundaries of his cage so that he will not stray into grave sin, vis-a-vis the petty. This is where the Christian ethic applied to real life has failed catastrophically and monumentally. And the Godless progressives and other such vermin have no hay to make in that black sunshine because their ethics are Christian in their very fabric. Let none of those raving imbeciles fool themselves into believing otherwise. To the extent and in the manner the Christian Church has failed so spectacularly, so have the others - the anti-religious, the stooge-atheists because their standard of ethics are taken from the precise same book.

Furthermore, let us be crystal clear that the Christian ethic, per se, is not what has failed here, for that is only a conceptual body of principles and tenets by which one may choose to live. The bitch and the hitch is that the ethics in themselves mean NOTHING until they are interpreted and applied, and it is we as a race who have done so poor a job of application. The really scary part in all of this is that most of it has been done ostensibly with nothing but the best of intentions.

It was good intention that enslaved the human race in the manacles of imposed love and caring, thereby ripping from it its liberty. It was the self-absorbed church that forced itself upon the world with the sword and the book, perverting the beauty within and changing it into the evil against which the world now thinks it rails, unaware that its own book is the precise same one at heart, only using slightly different wording. It is the cowardice of men that has enslaved humanity; the steadfast and categorical refusal to accept men and the world as they more truly are. Rather, they have adopted this wildly demented masturbatory fantasy of an idealized world that can never exist because it is based upon a world populated by non-human creatures.


There are so many layers, each entangled in endless convolution with the others such that it numbs the mind of the intelligent man who endeavors to understand it. Complete, precise, and correct analysis is unlikely to be achievable. The good news, however, is that it is not necessary. To begin from a clean sheet with principles in hand is the ONLY thing that will provide the basis for our salvation and deliverance back into freedom, once again assuming that we are even worth saving.


A key here lies not in just having the intellectual chops to dope it all out, but the courage and moral and intestinal fortitude to accept the seemingly harsh realities that accompany one along the path toward the goal. Good intentions that work against the wills of people who commit no criminal acts is WRONG no matter what the perceived greater good is. You want a poster child for "crime" - well there you have it - the do-gooder forcing his unwelcome help upon his fellows. In the end, the only person the do-gooder is serving is himself because at the bottom of it all he does not give the least damn about what the targets of his beneficence want. He cares only about what HE wants - to feel better about all the things in the world that he perceives to be unjust; to feel he has righted some terrible wrong and made the world a better place by hook or by crook. This is pure egotism of the worst form, for it is unregulated, non-self-limiting, and so blindly self-serving as to be frightening to even the bravest among men.


A truly pathetic element in all of this is that the forcible do-gooder operates under the delusional presumption that he does all of this devoid of the ego of the individualist. Unlike the individualist, when faced with failure they refuse to demur and they do this because they are devoid of all humility and human decency, all ostensible good intentions notwithstanding. They are the epitome - the very definition of "evil" and "disease" because in the end, everything they do is solely for themselves and not in the least measure for those whom them purport to help. They will take any measure they feel is needed and with which they think they can get away to achieve their objectives.


Let me now be clear as to how such people are to be treated: all who attempt to use force, and here I mean that which ultimately reduces to the physical, may and perhaps ought to be killed on the spot, without hesitation or compunction, and without equivocation. I do not care if it is police, Congress, their agents, robbers, rapists, or the city dog catcher. If one is proceeding without having committed a crime, and here I mean a real crime as in mala in se, vis-a-vis phony baloney crimes mala prohibita, any force applied may be justifiably met with opposing force up to and including that which is lethal. On this I am unequivocal. There is no other way to put an end to the insanity of those who would murder us with their stated good intentions. If we are indeed free beings in our fabric, and I contend that we are, then there exists no authority above that of the individual and all who believe otherwise are deluded. If you think about it, the whole notion of "justice" bases upon the tacit assumption of entitlement, and is questionable.

Truly, we are in quite a corner.  We want what we want, but so much of what we want is pure, suicidal poison.  The great majority of us are just like addicts.  We, in fact, are addicts and such people will pursue that which they crave unto their own destruction.  We are addicted to all manner of morbidity.

The question facing each of us during every moment of every day we live is what shall be our next choice?  What shall we choose to pursue?  What shall we shun?  What sort of person will I be at this very moment? 

Most seem to avoid the conscious choices to the greatest degree practicality will allow, for it is the effort and the accountability that are the ultimate objects of evasion for the common man.  These two things, work and responsibility, are the two most despised, reviled, hated, and feared things in the small, narrow, and shallow world of the Common Man.  Were it not so, Empire would never had the least chance of gaining a toehold in the circles of humanity.  There could have been no Roman Empire, no Third Reich nor Soviet Union, Red China, or any of the other wildly toxic and mortally dangerous human social organizations that have foisted upon the body of humankind the most bitter miseries that no free men could possibly imagine prior to actual experience.

It is clear that continuing on our current philosophical path is leading us nowhere that any sane person wants to go.  Therefore, "what now?" arises prominently as a sore thumb before the eyes of the world.  Indeed, what now?  Do we cave in to the One-World contingent?  Do we fight?  Do nothing and hope for the best?  I cannot answer for anyone but myself and as things stands at the time of this writing it is my decision not to willingly capitulate to the overwhelming forces that are driving the individual's ability to act in accord with his inborn freedom to oblivion.  It is my opinion that there is in fact a good fight to be fought and, having stepped into the breach, I have as yet no intentions of relenting.

As for you, ask yourself, "what will it be?"  If you are too afraid, too lazy, too bemused with the trinkets before you, that is OK.  Not everyone is built for this.  Settle yourself and have the best life you are able.  But if perchance you feel as do I that there are things for which doing battle is worthwhile, then think long and carefully what it really means to commit yourself to the cause of your own freedom.  Make no decision in haste or without its due consideration, but if after having diligently done so you decide the cause is worthy of you, then settle yourself to the commitment and be at peace with your choice.

It seems I have wandered a bit from my original intentions.  So be it.  I leave you to your thoughts now and wish you the best of everything that life has to offer.  May your health be good and your wealth satisfactory.

Pretty Slavery: What It Is And How To Identify And Expose The Fraud

Several years ago I coined the term "pretty slavery" and have used it many times in my communications with others to convey the notion of the gilt cage.  In a past article, I set forth the notion that freedom is an all or nothing deal.  There are no "degrees" where freedom is concerned.  One is either free or is not.  There is nothing between the two.  Degrees only present themselves under conditions of oppression and slavery where the master or tyrant decides what shall be allowed and what shall not.  This is by necessity an arbitrary position regardless of how well intended the tyrant may be, for no matter how benevolent one's master, you are always subject to that over which you have no control.  There is nothing in principle that constrains the master's hand; nothing to prevent his presumably reasonable base of principles from wandering into whim and caprice.

All that aside, there is nothing in credibly derived principle that endows one man to act as the master of another.  The Canon Of Individual Sovereignty makes this quite solidly plain.  Therefore, no matter how one attempts to slice the pie, he will find it quite impossible to concoct a logically valid basis for one subset of a population dominating another.  Dominion over others cannot occur except as a felonious action where those dominated have not given their consent.

This may seem intuitively obvious when one looks to the histories of personalities such as Stalin and Mao, whose colorless brutality made obvious to the world that they were monsters needing little more than tail, horns, and a pitchfork to complete the image.  Somewhat less obvious are the examples epitomized by men such as Hitler whose personal charisma and charm drew in millions of Germans who thereby fell for his lies and helped usher forth the destruction of most of the European continent and tens of millions of lives.

It is therefore not the obvious monster of whom we must beware, but rather of the one with the smiling faces of our beloved aunts and uncles - whose words soothe us, set us at ease and comfort, and promise us great peace, happiness, wealth, health, and endless prosperity.  Their appeals and arguments often carry such brute emotional force that we are compelled to forsake our normally good habits of circumspection.  We forget to ask the more pointed questions or pursue answers with yet more querying.  This is a terrible error into which even otherwise intelligent, smart, diligent, and careful adults fall and it is rapidly proving to be humanity's undoing.

What, then, is "pretty slavery"?  Simply put, it is the gilt cage wherein one is allowed enough of what one wants such that he tolerates all the other violations of his rights.  The characteristic of pretty slavery that is the greatest danger is that it is tolerable and even acceptable to those who subscribe to it.  In a great many instances it is, in fact, demanded.

