Free Culture Is Warrior Culture

Thomas Jefferson once quipped:

"When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil" 

For better than thirty years I have been telling this to people, at times with nodding heads in response, at others with glazed stares.  On far more occasions than I care to recall, people of a certain bent would launch into a diatribe at me about how violence is never the solution, even though I never mention the dreaded "v-word".  That's not to say I feel that violence is a universal evil as some do, because I don't.  As with all things, violence has its place.  However, it must also be noted that as with hatred, a little goes a very long way, but let me not digress so early on.

The American republic has problems.  Some will say our troubles root in the faults of our architecture.  This is certainly a valid point, for our Constitution carries with it the DNA for the death of the republic for which it stands as blueprint.  The power to tax is perhaps the greatest of these faults of design, but such flaws cannot bear the full measure of blame for the ways in which we have devolved as a people over the past two hundred years both morally, philosophically, and attitudinally.  By far the great proportion of culpability lies with we, the glorious "People".

I have given endless consideration and deep thought regarding the path that America has trod for at least forty five years since I became a young adult.  Long ago I could see that things were not progressing in a direction in which I could place my confidence and esteem.  Quite the contrary, we have descended the path leading into a hole from which a sulfuric stench issues and the horizons of which lie dark and menacing.

For a while I wondered whether I was just being some sort of genetic pessimist in my perceptions, but as the "dotcom" era began blossoming, an endeavor in which I found myself up to my eyeballs as an R&D computer scientist, I began realizing that my sixth-sense notions regarding humanity's general direction were not mistaken.  Indeed, by whatever grace or freak of chance, those recognitions were on the money.  The odd thing about it, at least for me, was that no matter how deeply into the grim went my prognostications, the realities that followed have always been equal to, or worse than what I'd dare declare as probable.  Some of it was pretty far over the common "line", too.

Back in 1992 when USENET was the "social media" of the day, I once made the prediction that one day the pedophiles would come out of their closets and demand the right to rape children.  In recent years NAMBLA† has come forward, effectively demanding their right to rape little boys with their declaration that being adults sexually attracted to small boys was nothing other than a "lifestyle choice."  In 1992 my suggestion was considered utterly outrageous, even by myself, and yet my inner voice said "sit back and wait.  Time will tell."  Thirty two years later...

How is is possible for a once sound people to have degenerated to such a degree?  The answer is simple: the absence of a warrior culture.  It is no more complicated than that.  America was wrong from Day One in this respect. Although much closer to the ideal in 1776, Americans were even then cut of a cloth that was not quite up to snuff for the liberties that the brave and gallant men of the Great Revolt, as I like to call it (the American Revolution, "revolution" being a term I dislike for the vast baggage it carries), had gifted them.  The truth of this becomes apparent when one considers the response far too many Americans gave when the first Congress passed the so-called "whiskey tax", which was signed into effect by George Washington.  The Whisky Rebellion lasted four years, between 1791 and 1794, and in my opinion was a mishmash of poor decisions on both sides of the disagreement, the greatest error being the enactment of the vile tax statute in the first place.

This brings us right back to the notion of "warrior culture".  But what exactly defines such a culture?  The concise answer is this: warrior culture is one where intelligent, well-educated, and morally sound people who understand the ins and outs of proper human freedom and relations, hold closely and with stern grip an attitude of utter and unremitting intolerance of the intolerable.  This definition, of course, begs the questions of what constitutes "proper human freedom" and that what is to be taken as "intolerable".  Those may be discussions for another day, though I have essentially covered all this in previous writings.

As Jefferson wrote in a letter to Charles Yancey on 6 January, 1816:

 "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."  

Free people living under the circumstances of civilization, which is now nearly universal on planet earth, cannot remain at liberty for long if they allow succeeding generations to slip into ignorance.  We in America, over the past 100 or so years, have borne witness to the searing and unequivocal truth of Jefferson's words.  Our general descent into the maelstrom of ignorance has accelerated at an alarming rate over the past twenty years, and even more so in the last decade.

Humans by their nature are predatory beings.  In states of civilization, their natural hunting proclivities are given little to no avenue for expression.  Our ideals of peaceable coexistence chafe against our hard-wired drive to go out and kill stuff.  Part of humanity's remedy for this clear problem has been the institution of artificial competitions of all sorts.  Football, basketball, soccer, baseball, boxing, and the rest of the manifold means of sublimating the human hunter-killer instinct, allowing it to be vented in a more or less safe manner, have proven not quite sufficient to the task.  Not all people are content to live vicariously through the experiences of 300-pound fullbacks slamming into each other at full-throttle.  There are those for whom the first-hand experience of prevailing over their fellow men is absolutely essential.  Most eschew serial murder, partly because it is frowned upon most grimly by the Law, and perhaps also because it is a step too far for those who fancy themselves apex predators, yet for whom actual apex predation proves too scary for the risks and consequences it carries.  In other words, they are big-yakking blowhards who want the thrill without the downside of raw chance whereby they might meet a sticky end.

And so they often find themselves in the political arena, busying themselves with new and creative ways of trespassing upon the sovereign rights of their fellow human beings in the effort to make themselves feel important and powerful, as if they were the true dwellers of the social apex, which they can never really be for the aforementioned lack of courage.  But making believe, at the grave and very real expense of those around them, is just the sweet spot in which they find their greatest comfort and cheap thrills while others suffer outrage upon insult.  They are the ultimate wannabes.  They are the ultimate cowards.  They are the ultimate felons.  They hide like frightened children behind the skirts of little girls, protected by men with guns who keep them safe from the right and natural consequences of their crimes against fellow human beings who are, in fact, most often their betters.

