The Phenomenon Of Lowest Denominator

Somewhere in the fourth or fifth grade, children are supposed to learn about the mathematical notion of "lowest common denominator" as they learn to execute basic arithmetic operations on fractions, such as addition and subtraction.

In other human endeavors, there exists the phenomenon of "lowest denominator", a term that often refers pejoratively to the level to which one will stoop in order to get his way.  There are several dimensions to this idea and many ways and instances in which it is be applied, but the basic idea is that he who is least constrained in his choices of action holds a tactical advantage over his competitors or other rivals.

An excellent example of this comes from late twentieth century economics as it applied and continues to apply to the relationship between China and the world economy.

For decades the cost of labor for products manufactured in America were considered high, but were accepted as part of the general overhead of doing business.  Labor unions, with the aid of corrupted American courts, distorted the American labor markets by forcing upon employers labor costs that a free market would not have sustained.  With time, these costs were driven ever higher, resulting in constantly increasing product costs such that in 1980, top of the line tennis shoes were selling in some cases for well over $200 per pair; that at a time when a man could live well enough in New York City on $200 per week and even have enough left over for some fun on Saturday night.

Then in the 1990s something fundamental changed: "free trade" with China, which offered the competitive advantage to American companies of labor costs so low as to be almost neglible.  Instead of having to pay American employees, say, $15 per hour to make tennis shoes, they could pay Chinese laborers $0.30 cents per hour.  It must also be borne in mind that the $15/hour American labor rate typically represents approximately $45/hour in actual costs to the employer due to onerous US labor laws, requiring them to shell out all manner of fees and other taxes for what has become the privilege of doing business in America.  Your inherent right to provide for yourself has been functionally demoted to that of a privilege, requiring "state" permission, directly or otherwise.  Something wicked has this way come.

With the "miracle" of Chinese "free trade" came not only the vanishingly low labor costs, but the absence of unjust "government" requirements in the form of onerously violative labor law.  All of a sudden, labor stood to cost maybe $3 per pair total, instead of $175.

There may have been those manufacturers who, understanding the unintended consequences of going to China, initially decided they would not jump on that bandwagon.  However, the moment the first athletic shoe manufacturer made the jump to China (or perhaps more likely, Viet Nam), it was not long before the rest were faced with the choice to follow suit, or have their lunch eaten by those who had.

When that first company left for greener labor and regulatory pastures, thus lowering the denominator, so to speak, it gained an advantage over its competitors so large, thereby allowing them to produce shoes of equal quality at costs so low in comparison with their American-based counterparts, they would be able to sell their product at prices deeply undercutting that of the competition while yielding equal or even superior profit.  The competition had no choice but to act in kind, if staying in business was a corporate goal.

By descending to a "lower denominator", a state of diminished restriction, a single manufacturer of shoes is able to alter an entire global industry at its roots.

In a similar way, we can see this phenomenon at work in politics.   Another reasonable example may be taken from the Chinese.  Libertarians, anarchists, agorists, voluntarists, as well as other presumably freedom-loving idealists, often call for the dismantling of US military forces.  While a noble sentiment, the reality is not quite so simple.  It is no secret to some that China, has designs for regional hegemony that includes utter domination of the international waters of the South China Sea.  Being international waters, rather than regional to China, Beijing holds no valid claim to them.  But by lowering the level of self-checking to which the Chinese are willing to subscribe themselves, "lowering the denominator" as it were, other nations such as the USA are faced with the choice of following suit or assuming the risk of finding themselves at a gross disadvantage in the contest of keeping international shipping lanes safe and open for everyone, the loss of which would almost certainly lead to every ship passing through those waters having to pay tribute to the Middle Kingdom, the advent of which would make clear to the world in short order just how bad the global economy could become, having become materially dependent on the production of most goods in China and having not stood up to what would amount to their piracy.

This notion of the lower denominator, which translates very directly in the increased willingness to exercise power without check, is driving the human race to ever deeper extremes of political barbarity.  The implications of this for human freedom, I should hope, are painfully obvious.

Consider the fundamentalist Muslims, scurrying all about in the middle east, sawing the heads from the bodies of those they consider unworthy of life.  They toss suspected homosexuals from the rooftops to their deaths, behead "apostates", stone women who do not toe "Allah's" line of comport, and engage in all manner of other atrocities which the rest of the world condemns as felonious, using their bent interpretations of Qur'an and its false authority to justify their actions.

In places where food becomes scarce, people devolve to a lower denominator of behavior in order to survive.  We see this currently evident in Venezuela, where the imploding socialist economy has resulted in people eating their pets, zoo animals, and so forth down what I suspect is a very ugly list of behaviors to which no typical human being would lower themselves under more normal circumstances.

War is another fair example.  Good men who are otherwise peaceable, don uniforms, grab weapons and go out to murder "the enemy" en masse.  During the American Revolution, the British complained bitterly about those damnable colonists who, rather than stand tall and with honor in lines as prescribed by the "rules of war", hid behind trees and intentionally picked off Redcoat officers, often sending the ranks into some chaos as they were generally less capable of engaging in "proper" warfare without someone shouting orders at them.

And yet, this will to make that descent to the lower denominator was essential if Americans were to defeat what was at that time the most powerful military force on the planet.  And from this we see the other side of the coin, which makes plain that the ultimate assessment of the descent will vary depending on one's point of view.  For the Brits, the American behavior was reprehensible and utterly devoid of any decency and honor.  To the Americans, it was the advantage they needed in order to throw the British vampire form their necks.

The descent is a two-edged sword, the same as most other things in life.  What is not the same, however, is the potential hazard that is presents.  Once a precedent is set, breaking the restraints people place upon themselves, it becomes perilously difficult to return to them.  We humans enjoy expansions of our personal and, in sadly far too many cases, collective powers.  We are bemused with power, even obsessed with it.  This is readily observable in children, watching them learn, which translates directly into greater individual power.  So long as we maintain a level head about such endeavors, we stand to remain well, both individually and as societal conglomerations.  The problem as I have come to see it, is that in far too many instances, we run off the rails in an instant, bedazzled by the lure of newly acquired powers.

Making the descent to a lower denominator more often results in the bad, especially in longer term considerations.  Take, for example, the so-called "war tax" imposed upon Americans in 1942.  It was justified on the basis that the nation was under peril at the hands of the evil Japanese Empire.  The promise made to the American people at that time was that it was a "temporary" tax that would be repealed the moment hostilities concluded.  That, of course, turned out to be a lie.  At war's end, the federal "government" was not about to relinquish the power of so vast an income stream as that afforded them by the good fortune of Japan's terribly ill-considered decision to attack Pearl Harbor.  They now had control of almost incomprehensible sums and, in typical human fashion, were not about to let go of so much as penny of it.

But in the wake of peace, how were the powers that were at that time going to justify such a move, especially in the face of a well-armed population who'd just come out of four years of warfare, had suffered terrible losses, and were most likely in no mood for such chicanery?  The answer was a classic: the Hegelian dialectic, and what better one to choose than the "red menace" of soviet Russia?  Oh yes, they were by all means a threat, but nothing as was blown up in the American press.  But once convinced and sufficiently terrified, Americans blithely obeyed the Master and made no fuss, for they had become willing to trade freedom for an illusion of security.

In the previous case, the descent has proven devastating to freedom because people of low moral character got their hands on power, refused to relinquish it, and have used it to sour ends in ever gaining measure, year over year.

Have we as the human gestalt learned the key lessons from all this dangerous political buffoonery?  No.  If anything, the Meaner (mean or average man) has become habituated to the corruptions of the Tyrant to such a degree that he now defends those perfidies to the point of his own destruction, and beyond, having lost the habit and inclination to ask "what sort of a world do I wish to leave to my grandchildren?"  The circumstance is now so decayed, that Johnny Q Meaner even rationalizes the corruptions of those who presume to lord over him (and the lordship to which he accedes via his lack of meaningful protest), telling himself and teaching his own issue that it's all for the "greater good".  It is unclear that humanity could devolve much further down the ladder of behavior, yet I would not assume it.

And so we return to one of the perennial truths for Freemen: freedom requires of a man a strong moral underpinning such that he is not overly tempted by the charms of his own lower self, which beckons him to make the descent to the equally low recesses of his character, always taunting and tempting him with the lie that it will have no cost associated.  It ALWAYS has a cost, and unfortunately the price associated with the descent is most often more than liberty can afford to pay, men's freedoms and their self-respect ultimately having to pay the price for those lapses of judgment and self-control that lead to that plunge to the lower denominator of human action.

This truth should be taught to every child.  They should not be told that they may never indulge in the descent, but that it always carries with it great risk and hazard.  They should be taught to keep an eye not only on their own choices in such matters, but upon those around them such that they will refuse to tolerate the perfidious acts of their fellow men.  It is only by this cooperative checking of the self and of and by others that we keep each other within the metes and bounds of proper human relations.  Conversely, it is through our willingness to turn blind eyes toward that which we do and, most importantly perhaps, that which is done by others, that it is made possible the rise of personalities such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.  To be taken in by the lies, bent truths, and false promises of one's fellows is an all too human failing.  The promise of free stuff or things too good to be true seems to get us every time.  How else were communists, fascists, NAZIs, Muslims, and all other flavors of authoritarian tyrants able to bring humanity to so low as pass as that in which we now find ourselves?