Why, you may ask yourself, would anyone demand to be a slave?  The answer comes in two parts. Firstly, the subscriber often is unaware of his status as a slave, usually and precisely because he can do enough of the things he wants such that he sees no reason to "rock the boat", or rationalizing the nonsense that one has to make sacrifices or cannot always have what he wants, and so forth down a considerable list.  Secondly, he accepts the shackles of his status because he is seeking to get something at no cost to him, which is to say, something for nothing.  He does not care enough not to trade away B, C, D, E, etc., if he can be provided with A.

There are many aspects to this and the layers are numerous and possessing many entanglements and convolutions with each other.

The gay man who wants to be able to marry his partner will be satisfied if allowed that privilege in exchange for his silence when the men in charge prohibit his neighbor from keeping and bearing arms because he has no personal interest in such rights or perhaps even disagrees with them.  In other words, if the concerns of his neighbors do not coincide with his own, their rights become meaningless at best to him, and so long as he has gotten what he wants he will remain otherwise compliant and tolerant of tyrannies that do not touch him too objectionably.

The fundamentalist religious man, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or what have you is often more than happy to see the rights of the gay man trampled into the dust so long as that nativity scene can be displayed in the town square or his children allowed to pray in school.  To those people the rights of their neighbors whose interests do not coincide, or in this case perhaps even conflicts with their own, mean nothing to them.  Less than nothing, in fact, because he often finds them inimical.

Pretty slavery means lifting not an eyebrow when one's fellows rights are stampeded into the dust by law and those who enforce it with physical brutality so long as you have enough of what you want.  Pretty slavery is the result of having been bought off by a mob of dangerous thugs whose tacit message to the slave is this: "now that we are agreed about what you are, the only question remaining is that of price."  That is the pitiable truth about the man who tolerates his pretty slavery, the only thing differentiating one from the other being the price at which he is willing to sell his soul and those of his fellows, the latter being the sin for which there may be no forgiving.

Do what thou wilt with thine own life, but presume not to dispose of mine without consult or consent.

Pretty slavery is indeed a fraud because it is slavery that is masqueraded either as "freedom" or as being "necessary".  We already know that it is the farthest possible thing from freedom, but what of the necessity angle that is so often employed with such nearly universal success against the average man who is either incapable of or unwilling to make use of his brain for something even slightly more than a hat rack?

We have heard nearly every president in our lifetime utter the assertion that "everyone must make sacrifices". Oh really?  Says who?  And what sacrifices are we to make?  Who decides what they shall be, who shall make them, and who will be exempt?  On what basis are these decisions made and how did the people making them acquire the authority to do so?  These are but the first in a long list of questions that need to be asked and the answers, such as they may be forthcoming, must be very carefully scrutinized for odor.

I was once in a meeting that had been called by our district manager at AT&T.  He attempted to foist this sacrifice nonsense upon us regarding a now-forgotten issue.  The room full with about 70 peoples sat silently as the manager went on with his dreary dictates.  At one point he said, "we can't eat steak every night, can we?", to which those present silently acquiesced, some even nodding in agreement.  My close friend and associate, Charles, by that time had had enough and very unceremoniously called the manager on his baloney by asserting, "I do".  The manager was so taken aback by the challenge to his phony nonsense that he really had nothing to say save to toss out his weakly offered counter that "most" people could not afford to eat steak every night.  Upon what he made that assertion is anyone's guess, but in typical fashion the people in the room got all uncomfortable, which was very visibly the case based on facial expressions and body language, and remained silent.  After the meeting adjourned, Charles and the manager continued the exchange and I admired his having taken a stand against the latter's ridiculous comments offered to make the decisions in question more palatable to his people.

When those around you, be they political pros, acquaintances, or even strangers break out their manure shovels and start piling on the bullshit about how your status as a slave is actually freedom or that it is necessary for whatever reason such as "fairness", it behooves one to expose the nonsense by asking the questions beginning with "why?" and "who says".  Keep chipping away until the shoveler runs out of his stock in trade.  Defy the lies by challenging at every opportunity those who perpetrate and perpetuate them.

Howard Zinn is credited with with the following quotation:

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem."


Do as you will, of course, but may I respectfully recommend you reject slavery in all its forms, regardless of how innocuous or "necessary" it may seem?

As always, please accept my best wishes.

More Commentary On The Fraud Known As "The State"

On another forum a poster made the following comment regarding the seemingly incongruous concept of the "state" claiming ownership of land as posed in a video titled, "You Can Always Leave", which may be viewed here.

"I had never heard the argument about how the state cannot legitimately claim ownership of all the land."

To this I responded as follows.

Actually, that part is a pretty glaring error in the conceptual structure of the video because there is no such thing as "the state" per se. Given this, the issue becomes even more pointed. If there is no such thing as the state then who, exactly, is claiming ownership of... well, anything to which the "state" label is applied? What does "state property" even mean?

Because there is no state per se, the term "the state" as commonly [mis]used must perforce mean something other than what most people appear to think. The question is, "what?" Who, exactly, claims ownership to all this property for which we are forced, ultimately at the point of the sword, to pay? Who, exactly, is it that claims authority to take from us that which we may not wish to give? If there is no "state", then what is there?

Individuals. 

Individual human beings who come together to act as a group with sufficiently common purpose to give the tacit and at times explicit appearance of a monobloc entity; a single and relatively massive and powerful organism that I like to call an effective "superorganism".

These appearances are no happenstance. Indeed, they are absolutely essential to the psychological design of so-called "government", for without them the state would be visible to even the dullest eyes as what it truly is: a group of individuals acting in concert to assume and exercise authority over others to which they have no rightful claim. This purported authority rests upon a foundation of physical force, and as our history demonstrates beyond any argument, that force is routinely used freely and murderously as "the state" deems fit. Those who claim to act as agents of this impossible-to-locate entity rely upon the hoodwinked nature of those over whom they reign to get away quite literally with murder, assault, and theft on a daily basis.

Government buildings, for example, are built as imposing edifices not by accident, but by definite design to fool the rest into accepting the litany of fog-shrouded innuendo upon which their perceptions and understandings of what "the state" is and thereby securing their consent to be reigned over, if only tacitly so.  They are designed to be imposing and thereby to intimidate, the medium in this case being very much the message.  Empire is the single greatest, most successful, and long surviving scam in human history and the notion of "the state" is its central pillar.

Testament to the power of this lie is the fact that even though there may be no conscious conspiracy afoot to expropriate the cooperation of individuals through the agency of the concept of "the state", the expropriation occurs nonetheless. The "state" survives more or less intact as a conceptual entity generation after generation not necessarily because there exist cabals of evil, faceless, hand-wringing monsters whose long-lived dynasties exist for naught but to rule the rest, though such may exist from time to time, but because the drive to so rule is part and parcel of human psychological makeup. Therefore, there will always be those who will crave the power to make the rest do as they bid. This is part of what we are as human animals and that is why those who wish to remain free shall always reside behind the 8-ball. Free men will always have to fight against the monsters who would subdue them and take that to which they are not entitled.

When Pandora's box was opened, one of the little creatures that escaped just happened to be the single most dangerous evil in all creation: the concept of Empire. Empire takes and perverts with unimaginable extremity the natural and otherwise good human fascination with power and awakens a monster in the individual that might otherwise sleep eternally. The enormous raw power of our cognitive minds is a two-edged sword in that when perverted, the dangers a single individual may come to foist upon others becomes mind numbing. So much more the case when he has recruited the aid of friends and the principles of organization.

The "state" is worse than a lie: it is a bullshit. Mere lies are most often discovered in the longer run, but well crafted bullshit takes the truth and bends it in such ways that the effective lie it constitutes can become impossible for the average man to identify and even when pinpointed he finds himself incapable of accepting it. This is part of the genius that began with religion: inculcate the young with the belief system you want and as adults they will find it nearly impossible to shed it. The people who perpetuate this are like the vampires in horror movies where once bitten, the victim no longer wishes to escape. That is the situation we have had at hand within the borders of human Empire for at least 8 thousand years.

Individuals and administrations have made terrible errors in the past and still do today. The outlandish tyrants of Rome, England, China - the Napoleons, Georges, Stalins, and Maos arise and appear to be eventually vanquished, yet Empire remains perennially and that has been its greatest victory. Just consider that with some care for a moment. The individual tyrants and even their minions by the thousands and perhaps even millions in some cases are wiped from the face of the earth. The vanquishers, those noble fighters for equity and what is right, march joyously out of the maw of hell, only to turn themselves immediately around to march back in. Why? Because their minds are so utterly and hopelessly poisoned at the most fundamental conceptual levels in terms of what they see as politically necessary that they cannot see beyond their most basic and tacit assumptions about what it means to live properly with one's fellows.  They cannot let go of those things they assume to be absolutely essential, lest some horror befall the world in their absence.