This saddest of all qualities in some humans is precisely that which has reduced all humanity to the dregs to which we now find ourselves relegated in terms of real status.  But equally pathetic and far more dangerous are those who tolerate these gross and unpardonable intrusions upon the valid prerogatives of Freemen.  This is where we Americans have failed to utterly, shamefully, and embarrassingly.  The reason we have failed so brazenly, is the absence of the warrior mentality which knows right from wrong and is willing and indeed eager to thrash with great violence those who unjustly trample upon their fellows.

Any warrior must know that which may be tolerated and that which may not.  While it is actually quite simple, I am not the first to point out that it often reveals truths that are not easy to accept.  Learning what to bear and what to reject is supremely difficult because it bumps against our innermost desires, whatever those may be.  If I choose to be intolerant of the intolerable in others, I must also reject it for myself, lest I plunge headlong into hypocrisy, a status which leaves me half a notch below that of a child molester.  I say with confidence that there exists no lower creature upon the earth than such a hypocrite.

Free men living in a civilized state must manifest the following qualities:

1. Strong intellect
2. Smarts 
3. Integrity  
4. Honor 
5. Responsibility 
6. Generosity 
7. Courage 
8. Correct Attitude 

Without these qualities in sufficient levels and ubiquity, a putatively free people is doomed to the same results we now enjoy in America.  We have chosen, as matters of will, the unsavory in the false belief that it makes us "different" and therefore "edgy*".  We as a people, and here I speak statistically, have sold our souls for a grand pack of lies which falsely proclaims what it means to be a proper American, the central requirement there being to turn one's back to everything once regarded as right and proper between men, in favor of the wretched, vile, and that which renders a man ineffectual in both the cultural and political arenas.  This is not to say that all things new are bad.  I consider the sexual liberation of humanity to be one of the few bright results that have issued from those whose other offerings have lead men down the garden path.  Sadly though, even that once good direction has been perverted by certain interests, resulting in said liberation being derailed in a way that now turns what is certainly one of the divine elements of human relations into something cheap and soulless.

Enlightened self-interest may be the term that best nutshells the central necessity for all men who love freedom and wish to remain at liberty.

As for the eight qualities, lets give a Cliff Notes gloss.

Strong Intellect

I believe this speaks for itself, prima facie.  Without basic intellectual power, how will people find themselves able to become smart in a broad and effective manner?

Smarts

It is not enough to have a good mind, which is more or less a matter of inborn talent.  Talent without development leads to having no skill worthy of the mention. Smarts is a certain sort of skill, which is the cultivation of one's God-given talents such that he becomes capable.  Capability is an ultimate quality in a free and sovereign human being.  Few things are as pitiful as the sight of a man who has no real capacity to get useful things done, for it means he has no real and meaningful power.  He is as an empty shell and it is a pathetic thing to witness.

Integrity

Trust is perhaps the single most important thing that two human beings can have between each other.  I see no other quality that so much as equals the critical importance of trust.  Without trust, men have no basis for relationships, save that they avoid each other at every possible turn, and when it is not possible, they are reduced to murdering one another, if for no other reason than out of fear run amok.  The momentousness of trust cannot be overstated.

The integrity of a man is central to his trustworthiness.  If you are not seen as so worthy, nobody with a lick of sense will want to have anything to do with you.

Honor

Honor is an element of integrity that narrows the sense of it.  A man may have integrity, yet may not be honorable, depending on that to which his integrity has been committed.  Integrity speaks to a certain, let us say minimal, degree of predictability in a man, which in turn speaks to his trustworthiness; but not all trustworthiness is good.  Scoundrels and felons may be trustworthy in that you know they are going to consistently act against your interests.  This is a good thing, in a backhanded manner, because at least you know that with which you are dealing.

Honor brings a certain quality of desirability to the idea of integrity.  The honorable man is not only one of integrity, but one whose constitution carries qualities that others not only trust, but value in a positive way.  The honorable man may be trusted to watch your children playing outside while they run into the store for tonight's dinner ingredients, with no meaningful fear that any harm shall come.

Responsibility

Responsibility speaks to the ownership of one's words and deeds and relates to both integrity and honor.  Responsibility is one's duty toward certain things, which may include but is not limited to not trespassing upon the equal rights of his fellows, for example.  We carry responsibility for our actions.  If I am shooting a firearm under "normal" conditions such as while deer hunting, I am responsible for the safety of others such that I do not mistakenly or carelessly injure them by my gunshot.  Under exigent circumstances such as in defense of one's life, the specific requirements of responsibility may be relaxed, depending on the particulars of a given case.

Responsibility, along with the other elements of this list, carries the element of enlightened self-interest.  Extending my sense of responsibility beyond my own immediate and obvious self-interest can indeed prove to be conducive and protective of those interests, if often in indirect and seemingly oblique ways.  For instance, my choosing to assume some manner and degree of responsibility for the rights of my fellow men may result in the better guarantees of my own rights.  When I see a woman being assaulted by a brute, I have before me a choice: get involved or walk on by.  Granted, I may not be in full or even sufficient knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the apparent assault, but I am nonetheless faced with the choice of whether to render help.  But if my assumptions of unjust assault, based on appearances, proves correct, then by rendering aid to the apparent victim, I am helping protect her rights.  If enough men so choose to safeguard the rights of their fellows, then the security of all rights is enhanced and better guaranteed.  Enlightened self-interest, indeed.