The sin lies mainly not with those who would become your masters, for how can one blame the snake for biting?  The error lies with us; with our willingness to tolerate that which is intolerable: the violation of our individual freedoms by external parties, pursuant to some idealized lie that usually speaks to the "collective good".

We painted ourselves into this corner and only we can get ourselves out.  And make no mistake about it: we the people of this world, certainly of America, could be free by close of business today, if that is what we decided we wanted in sufficient measure.  Theye have almost no power of their own over us, but mainly that which we willingly hand to them, which they immediately turn back upon ourselves to their advantage, and our loss.  That is the ultimate effect when would be do-gooders and other tyrants are allowed their latitude with no threat of destruction erected against them.

As the denominator lowers ever further, the checks upon the actions of tyrants become ever more sparse and the hazards to Freemen ever greater.

Please consider this and what it means in terms of decisions that you make, whether you make them proactively as a Freeman, or through the default of inaction as someone less than free by your own choice.  What do you really want to be?  Do you want to be free?  If not, then bless you and may the galaxies take pity upon thee.  But if so, what are you willing to do to be free?  What are you willing to sacrifice in order to throw the vampires who suck the life from you from your neck?  Only you can choose for yourself, but make no mistake about the fact that doing nothing is still making a choice: the one to be a slave, kept in his cage like a pet and whose prerogatives exist only at the whim and caprice of other human beings, not a single one of whom holds the least authority to impose their wills upon you.

Be well, preferable freely so, and as always please accept my best wishes.

War Should Be Hell

Human beings are the oddest creatures.

We have been gifted with the power of reason, and yet we abuse it, misuse it, or turn our backs to it completely.  Consider the ways in which the purportedly "evolved" nations view warfare.  The mere fact that they sign agreements that limit the ways in which war may be waged seems to me prima facie proof that they are gone mad.

In the most general terms, what is the objective of war?  It is to defeat one's enemy.  Why would one fight without the intention of prevailing, regardless of cost?  Yet we are constrained by agreements such as the Geneva Conventions wherein we agree to never do X and to always do Y.  For example, we cannot target civilians and must always house and feed prisoners of war, treat them humanely, and so forth.  This, I declare, is pure rubbish.

So why, then, do we do it?  It is the pure hedging of our bets, that's why.

The thinking goes basically this way: "well, if we kill all the prisoners we take, they will do the same with our people whom the enemy takes prisoner."  We want to fight wars but do not want to pay the price of warring.  This, of course, is absurd.

If you do not want to pay the price of warring, then do not wage war.  The one exception to this lies in defensive fighting and in that case if you are facing an existential threat, which I will here suggest is the case any time a nation attacks you, then you should be fighting like mad bastards with the intention of committing utter and complete genocide against everyone bearing arms against you.  This is especially the case when you know you have committed no violation against your antagonist.

War should become so ghastly a prospect that nobody on the planet would wish to partake, precisely because the potential and sufficiently likely outcome would be the extinction of your bloodline and those of everyone you know, and for whom you care.  Were this the central concern, how many rulers and their vile, butt-smooching, hand-wringing sycophants would be eager to enter into mortal combat?  Knowing that their children would be hunted and slaughtered, as well as those of every member of their families out to, say, third or fourth cousins, how many of these great heroes of the people would be so eager to press Fearless Leader to send troops into neighboring lands?

How many troops would be eager to obey such orders, knowing their families would be hunted to extinction in the event they did not prevail?  How much of an incentive would it be for them to see the virtues of defensive-only action?  How clearly might they see war, not as a chance for glory, but for the thing that it truly is: utter barbarity?

Human history is littered with examples of young men champing at the bit to go to war for the sake of "glory".  The Great War was example enough, the result being an endless sea of regret from troop, sailor, submariner, and pilot alike after realizing the impossible waste that war represents in every imaginable term.  And yet, by the time the next generation comes of age, the lessons of that previous herd are lost or, sadder still, disregarded because the young always know better.  They know what dolts and nitwits were their parents or grandparents and that they will be able to do it right this time.  That is, of course, pure nonsense, and when the waves of mangled bodies and corpses return home, the cycle of bitter regret at lives wasted repeats itself.  It is almost as if we cannot help ourselves.  Almost.

War should be hell.  It should be waged as bloody annihilation of every human being, including civilians - perhaps especially them - on the losing side.  Make it the rule to commit pure genocide against anyone raising arms against you, knowing that they will do the same in return.

If the spectre of everyone we know and love being brutally murdered in a systematic genocide does not abate our willingness to war, much less our thirst for it, then we as a species are unworthy of our existences in the first place and humanity should then extinguish itself as an obvious matter of basic propriety.  At the very least, we should all shut our yaps and stop complaining about it because we get what we tolerate, so onus rests squarely with every last one of us.

War should be hell.  The very thought of it should fill the minds of men with revulsion and wild fear that everything for which they care will be written from the face of the earth in scorch and death and disease and misery and ultimate disappearance into the mists of eternity.

The very suggestion of going to war for non-defensive purposes should cause a people to immediately rise against those in power who would dare suggest it and kill them and their entire families without hesitation or mercy.

War should be hell.  But once engaged in, defensively speaking, the very roots of the attackers genetic lines should be killed off in totality such that never again will they pose a threat to one's own blood.

It is a horrible way to consider it, but I submit that the current way is far more so, for so long as war entails "reasonable" risks (to whom, exactly?), and those risks amount to near-zero for those driving others into it, we will continue to bloody the innocent for reasons that are never valid.

War should be hell.  Any people worth their moral salt would rise against leaders who aggress against other nations, killing them with prejudice, resolve, and no mercy.  Any people failing to do so are perforce complicit, thereby equally guilty, and therefore worthy of total annihilation.   Make this the rule of humankind, the violation of which brings upon the felons the fruits of their choices, and humankind would change as a pure matter of practical survival not only of the individual's thoughts for himself, but for those around him for whom his affections live.

War should be hell.  Make it so and the human race would undergo a quantum alteration in its views on many matters, the dictates of survival becoming the first-order canon of practical living.

War should be hell.  Not for a few, but for all.  Were it so, one can only speculate as to how eager would the people of Germany been to back the war-mongering Hitler.  As for the Soviets and Communist Chinese, those were internal affairs, horrible as they were, to be left to the people of their respective nation-states, though it is my considered opinion that had they treated Lenin and Mao in the same ways, things would have turned out notably better for both peoples.

War should be hell.  The incentives should lead people to avoid war at nearly any cost with a ready will to slaughter their "leaders" any time it is suggested they enter into a war of aggression.

Have I mentioned that war should be hell?

I have no illusions about people coming to sense on this matter.  Warring will continues as always, and people will meekly and corruptly accept it as matters of their cowardice, ignorance, desire, and convenience.  But they can no longer claim that they were not given the better idea on how to proceed with respect to aggression waged on a national basis.  It could be stopped today, if we cared enough.  That we do not is prima facie proof of the need for war being made hell for one and all.

Give it some thought before rejecting the notion out of hand.  Look deeply into the issue and I believe you will see the virtue in what it is that I suggest.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Language, Conceptual Stores, And Mental Health

I have noticed through the decades how many people fail to understand the expressive styles of people from ages long past.

The average man seems to regard such styles as those even as recent as Victorian english as "quaint", at best; often "corny", and even "stupid". That of Shakespeare is indecipherable to most and even modernized interpretations of ancient passages such as Song to Inanna, what is generally considered the world's first poem, in the same ill-considered and ignorant ways.

So I will mention this: men of yore departed from us in two essential ways where language is concerned.

Firstly, they respected language, whereas most of us regard it casually, with disregard, and even dismissal. They understood the power of words; their central importance in the lives of humanity, whereas the contemporary meaner has little to no clue whatsoever. Sadly, it appears he has no desire to learn this most centrally important aspect of human life.

Secondly, men of yore were less beset by conceptual noise - the myriad of ideas swimming about in their heads that lead them astray from a more essential mental bearing. The people of ancient Sumer knew nothing of cell phones and the political idiocies of our contemporary times, such as communism for example. The swamping of men's minds with noise that separates them from essential thought cannot be helped, so far as I can tell. It is an unavoidable consequence of the gaining of new knowledge, for better or worse. As that body of concepts grows, the new knowledge and its attendant thought-volume revolves around the more highly-abstracted, newer ideas perforce because they seem more practically relevant to everyday living. This places distance between the mind of the individual and more basic considerations - ideas that were central to the mental lives of the people of ages past.

The farther back in time one goes, the less "polluted" were the minds of people, simply because the store of human knowledge was smaller.

While in some ways we find advantage in this augmented body of conceptual stores, there is a price to pay, which is precisely the fact that the most basic sense becomes foreign to us. My suspicion is that this presents a deep and abiding problem for humanity and my proof of this lies in the fact that the world of humanity is a hot mess and getting messier, rather than less so.