In the end, people become the inmates of their own, single-celled conceptual prisons, the foundations of which their fellows helped them build in childhood and which from then on they willfully add to the thickness and height of the walls and bars throughout a lifetime. A people will revolt under a tyrant, defeat him, and then almost immediately continue his tyranny, then wonder why nothing has changed. 

Romania is a very good modern example of this where a group of people apprehended the dementedly evil Ceaucescu and rightly murdered him. While some of his tyrannical excesses were brought to a halt, the fundamental basis of his tyrannies, none of which he invented but rather merely inherited from his forebears, survived essentially intact such that today the most fundamental elements of "his" tyranny remains perfectly intact as if nothing had ever disturbed it.  The only changes are apparent, superficial, and thereby essentially devoid of substantive effect.

We hear and read about these tacit assumptions daily in statements such as "what about the roads?" As if trails have not been blazed without the aid of rank tyranny by the "state".  Yet, people are so blind to their own presumptions, so utterly convinced of the rectitude of their assumptions that they are unable to escape the mental box, the "prison", into which they have caged themselves.

Mind is the great destroyer, for where it goes the butt follows.

A Few More Reasons Why Humanity's State Of Inherent Freedom Remains In Grave Peril

Elsewhere in cyberspace someone wrote,


"You can't legislate morality ass clown."


Said the blind man to his deaf daughter in reference to some rather childish, yet revealing comments made by former senator Rick Santorum about what the Republican party was, and was not. To that I responded as follows.


They (religious extremists) think they can and this renders them equally dangerous to those at the other end of the supposed spectrum. Do not fool yourselves into thinking that such people would not have your necks under their boots were they given the opportunity.


Extremists of any flavor, whether religious or otherwise pose essentially equal threats to freedom and if liberty is to survive (and at this point that is in some very grim doubt) the day will almost certainly come where they will have to be "handled", and that can mean anything from simply managing them with some political clarity to open warfare.


Here again we see the perils that beset human freedom at every turn. Some people seem driven to the will to dominate others, though not always in manners that are obvious to the casual observer. A huge proportion of us, most likely a vast majority in fact, are terrified of actual freedom. They want all the benefits with none of the associated costs. In other words, they want something for nothing and in a universe that as yet provides no discernible free lunches this poses a very serious problem for everyone. Some very few of us want actual freedom. The rest want pretty slavery where the Master magically pulls those free lunches out of thin air and beneficently dispenses them to one and all. No worries there at all, right? Nothing could possibly go wrong there, right?


The bottom line for living freely is stark and perhaps unpleasant: in order to become and remain free one must be willing most literally to butcher his fellows who would trespass upon that freedom. There is no way around this. Law in itself is nothing. Principle left fallow is nothing. Talking nicely to empty headed animals avails one nothing. Talking harshly to them gains them practically nothing. It is naught but the sword that keeps the barbarians polite. Make no mistake about the fact that at the end of the day your "nice" neighbors who crave their particular visions of pretty slavery are not your friends. They are potentially as bitter an enemy as any you might imagine, for they would offer your children up for immediate and unceremonious slaughter if they thought it would get them what they want, which is that vision of paradise at no cost to them. They don't give a damn who pays, so long as it is not them. They are thieves every bit as much as the man who dons a mask and sticks a gun in your ribs for the sake of taking your wallet, only far less honest than the mugger, for at least he does his own work.


Bear always in mind the enormous raw psychological power of well crafted visions of pretty slavery. They are so viscerally appealing - so right in their appearances even to otherwise intelligent and careful adults - that it becomes easy to fall for the bait. Just as with the old vampire movies like Salem's Lot where those somehow saved from the ultimate fate say once bitten they no longer wanted to get away, but to remain in the monster's clutches, so it is with the right visions of pretty slavery. People get swept away with the visions of golden "freedom" and strong happy children and social order, never asking "at what cost, this?" That is the mistake - of wanting something so much that habits of good reason fall by the wayside.


The song of the Siren is nearly irresistible.


No matter how appealing a story line may appear to you, always ask yourself what the costs will be. This is most especially true for the vision of actual freedom because how can you want something you do not fully understand? What is the manna? Whence does it come? Who provides it? How shall they be compensated? For whom shall it be provided? Who shall compensate? How much shall be the bill? And so forth. Do not forget that nothing is free, not even our freedom. A paradox for the ages, perhaps.


When one has well in his grasp the principles of proper human relations the answers become easy to find. When difficulties arise in one's mind it is ALWAYS due to the desire for pretty slavery - for getting something for nothing - for avoiding the costs one does not want to pay. There are no exceptions to this. Proper human relations, which is the manifestation of proper human freedom, gives rise to some unpleasant truths. Some people will not "make it". Some children will die. Others will be stricken with disease, or go hungry and without homes. Some will be forced to live without a large flat-panel television; oh the humanity!


These are some of the costs associated with actual, proper human freedom. While there is no "government" to save you from your unfortunate circumstances or poorly considered choices, there is also none to step upon your rights. The pretty slaver wants the former without the possibility of the latter. 

The pretty slaver wants that which can never be realized. The pretty slaver expects magical and saint-like perfection to govern his world by hands no more adept and free of sin and vice than his own. It is a wish so violently disconnected from even the the most remote threads of reality as to defy one's credulity. How can anyone accept such barking insanity in the least measure? Yet, the vast majority of people in these United States and indeed the world have been trained to subscribe to this rank dementia with clamoring that flies well past the feverish. A goodly proportion of those people would unhesitatingly see you sacrificed upon the altar of their golden vision in order to have that for which they shamelessly fiend. Your desires, your rights, your very life is as nothing to such people. They are no different from all the fools in Germany who stood tall and raised their arms in the NAZI salute for Hitler. They are no different from those who meekly stood by as Mao and Stalin ran roughshod over their fellows, thankful in their quaking cowardice to have been passed over... this time.


These people, your neighbors, those wantonly ignorant and mindlessly greedy poltroons who are willing to accept any political idiocy so long as it affects someone else, would turn on you in an instant if they sensed profit in it or if you threatened their status as free lunchers. So long as they are not inconvenienced they are content to tolerate no-knock raids upon the man next door, always rationalizing that it is none of their business. With few exceptions this has been the increasingly overarching human proclivity since ancient times, having grown exponentially over the past century. Back when, at least, there were apparently far more willing to come to the defense of the rights of their neighbors as written history appears to indicate. Today, however, that characteristic of the race of men is all but extinct, Joe Average now drawing the shades when a ruckus breaks out as he draws a sigh of relief that is it not his house to which armed men in black have arrived and caved in the door, shot the dog, wrecked the house and stomped wordlessly away after realizing they came to the wrong address. Relief that it is not him being dragged away in handcuffs, having been beaten senseless and bloody for having had the temerity to question their actions, the children on their way to "the system", and the wife left to live under a bridge with the house under an order of civil forfeiture.


This is the reality of our nation today, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. The whole truth is so ugly, so frightening, and so impossibly nauseating that most people simply cannot - WILL NOT - consider it. It is simpler to shut it out - drown it out with the next big game on TV, remote in one hand, beer or pecker in the other and the will to tell oneself that all is well.


It is this reality against which we enter the breech. Never let this truth escape your thoughts, no matter how oppressive it may seem, for it is an essential element of that bare thread by which we hope for salvation from abject material slavery at the hands of the good intentions of our fellows. Facing this truth requires courage. Real deal, no bullshit courage as if we were going to war. Without it, we are lost. Do not forget this.


As always, until next time please accept my best wishes.

Political Misuse of Language: The Trick

In "The State" we explored the notion of the so-called "state" and concluded that it does not in fact exist per se.  In "Language and Freedom" the central importance of language in everyday life, particularly its significance to questions of human freedom, is examined and emphasized.

Today we will use the basic ideas contained in these two essays in a particular way to bring to the fore of our awareness a condition of our daily existences that bears attention and understanding.  It effects the lives of virtually every soul on the planet in the most profound and often deleterious ways. In specific, we will focus our attention on a particular manipulation, a trick of language and cognition that persons of a political bent have been using for thousands of years, the continuing use of which makes felt its manifold effects in both nature, degree, and its nearly perfect reliability.

I call it simply, "the Trick"

Language has been a primary tool of manipulation and force of the political class since the reprehensible practices of fraudulent and forced subjugation by one human being of his fellows began long ago. While the sword has been language's partner in crime, shrewd rulers have always recognized the word as the preferred instrument of thrall and tyranny.  After all, is it not preferable to gain power and compliance to one's will without exposing oneself to the risks of open violence or assuming its costs? Cleverly crafted words have been a staple for securing the assent of a people and to establish justification by their rulers.  Such craft often involves fraud, though not in all cases. That is to say, it should be recognized and acknowledged that the Trick to which we shall pay our consideration here is not always employed with explicit knowledge of it as such or with malice.