I will note that vast numbers of people recoil at the notion of being responsible.  That is why proper freedom is so utterly unpopular.

Generosity

When we speak of generosity in this context, we are not referring to the opening of the purse or the giving of material items to those whom we deem as "in need" or "less fortunate".   The relevant sense of "generosity" here is that which says we respect the equal and just rights of our fellows just as we expect them to respect ours.  Once again, a strong aversion to hypocrisy is an absolute requirement for being a free human being.  Hypocrisy is criminal at its core and criminality has no rightful place in a free land.

I give you your life, you give me mine.  It is a simple as that, and yet this has proven monumentally repellant for vast legions of humanity, whether actively so, or passively.  After all, without the (at least) tacit approval, the tolerance of "the people", would the blood soaked tyrannies of the Soviet Union and communist China have been possible?  Would the far softer, yet more insipid tyrannies of America be possible?  Methinks not.

If you want life, give life.  If you want love, give it.  If you want respect, be respectful.  If you want your ways to be tolerated (all else equal), then be tolerant of those of others (again, all else equal).

The Golden Rule is the basis of this sense of generosity.  Without it, we reduce ourselves to carping, grasping, and ultimately warring.

Courage

Free men must be courageous, but what does that mean?  I can paraphrase by stating that courage is the quality of quaking in one's boots with fear, yet pressing on to the object of your terror and reticence in spite of it all.

Without courage, knowing what must be done is likely to leave a man timidly demurring from doing the right things.  When "governments" overstep, one must not just have the knowledge of right and wrong such that they recognize the evil that is being perpetrated, for that is only half of the equation.  The other side of the equal sign is the resolute decision to act with authority to make an end of the wrong, and most often that means taking on the great Goliath we call "government".  If that does not frighten you, then somewhere along the line you have lost your most basic sense of self-preservation.  But if you have retained your healthy fear of that which poses grave danger, and you are willing to face it nonetheless, then you are indeed courageous and worthy of every man's good esteem.

Attitude

All of the above qualities and requirements turn on one's attitude regarding such matters.  All the righteousness in the world on paper is worth nothing in the absence of the attitude of determination to accept and embrace those qualities as the bread and butter of one's daily existence.  Charles R. Swindol once wrote:

"Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it."

This statement speaks directly to the notion of attitude, which is all about individual choice.   Free men hold the power of choice in their hands.  Slaves do not, or they reject it when available but find it unpalatable.  Once lost, the power of choice most often becomes endlessly difficult to reclaim.

For a moment let us park ourselves in Albert Einstein's backyard and engage in a thought experiment of sorts.

Imagine if you will a land where the people are free and there exists a body of hard men who walk the walls for the sake of their fellows' liberties.  These men we may call "warriors".  They brook no defilement of the rights of their fellow men.  They walk the wall in defiance of all comers who might fancy a swag against freedom.  Now imagine that as time passes and the concerns for liberty of the people inside the walls fade as is inevitable with nearly all humans.  In time they forget their basics of what it means to be a free people.  After all, they have the men on the walls who protect them, so why should they busy themselves with such matters?  Those men are even paid, so we're entitled to ignore those things with which the hired help must consume themselves.

Given enough time, this separation becomes so broad and the people so far removed from their own roots, they begin to degenerate into softness and all manner of decadences. As life becomes ever easier for the common man, they tend to get bored, and by that impulse strike out for new amusements.  We in America and the "west" in general have borne first-hand witness to the results of such conditions.  Sexual liberation becomes perversion.  Tolerance becomes tantamount to suicidal apathy, and so on down the dreary list of degenerative symptoms of a people in decline, falling from the status of Freeman to that of willing slave, thinking himself still free just because the Whipmaster has deigned to afford him an expansive and gilt cage, replete with all manner of amusing diversions.

Meanwhile, the men on the wall remain, if luck also remains with the protected.  But the moment those hard men begin falling to the degradations of the broader culture, all stand to face doom before too much longer, for decay is like the most aggressive of malignancies.  Entropy never sleeps.

This dolorous and most pitiable and shameful inevitability can be prevented by only one means: warrior culture which pervades the minds and souls of the average man.  To separate the warriors from the rest, as the sheep are separated from the guard dogs, is to all but guarantee the eventual demise of a people.  Because some human beings show the proclivity to prey upon other human beings, whether literally or in the political sense, the best guarantee for the liberties of all is to ensure that very nearly all be trained up as warriors, intolerant of trespass and ready and eager to bring to wrack, ruin, and obliteration all who fail to live up to the minimal standards of interpersonal comport.  Intolerance of the intolerable is one of the grandest of all human virtues.