And that is why I have been writing about the basics, in the effort to at least make available little reminders of the most fundamental notions that SHOULD be serving as anchors for our mental and spiritual health.

We do still find such reminders in places such as in religious texts, but those suffer from serious drawbacks, mostly related to language, it's style and how that style deviates from our contemporary usage. Christian writings, the Bible in particular, is a good example of this. The catastrophic example is well represented in Al Qur'an, which has sown more destruction and misery than any other tome, save perhaps the body that represents communist/socialist/progressive philosophy and attendant thought.

The Christian church attempted, however ham-fistedly, to keep people well anchored through the imposition of their political might upon the mass of humanity under their aegis. This, of course, failed miserably in the end precisely because it was forcefully imposed and not made attractive such that people wanted to maintain virtuous relations with the sacred, rather than toeing a line due to fear of dire punishments, whether in this life or that hereafter.

The Muslims took the Christian model and stepped it up several orders of magnitude in error via sheer viciousness, the results being plain to see in places such as the middle-east, which is a study in human disaster.

An interesting aspect of this mental noise is that it is very effectively employed, consciously or otherwise, as a fog into which politico-social chicanery is injected into the minds of men, leaving them less able to understand the truer nature of what is being presented. This is how the scourges of all modern authoritarian thought and action have been so successfully foisted upon the people of the world since the twentieth century, at the very least. When people are separated from basic sense, they are less able to discern nonsense when presented to them, further leaving them unarmed and consequently unable to repel the assaults of the Tyrant upon their innate rights and liberties. When people do not know better, how can they even be inclined to fight the violation of their individual sovereignty?

Retaining the basics is essential to the health and prosperity of the human race. The depressingly absent health and happiness of men is the direct indicator of just how little we as a race of beings have retained of that basic knowledge. That we are so widely separated from the basics bodes deep ill for humanity's future, which is why my suspicion hovers about the thought that nothing short of reset will save the race of men.

Individuals can think their ways out of this sort of trouble, for illumination is the necessary condition for setting then right once more. But such enlightenment means nothing to men as a body gestalt if sufficient numbers fail to come to sense. By that failure are the good dragged into the pit with the rest, and so it appears to me at this time that reset is the only hope remaining to us; an even so deeply and unforgivingly disruptive of daily life that the choice becomes immediately clear to all but perhaps the most stubbornly dull among us: come to sense now, or have your name stricken from the Book of Life.

That, I fear, is the fate that awaits us because I see just this side of zero possibility of a critical mass of humanity so much as wanting to come to sense, much less making the actual effort to do so.

Perhaps none of it matters, but I cannot help but feel deep sorrow for the innocents, the children mainly, who will pay for the sins of the rest.

Ask yourself where you stand on this issue: do you want to know what is right for all men?; how to live properly amid the throng without destroying them and yourself, or being destroyed by the others... or does it just not matter? To that last question, I have no answers for you, but will suggest you turn your thoughts to those whom you love and regard with fondness and care and then consider the question once more.

Be well, and as always please accept my best wishes.

All Rights Are Property Rights

I was introduced to the notion that all human rights are in fact property rights about a decade ago on an internet forum.  At first I balked at the idea, largely because I'd not thought of things in that way prior, but as I allowed time to work its digestive magic it quickly became clear to me that this was indeed true.

Going back to the definition of a "right", which is a "just claim" to something, it becomes clear upon even superficial consideration that human rights are claims to property.

The immediate objection that arose in my mind upon introduction to the assertion, was that regarding life itself.  I'd never prior considered my life as property.  My life was my own, of course, and yet the idea of it as my property never quite made it to the surface, so to speak.  However, it took very little time and consideration to come to the realization that my life was, indeed, my property, even if the thought implied some sort of separation between "me" and "my life".  But even if we agree that I am my life, who is to say that I cannot own myself?

My right to my life, which is to say my just claim to myself, implies most forcefully the idea that we own ourselves.  Our right to our own lives may be restated as our just claims to our own lives.  So put, the notion becomes more clear and more forceful in its own favor.

Now consider the Other - your fellow human being picked from the great wad of humanity at random.  If we call him Johnny Q. Public, then I ask you this: all else equal, does Johnny Q hold any claim to your life that is greater than your own?  Does he hold any claim whatsoever?  The only answer to which I can ever bring myself is "no" in each case.  How might Johnny Q make a valid claim to YOUR life that is of greater valence and salience than is your own?  What might such a claim look like?  I see no way of answering that question in a manner that does not stem from a presumption that is innately and embarrassingly obvious in its arbitrariness.


If it is correct across all possible pairings of human individuals that a man holds the primary and possibly sole just claim to his life vis-à-vis any other man, then we must perforce conclude that no man holds authority over another, once again and ever so importantly, all else equal.

In other words, so long as I have not trespassed against another, there is nothing that I might do that could justify the interference in my affairs by another.  Whether I smoke a joint on the courthouse steps, employ the services of a prostitute, buy and sell illicit drugs, go helicopter skiing from eighty-foot high ice cornices, or do any of a nearly endless number of things that might cause me serious injury, it is nobody's business that I so engage myself, much less that men in uniforms and with sidearms place me in a cage for it.

The basic and inherent freedom of the human individual directly implies agorism as the only valid societal foundation.  For those not familiar with the term, "agorism" is a philosophy wherein all human interaction between individuals of their majority is undertaken on a strictly voluntary basis.  Coercion and other means of force must not be employed in an agorist society, such use exposing the perpetrator to both criminal and civil liability.

For example, the rape of one individual by another would leave the rapist open to criminal charges and liable upon due conviction to the consequences of his actions.  Someone stealing a stick of gum from another might be liable for recompense, being given the opportunity to make good.  Failure to balance that scale could result in the escalation of charges into the criminal.

As for those who have not attained their majority, they live under a slightly different set of rules whereby their basic rights are maintained, but their individual prerogatives may be validly curtailed for the want of life experience and sufficient physical and mental development.

This brings us to the notion of life itself.  One's life is what we shall call his "First Property".  It is literally the first thing with which the living entity is endowed.  The entity owns itself, leading to the idea that he is autodiathistically entitled to keep and dispose of himself as he may see fit.  It is also eminently arguable and seemingly self-evident that one's life is also cardinally "first" in significance.  Therefore, "First Property" appears to these eyes to be a truly appropriate moniker and appellation.

Upon one's acceptance of the notion of his First Property, the rest of human rights as those pertaining to the property of the individual come into sharp focus, usually with little to no help.

I own my life, which is to say that I own myself.  That which I materially or intellectually come to possess through no demonstrably criminal act also becomes my property.  As I stroll along the Gulf Coast, I come upon a sea shell that I find beautiful, I am free to pick it into my physical possession and take it with me wherever I may choose, for as long as I might.  The taking having constituted no crime, the shell becomes my exclusive property.  Being property, I retain and reserve the right to defend it from destruction or theft at the hands of another, for unless I voluntarily relinquish exclusive ownership of the shell, nobody else may lay claim to it and act upon that claim as if it were valid.  In such cases of a counterclaim, we have courts who, in their presumed wisdom and impartiality, will hear the case to be made by one man against the claims of another, to some object or other asset, and render judgment as to whom said asset belongs in exclusive, or partial right.

When one begins to consider themselves and all that surrounds them in terms of property rights, their ideas of how the world properly works becomes far more clear, if deeply altered.  Lo and behold the world becomes an easier and better place in which to live.

Be well, and until next time please accept my best wishes.

Covid-19

In this post I will depart a mite from the standard purpose of discussing issues that relate to human liberty directly and touch upon one that could strike deeply, however obliquely, to the same issue.

There is much debate over whether covid19, the so-called "corona virus" of Chinese origin, is a weapon.  If you know the basics of that which drives bioweapon design, the confusion should subside at least in good part, though your unease may not.

There are a few holy grails after which the designers seek:

1: long latency (incubation) period.  Thus far it is confirmed the latency is at least 14 days with some reports claiming as much as 24.  This is quite long, so here we have a mark in favor of this being a weapon, and a rather suspicious one at that.  Think of how far and how many people may travel from a single place in two weeks' time in this age of air travel.  China with its billion and a half people could have thousands of individuals in every nation on earth in much less time than that.  Thousands of highly contagious people could spread the virus to such an extent that there comes with it effectively zero hope of containment on any mass scale.

1a: And what if the actual latency varies between individuals such that in some people the agent incubates at intervals counted in months?  Highly varying latency between individuals reduces predictability, which leaves people in a state of relative uncertainty not only as to the nature of the bug, but diagnostically, and also in terms of how human organizations such as "government" tend to respond.  The less predictable the bug, the more difficult becomes our decision-making processes, diagnostics, etc.  The longer a bug has to spread and the less telltale the outbreak pattern, the better for the wielder of the weapon.

2: Sudden onset.  The virus appears to bring on symptoms rather suddenly.  Mark the second, if a less convincing one.

3: High contagion during latency.  It seems clear that the covi19 virus is at least very contagious during the latency period, if not wildly so.  Mark the third.