Quite the contrary, it seems that in a majority of cases this Trick of language is used in a monkey-see, monkey-do fashion.  This is because use of the Trick results in the establishment of false beliefs in the minds of individuals who fail to identify the fact that a trick has been employed.  In such cases the individual most often accepts the result of the Trick as truth and integrates it into the truth that he claims to "know".  Once such falsity is accepted as "fact", it can and often does become very difficult to dislodge, regardless of how much logic, reason, or dynamite one may employ to that end.

It also appears that the more intimately such information touches the emotions of the individual, the more difficult it is to correct, once accepted.  It is the threshold of acceptance that appears to be the crucially damaging event in such cases.  One truly disturbing aspect of all this is that even users of the Trick may employ it without explicit awareness that they are doing so.  They use it without understanding that they are propagating and perpetuating falsehoods.  Monkey see, monkey do, a common human proclivity that may be regarded as cute in small children, but proves very destructive when retained by adults.

In the wake of acquiring these "truths", which tend often to be accepted unquestioningly and consequently to become unquestionable, once accepted, all manner of undesirable things can and frequently do follow. The history of human political life is littered with countless examples of the pernicious effects of this Trick, most of which are ugly, sad, and very destructive.  The vast proportion of human tragedy has been the direct result of the Trick because it attacks us at so fundamental a level of our psychology such that we are lead away from truth. 

In considering the material presented, it will be most helpful to bear in mind the chain of relationships between word and action.  Your words form your thoughts, your thoughts form your beliefs, your beliefs form your cognitive reality beyond the mere reflexes, and finally, your personal reality drives your actions.  Be aware that this chain is a two-way road.  Word and deed, therefore, are inseparable, each effecting the other in ways that can be both subtle and powerful.

The Trick most often results in the formation of conceptual errors (words to thought) in people's minds that in turn give rise to a great plethora of faulty ideas and beliefs (thoughts to belief), which then drives faulty behavior (belief to action). Judicious and clever use of the Trick has been the greatest ally the politician has ever known.  The misapprehension of truth that the Trick brings about are most often of a strongly convincing and compelling nature because they speak so directly to emotion with great force.  It is also most often the case that such misguided beliefs are by their very nature fundamentally dangerous and injurious to the individual and, by extension, to humanity taken as a group. 


Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Trick.

A very common form of expression, especially from holders of public office and other agents of "government" is to refer to non-independently existent and materially insubstantial entities as if they were otherwise.  This is what I call "the Trick".  Why is it a trick?  Because even though there is nothing truthful or otherwise valid in its nature, it still manages to persuade people to think and to behave according to specifically intended ways.  It is a cognitive sleight of hand that uses language as its means of affect. It is the intellectual equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat or sawing one's fetching assistant into halves.  Flawed, yet compelling devices are used to drive one to accept the impossible as real and true.

There is a great litany of such devices constructed with carefully chosen fallacies such that they mislead the mind with great reliability and force.  So compelling are these instruments that people come to believe all manner of ridiculous things that, when all is said and done, amount to nothing better than outright lies gussied up in fancy and emotionally compelling language.  A short-list of some of the more immediately relevant examples might include:

• "The state"
• "The government"
• "The people"
• "The union"
• "The court"
• "The public"
• "The corporation"
• "Society"

What are these terms, really, and why is their common use so often pernicious and dangerous in effect?  The terms themselves have two fundamental things in common.  Firstly, they are objects of a strictly abstract conceptual nature, possessing no material reality of their own.  As such, they exist nowhere in reality save within the confines of a human skull. Secondly, the materially real objects to which these terms refer are most often sets of individual human beings to which one is referring collectively and nothing more.  These attributes relate directly to the four-part structure of the Trick, which includes:

1. The use and treatment of objects that are non-existent per se as if they actually existed otherwise,
2. The attribution of human- or human-like characteristics to these inanimate and abstract concepts,
3. The often tacitly forwarded presupposition or implication that the individual humans to which these abstract objects refer all share the precise same characteristics, opinions, desires, etc. such that they may each be treated as purely interchangeable entities, which is to say as being essentially clones, and
4. Vague or nonexistent definition of the terms.

The Trick may employ any or all of these devices in a given instance.

The "state", for example, exists nowhere in reality save the confines of the human skull.  Remove all the people from the planet and then point to "the state".  Upon what may one lay his hands such that he may rightly and truthfully and rationally declare, "this is the state"?  Nowhere.   Remove all the people and the same happens with "the public", "society", "government", "the court", and so forth.

If one retreats from the assertion that the "state" exists in and of itself, falling back to the position that asserts that it is comprised of those in positions of governance, then they will not be able to establish a "state's" rights, authority, interests, etc. because it cannot have such attributes.  The only rights of which to speak there are those of the individuals that comprise the set and those cannot be additive.  Since the "state" has no rights of its own, separate and independent from those of the people that comprise it.

Such terms refer to nothing other than abstractions and possess no material reality of their own.  Having established that such conceptual constructs represent no a discrete real object per se, it then follows that the abstract object cannot perforce possess the attributes of a such objectively real entities.  The "court" cannot have neither rights nor compelling interests, the same to be said for the "public", "government", "the state", and so on.

The third attribute of the Trick involves the implication that a given conceptual term, for example, "the public" speaks authoritatively for all the people to whom the term may be said to refer.  This, of course, is almost never true.  Save for the most basic considerations, human beings almost never agree universally on any given issue in so much as principle, much less its gory details.

Consider the issue of gun control laws.  A legislative body will draft a law that will have the support of some, the indifference of others, and the enmity of yet others.  Some will agree that we need more "gun control" while many will simply not care either way.  And on the other end will be those who wish to keep and bear arms unconditionally as per their natural right to the means of defense.  Therefore, such a politician when talking about such laws or policies cites "the public interest" he is clearly speaking either out of deplorable and inexcusable ignorance or is employing fraud to secure sufficient support of a law that will clearly meet with the displeasure of some portion of the population.  In such a case the "public interest" is not a uniform monobloc as the usage implies.  And here we see how imprecise or nonexistent definitions of such terms is employed such that politicians may employ endless innuendo such that they can never be pinned down to a specific meaning.  This use of semantic fog and implication enables them to lead people to the conclusions they seek and relies heavily on the bad habits and poor reasoning skills of such people.

Despite the rank absurdity of the structure of the Trick - absurd in that when the structure is made clear one wonders how it manages to succeed at all, much less in the wild fashion it so widely enjoys - countless people use such terms in precisely this manner with no apparent problems.  Politicians and political agents use these terms as if they referred to independently and materially identifiable and tangible objects in the real world, possessing human-like attributes and that speak universally for all people.  The vast majority of the rest of the population accept these endless absurdities most often without question, seemingly unable to identify, analyze, and defeat them, which represents a clear, present, and profound danger to all people.

Would these same people accept my assertion that the Floof exists, has authority over them such that it may prohibit some behaviors and mandate others, holds interests of its own and possesses the right to exist and act in accord with its authority?  Given enough time and the right introduction, I do believe the answer to the question is, "yes".  Really?  Floof?

Even if one were able to demonstrate, for example, that "government" actually existed, how does it follow that it possesses human attributes such as rights, authority, and power?  Accepting that "government" possesses such attributes is in principle little different from claiming the same to be the case for an automobile or one's kitchen sink. When one draws away from his acceptance of the key premise that abstract and therefore inanimate objects possess human attributes, the enormous houses of cards built upon such impossibilities collapse in spectacular fashion.

Examples of the many ways in which the power class uses the Trick can be found in the legal system.  In the body of statute as well as that of case law one often encounters references to the "public interest" or the common assertion that "society has the right...".  These are indeed prime examples of how the Trick is employed to convince people to accept the imposition of restrictions upon their liberties and other violations of their rights that they would likely reject were they in possession of an understanding of the true nature of the reasoning used to gain their assent.  Those in positions of power, political or otherwise, often make reference to such fallacious notions as the "public interest" so as to present emotionally compelling, if highly tacit and logically flawed arguments in order to gain the acceptance of rubrics which they seek to impose upon others.  This, of course, is a gross misuse of such conceptual instruments and represents, at best, ignorance and incompetence and at worst, a ruthless willingness to employ fraud to achieve one's objectives.