Without the mean man's ability and uncompromising will, his attitude, to see to his rights with a vicious and venomous single-mindedness, he dooms not only himself, but his fellows as well to decay into something that is not freedom, but rather pretty slavery at best, and often to things far, far worse.  The question, then, really turns on whether one is an actual and true lover of freedom, willing to become a monster when circumstance demands it.  I have found that most are not; they talk the big talk, but walk but a few steps pursuant, wanting all the benefits of liberty without having to bear the stresses, strains, and other burdens of becoming free, and then perhaps more significantly of holding onto their liberty. There is always another human being ready and eager to take from others that to which he is not entitled.  The human world is rotten with criminals of all stripes, not all of them rapists, robbers, or murderers.  Defend your rights as a warrior, or you have no rights.  A right exists only if it is asserted, and once declared, defended.  Otherwise a right becomes as if it never existed in the first place.  This is part of the reality of being a human being on the earth.  It is part of the cost of being a Freeman.  To reject it is to reject reality and freedom itself in favor of some lie to which "Liberty" has been cheaply stenciled thereupon; so buck up and choose, but do so with great care, because choosing wrong will cost you more than you can afford.

Warrior culture is that of the man who knows who he is, what is right, what is wrong, and tolerates no trespass of his sovereignty by anyone, at any time, for any reason, though he reserves his authority to make such determinations as to exceptions to this general maxim as and when he sees fit, subject to his judgment and his judgment alone.  However, such exceptions are a tricky fish upon which to keep hold.  They should be few and given only in the most wisely chosen cases, lest people then eventually end up giving away the farm that is their liberty to the barbarians who would have your hide drying on the barn door, given half the chance to make it so.

Warrior culture is the only culture suitable to free men.  All others lead to inevitable destruction by cultural suicide, and even that of the warrior can end in the same result when the people relax their vigilance in the absence of clear and apparent threats.  As the old saying goes, easy times make weak men.  Weak men make hard times.  Hard times make strong men.  Strong men make easy times.  Perhaps this cycle cannot be avoided, but does it not behoove us to at least try to our best ability?

It's an all or nothing deal.  In for a penny, in for a pound.  Otherwise, do not even bother starting.

Once again I bid you adieu, and please accept my best wishes.

†North American Man Boy Love Association, advocates of the rape of little boys.

*The notion of "edginess" revolts me to no end.  It is the goal of low-rent wannabes for whom image without substance is the grand virtue of their miserable existences.

^††

More On Ratios (Moron Ratios???)

Today we speak briefly and in broad strokes for the sake of something upon which to cognitively chew.

The quality of out lives is largely about ratios. This is especially so in all things economic, where affordability is a key factor. The ability of someone to purchase a given product or service rests primarily with his ability to afford, all else equal. The ability to afford is primarily a question of the ratio of one's disposable reserves to price.

In recent decades, that ratio has fallen, at times sharply as a consequence of economic "events" of a decidedly non-organic nature, the latest having been the disruption of economic supply chains caused by the nearly universal global responses of "governments" to the so-called "pandemic". By the way, I view such unwavering uniformity with deep suspicion. Few things human take on this character.

As the ratio of reserves to price falls, the ability to afford even basics for daily life becomes ever more deeply strained. Many people do not see this simple relationship, largely due to a dangerous lack of education in basic economics†, and also in part to the vast oceans of noise with which the average man is now bombarded on a minute-by-minute basis. The signal to noise RATIO (<-- there's that word again) is now dangerously low. People on the average are now so beset with problems, most of each of which may be low in intensity, but with numbers of them legion, that they are overwhelmed such that basic living has become an overbearing burden with stresses in every nook and cranny of their daily lives.

And of course, none of this is natural. Nearly every shred of it is artificially imposed upon us by those in power. The currently prevailing conditions of stress serve to keep vast proportions (another reference to ratios) of people off-balance as they struggle to move from one moment to the next in even the simplest of life's endeavors. Keeping people's eyes focused on the ground between their feet keeps those eyes off the so-called "elite" enough to allow the latter to continue their ultimately destructive machinations. To all appearances, these endeavors of power are intended to enrich those in power in one manner or another at the expense of the rest. It is so because political class want it all for themselves, and therefore choose to see the circumstance of humanity on the whole as a zero-sum game. For Themme (those in material power), there is no other way to view things, and the attitude and decision to take the world as a zero-sum affair arises generally not of naive ignorance, but of informed (though perhaps tacit) awareness and the deliberate will to make things so, often under their purposeful subscription to delusional notions of the "greater good" to which they attach themselves, that they may proceed under the psychotic belief that they are doing good for all. It is further instructive to note the damning nature of the fact that such people never include themselves on the list of those to get the short shrift. Somehow, and however tacitly, they always find themselves on the beneficiary side of the dividing line.

This is the greatest evil on planet earth, the next greatest receding to vanishing with respect to it, for a grat majority of the others are driven by this root motive.

If we the so-called "people" don't put an and to this, it will put an end to us, and the window of opportunity appears to be closing with increasing acceleration. That's it for now. Be well and please accept my best wishes.

†I strongly recommend everyone take classes in Austrian economics. You need not get your MBA, though it, too, helps.

The Root Of The Problem

In forums far lung, today someone quipped that America's current state of woe began with Obama, an assertion that carries considerable emotional force and appeal.
As much as I wish to agree from the standpoint of pure emotion, logic tells me otherwise. The Obama phenomenon is but a mere, if vile and disgusting, symptom of a far deeper and older cancer in the American people that took root in our souls almost from the very first day of the Republic. That disorder is one of a moral nature, very often seasoned with liberal sprinklings of ignorance. Rarely is it based in some inherent state of stupidity that cannot be corrected with proper education and a will to learn, making the truth of our political reality all the more horrible and, to my way of seeing it, unforgivable and perhaps even criminal. The rot of the mean American is a long standing condition, I am sad to remind you.