4: High lethality.  Because the numbers reported are not to be trusted, especially those offered later in the reporting cycle, it becomes very difficult to determine the rate of lethality.  The possibly less-massaged numbers from January suggest a lethality of around 30-35%, which is very high.  Those figures may not be representative of the truth, but then again the same may be said for those reported later on, which suggest far lower danger.  Therefore, we remain in limbo on the question of the kill rate.  But if perchance lethality is that high and this bug goes pandemic, which it now looks like it may, we are talking about nearly three billion dead at the speculated rate.  Let us hope it proves less lethal.  We cannot quite issue mark the fourth due almost certainly to the lies of the Chinese government.


5. A vaccine exists.  If a vaccine already exists, and thus far there is no way of knowing, then the likelihood that covid19 is a weapon comes to perhaps 95% or greater.  No mark in favor due simply to a lack of data.

We see three of five elements are marked in speculative favor of the covid19 virus being the product of willful human endeavor pursuant to the goal of developing a weapon.  Sixty percent is not quite damning, but it gives great reason for pause.  If this proves to be a weaponized organism, nobody should be surprised.

With this issue arise potentially great implications for human freedom as this is the precise sort of chaotic circumstance that permits for enormous force behind a tyrant's moves to gather ever greater power and false authority into his hands at the cost of individual liberty.  In this sense, a pandemic of a highly lethal biological agent is functionally no different than that of a more conventional "terrorist" attack.  It is, in fact, far greater a threat for any of several reasons, not the least of which is that the parties responsible always hold some plausible deniability.  If there is no positively identified enemy beyond "mother nature", then there is nobody against whom to train one's weapons, further meaning there could possibly be no secure victory against the instrument of one's destruction.  This is the brand of chaos that could be employed as the justification for utter usurpation of all power, whether by design from the get-go or by the pure opportunity of happenstance.

The justification of public health and national survival, when couched in the context of a general terror of a deadly plague, stands to meet with near-universal public acceptance.  Frighten people sufficiently and they will surrender to you anything you might demand, if you can convince them even for a brief moment that you and only you are capable of delivering them from catastrophe.

Whatever the truth, I would advise one and all to keep their eyes on this issue to see how "government" ultimately responds.  My tendency is to expect further claims to power with commensurate denigration of the individual prerogative.

Let us hope this does not prove out in the worst way imaginable, but be prepared for it in any case.

Be careful out there, and as always please accept my best wishes.

GovernMENT Is Cancer

The degree to which "governMENT" exists in any given land and is freely accepted is a direct measure of the corruption of the people therein. If we are to have governMENT beyond the governANCE of each man over himself, then let it be so minimal that it becomes difficult even to detect that it is there.

GovernMENT's role should be to take into hand those cases where men fail to govern themselves, and even then the bodies of men functioning as such an institution must be treated with utmost suspicion that borders on contempt. The people must be ready to strike down with great and cruel resolve any governMENT which steps from the metes of its delegated authority so as to remind every individual in the land the hazards that await anyone as reward for treachery against their fellows.

"GovernMENT" should fear we, the people, with the deep thunder of knocking knees. They should live in abject terror of those whom they serve, the least thought of any presumption to rule shivering their souls to shards long before any action is so much as contemplated.

It is time to rein "governMENT" in. It is time to scrub the legislative gene pool free of the false law Theye call "statute" which serves but as pure trespass against the rightful prerogatives of free men.

Time is here; time to become a righteous people; a free people.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Beware The Phenomenon Of Trump

Since about 2015 we have been seeing and hearing about the huge turnouts of Americans to the manifold Trump rallies. It is quite amazing to behold, given the past several decades of American political somnambulism. While potentially encouraging, I must advise caution and warn of the possible dangers lurking with the rise of President Trump.

My reasoning is as this: it is arguably good that people are becoming in some ways and measures politically aware, and at least active enough to show up to events, which prior to 9/11/2001 most were clearly not. The good here is the increase in interest and action. But is it enough? That remains to be seen, and therein lies one of the hazards - what if this is a flash in the pan? What if we have not the commitment to see a vision to its completion? More troubling still, is there even a vision present, or are the tens of millions of Trump supporters representative of tens of millions of half-baked and disparately vague notions, desires, and impulses? This should be a very real and immediate concern for anyone with a genuine and abiding interest in freedom and its prospects.

The potential bad: this becomes a cult of personality. Hitler and his Germany were in this sense a similar circumstance. Conditions were bleak, the Man rose in the wake of rhetoric that struck chords with a sufficient mass of the people, and he got things done. I am in no way accusing or equating here, but only observing the similarities in terms of the circumstances and historically-demonstrated human habit.

Further bad potential: the throng comes to rely on the icon to get it done, rather than taking responsibility for their own better interests, which includes becoming smart on certain crucial matters, and refusing to pimp those responsibilities off onto others whose trustworthiness can never be safely assumed regardless of outwardly apparent saintliness. This is perhaps the single greatest threat to the welfare of humanity, taken as a gestalt. It is certainly a central causal factor as to how so much abject misery has managed to rise in the human world and come to be accepted as inevitable, the mean man telling himself resignedly that this is just the way things are. Perhaps the worst of it is the apparent fact that this does not arise in mean man out of malice, but as the result of personal corruptions of which he is perhaps not even aware.

Untimely and gratuitous death, poverty, disease, and misery are not inevitable; certainly not on the immense scales to which history bears grim witness. They are vastly avoidable, far more so than the degrees to which we currently observe. But effective elimination requires proper human freedom, which in its turn requires the attitude of the Freeman. Restructuring one's world view from that of Weakman to Freeman is no mean task. It is monumentally difficult, and as we may readily witness it has thus far remained an unattained realization on a large-scale basis. The rot and cancer of the Weakman's mindset is deep and terribly destructive, for it is as the depiction of the vampire's victim in novels such as King's "Salem's Lot": once bitten, the victim no longer wishes to escape, but rather to give himself utterly to his murderer.

Think carefully on this and then ask yourself what it is that you really want from yourself, for yourself, of and for your life. What would you have for the lives of those whom you love and hold with deep regard and affection? Becoming and remaining in the servitude of pretty slavery is easy, but only so in a very false and deceptive way, for it is as living death even if one is unable to readily perceive it as such, particularly at the time of infection.

Choosing the path of freedom is eminently difficult, but the life of the Freeman is exhilarating, as well as challenging and even quite frightening at times. The benefits of freedom do not come at zero cost to those who would be free, nor should those costs be viewed as taxations upon the appeal of liberty. Rather, the proper view of those costs are that they constitute much of the spice of life; they are challenges worthy of free men who meet them with courage, strength, honor, dignity, eagerness, great love, and the heartfelt generosity and charity that the Superior Man carries within himself throughout his days.

The mere existence of the Weakman is, in contrast, dull such that if one remains in this world long enough in such a state, the prospect of his end becomes greatly welcomed, even if only unconsciously, for the boredom and the taxing mental poverty of it all becomes too much for even the most tepid and timid to bear. The condition of the Weakman acts in diametric opposition to the fundamental nature of the human animal, and yet just as with any other disease, we are as individuals all prone to such contamination, the result of which appears most often as a fate far worse than death.

So my rarely given advice to all the good people who support the forty-fifth president of the United States of America is that they take to heart my call to caution, self-examination, and to make it a point to learn what it truly means to be properly free, if freedom be decided as one's personal desire.

As always, please accept my best wishes.

Political Freedom In An Unfree World

The world is run by two major factions: tyrants and willing slaves, the two in my very rough estimation comprising about 99.5% to 99.9% of the world's population. Some small dreg of the remainder is comprised of those very few humans who do not share the mindset of either controlling interest, but are in fact free men. There is much to discuss on these matters, yet so little of value has been put forth that is worthy of pursuit, architecting, tuning, and realization. The vast majority of humanity are, in their minds, willing slaves to those who presume to lord over them. They are do deeply hoodwinked, so blinded to the greater truth regarding proper human relations, there is little to no hope that they can be brought around to the veracity of their innate status as free beings. Such people, the vast majority of all humanity, are bred and trained to fear, and consequently hate actual freedom. They have been long marinated in the mental swill that bends their thoughts and perceptions to the will and convenience of the tyrant. And so it has gone for thousands of years to ever growing advantage of the would-be lords of humanity as the body of man's knowledge has grown, hitting what currently appears to be at least the beginning of an asymptotic stride upward such that even a single man can now wield nearly unimaginable degrees and sorts of control over vast populations. The oddly paradoxical element in all this, however, is that those of the tyrant class are every bit the inmates as those over whom they presume their false authority as valid, the only differences lying in the dimensions and appointments of their respective prisons. Theye are every bit as trapped in their roles as tyrants as are those who willingly submit to the various and manifestly cruel oppressions. In this way, the slaves are not only willing participants in the play that is human politics, they hold an oblique brand of odd authority over the tyrants as well, the practical upshot being that Theye are as shackled as are the rest. The result is a system of mutually reinforcing authoritarianism whose truer nature is belied by the superficial differences between the respective roles. Theye only think they are in charge in some gestalt manner, suffering under the symmetric delusion that the proles have no power over them. This, however, is in itself deeply delusional, for Theye have no more access to freedom than do those of the slave class. The moment one is able to realize this truth, the machinations of the so-called "elites" become mostly droll with punctuations of hilarity. Hilarious and boring it would all be, were it not fo the fact of Theire murderous natures, but that is a topic irrelevant to this far more fundamental topic. The ruler and the ruled form a gestalt, a whole. Each has devolved in such manner that each can no longer live without the other, even though they both seem, statistically speaking, to believe that each is somehow better or more important than the other. They are, in fact, equally corrupt and responsible for the grand and miserable fiasco that is the human race. But what of the one percent of the one percent; that small handful of men who not only see themselves as free, but who act in accord with that very belief to the greatest degree possible, which does not bring the wrath of master and slave alike upon them and those dear? Those are the people to whom my concern and affections turn, for they are the only examples of the human animal worthy.