Because there is no such thing as the "public" per se, which is to say that it does not exist objectively and materially in any manner independent of the components that comprise it, which are the individual human beings to which "public" refers collectively, what then is the purpose of the term?  Why does it exist and to what legitimate use is it to be put, if any? The answer is simple.

The proper role, purpose, and usage of terms such as "public" is to serve as a conversational short-hand by which one refers to the individual members of the set in a conceptually abstracted and collective manner.  This device allows us to save ourselves from having to name each individual when referring to populations or greater than trivial sizes, which in virtually all cases would prove onerously time consuming and inaccurate. The adoption of such referential terms and their attendant conventions for use does not include or confer upon the conceptual object ("public" in this case) other characteristics and qualities such as solidity, unity, or existence per se, as those are solely demonstrable as being attributable to the individuals in question to which the term refers and nothing more.  The Trick, then, has been to convince people otherwise; to accept that such things as "public" exist per se and as implied  and even explicitly claimed at times and possess qualities and attributes of their own independent of the real-world objects to which they ostensibly refer.

Being further the case that individual rights can in no possible way be construed as additive in nature, there exists no composite right attributable to the "public", an assertion that is rife in common political discourse like a plague. Such a right, for example, is implied and even explicitly claimed by courts and political office holders on a regular basis!  Therefore, they are either too corrupt or too incompetent to be allowed to hold such positions of trust because they pose enormous dangers to the rights of the individual.  These behaviors should be met with the most ironclad intolerance.

Used in the ways described here, terms such as "public interest", "societal rights" and so forth qualify as nothing better than nonsensical gibberish describing impossible creatures.  

This, my friends, is your lesson in semantic analysis for today. Learn it, keep it, and meet the false arguments in which they are employed with your knowledge so that you may expose them to the light of truth and help your fellows gain a better understanding. Rebut these sorts of fraudulent arguments such that they are not just proven false, but are utterly destroyed for all to see. Leave their advocates NOTHING upon which to cling. Deny them the smallest splinter upon which to hang their bankrupt assertions.

Until next time, please accept my best regards.

Government v. Governance

Much as "the state" is a fiction possessing no material reality of its own, so may we regard the concept of "government".  This may come as a great shock and surprise to a large number of people, yet I assure one and all that this is indeed the truth of the matter and shall explain myself forthwith.  As usual, let us begin with some definitions.

From the Samuel Johnson dictionary of 1785:

GOVERNMENT. n.

1. Form of a community with respect to the disposition of the supreme authority.

2. An established state of legal authority.



AUTHORITY n.

1. Legal power.

2. Influence ; credit.


3. Power; rule.

 SUPREME. adj.

1. Highest in dignity ; highest in authority

2, Highest ; most excellent.  

Notice that nowhere is there any reference to any material reality.  It does not describe buildings, people in uniforms, weapons, prisons, tax collectors or anything whatsoever upon which men may barely lay so much as their thoughts, much less their eyes, and far less still their hands.

The first entry refers to nothing more than an arrangement of elements by convention, which by its very nature refers to a strictly conceptual construction.  In other words, there is no tangible object to which one may point and say, "that is government".  This being the case, one must upon reflection ask why it is then that so many people regard and refer to this vaporous notion of "government" as if it were an object in se?  We constantly hear people referring to government as having "rights" and "interests", but how can this be so if government does not in fact exist as a stand alone entity?  And even were it so existing, is "government" a living and sentient being?  If not, how can it be said to hold claims of right and to have interests?  Is this not disturbingly similar to asserting that a stone has rights or that one's toilet bowl holds interests?  Assert those latter claims and those around you will be reaching for their phones to call the nice men in which jackets for to pay you a visit.  Consider also that convention implies voluntary agreement of the parties, further implying no authority exists to force the compliance of those not signatory to the agreement.

It is therefore clear that in order to regard and refer to government in a conceptually sensible way, we are behooved to disabuse ourselves of these highly tacit, latent, yet powerfully effective false notions about it.  When stripped of all the semantically bankrupt connotations people drag along with their conception of "government" a new and radically altered truth emerges.  Government is actually nothing more than an arbitrarily constituted subset of the population who act in manifold accord with a set of conceptual conventions, some of which are commonly called "law", some "policy", and some whatever the hell their moods may dictate at any given moment.

Large and imposing edifices are not government.  Words on paper are not government.  Men with guns are not government, nor those in  costly suits or impressive looking black robes. None of this is "government", but rather only the agents and incidental artifacts of the various functions of governance.  Government does not in and of itself exist.  To my way of thinking, the term itself should be stricken from use because it represents a very dangerous fairy tale; one which has been the root source of endless misery, suffering, disease, and death.

At this point of the reading some will be scratching their heads, wondering whether I am gone mad or, if not, what then are all these people who claim to be "the government"?  That, my friends, is a question easily answered.  Such people are nothing more than agents and instruments of governance.  What, you ask, is the difference?  The difference may seem subtle to some, but it is also fundamental.  "Government" refers to nothing that exists such that a man may lay his hands upon it and declare, "this is the government!"  The term "governance", however, refers to a set of functions, the nature of which may be readily identified, qualified, and even quantified in many cases.  Its definitions:

GOVERNANCE

1. Government, rule ; management.

2. Control, as that of a guardian.


Ignoring the somewhat circular references to "government", we are left with the notions of management in pursuit of the goal of control.  The functions or governance are those of control and nothing more.  In many internal combustion engines there may be found a device called the "governor".  Such devices mostly serve to control the engine by limiting its operating speed to some predetermined upper limit.  The purposes of such devices are several, including limiting the power and speed of the engine in question to a specific usable range, to minimize the rate of wear, and to prevent mechanical failure.  Without such a device, many engines would fly apart or become otherwise unsuitable to their intended tasks.  But in order for such engines to be useful, their governors must be properly designed, built, installed, and adjusted, lest the engine run too slow or too fast.

In a similar way human beings are governed, mostly by themselves.  The process of properly controlling oneself may be called, "autodiathesis".  Those who so govern are "autodiathists", and that speaks for the vast and overwhelming proportion of the world's human population.  There are, however, external mechanisms of governance - that which we erroneously refer to as "government".  Those mechanisms are made real and tangible in but one form: other human beings.  Such governing function is established because human beings are well known for their occasional failures to govern themselves, some of them qualifying as "catastrophic".  Therefore, assuming that there is in place a morally correct standard of human behavior, such functions of governance become practically justifiable in their application to those cases where people have failed to self-govern in accord with that standard.  The salient question that naturally arises is that of what constitutes the proper standard and how do we know it is proper?  That question is answered at least in part in "What Is Freedom?", and "The Canon Of Individual Sovereignty".

The great problem that arises is one of conceptualization gone wrong and the places to which such errant cognition inevitably leads us as individuals and as groups acting in some concert.  When the concept of governance, a readily identifiable function that operates in accord with a presumably reasonable framework of application, is supplanted by the concept of government, things begin going awry such that subsets of a population inevitably end up running amok in all manner of very bad ways.  The twentieth century alone was rife with such examples of men getting together as a "government" and in the name of ostensibly good intentions proceeded to plunge vast swaths of humanity into horrors of seemingly endless barbarity and butchery.  That century alone may lay claim to the destruction of up to 220 million souls in the wakes of mechanized warfare and technologically leveraged political purges.

The problem that arises in such cases is that of the usually slow (at first) march away from readily identifiable, if not always completely agreeable principles of governance toward the often opaquely constructed dictates that issue from the black-hole of that conceptual monobloc we know as "government".  Functions are not unassailable.  If a function makes sense to people, they will accept it. But when a function makes no sense, people will reject it and raise their objections.  For example, the function of the murder laws is fairly clear in the minds of most people.  Because they make sense, most people abide by them and agree with their application to those who commit acts of murder.

But what about a law prohibiting the opening of one's doors for business on Sunday?  There was a time when these so-called "blue" laws were widely accepted and whereby shop proprietors were forced to keep their doors closed on the "Lord's day".  No doubt the Jewish people during those times may have taken some exception to this and in time ever growing proportions of the population followed suit.  Why?  Because of the ever more obvious arbitrariness of such laws that called for acts of governance against those in violation but where no crime is evident.  Such law represents the arbitrary and capricious will of those who assume the authority of kings over the rest.

So, why are the two examples so different?  Because on the one hand we are governing against a crime, whereas in the other we are not.  People know the difference, even if only tacitly so, and if called to task even those in agreement with such blue laws will, if they are reasonable and honest, admit that such laws are arbitrary and therefore unjust in the sense that they are enforced ultimately at the end of the sword against those who have committed no crime.