When the First Congress passed the Whiskey tax, Americans having just shed great blood and suffered long miseries and losses to throw off the English tyrant, should have quietly apprehended every member who had voted in favor of that abomination against Free Men, as well as the president who signed it into false law, and hung them all at once for the world to see, the message to be scrawled on the withered and cancerous souls of all would-be tyrants to come being "this awaits all who trespass upon Free Men, now and forever". Some tried to fight it, the effort now known as the "Whiskey Rebellion", but in point of fact most Americans were hopelessly corrupt even then. After all, only 3% fought for the sake of freedom, the rest content to sit with fence pickets in the place God never intended them to go. Perhaps the brave should have sent the other 97% back whence they came and cleansed the land of their accursed and cowardly presences. But what, then, prevents the good from becoming that which it seeks to abolish?

This illustrates one of the great and tragic ironies of humanity: the rotted majority seems always to ride the coattails of that tiny minority of true and gallant men who would have a better world for all. As I age, I better understand the points of view of some of the great tyrants of our history who, rightly despising the dregs of their own kind, endeavor to rid themselves of the burden of parasitic, corrupt humans. Sadly, and as I just mentioned, those correct intentions resulted in the good becoming the evil it sought to eliminate.

What decent man supports the rape of children; their physical mutilation through chemical and surgical means? Which one supports the self destructive behaviors of addicts, the abuse of the innocent, and the destruction of beauty? By definition, not a one. And yet, here we are, a people so abominably and utterly rotted with corruption, we tolerate nearly every outrage against human rights and dignity, the trend racing toward a no-holds-barred world of depthless filth and felonious violation that reeks of the stench of nothing better than the random and capricious rule of the strong over the weak, the chaos of self-imposed entropy over order such that nobody is safe or free, not even the tyrants, most ironically of all. Chaos is a prison nobody escapes, yet the so-called "elite" seem to believe otherwise, that they stand outside of it all as the rest of us marinate in the horrors of servitude and moral degradation. But in truth, the walls of this world built at Theire command encompass them as well.

The true bottom line here is precisely what some of the Founders stated most explicitly: freedom is in no way and to no degree compatible with ignorant or morally decayed people. They cannot occupy the same spaces just as two atoms cannot occupy the space for only one.

Free men must be intelligent, smart in the right ways, and morally intact to those ways. Far too many Americans, a vast majority I would speculate, are too rotted with the manifold cancers that leave them as Weakmen who possess neither the correct understanding of liberty, nor the desire - much less the will - to be free. Instead, they prefer the lie that is pretty slavery, which tells them they can have all the benefits of liberty without having to bear so much as the least of the burdens of becoming and remaining so. The apparent paradox here is that only by virtue of certain restrictions can men be truly free. A circumstance of absolute anything-goes is not freedom, but rather the most repressive slavery imaginable.

In other words, we are screwed to the barn door by our own hands and show no inclination to unscrew ourselves from it.

A greater human tragedy I cannot begin to imagine. When America ends, and we now stand at the precipice of a great and black abyss, all value and hope for humanity shall be turned away from the earth, possibly for all time to come.
At this pass, I know not what to tell anyone in terms of practical measures for returning men to a state of mind more in keeping with the state of the Free Man.  While things seem nearly hopeless, I stubbornly refuse to give up hope that we may one day choose better for ourselves.  How terrible is it that we have foisted this dolorous condition upon ourselves.

Be well, keep the faith no matter what, and please accept my best wishes.

Make Mine the Ninth, Thankyouverymuch.

I prefer the Ninth Amendment to the Tenth, generally, the latter containing an element that leaves doors open for mischief.

The 9A states:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

 

The Amendment states in clear language that the rights of free men exist well beyond the metes and specifications of the Constitution and that those rights may not be in any way validly disparaged.  The Framers should have stopped there, but sadly failed to.  Perhaps they wanted a nice round number and could think of nothing better than the following:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

 

The bolded text is the problem. For one thing, it logically separates "states" from "people. Here's a newsflash: the people ARE the "states". Were you and I to climb to yon dizzying height upon the mountaintop and wave the magic wand to cause every human being on the planet to disappear, save you and myself, I would then ask "where is the 'state'? Show it to me!" You would be hard pressed to demonstrate its existence. Without people - ALL the people - there is no "state", and even then reference to the "state" is naught other than a linguistic convention of practical convenience. It never refers to anything real, except perhaps the set of a given human population, such as those of Texas, for example.

In addition, the use of "or" leaves a logically valid pretext for excluding "the people" from the powers in question. From the standpoint of propositional logic (zeroth-order logic), there is an OR-relationship between the "state" and people. This relationship is used daily to deny the rights of free Americans. The National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA34) is a prime example. NFA34 formally and systematically denies or infringes upon the right of most people to keep and bear certain types of arms, which are reserved only for the "state", which of course is just another set of people, fundamentally no different from the rest, save by the false claims made by themselves against all the others. Nuclear materials are similarly restricted in equal violation. The list of such violations is drearily long. From the standpoint of logic, the semantics of the Tenth tell us that so long as at least one of the two entities ("state" or people) reserve a particular power, all is well with the world. This, of course, is nonsense, and yet here we are. The Framers, knowingly or not, foisted a tiny but vicious disaster upon the people they claimed to have been best guaranteeing freedom.