What, indeed... Given the Gordian Knot of mutually fortifying corruption between ruler and ruled, is there a social architecture that allows for meaningful freedom in the vast oceans of putrescent tyranny? I am not sure, but I have given this much thought over the decades. The older I get and the more clearly I see the hopelessness for the greater wad of humanity, the clearer it becomes to me that the ideal of anarchy is currently unworkable in any population other than those of trivial proportions. In my opinion and based on my observations of contemporary human societies, humans were not designed to do well in the large populations we currently see. Rather, they appear to better flourish in comparatively tiny groups that are more akin to extended families than great undifferentiated wads of fungible units. This truth seems to eliminate anarchy as a viable option for the human world as it currently exists. Barring a "reset event", one that is so deeply disruptive of daily reality as to present every living man with a set of clear and immediate choices that bear on their abilities to survive from one moment to the next, the future for ideal and proper human freedom appears bleak. All, however, is not lost. The next best thing, which so far as I can see may be configured so as to be nearly indistinguishable from non-formalized anarchic life, is what some call "minarchy". I am not particularly fond of this moniker as it carries certain baggage that appears to lead to little better than endless bickering precisely due to the typically poor habits of language and, thereby, thought of far too great a plurality of humans. The best I have been able to concoct for my own purposes is "panarchy", suggestive of the fact that governance is the responsibility of every man, rather than some elite subgroup upon whom personal responsibility is pimped by the corrupted masses who wish to be free of their personal obligations pursuant to the proper conduction of daily commerce between men.

But central to the notion of anarchic or panarchic life is the concept of autodiathism, which is nothing fancier than the idea that people hold the right and the corresponding responsibilities of self-determination. The freedom to choose for oneself how to live and what to do on a moment by moment basis is inherent to men. There exist none of the falsely concocted "societal" obligations forwarded and in many cases foisted by master and slave alike. The only obligation of one man to his fellows is that he refrain from violating the equal claims of others. The rubric of the Free Man is the canon of the Golden Rule itself. It is simple, clear, complete, and correct, requiring no modification of any sort.

This all said, what then is the practicable solution for free men? Separation, plain and simple. Physical separation is very helpful, but mental and "spiritual" or "attitudinal" segregation are paramount, as is that of deeply ingrained habit that comes only through endless repetition and refinement such that these qualities become one's first nature.

To this end, territorial secession becomes a deep practical necessity, particularly in the absence of a binding and unifying sense of the sacred such as that found in various religious communities such as those of fundamentalist Jews. But even that is not a good replacement for physical territories wherein the inhabitants are nominally safe from the violent predations of the tyrant. Consider those same Jewish communities in places such as New York City. There is great cohesion within the Lubavitcher community, and yet they are not quite properly free a they remain beholden to the violative ordinances of the municipality, the so-called "Sullivan Laws" coming immediately to mind, which prohibit them from keeping and bearing arms for defense of the individual and the community at large. This sad truth leaves those people and all like them in a degraded state where either they comply with the "law" or risk severe repercussions if they choose not to comply with the possession of a firearm without the approval of the "state". In my opinion, this is no way to live. It is certainly not a free man's living.

And so it would appear that given the current circumstances, the best practical base step is to secede as a group in physical and legal possession of a territory and establish a conceptually separate entity that has well defined physical borders and a properly architected social order upon which all residents are in sufficient agreement such that everyone is able to live as he pleases so long as he does not engage in violations of the equal prerogatives of his neighbors.

Furthermore, and contrary to the common wisdom of the so-called "left" or "progressives", "socialists", "communists" and other mentally unsound sorts, if the new society is to survive, much less flourish, a clear, sufficient, and faithfully applied set of rules must be set into place that controls those borders, as well as who is allowed to cross them. Americans knew and accepted this as intuitively obvious until comparatively very recently in their history. Today, the progressives prattle on endlessly about how we as Americans are absolutely obliged to admit any and all comers to this land of opportunity, regardless of their political biases against the dominant culture, their hatred of the people of this land, any wildly communicable diseases they may carry, and so forth. This, of course, is raving, suicidal madness. It is of interest to note how those same people appear to have no issue whatsoever with other nations controlling their borders, often in what might be viewed as draconian fashion.

To summarize, the best and most practically viable path toward the establishment of a place in which free men are allowed to exercise their full prerogatives as such are as follow:

1. Begin at the beginning, which involves the identification of the set of rules by which the residents of the free land will comport themselves without coercion, but rather with understanding and the eagerness that arises therefrom.
2. Inculcate the members with the spirit and specifications of the Freeman. Teach them to recognize, distinguish, and understand the differences between Freemen and Weakmen. Teach them to value the Freeman and to pity and despise the sadly corrupted Weakman who poses endless dangers to himself and everyone around him.
3. Teach to deep understanding and appreciation the centrally vital role that language plays in the life of the Freeman, ensuring that everyone as a matter of basic culture understand how lost they are without profound skills in the art and science of verbal communication; that they are little more than an empty shells without a well and sharply tuned facility of spoken and written language. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
4. Render aware the two-edged nature of freedom, benefits and costs, rights and responsibilities.
5. Render aware that which freedom demands of a man, specifically:
• Intelligence
• Smarts (intellect developed into practical knowledge and skill)
• Courage
• Integrity
• Generosity
6. Inculcate and attitude of eagerness for those demands, such that they regard them as great things to which to aspire, rather than as things to be dreaded and avoided at nearly any cost.
7. Self-respect
8. Respect for others
9. Value in one's relationships
10. Rights: what they are, their characteristics, how they work and, equally importantly, how they do not.
11. Respect for property
12. The beauty and value of love
13. Identify a territory, such as a county-sized region, and settle it with large numbers of like-spirited cohorts. Attempting to secede on a statewide basis is likely too ambitious.

Secession, while a fine idea in principle and likely the only practically meaningful path toward liberty, must be undertaken with great planning and care, lest the result end up as just more of the same old tyranny.

Unlike pretty slavery, freedom is difficult. As much as it is exhilarating, is can be exhausting and terrifying because it demands much, while offering no guarantees whatsoever. The things it does offer, however, are opportunity and, ... itself!

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Ending The "Deep State"?

The Deep State, or DS from here on in, is loosely defined as the body of entrenched governmental officials whose tenures at duty span the comings and goings of multiple administrations. As such, the potential for long-term, concerted, rational, coherent corruption not only exists, but has in fact become commonplace. With time the rot, once established, can grow as the entrenched few gain internal clout and recruit and emplace those of their feather, growing their ranks and advancing their agendas. By this means has power been usurped and cultivated, affecting the brands of change desired, which invariably runs toward tyranny.

In 2016, Donald J. Trump became the forty-fifth president of the United States, at least in part upon his promise of "drain[ing] the swamp", which was his way of referring to the DS.

Given the definition, it would seem clear that if we value freedom, purging the DS would be one of the things to do, and I assert that indeed it is. But such a cleansing is not sufficient to the longer term prospects for freedom. As things stand, what is there to prevent a new DS from arising in the future? The answer, I am sad to say, is "nothing". There is nothing to prevent a new legion of tyrants from coming into power, which means that something needs to change.

Purges may be all well and good, though historically they tend to become bloodbath disasters for reasons we will not discuss here, but when the division of labor that serves us so well in some respects is allowed to remain in the realm of politics, tyranny becomes virtually guaranteed. Division of labor in the political arena is what leads to the rise of a Deep State, pretty much guaranteeing it. When applied to political offices, a division of labor results in specialization in the machinations of the so-called "government".

With governmental specialization comes the notion of expertise along comparatively narrow lines of skill and, presumably, duty. In the case of political establishments, there attaches to the notion of expertise the often tacit idea of exclusivity of authority precisely because we speak of political office. The logic is a bit more complicated than just this, but even this comparatively superficial description reveals the tortured nature of the reasoning behind these often unstated positions. It is, in fact, absurd and wholly unsustainable, save for the fact that these "rules" are kept deeply tacit such that explicit expressions are avoided in order to keep people in the dark, that they not come to understand how it is they are being subjugated as functional slaves under the boot-heal of those who presume themselves the masters.

Unlike with any other organization, the stations of the various political offices claim exclusive authority to command the behavior of the rest. This is a subtle form of evil that is more dangerous than all the armies of the world, combined. The most frightening and sad fact in all of this is that for the most part, the wad of governed humanity meekly accepts this exclusivity with no effective opposition, like sheep obediently trudging along the chute to be slaughtered.