So why, then, do people tolerate the existence and enforcement of such arbitrary law that calls for what is always unjust and draconian acts of governance?  Mainly because government has issued its fiat that it be so.  Those in positions of power have been very clever to persuade the rest that there exists an actual and objectively extant entity called "government" and that this so-called government possesses this authority or that, and that by such virtue all are required to comply with the mandates that issue therefrom regardless of how ridiculous and unjust they may be.  In the minds of a great many, "government" cannot be questioned, either in principle because people have no right, or at the very least practically speaking because it will avail them no good and may in fact bring even worse circumstances upon them by men with guns.

"Government" is the cognitive monobloc edifice behind which those in power hide and by which they justify their power, the exercise thereof such as it may be made manifest, and arrogate ever more to themselves at the expense of the rest.  This has got to be perhaps the oldest political trick on the books, going back heaven knows how many millennia when the first man figured out that people can be made to believe that he is somehow superior to the rest and therefore holds higher claims to life than do the others and that they need him.  That, my friends, was the beginning of the end for humanity.  That moment marked the birth of empire.  From that moment on the cat was out of the bag for those whose personalities were such that they would rather live off the toil of others than the fruits of their own labors.  This is one of the most crucial, most centrally salient points with which any human being can ever come to grips.

Government is the greatest, oldest, most widespread, most profoundly rotten, yet most wildly successful scam ever foisted upon the race of men and it is in a greater state of good health today than at any time in known human history.  The vast and overwhelming majority of the human population of this planet are staggeringly drunk on the Koo-Aid.  These Blue-pillers are so utterly lost in the illusion of government that I fear nothing short of a truly monumental global catastrophe will shake them out of their deluded states.  Some will certainly remain as they are even unto their own destruction. That is how powerful these lies are and how utterly cowed some people have been by them.

I enjoin one and all with even the least curiosity for truth to give what I have written some honest consideration.  For some it will be all too easy to harden up their thoughts and dismiss what I assert as wrong.  To those very people I ask but one thing: soften your minds in the sense of opening them up and for argument's sake assume that what I say is in fact true.  Then attempt a proof by contradiction.  If you are correct in believing that my thoughts and assertions are false, then you should have no problem contradicting them with valid force.  But if you cannot produce such an ironclad contradiction, then at least be honest enough to hold that what has been written here may actually hold some truth.

My suggestion to the righteous skeptics among us is to begin by refuting the claim that government, per se, does not in fact exist anywhere on the planet.  A good device I have recommended to folks is the thought experiment where one sweeps every human from the earth.  With all persons now gone from the planet, point to "government".  Where is it?  How is it embodied such that it remains after all humanity is swept away?

Please do not fall for the lie that is "government".  It is naught but a conceptual manacle by which those in power cause the rest to be diminished by their own hands in favor of those who can in fact lay no superior claims.  Holding no such claims, they therefore hold no inherent authority over their fellows.  Having no authority, it becomes clear that the only thing that they do hold is the threat of material force and the means to make those threats physically real.  They are nothing better than barbarians and tyrants.  They act simply because they have the guns and the ready will to use them, whereas the rest have no such will even though in some places they are far more extensively armed.

Bear ye all this in mind and think on it for all the best that you are and be not afraid of where such thoughts may lead for truth should never be feared even if it is otherwise fearsome.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Time To Wake Up

Lohud.com publishes personal information on NY gun owners!

They are publishing the names and addresses of EVERY gun permit holder in the lower counties of New York State. One can only wonder how many of these people are going to become the targets of robbers in the coming months.

I am sure the editorial staff are very proud of themselves.  I wonder whether they would feel comfortable were someone to publish all their names and addresses.  Perhaps we should find out?

http://www.lohud.com/interactive/article/20121223/NEWS01/121221011/Map-Where-gun-permits-your-neighborhood-?gcheck=1


From the comments:

Teri Davis Newman · Top Commenter
Sauce for the goose or, home address and phone number of Journal-News publisher White Plains newspaper The Journal- News, a Gannett publication, has published the full name and address of every licensed pistol permit holder in three New York counties. I don’t know whether the Journal’s publisher Janet Hasson is a permit holder herself, but here’s how to find her to ask:

Janet Hasson, 3 Gate House Lane, Mamaroneck, NY 10534.

Phone number: (248) 594-2197; you might also try (914) 525-1923, but the area code is just a guess on the assumption that this number is a land line.
Here’s a photo showing her Mamaroneck house – interior shots are on Zillow:

Gannett’s CEO-

Gracia C Martore
728 Springvale Rd
Great Falls, VA 22066
(703) 759-5954

The reporter on the story is

Dwight R Worley
23006 139 Ave
Springfield Gardens, NY 11413 (718) 527-0832

Janet Hasson herself is married with one child

Autodiathism (AKA "Diathism")

It has been a while now that I have been in search of a term, a word, to symbolize the concept of self-rule.  Without the option to rule oneself there can be no freedom.  "Anarchy" is perhaps the original term, but because it has taken on such universally bad connotations thanks to the adroit and tireless work of bottomlessly misguided and in some cases stupid or just plainly ignorant people, I have come up with a new word for the self rule of the individual: autodiathism, from the Greek, "αυτοδιάθεση" (transliterates to, "aftodiáthesi"), literally "self determination". Diathism for short. One who practices self-rule, an autodiathist or diathist for short.

I believe a new term would be helpful at this time to provide the world with a clean psychological and semantic break from the past. As the world plunges headlong into a new Dark Age , many of us are simultaneously digging and climbing our way toward the eternal light of proper, living freedom. I cannot say how things will turn out in the end and acknowledge that the prospects for the future of human liberty are not looking very good at the moment, but we can do only one of two things: keep clawing our ways toward that which we know to be the good or lay down in defeat. I see no virtue in the latter even though in the end we are all inevitably defeated by old age. Though we may have no choice in our ultimate dispositions, we always have in our hands the power to choose how we shall meet them. We can go out with a bang, heads held high or we can go out wheezing and whimpering. That choice can neither be taken from us nor can it be made for us.

That said, for those brave and worthy souls who choose to press on, come what may, I believe our only hope lies in educating as many as possible to the virtues of freedom and all that it implies and requires of us. We cannot educate if we cannot get people to listen and we cannot get them to listen if they reject out of hand the words we use. It is therefore convenient, both conceptually and conversationally, to have concise terms that embody ideas. We use such terms every day. "Anarchy", however good a word it may be in terms of its true semantics, has been polluted by the corrupt, the ignorant, and the stupid such that it now connotes chaos and doom to far more people than it does anything else. One can spend inordinate resources correcting this misapprehension in but a single individual and still not break them of the bad habit of false connotation.

I therefore submit to the world these new terms for use in describing self-rule, autodiathism (diathism) and Autodiathist (Diathist).

Research reveals about 48 unique references to "autodiathesis" and it appears every use constitutes jargon specific to political issues related to Greece, Cyprus, Albania, and that general region of the world. Autodiathism derives directly from autodiathesis.

I will, therefore, assume the privilege of declaring myself the first Autodiathist. 

Being a Diathist, I bid one and all welcome to the fold.

Until next time, please accept my fondest regards.

Fiduciary Responsibility In Relation To Ethics.

There has been a perennial battle between those who view business as good and those who view it as greed besotted evil that must be held on a strong and very short leash.  Each side has legitimate points in favor of the positions they assume on the issue and each has points against.

On the anti-business side, among other things, some argue that business is cold and unconcerned with human rights and welfare while being utterly consumed by the drive for profit.  While this is sometimes true, there are tacit elements at play just below the surface that are blatantly false.

On the pro-business side, people argue in favor of free market capitalism on the premise that the freedom to engage in business and pursue profit is a fundamental human right that provides real and practical benefits to all.  While demonstrably true on the whole, the tacit belief that such pursuits can be conducted blindly without much consideration of side effects and unintended consequences to others presents a host of problems of its own.  The assumption here is that the fiduciary responsibility to shareholders can trump one's ethical responsibilities to his fellows.

The central issue in this debate is one that few people are able to identify, much less articulate with clarity and sufficiency.  The issue in question is that of the proper relationship between fiduciary responsibility and ethics.

The pursuit of profit is an eminently legitimate undertaking and the fiduciary responsibility of corporate managers from the CEO all the way down to first line managers is to maximize profit for the shareholders. That much is clear, sensible, and is one of the first and most fundamental lessons business students receive.  What is not given sufficient coverage, however, is the context of ethics within which profit maximizing goals must be pursued.  This omission represents a ubiquitous and grave error on the part of the business schools in general who hint at it but rarely if ever make the clear and explicit connection between ethics and fiduciary goals.  Ethics comprise the framework that underpins and defines much of the character of busainess activity.  That is to say, such activity is bounded in certain ways by the requirements of proper ethics.