The semantic bottom-line of "the states, or the people" reduces to "the people, or the people". From the standpoint of set logic, we can say that the expression would be "one set of people" or "the other set of people". The only way to render this valid in terms of its truth value would be to demonstrate a fundamental (radical) difference between the members of the two sets. This cannot be done, and so there is no valid basis in logic or in truth for setting one set above the other in terms of its authority to reserve for itself and wield the powers in question. It is redundant and in that redundancy resides no practically valid meaning. In other words, that particular portion of the Amendment is pure nonsensical gibberish, devoid of meaning the moment you reject the notion of "state" as an extant, objectively real entity separate and distinct from "the people". "The people" are the only reality that "state" can ever claim as its own. As you can see, we are awash in bullshit; very dangerous bullshit, I may add, for it has been the root of endless evils.

HOWEVER, there is a tiny jewel in the 10A: "nor prohibited by [the Constitution] to the states". It is the clear and explicit indicator that the states MUST abide by the restrictions placed upon them by the Constitution just as must the fedgov comply. These tight limitations upon "state" governing powers and actions are the conditions a territory's people must accept as a requirement for being accepted as a member of the American union. It by all means sets to rest some of the foolish debate as to whether the states are so bound by the so-called "equal protection" clause of the 14A. They are indeed so bound insofar as the Constitution limits the reach of "government" power.

The Constitution is the contract by which signatories thereto are to be held in compliance. This does not lend any super power of the fedgov to enforce upon states their usually idiotic and felonious requirements they have so often foisted upon the people of the so-called "states". It only means that those operating as agents of "state governments" are hamstrung in the same ways are is the fedgov with respect to the rights of the people whom they are sworn to serve in good faith and competence. If the 14A applied only to the fedgov as some have posited, then the circumscriptions of the Constitution upon that body would have little to no practical meaning because the member states would remain free to disparage and deny rights as they saw fit. This is idiocy of the first order.
A proper, if nonetheless still redundant wording of the 10A would go something like this:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it, are reserved to the People."

 

There are no "states".  "State", as commonly used today, is perhaps the grandest of all lies.  It is a gigantic nothing to which all manner of false properties, powers, rights, and interests have been attributed by those who are either unforgivably ignorant of the relevancies, or who are peddling things that no sane, intelligent,  and decent man would ever buy from another human being, yet who will obediently open his wallet upon command of the almighty "state".  This is a cancer of mind and morals.  Obedience to the "state" represents the renunciation of all individual responsibility for one's own life, choices, and actions.  It is the Freeman become the Weakman by will for the sake of mere convenience; of accepting lies that absolve one of the responsibility to act in countervail of evil.  It is the reduction of the free human being to a sniveling coward, at best, and to an avaricious beast in the worse case, content to see men with guns do his bidding, no matter who gets hurt.

We are currently lost as a people. Freemen must perforce be moral men, for the one cannot exist without the other. The good news, however, is we are not yet so far gone that we cannot recover ourselves from the clutches of the devils who now so blatantly, casually, and with such sardonic contempt and dismissal run roughshod ever more deeply upon the territory of our sovereign rights as free human beings. But time is not on our side, it would seem to me. With each passing day the tyrant worms his way ever more deeply into his quest to cultivate his power to the point that dislodging him becomes ever more unlikely. We should have been hanging the scoundrels from lamp posts and tree branches since at least 200 years ago, but we failed. It is not too late, though, but we cannot prevail if we do not act, and we cannot act if we do not get our heads straight on the matters that count. Defy Themme at every turn. Refuse to comply. Exercise your rights, even if seemingly gratuitously, for failure to do so gives Themme every phony baloney pretext for eventual denial. Be courageous and make Themme sweat and toil and curse and spit for every crumb they take from you. Give up nothing without a fight and leave Themme doubting themselves, yet doubting not your resolve as a Freeman. Be well, God bless you all, and until next time, please accept my best wishes.

The Human Prospect

We live in a very angry world.  

Stress levels are very high, thanks in great part to media doing what they do best.

Several weeks ago an organization calling itself "Hamas" mounted an attack on Israeli civilians, murdering well over a thousand men, women, and children.  Since being founded, Israel has coexisted with the so-called "Palestinians" on tenuous terms, at best.  The Israelis see the Palestinians as the bad guys in the strained affairs between them.  The Palestinians see the Israelis as the bad guys.  Each has their point of view on the matters at hand.

I, for one, see this from all sides.  There is culpability aplenty for all.  The ones I pity most are the children.  They get no chance; no say.  They are nursed on the corruptions of the adults around them.  Those corruptions are not always what one might think, and they cover a very broad spectrum of characteristics.  It is not the Israeli/Palestinian strife of which I wish to speak now, for that is but one mere example of a world choking on such strife and the chaos and bloodshed it so often drags along with it.  It is the propagation of human rot and filth and the inevitable doom it is likely to bring to bear upon us all that I shall address.

The human race is hopeless as a matter of its proclivity to perpetuate the evils and errors of the past, and to spawn and propagate new ones, generation over generation.  The fact that we do this with such steadfast reliability is the very guarantee that the day is likely to come where we will seal our destruction as a species such that regardless of whether so much as even a handful of us survive, we will nonetheless have been destroyed in toto, for there are fates out there which are worse than death.  