Let nobody occupy any governmental station long enough to become an entrenched "expert". Some may claim that this will lead to having unqualified people in positions of governance. To this I say "GREAT!!". Let there be no experts. Let there be nobody holding the brands of exclusivity of authority that is commonplace today. Let all power be questioned and challenged daily. Let the conditions be such that deep expertise is no longer required because governance is conducted along the simple lines of the basic principles of proper human relations, rather than the chicanery of special interests the leads to unnatural complication, which in turn is used as the justification for entrenched experts whose words cannot be questioned.

It is all well and good to remove the corruption, but unless we restructure our attitudes and our roles to best ensure it never rises again, we all but guarantee that it will. This means that not only must the division of labor in government be eliminated and disallowed into the deep future, but the void created there must be filled by "ordinary" men - generalists who, while not as expert in the various offices, don't need it and, in fact, recoil from the idea of it. All men must become governors, primarily of themselves, but also willing and able to assume an office.

Until we become a race of political generalists, we doom ourselves to ongoing tyranny, subjugation, oppression, and to suffer all the degradations of health, happiness, fortune, and liberty that tyranny universally brings at the hands of the specialists who claim sole authority to tell us what we may do, cannot do, and are compelled to do.

We do not need leaders if we are all leaders of our own lives. Stop trusting and depending upon others for your basic needs, your political needs, your liberty, your choices. Be your own president, as it were. Lead yourself. Govern yourself. Learn the principles of proper human relations and render them your second nature. Become the Superior Man and, rather than shrink from the responsibilities and obligations that carry therewith, revel in them, in the power that it confers. It can be done, if you really want it.

Do you?

As always, please accept my best wishes.

Structural Rights

The term "natural rights" appears to give a great many people, most of whom appear to my eyes to be something of cynics, great heartburn. Though the world needs more jargon about as much as we all need additional holes in our heads, I would like to offer a term in the spirit of easing the violent rejection experienced by so many who rebel against notion of "natural rights".

The term I would like to introduce is "structural rights", a designation synonymous with "natural rights". Why, then, offer up yet another term for the same concept? Just as many people turn off at any mention of religion that is not cursing or damning it, so it has been with talk of natural rights, which I suspect is often intimately associated with "God-given rights", which brings us right back to the religion issue and the related aversions.

Whatever the true reason, a great number of people reject the concept of natural rights, often with protestations that run along the lines of the belief that there are no such things, replete with the notable absence of anything even vaguely resembling a valid argument in support of the assertion. That, of course, is quite untrue, but if one wishes to enter into discourse of the nature of our fundamental rights as human beings, one must first be able to get others to listen.

Therefore, if the exchange of ideas is the intermediate objective in order to bring others to a better understanding of what rights actually are, perhaps with a goal of persuasion, we have to be able to get the ideas on the table before people turn off or, ever more commonly today, go on a war footing.

For many, "natural rights", appears to have an air of some tacit and invalid bias about it, whereas "structural rights" is more neutral sounding, rather than something that's escaped the inner sanctum of the great temple at Hokum. When presented in this seemingly neutral cast, I have found in many cases that people remain off their guard and actually listen to what it is you have to say thereafter.

What can we say of our structure as beings? The short logic chain might look something like this:

1. We all live 
2. That which lives appears to universally wish to remain so, all else equal 
3. Wishing to remain alive, it follows that we claim our lives as our own; what I have termed our "First Property". 
4. Our claim to life is precisely our right to life because a right is defined as a "just claim". 
5. Therefore, by virtue of being alive and wishing to remain so, we assert our claims to our First Property, that is, our very structure as beings. 
6. By extension, we further stake our claims to that which sustains our structures as living beings. 
7. Our structure as living beings, part of which is the drive to remain alive, leads to our claims to life and all that which is necessary to not only survive, but preferably to thrive. 
8. 
   

The foregoing is by no means a perfect argument, but it is on the right path and is offered that one might get the basic gist of the argument that explains the nature of rights.

Our very structure as beings drives us to the claims we call our rights. It is precisely because we all share those drives in common, and act pursuant to the interests those claims seek to serve, that no man holds the authority to dismiss such claims of his fellows. This is the true meaning of "equality" between individuals. Our structural rights are equal between us because we share identical claims to life at the most abstract level.

One man cannot validly assert a greater claim to his life than I do to mine, for the contention makes no sense on the one hand, and cannot in any event be validly proven, on the other. Furthermore, one man may not validly assert a greater claim to the life of another than the other may to his own. It can be well argued that one man can assert a claim to the life of another man, certainly not without consent, and all else equal.

The very structures we share as living entities defines our rights and establishes the true and proper senses of our equality as living beings.

"Structural rights" as an alternative card to play may prove a good tool to keep up your sleeve in the event you run into one of those sorts who runs from "natural rights" as if he were on fire.

For what it is worth the alternative phrasing is offered, and as always please accept my best wishes.

Humanity Degraded Results In Today's Version Of "Civilization"

When men living in proximity to each other do so with an attitude of basic respect for themselves and their brethren, anarchy is invariably the result.

It is only when men abandon the basic morality born into them that "civilization" and the pestilence it visits upon them becomes the normal condition under which people must suffer the miseries of each others' tyrannies, heaped hand over fist by every man upon every other, most often in the form of the fictions that are "goverment" and "the state".

It is only in the wake of moral degradation that men come to accept being "civilized" by others of equal or greater corruption, and in whom no such authority to thwart and reduce can be said to exist. Men turn their backs upon themselves and their fellows in betrayal of the sacred gift of Life, equally bestowed to each by the Infinite. There is no truth sadder or less necessary than this. It is an affront to the Sacred; it is the ultimate obscenity.

But if we are to more fully understand what is actually happening, what our condition is more truly, we must first understand what it means to be "civilized". Let us start by consulting the dictionary.

Samuel Johnson's 1785 dictionary of the English language puts it this surprising way:

CIVILSATION n. s. 1. A law which renders a criminal process civil.
2. The act of civilizing.
3. The state of being civilized


Definition one is not quite clear. Turning our attention to "civil", Johnson's states:

CIVIL a. 1. Relating to the community
2. Relating to any man as a member of a community.
3. Not in anarchy; not wild.
4. Not foreign; intestine; as, a civil war.
5. Not ecclesiatical; as the civil courts.
6. Not natural; as, civil death.
7. Not military; as, the civil magistrate.
8. Not criminal; as, a civil process.
9. Civilized; not barbarous.
10. Grave, sosber.
11. Relating to the ancient consular or imperial government; as in civil law.

Now to the definition of "civilize":

CIVILIZE v. a. 1.To reclaim from savageness.


From the same source, "savageness":

SAVAGENESS n. s. 1. Barbarousness; cruelty; wildness


And "barbarousness":

BARBAROUSNESS n. s. 1. Incivility of manners; impurity of language; cruelty


So what, then, are we to make of definition 1 of "civilsation", as it is the only one that seems even remotely relevant? It says "A law which renders a criminal process civil." What does that mean? Not natural, as per def. 6 for "civil"? Not criminal, as per def. 8, ibid?   Because of this grand failure to pin down with complete rigor, we can make nothing certain of "civilization", which leaves tyrants open to make it mean whatever they please.

When we consider how much of our world rests upon the notion of "civilization", do you not find it somewhat disturbing that the definitions of the term and its semantic relatives are so vague, imprecise, incomplete, and circular?  If not, perhaps you would be well served to begin.

This semantic failure is utterly unacceptable if we Freemen are to live up to our purported ideals. How are we, the standing Freemen of the world, to move forward as such beings if we do not understand the most basic notions of what it means to live among each other with the proprieties that proper human freedom carries as matters of its very fabric? The answer, of course, is that we cannot, and ought not accept this deplorable condition, for to do so leaves the doors ajar for clever tyrants who would play on the ignorance, fear, and other raw emotions of men for the sake of gaining power over them, by hook or by crook. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, it hobbles us as Freemen because it degrades, diminishes, disparages, maligns, and leads astray our understanding of the deeper truth of Proper Human Relations. If we do not understand how to live properly among each other, then the tyrants are free to foist upon us literally anything, regardless of the outrage of it it, precisely because we are insufficient to the task of arguing against it.

What, then, are we to do in the face of this most unfortunate truth, that the very definitions of the terms in such common use, are almost devoid of concrete meaning? We remedy the situation by providing a definition that is worthy of the moniker. To that end, I offer to the world the following definition of "civilization":

CIVILIZATION: n. s.

The condition under which people live among and amid each other such that each individual is wholly, utterly, and completely free to choose, decide, and act as he pleases pursuant to his desires and judgments, so long as he refrains from violating the equal rights and consequent prerogatives of his fellows.


CIVILIZED: a.

A state of living such that the conditions thereof are those of a civilization.


This is what "civilization" ought to mean. To be civil should be synonymous with being free. Alas, it is anything but that. In today's world, civilization is precisely what we have: a prison-like environment where the whims of a ruling subpopulation are forced upon the rest, failures to comply most often carrying draconian consequences.