Business schools do in fact teach and even strongly emphasize ethics, but they do so in a way that does not appear to connect them directly, explicitly, clearly, completely, and correctly to the fiduciary drive. The responsibility a manager holds to the shareholder must in some respects be subordinated to the ethical obligations he holds to his fellow men, and in all cases must be tempered by it.  It is obvious to most that one must avoid marketing products that perforce kill customers, for example.  It is, however, quite an interesting phenomenon to observe the difficulty many organizations face in arriving at decisions that are sufficiently sound in terms of ethics where the cases in question do not enjoy the easy clarity that such extremity lends.  The less obvious cases appear to pose serious problems for many managers who seem willing and even eager to move forward with plans pursuant to a fiduciary goal.  In such cases managers often feel entitled to act without giving very much weight to ethical questions if the known results of their decisions do not obviously expose them to criminal or civil liability and they are not personally effected.  The results can be terrible in some cases and are perhaps most often unintended, but managers will nevertheless proceed because they usually fail to see the ethical lapses in their decisions, having been blinded by the vigor of their pursuit of maximum returns for investors and the rationalizations to which such pressures often lead.

On the other side of the coin are those who tend to rail against business as being unethical and even criminal in nature.  Such persons also fail to understand the nature of the relationship between fiduciary motives and ethics and indeed tend to hold a significantly flawed understanding of proper ethics in general.  They, too, fail to understand where the lines lie, what the definitions are, and therefore make the error of declaring unethical attitudes and practices that are in fact perfectly legitimate, even though they may generate regrettably unpalatable results at times.

One example of this may be found in the business of leveraged buyouts (LBO).  Companies in the business of conducting LBOs purchase other businesses, ones that are often in trouble. Regardless of the causes, a common enough characteristic of LBO targets is that they are often in danger of failure.  The goal of LBO businesses is to purchase such companies that they have assessed as having attractive but under-realized market potential, determine the precise nature of the needs, and devise and implement action plans to correct the problems and return those companies to the path of profitability and healthy growth.

During the analysis phase it is often the case that certain areas of the business may be judged as non-viable in terms of its long term prospects.  Such operations may not only be unsustainable, their very presence often threatens the survival of the business as a whole.  When this is determined to be the case, much as a surgeon may remove a gangrenous leg in order to save a patient's life, so may the LBO company sell off or dissolve portions of a purchased company in order to restore it back to health, thereby avoiding total failure.  This often involves loss of jobs and this aspect is one against which the ignorant, if well intending, anti-business personality rails and offers as proof that the businessmen in question are nothing but greedy people who seek to destroy jobs and take some unarticulated pleasure in putting employees on the street.   Such activity is often referred to as "gutting the business", the implication being that it is an unethical thing to do.  This, of course, is mostly false and disturbingly irrational, particularly given that such people appear to hold the belief that a man is somehow entitled to his position once he assumes it, which of course is strongly and even dangerously mistaken.  Those who hold such beliefs hang on to them with the fervor of the religious zealot such that no amount of fact, reason, or TNT is likely to dislodge it.  This is a manifestation of good intentions running seriously afoul of truth and cold hard reality.

We therefore are presented with a twofold problem.  On the one side we do have businessmen who at times suffer significant lapses of proper ethical judgment that often occur due to conflicts between ethical requirements and the demands of their fiduciary responsibilities.  On the other hand we have large numbers of people whose ill-conceived  ideals of how business should operate lead to outrage.  This anger stems in large part from a blindly steadfast refusal to accept truths that do not comport themselves "properly" with  their unsound ideals.  Were such ideals to be forced into practice, the world would come crashing down into a great smoking pile of rubble in very short order because they chafe so violently against the sometimes unpleasant but nevertheless inescapable truths of daily reality.

Many of those on either side of the issue need to reevaluate their positions in some manner and degree in order to understand, think, and act properly.  Business per se is decidedly neither evil nor immoral, but fiduciary responsibilities can never trump our ethical obligations to each other.  Businessmen need to keep this in the forefront of their thought with every decision they make.  Likewise, others may not make unreasonable demands of businessmen simply because they do not care for the results of legitimate business decisions.  Understanding ethics properly and accepting the occasionally unpleasant aspects of life is a moral obligation each man must bear.

The Mind Of Empire

Today we will discuss the notion of "empire" and the psychology that underpins it.   The Samuel Johnson dictionary of 1785 gives us the following definitions:


E'MPIRE. n.

1. Imperial power ; supreme dominion; sovereign
command.

2. The region over which dominion is extended.

3. Command over any thing.


DOMI'NION. n.f. [dominium, Latin.]
1. Sovereign authority; unlimited power.

2. Power ; right of possession or use, without
being accountable.

3. Territory; region ; district : considered
as subject.

4. Predominance ; ascendant.

5. An order of angels.


I'NSOLENCE. "1 n. /. \infolente, French ; /-
I'NSOLENCY. J Jolentia, Lat.] Pride exerted
in contemptuous and overbearing
treatment of others ; petulant contempt.


SOVEREIGN. adj.

1 . Supreme in power ; having no superiour.

2. Supremely efficacious ; predominant
over diseases.

SOVEREIGN, n.f.

Supreme lord.


Cl'VIL. adj. {civilit, Lat.]
1. Relating to the community; political;
relating to the city or government.

2. Relating to any man as a member of a
community.

3. Not in anarchy ; not wild ; not without
rule or government.


CIVILISA'TION. n.f. [from civil.] A law,
act of justice, or judgment, which renders
a criminal process civil ; which is
performed by turning an information
into an inquest, or the contrary.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Empire is relatively new to humanity.  There appears to be some contention as to how long empire, often incorrectly confused with "civilization", has existed but it seems safe to say that it has been around at least eight to ten thousand years.

During most of that time empire was confined to those geographic regions that were  materially able to support it to the degree and in the ways that contemporary technologies allowed. Technological evolution eventually enabled empire to expand into areas where only ruler-less societies had previously existed and proceeded to systematically wipe them out as such, either converting the indigenous populations to those of empire of flavor X, or murdering them. This is the nearly universal pattern and it tells you much (perhaps enough) about the fundamental nature of empire. Given this, ask yourself just how well has empire (AKA "the state") worked out for people? To my eyes, not so very well. In fact, it has amounted to nothing better and nothing less than a catastrophic plague that has ravaged the face of the planet.

The single, sole, and so very lonely advantage that empire holds over free society is that of raw, brute power. People working in well controlled concert constitute what becomes functionally indistinguishable from a super-organism. Much as the power of a single cell of a human body generally pales in comparison with that of the larger organism, so the power of the individual similarly and generally shrinks into insufficiency beside that of a large population of individuals acting as one. The power of the concept of the division of labor and of workforce management cannot be denied. We experience its effects every moment of every day of our lives. That this be the case, it does not of necessity follow that such an arrangement is superior to that of greater material weakness in other terms.

Human beings are almost universally fascinated with power. It tickles and titillates them endlessly. They seduce themselves with the illusions that arise in power's presence. This is all well and good in terms of individual choice for oneself, but it tends to fail spectacularly in practice because of the overwhelming tendency for a materially more powerful individual to impress his will upon others regardless of whether it is wanted. Welcome to Empire.  The Empire Mind is precisely that which chooses to ignore what is morally justifiable for the sake of exercising power over others to the greatest degree that material might will allow. The Empire Mind, knowing at its very core that what it wants and does is morally unjustifiable, concocts and contrives all manner of rationalizations to absolve itself for its actions.  These stratagems range from absurdly and pathetically transparent to those that are very emotionally compelling.  All of them, however, are rotten to their cores with fallacious presupposition and wildly flawed logic.

It has been endlessly argued in justification of Empire that it has provided us with "more" than freedom ever could. Technologies that improve our health, enable us to travel to the moon, computer networks, and so forth would not have been possible without the cooperation of many. This is arguable, but even if we accept it for the sake of argument, it is a great presumption to assert that these things have made our lives better, particularly when the sum total of the associated costs are taking into consideration.  Is one's sacred right to free life worth throwing to the winds for the sake of video games or whatever other trinket might be used to entice one to give it up?.

By what standard are we judged as having been improved? By the elimination of certain manifestations of Empire past, only to be replaced with new and often worse ones? Perhaps, but how, exactly, does one fix the evils of empire with more of it, regardless of superficial differences in appearance? Empire brought much suffering, death, and misery; it has stamped out our abilities to live in accord to the dictates of our consciences when they do not coincide and comply with the mandates of the "state". Empire always employs force in some form - whether directly or through having imposed such an environment that allows for nothing better than misery and death for those who exercise their "freedom" to decline participation in "the system".