The entropy of thought, of perception, of the interpretation of perception, can only grow in the superorganism of a culture, which seems to take on a life of its own at some point.  The hatreds and other corruptions held and made manifest by individuals remain safe in the bowels of the collective id of their underlying culture.  It is through that channel that those errors pass on from one generation to the next.  And as humanity's technological levers grow in length, those who wield them do so with with ever greater latitude to act with ever more vast and inescapable effect. When such individuals hold such power, harboring all the bitter and hate-fired emotions to which their inherited corruptions invariably give rise, the ultimate outcomes of such combinations can run but one way: to chaos, disaster, and raw tragedy.  

Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; surveillance hardware, and the now emerging machine intelligence in the hands of men running wildly mad in their perceptions and the opinions which arise therefrom shall be the basis of our ruin; it already is. Worst of all, the midbrains of men running off the rails with a fervor that is bio-functionally indistinguishable from that of the religion they deny, and the God they hate so deeply and disdainfully, will drive every choice they make.   They shall be thinking of naught but to satisfy the lust for what they believe, however conveniently, is "right". it is by this route that they shall render themselves in no radical way different from those upon whom they vent the rage-hatred that lives within them like a metastatic cancer.  We are doomed because there will be no stopping what is coming; there is no stopping it because we refuse to so much as see it, much less to act in the defense of what is good between human beings; things worth defending.

Men such as Schwab and Gates have crossed a threshold and have doubtlessly carried minions on their coat tails.  The day will come when those men will act with neither equivocation nor compunction, and humanity will become a settled issue in large part, if not in toto.  And if some survive, which is likely, those people will believe themselves as having escaped fate, or perhaps as being immune to what had been brewing for thousands of years in the breast of humanity.  One again shall men delude themselves for the sake of their immediate comfort.  

Much like the Krell, they will never be able to escape what they are, and shutting their minds to the truth of it, they will doom themselves to ultimate extinguishment in ignominy equal to that of those they so self-righteously murdered in the false belief that they were cutting some cord with the past, only to be carrying its seed within themselves, denying its existence any further, and thereby ensuring with absolute guaranty that the beast will arise once again as the cycle begins afresh.

We, the sufficient mass of humanity and the ones most in need of maintaining our thoughts and reveries upon the Sacred, have turned our backs to it.  Is it any wonder that we have ended up where we are, and that we got here by so tortured a path?  We who ventured from the old world that stood stably for millennia, to build the new, the  men of European descent whose embrace of "science" which lead to our stepping from the traditional confines that bound us within a circle, needed the Sacred more than any other people on the planet as we ventured beyond those ancient lines.  Yet enough of us turned our backs to it, and now we stare into an abyss of our own contriving.  

Our venturing and the achievements that resulted therefrom, however, were the precise reasons for closing our eyes to God.  Who, having accomplished such things, wishes to share credit?  Few, I suspect.  And so we march headlong into something of which I have no interest in being a part.

The more powerful a man becomes, the more does he need a sense of the Sacred as a guide for his choices.  This is precisely what the men currently wielding true material power in the human world lack.  The combination of great material power and an absence of that which the Divine lends in the relevant terms can lead nowhere good in a way similar to locking a curious toddler in a room with a nuclear warhead and a button that, if pressed, will result in detonation.

Worse yet is the man who is convinced that his sense of duty, which drives his decision making, springs from correct roots.  He is the most dangerous of all because he stands so utterly convinced that his views are not only correct, but are uniquely so.  Verily is he the perfect mirror-image of the man of religion whom he hates with such depthless and bitter rage.

Humanity stands deep in the kimchee, self-extrication appearing ever less likely with each passing minute.  Until we choose to limit our prerogatives along lines of choice that coincide with something even vaguely resembling basic sanity, we shall continue the march toward the maw of the beast that consumes everything in its path.  Understanding that which is Sacred is key, and no such understanding can come if men are unwilling to stop themselves for a moment to consider the question.

I cannot say what will happen along this path on which we find ourselves, but I can speak to the probabilities, none of which look particularly good at this time.

As always, give these thoughts some jiggle in your brain, and please accept my best wishes.

Hamas' Half-baked Attack On Israel Reveals Its Truer Face

https://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com/2023/10/hamas-half-baked-attack-on-israel.html



Hamas has conducted what was very clearly a carefully planned assault on the people of Israel, murdering well over 1000 presumably innocent men, women, and children. There is no question that the attack took considerable time, money, and care in its design and the preparations for bringing it to fruition. Given the long history of strife in the area by the usual cast of characters, it is also clear that Hamas had to have been keenly aware of the response they could expect in return for their treachery.

In the wake of the attack, the Israeli hornets' nest was stirred aplenty, and for the past seven days their armed forces have been busily pounding Gaza, resulting in thousands of casualties. In addition, Israel has cut off all electrical power to Gaza, as well as network connectivity, food deliveries, water, and so forth, all these measures being predictable in the extreme. There is no doubt that Hamas knew all this would happen.

How is it then that Hamas, which presumes to speak for the Palestinian people, and whose rhetoric gushes with intmations of their devotion to same, failed to make provisions in anticipation of the Israeli response that was so readily predictable? Why did Hamas fail to ensure there would be plentiful food hoards? Medicine? Water? Electrical power equipment?

If Hamas' cause is so just, so noble, and if "God" supports them, then why do they hide themselves amid the innocent like cowards, virtually guaranteeing widespread injury to the people in whose name they claim to act? Why, if their cause be just, do they make every effort to escape into neighboring nations after having done the deeds they claim as having been righteously taken against the people of Israel?