The current reality of "civiilization" is nothing short of a nightmare for countless billions of human beings.

Consider the so-called "drug laws" and the war that has been waged pursuant to enforcement of those invalid and tyrannical mandates. Consider the seemingly endless litany of lives that have been unjustly destroyed for failure to comply with the non-authoritative demands of a ruling elite who decide what we may do, possess, think, and feel. There are literally millions of human beings languishing in American prisons for non-criminal acts such as possessing, using, and/or selling proscribed substances such as cannabis, heroin, and methamphetamine.

Few people will argue that the illicit use of heroin is a "good" thing, save perhaps the addicts themselves. However, regardless of how unwise such use may prove, it is nonetheless not a crime to use, possess, or sell heroin. That some arbitrarily constituted body of de facto tyrants declares it a felony to possess, use, or sell heroin and codifies the prohibition by statutory means, it does not follow that it is so. That is, statute is not perforce Law, all protestations by legislators and perhaps courts to the contrary notwithstanding.

Consider now those statutory instruments that have criminalized prostitution. Is the payment to one human being by another a criminal act? It is demonstrably not, and therefore it cannot be validly prohibited to any man by any other. To do so is bald-faced tyranny, no matter how repugnant one man may find the deed. The prohibition is itself a felony masquerading every so thinly as Law.

How about homosexual acts? Are they criminal? At one time there were statutes on the books that said "yes". And yet, they are not. Men are free to be disgusted by homosexuality, if they are so moved. What they are not free to do is interfere with the rightful prerogative of all men the choose such acts if they are inclined to it.

The list of capriciously arbitrary prohibitions is sometimes appears endless, with more being added by the day in clear violation of the sovereign rights of every human being walking the planet. Is there a remedy for this? Yes, but the question is not that of existence, but rather of the will of men in sufficient proportions to make real a better world, a free world. Thus far, that question has met with the grim answer, and yet hope is not quite lost, if it be ever so skinny from lack of nourishment. We, the tall-standing Freemen of the world may yet bring some harrow to the tyrannies that beset every man, including the tyrants, for they are as much imprisoned by their own schemes as are the rest of us.

I therefore implore ye of good character and who love freedom truly and completely, to spread the word and to help us all by endeavoring to bring to clarity the very words that underpin our lives in such a manner as to give better effect to the thoughts of free men the world over. Help us form the ironclad framework of conceptual understanding such that those who yearn for something better from this world are gifted with the tools necessary for the affect of change to those ends.

We do not have to live as chattel, serfs, prisoners. Theye can be stopped. Stopping Themme is not even particularly difficult - not if you have the knowledge in numbers, coupled with the drive to achieve the worthy goal of freedom in our lifetimes. It is the will to the goal, which in turn is driven by sufficient and proper understanding, that is the trick here. We are eight billion mostly ignorant souls, generationally hoodwinked by those who presume to reign over us as lords. The only way out, the only first step, is realization and the thirst to learn the greater truth of what it means to live properly amid one's fellow souls.

May the hunger for freedom grow and intensify such that we all begin to help one another, rather than suspect, despise, dismiss, and even hate our brethren. It is precisely that division between us that keeps the Tyrant on his throne, free to dictate as he might please. Are we going to allow this to continue? I pray we do not.

So long for now, and may the spirit of freedom bring its blessings upon you.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

The Three Ls

I propose to coin yet another new term for humanity, the ideas of which I trust shall be clear.

Ladies and gents, may I introduce the Three Ls, or 3Ls for brevity's sake:

1. Life
2. Limb
3. Liberty

What, you may ask, do these three notions, clustered in some sense as a group, represent?  

The answer is simple: together, the form the very basis of all human claims to life.  I have been in the habit of late of referring to a man's life as his "First Property".  This wording reinforces the notion of a man's life as his own possession and not that of any other man, save by sound and valid agreement.

Limb, the physical embodiment of a man, is an integral part of his First Property, without which said property could not continue on this earthly plane.  The threat of destruction in toto is only one concern a man has for Limb, partial destruction through maiming or its literal expropriation into a slave condition, relevantly at the hands of his fellow men, being the other two great concerns regarding Limb.

His Liberty completes the Triad or Trinity of a man's fundamental moral constitution, that arising from the very nature of his being, particularly significant in the context of the company of his fellows.

And there you have it - the very basis of men as individuals expressed in truth that is so obvious to unclouded minds as to be nearly absurd in its mention.  And yet, the mind of the modern man is so very clouded that someone finds himself compelled to make such mentions as these regarding their very existence, as well as their individual natures, and the nature of their interrelations.

I bid you consider the 3Ls, and further mull what they mean to you and those you love.  Ponder what it means when the respect of them is thrown to the wayside by one's fellow men.  Think of what the world of men becomes when respect by one man for his fellows dissipates into the mists, unleashing every wild impulse he may have such that he makes no mind of the resulting violations.  Now imagine into what that translates when one such man becomes legions of men.

If your considerations prove vexatious and the source of grave concern, then I will consider myself as having accomplished at least one of my objectives in this writing.

Be well, be free, and as always, please accept my best wishes.

I Bet They Never Saw This Coming

This is my first non-philosophical post.  It will not become my habit to post about current political reality, but this time I just feel the desire to do so.  I will be brief.

The political stooges of the so-called "left" now nervously circle one another, eyes peeled for the right opportunity to turn cannibal.

I bet not a single one of them thought they'd be facing this possibility the moment they made their turn toward treachery. And yet, it would appear that here they now stand, wondering whether it will be to their distinct advantage during sentencing to have those in whose hands justice rests, know that they were the first to do the "right" thing. The conundrum must be crushing for them.

Consider the media on the one hand, that seem to be suggesting that the first man to turn on the rest with vital testimony will enjoy punishments far reduced in comparison with the rest, or may even enjoy immunity from prosecution - the proverbial get-out-of-jail-free card.

On the other hand, there is little doubt that the likes of Clinton, or whoever it is that is the liaison between them and the real power, the veiled power, is shrieking at them to hang together in the spirit of not hanging separately.

I cannot imagine that these people are sleeping particularly well these days with such possibilities and storming uncertainty sloshing around in their mostly empty skulls.

On the one hand, the mind reels at the prospect that America may be taking a step backwards in the direction of a state that might actually bespeak some hints of freedom.  On the other, there rises the spectre of just another cult going wildly wrong in the vein we remember as a Soviet Union or Red China.

Where politics are concerned, seemingly good things can turn very bad in a heartbeat.  Therefore, decide on what it is you want in terms of freedom and make sure you are heard, no matter the cost.

Be well, thanks for reading, and as always, please accept my best wishes.

Banning Abortion Is Not A Solution

Banning abortion is not the answer.

Teach girls to keep their legs closed and to take all reasonable precautions because boys do not become pregnant.

Teach boys to be gentlemen and to stand responsibly for their choices and the acts that follow therefrom.

Not saying we have to go puritan - very much the opposite. But proper behavior born of proper attitudes begets the better result, which is the diminution of unwanted pregnancy, which in turn reduces the "need" for abortions commensurately.

Abortion is a horror. That so many women get themselves cut for the manifold and lousy reasons they so often do, speaks to the mindsets of people, first and foremost.

When women are sound in their minds and souls, they respect themselves and cherish that which comes to grow within them. Not wanting such a thing at any given time leads them to cautions that they cannot count on anyone else to take on their behalves.

Sadly, they see this as trespass upon their rights, rather than enlightened self-interest.

To claim that a woman has no right to kill the sacred within herself is the product of the brand of cowardice that has lead the world to its current state of decay. I understand it is the product of good intentions and I am in no way saying that abortion is good, but freedom is scary and rotten as often as it is beautiful and exhilarating, if not more often so.

Banning abortion is not the answer anymore than banning drugs has made those problems go away.

Generally speaking, free men do not ban, for doing so invalidly is an act of trespass born of personal and cultural corruption. It is the mark of people who want something without cost, representing the lowest and most deeply wretched state of the human animal.

Someone recently wrote to me that "you can't unring the bell", in reference to the finality of removing life from another being. I completely agree with them, but that fact does not justify enslaving one's fellows, no matter how good the intentions, recalling that such good intentions count for nothing at the end of the day.

This is precisely how people come to reject freedom. They want the attractive bits, but do not accept those that are not quite so pleasing, which I must remind people is the price that is associated with actually being free. That is why I call it "pretty slavery", which is nothing better than human corruption made manifest in the acceptance only of that which pleases, rejecting all that which does not. Freedom does not work that way.

In this precise sense, the so-called "right" (conservatives, or whatever you wish to call them) is no different from the so-called "left": they each want something for nothing. That they want different things is irrelevant to the fundamental issue and question of freedom.

Lefties want to be able to put their naughty bits anywhere they please, boys calling themselves girls, and all manner of other wildly morbid insanity. Conservatives are, admittedly, far and away better in this regard - this is not validly arguable - and yet they are equally willing to enslave their fellows by denying those things to which all are by right entitled. In this particular instance they think they are entitled to prevent a woman from terminating a pregnancy. Conversely, they feel entitled to force a woman to carry a pregnancy to full term. This is pure evil every bit as much as is a woman's casual desire to "get rid of it".