One would have to be able to go back to a time prior to empire, to a time where small societies of truly free people lived and, apparently, flourished. Those people, so it seems, were not living in misery despite the dearth of technologies that today so many regard as absolutely essential to survival. How, pray tell, did those ancient people manage without them? How miserable their lives must have been! The provisions of empire have been often used to justify its imposition upon those who preferred not to participate. This is a cornerstone of the Empire Mind - of the thought process that underpins the concept and the consequent practical implementation.

This is essentially what your "state" is. That is all it has ever been. That is all that it ever CAN be. The "state" is non-existent, yet functions within the confines of peoples' skulls as the somehow credible cover, justification, and excuse for one group of human beings exercising arbitrary power over the rest. The exercise of this power invariably leads to, and in fact depends upon, the application of force to obtain compliance with the will of that mob, AKA "the state".

Was the time prior to empire an idyllic period in human existence?  The answer depends on one's definitions and what it is that is considered more important.  But to be conversational, it may be plausibly answered in the negative.  No, life was not perfect.  It was most likely very difficult at times, but was it worse than it is now?  Back then, men were free to live as they saw fit.  Having not developed the great technological infrastructure we now have, the nature of life was very different in certain details.  From the medical standpoint, puncture wounds and broken legs could be a death sentence.  There were the hazards of wild predators, not to mention the predations of other human beings whose cultural orientations constituted perhaps the seeds of empire to come.

But now consider today's reality: we are free, but to exercise that freedom poses very direct and possibly terminal threats to our lives.  We have war on scales the ancients could not imagine where entires cities can be wiped from the face of the earth literally in seconds.  We still suffer the ravages of disease, polluted environments, levels of stress that are often fatal, anger, hatred, misery and a host of other very destructive effects that have arisen directly as the result of the sum total effects of the Empire Mind.

Has it been worth it?  Trading our ability to safely live in freedom for the token fortunes offered by the lie that is empire?  Can you say that trading your freedom in exchange for museums, public school, ball parks, roads, and all the other bright and shiny things empire has provided been equitable?

And who is to say that had we avoided empire that these minor wonders would not have come eventually anyway?  It is a most arrogant presumption to accept the premise that without the tyrant we would have no roads, no hospitals, and that we would still be living in trees, scratching our asses with twigs as we waited for the lions below to skulk off in search of other meals.  It is interesting to note, and indeed a credit to the human spirit that virtually ALL of the creative genius of humanity has issued from the efforts of the individual and never from the end of the sword.  There is no doubt whatsoever that we could have built everything we now have, probably better than it has been, without the violence of the whip upon our backs.  People by their nature are social beings and are well disposed to cooperatively creative projects.  So why, then all this violence against our inborn freedom?

What is accomplished with violence and force that could not be accomplished with freedom?  Nothing save for one: the realization of goals that NOBODY ELSE shares with you.  If your goal is to do 'A' and everyone around you says, "WOW!  That is so cool!  Can I be part of it?" there is no need for threats and force.  But if the response is negative, you have a choice to make: accept that you will have to give it up (or try to do it yourself) or employ FORCE to make others toe your line.  Things are as simple as that.  The King wants to build a great monument to himself.  He announces the project and nobody could care less.  The King then gathers up his army of bully boys and "acquires" bodies for his task of self-aggrandizement.  Those  refusing are welcome to join others in the dungeon or to die on the spot, or perhaps have an eye put out or a hand cut off as a message to the rest.

This is the essence of Empire.  It is founded and fueled by nothing less than outright slavery, for if you are compelled to act against your wishes you are in fact a slave and nothing better.  Freedom is an all or nothing deal.  If you are not free, you are in fact a slave of some form and of some degree.  Make no mistake about that; do not fool yourself into believing otherwise, though it is very easy to do so.  It is the easiest thing to fall for the cleverly contrived justifications that tell you that you must concede your rights for reasons such as "the greater good", "need", "social justice", "the planet depends on it", and so on down a nauseatingly long litany of phony baloney.

Empire is the greatest scam of all time.  It is based on pure pragmatism as its only guiding principle, which in this case predicates as right any act that one may pull off successfully while avoiding all  undesired consequences.  Success, therefore, becomes its own goal and its own justification in the minds of all tyrants, though some may be of a nature to cloak this truth under a veil of good intentions and rationalizations of false morality.  Might, in whatever form it may take, makes right and by its very nature the Empiure Mind denies human equality and in so doing justifies the hand of the tyrant in all he may do, no matter how capricious, arbitrary, and barbaric.

Empire can take any of a grat multitude of forms in its manifestations. For example, there are no defining physical limits for Empire in terms of size or numbers of people. This makes empire difficult for many people to identify.  If there is no Stalin or Mao at the head of state or an absence of death squads, many people fail to recognize empire and the tyranny that underpins it even as they are dragged away to cells, perhaps never again to be seen or heard.

The only thing one must apprehend in order to identify empire is the underlying tyranny that says this group of individuals over here are empowered to impose their wills upon the rest regardless whether that will is welcome.  It is as simple as that.  It is in fact rather easy once a person makes the quantum mind shift in perception, that shift being the most difficult thing that many people will ever attempt to do in their lives.  Or not attempt.

Perception is 90% of nearly everything in our lives.  Changing deeply seated notions can be terribly difficult, but in the case of empire it is the only thing that will put one on the road to a proper understanding of the nature of the relationship between the presumed master and the mastered.  I say "presumed" because there are no actual masters of other men.  The tyrant knows this and he knows too well the hazards of openly violent force against those over whom he would reign.  Therefore, the intelligent and prudent tyrant works to gain the willful and even eager acceptance of his position as master of the rest.

Perhaps 99% or more of all that the usurpers do is made possible only through the voluntary cooperation of those upon whom their wills are imposed.  Could the US Congress prevent an active rebellion of even five percent of the population?  Not likely.  Therefore, those in power have endeavored since the earliest times of empire to attain and keep the good will of the people in pursuit of their agendas with every manner of deceit, nonsense, and outright lie imaginable.  How else could any nominally intelligent and rational man regard assertions such as "divine right of kings", "manifest destiny", "God's vicars on earth", and so on as anything but the utter nonsense used by tyrants to cow others into doing their bidding?  That is the bulk of the operational basis of empire.  The rest consists of threats of force (the stick complementing the carrots) and actual application to make examples of the few who resist in some conspicuous or otherwise undesirable manner.

It is a very perfect system of control that relies on all the worst proclivities of the great majority of human beings.  Most of all, it relies upon ignorance and lassitude such that the lazy will choose to believe pretty lies that comport well with some personal desire.  A chicken in every pot!

Empire is a scourge upon the face of the earth.  It is responsible for the brutal slaying of hundreds of millions of people over the ages, the twentieth century alone accounting for well over one hundred million souls put to the sword in an orgy of technologically mechanized slaughter.  For all practical purposes, empire may be credited for virtually every woe suffered since its unpropitious inception so long ago.  It alone has provided the conditions that have lead to endless human suffering, death, disease, and poverty.  It has waylaid the human race utterly and yet so few people see it.  Most of them have been bred into timidity such that they not only accept the master's whip, they demand it and will actively aid the master in maintaining his death grip around their own necks in the event any of their fellow quotidians step out of line with the orthodoxy.  To stand outside of this macabre vignette one begins to see the freakishly disturbing truth about humanity as a statistical body, but he also sees the tenuous nature of empire in terms of its reliance on cooperation.  This keeps open the possibility of enlightenment through education and therein lies the thinnest hope for the race of men that their futures may one day be brighter.

Give these lines some consideration and if you doubt what you have read here, ask yourself whether you can identify the sorts of behaviors described.  What are the relationships like?  Are we equal or do some stand above the rest; above even the law?  If they do, upon what basis do they do so?  Divine right?  Need?  What?  In your mind imagine a "great leader" as an infant and place him next to the son or daughter of a ditch digger.  Which is superior?  Which one's rights stand above and beyond the other's?  Is the future leader superior?  Does he possess superior rights?  Is he entitled to rule over the ditch digger's child?  If so, by what right?  By what means is it so?  And if not, then at what point along the timeline of growth does it change?  By what virtue is he suddenly superior in  his rights over his fellows? If he is not, then b y what right does he impose his will upon the rest?  By what authority does he violate the rights of others?

Consider these issues carefully because the quality of the lives of your children and their great great grandchildren may well depend on the conclusions that you reach and the actions that you take, or fail to take.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.