People need to learn to mind their own business. Freedom is at least as full of horror as it is wonder and exhilaration. People want the latter, and nothing to do with the former. So long as that remains the case, they will not be free no matter how fancily they may lie to themselves and each other.

If those horrors include women aborting their pregnancies, then we as free men must accept it as fact at any given moment.  The solution, once again, is not to ban the act, but to train our children to better virtue.

When girls become responsible for their choices and boys follow suit in at least equal measure, then we will begin to see the changes that we who respect life wish to see.

And from a purely practical standpoint, we must acknowledge that we will never stop women from becoming un-pregnant.  There are so many ways of terminating a pregnancy, an iodine-soaked rag inserted into the vagina being but one very effective means, that we will never prevent any woman from ridding herself of the unwanted condition. 

There are those who will say that we can, in fact, enforce a ban.  Now I ask you to think about what that would actually mean.  The reductio ad absurdum there would see the state inside the pants of every woman in the land, constantly checking for a state of pregnancy.  Is this what we want?  I ask because this is precisely what we might get because that is what would be required, particularly in the  likely case of states adopting a "zero-tolerance" policy.  All a young girl has to do is stop eating for a week and she will miscarry.  What then?  Shall we force feed her?  Ask her daily why she is not eating and force her to have a pelvic examination?

Many will say that this is extreme and would never happen.  People also said that Hitler would fade away in time.  Well sure, he did just that, but not until after having destroyed an entire continent.

For the third time I must repeat that which bears repetition: banning abortion is not a solution, but rather an excuse to further state power and the tyranny of some men over the rest.  Show your children the better way and train them to it.  It is the far more difficult path to better living - of that there can be no doubt - but it is the way that better ensures the liberty of humanity, moving forward.

Bans are the great cop-out for people who do not want to be bothered with the hassle and demands of doing something correctly, because that requires output of effort by the individual with no guarantee of results, both of which are required of men who purport to being free.

Treading the path of freedom is always the most difficult.  It is also always the most rewarding, the many pitfalls and deep costs notwithstanding.

Once again, I thank you for keeping such good company with me.  

Please accept my best wishes in return.

Secfree: A Biggest Lie

I have found it most curious to observe the nearly universal acceptance of one of the most poisonous of the tacit assumptions upon which humans operate.  It is that of the false dichotomy of security and freedom.  I will henceforth refer to this as the "Secfree" fallacy, an ultimate lie that says one must choose between freedom and security.  Secfree has enabled tyrants of every stripe to cow vast populations into accepting their caprice.  Continuing as standard practice even today, few if any of the other tools in the tyrant's bag of tricks can boast of what appears to be a nearly perfect record of success, playing on the mid-brain fear of the individual that if they do not waive just a "smidge" of their freedoms, the boogieman is going to get them and do terrible, unspeakable things.

Secfree may in fact be the ultimate zero-sum belief.

However, as with so many other fallacies and outright lies, once exposed to the withering light of anything better than the most carelessly casual examination, the true nature of Secfree comes into sharp focus.

One of the bases upon which Secfree's success is founded is the deeply tacit assumption that there exists such a thing as a guaranty of security.  As with so many other things in life, security is a purely statistical creature, which is to say that it is a game of numbers; of probabilities; likelihoods that some event will happen, or not.  Anyone coming to another with smiles, offered handshakes, and promises of safety is either dangerously ignorant of the fundamental nature of life, psychotic as a pineapple, or is selling a bill of goods.  Most often, my vote is for the latter.

Because of this nature, security can only be offered as a probability measure.  A great and all-powerful "state" can do nothing to protect you when a twenty-mile long asteroid is bearing down upon one's head at ten miles per second.  In such a circumstance, you and likely everyone you know is doomed.  The same is true of far more mundane threats such as the sick and desperate junkie who is going to have your wallet, no matter what.  Hellbent and deciding he will brook no resistance, such a man poses a threat against which no "state" or agent thereof may offer guaranty.

The old saw that says "feces happens" is perennially true.  Nobody is able to guarantee anyone security, and yet there are those who are always willing to make the promise in any case.  It should be borne in mind that regardless of the conscious reasons for making such promises, fair or foul, at the unconscious level there is always to be found the nut for he who does the promising: power over his fellows, willingly given.

Once the trick that is the exchange of freedom for a vaporous lie is discovered, recognized, accepted as real, and its nature understood, it quickly becomes clear that the one thing all Secfree peddlers seek, whether they are aware or will otherwise admit,  is the power that the exchange brings to their pockets.  It is human relations played as a strict zero-sum where "heads I win; tails you lose."

The other end of the exchange is easily understood for what it is: people want what they want, and are most often willing to sell their souls in order to have it no matter how absurd, self-defeating, and destructive the choice to procure may prove, even prima facie, often raining those results down upon those around them as well.  The average man, what we may call the "Meaner", is sufficiently corrupted with fear and avarice that he will readily find a way to rationalize the destruction of his fellows for the sake of getting what he wants, in this case his hallowed security.  The list of excuses people offer themselves to justify and excuse the ghastly things they allow to be done in their names is depressingly long, shameful, and utterly devoid of validity.   The Meaner will often go so far as to decide that those who suffered for his choices probably deserved it anyway.  Some humans.

Secfree results in the willful handing over of one's sacred birthright in exchange for the privilege of being able to lie to oneself that they are now safe.  It is perhaps the most hideous absurdity of them all, no different in effect to taking one's life-savings in cash and setting to it gasoline and a lit match.

The deep irony there is this: freedom is the condition of human existence that offers the best numbers in the game of chance that we call "security".  It may seem counter intuitive to a great many people, but once again the most meager effort to honestly dope out the logic chain demonstrates how it is true.  A single, simple example, should provide most with enough on which to go such that they are able to continue asking the right questions.

For the sake of "security", the Secfree peddlers constantly spew the bait that we must eliminate guns because no civil society needs or wants them, and that if you give up your firearms, you will become safe.  This, of course, is a bald-faced lie of pure brass.  History has proven without any wiggle room for argument that no matter how strictly anything may be prohibited, no matter how draconian the punishments for non-compliance, there will always be those who can and will violate the prohibition, sometimes with nefarious intent.  Subscribers to Secfree most often come to the defense of gun prohibition with the absurdly false argument that we don't need guns because police will see to our defense.  In ever increasing measure, it is police who pose the greatest and most ubiquitous threats to our safety.  Such irony.

Imagine the mugger, knife in hand, threatens your life if you do not give him the wallet.  Sure, you could hand it over and count on his promise that he won't kill the only witness to his high crime, but do you really want to place the trust of your life, your First Property, into the hands of one willing to rob you in this manner?  Will covertly dialing the police via E911 result in your deliverance from danger and back into the bosom of your beloved safety?  As an old saying goes, "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away."  On average, the best guarantor of one's safety is himself because third party defenders rarely appear out of thin-air and, when push comes to shove, may decide not to fight on your behalf because they, too, want to go home to their families at night.

Now consider the free society where men are at their leisure to arm themselves in anticipation of the unanticipated.  When the mugger announces himself, you are free to hand it over if that is what you wish, perhaps even trusting your assailant will leave you in peace in your belief that a wallet and its contents are not worth killing someone.  Or you may produce your weapon, leaving you the options of holding the criminal at bay either until police arrive, or you can affect your escape.  Finally, in the case where Mr. Mugger decides to go for broke, you have at least the outside chance of shooting him down pursuant to the preservation of the life to which you hold just and valid title.  It is clear that your menu of choice is far and away better when you are free, versus being subjugated under the rubric of Secfree.

Freedom provides a far greater options to everyone, with the recognition that in life nothing is guaranteed, most especially safety from harm.  But reasonable assurances can be validly made in that respect, once again with freedom providing the greatest allowances for choice such that each individual may provide for himself as his abilities and valid means may enable him, and his predilections enjoin.  One man chooses the gun, while another may decide upon a bodyguard, while others are free to remain content to ignore such issues altogether, confident that no evil shall ever befall them.

Freedom is not the mutually exclusive antagonist of security: it is security's greatest hope for realization.

It is my hope that people will consider what I have written here with an open mind, suspending both disbelief and hard feelings, as well as any apprehensions they may experience at the thought of being responsible for their own safety and security in what I believe we can all agree is a world where "authorities" are powerless to render aid to those in need.  Do yourselves a great favor and take the plunge in a place of comfort such that you feel able to venture beyond your deeply held assumptions about such matters, and take a walk on the wild side.

My promise to you is that you can only benefit from this, regardless of outcome.  And if perchance you feel the uncomfortable tingling that new truths often bring to the fringes of one's awareness, be brave and press onward, and deeply into it.  Explore it as fully as you are able, no matter how scary or otherwise objectionable you may find it because I further promise that if you do this, you may come to a life altering moment because the more deeply and stridently one feels that objection, the more likely it becomes that the truth engendered there is important, the change to which most often results in healthy transformation.  Always consider the possibility that in the end you may become a better and greater human being for it.  At worst, you have confirmed your presently held beliefs and may at least then speak on such matters with better authority.

As always, please accept my best wishes.