What Hamas has done and continues to do seems not unlike someone who eagerly engages in sexual activities, yet when there is a child to raise, is nowhere to be found.

Furthermore, to label the Palestinians as in any way being mere and innocent civilians (small children excepted) carries an equally foul stench. In order to be genuinely innocent, they would have to stand in sincere and open disapproval of Hamas' existence. Tolerance of an official policy that says "death to Israel" cannot be reasonably taken as innocent, even in the face of threats to anyone daring to speak out. If a Palestinian disapproves of Hamas, then he should take whatever action he is able to thwart and erode the designs of Hamas. Granted, it may not be possible to do much that is immediately and directly effective, given that we are speaking of a terrorist organization which has shown its eager will to spill blood pursuant to their goals and objectives. But there are things that could be done, nonetheless, such as moving away from the area. How about sharing with Israeli authorities information that might help them take effective action against specific individuals who strive to precipitate blood-soaked mayhem?

Never once have I heard, seen, or read any reference to brave Palestinians risking their skin to help the Israelis defend against the various islamist kooks who incessantly plot against their most hated foes. The silence of so-called "Palestinians" with respect to organizations such as Hamas strongly suggests tolerance at the very least. I will go so far as to say that the likelihood stands that a large number of Palestinians actively support Hamas, even if only morally, though I am confident of the probability that many do more than that. That speaks not a word to innocence.

So if Palestinians are not working against Hamas, knowing what that organization is and what they do, then it becomes quite the stretch to assess them as innocent civilians who are unjustly made to suffer at the hands of the evil Israelis. Nobody wants to be murdered.

No matter how you slice this pie, at best Hamas comes out smelling very badly and looking abominably stupid. Taken more realistically, they are cowards and liars of the lowest order who claim to be fighting a war, because soldiers don't take hostages. These are not soldiers at all, but only craven milksop poltroons hiding behind the skirts of little girls for fear of reaping harsh consequences for their harsh acts. They want a free pass to kill and maim those whom they choose to hate. They want the proverbial free lunch.

I will go out on a short limb and assert that Hamas was not only aware of what would happen in the aftermath of their blood-bath, but that those consequences were in fact the point of the exercise. Mount a bloody assault on innocent people, knowing full well that a certain population was guaranteed to take heavy damage in the wake, while making absolutely no preparations whatsoever to deal with those horrific outcomes such that the worst possible horrors would be realized with thousands of dead and viciously maimed, so that you could then parade the mangled humanity upon the world stage and play the victim. This is precisely the brand of cynicism-soaked rot at which Hamas and other islamist interests are playing, all for the sake of seeing Israel destroyed.

Unless there was indeed some deeply concealed Israeli conspiracy to precipitate this attack in the spirit of a false-flag, only better, then it is abundantly clear that Hamas and the people of Gaza are the single and singular bad actors in this instance. As yet, there has been no evidence presented indicating that Israel committed any act that would justify such an attack, reducing Hamas to the standing of rank murderers and leaving the character and quality of the Palestinians in great question at the very least.

For the record, I write these observations as an indifferent third party who has no pony in this race. My broadest assessment of the players unequivocally indicates that there is plenty of blame to go around, Israel included. I would also note that never once in my entire lifetime have I encountered so much as the most oblique hint from either side that they might actually share in even the least measure of culpability for any act that they had ever committed, strongly suggesting that the problem in question is intractable and that things will not end well for anyone there.

I find the whole situation horrifying and repellent, pitying and despising all at once those who have chosen to embroil themselves in a destructive tantrum that shows no end in sight and whose practical sense leaves everything to be desired. To find this rivalry profitable, as doubtlessly some on both sides do, is distasteful in the extreme, and is worthy of nothing better than our deepest disdain.

Finally, I further note that the Palestinians are religiously bemoaning an absence of help from outside. My view on that, assuming the fact, is that it would seem a very unambiguous message that nobody likes them, perhaps because their problems are mostly all self-inflicted. Some of the Muslim entities are paying lip service to the Palestinian plight, yet none of them to my knowledge have opened their borders to welcome refugees, or their wallets to provide the basics of life for the displaced and injured. Where is the material support from a Muslim world that seems quite fond of boasting the virtues of Islamic generosity and charity? Thus far, I see none in evidence, but let us hope it shall be forthcoming, and forthwith.

What I see from the Palestinians is a load of cry-babying as they peddle arguments that do not stand up even to comparatively casual scrutiny. They tacitly support a raft of murderous lunatics, and then cry and moan when those whom they have brought to harm understandably retaliate, all the while expecting the world to fall at their feet, kowtowing. This is not likely to serve them well.

As the world descends ever further into madness, I can but bid you all well and offer my prayers for your wellbeing in these times where the lunatics are running the asylum. While I recognize the futility in doing so, I also hope the people of Israel and Palestine meet with success in finding mutually beneficial solutions that do not involve genocide.


Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Why The "Left" Will Never Be Happy

Over the years it has become painfully apparent that those who identify as "left" or "progressive" have never once in my experience showed so much as the least sign of satisfaction in... well, anything, save perhaps the misery of others.  No matter the nature of their goals and objectives, even when they "win", they remain of a bitter, anger-logged demeanor for whom their deep-seated resentments come forth in ever growing transparency, made outwardly manifest in torrents of bile and ever expanding circles of wild rage.  No matter how much they may gather unto themselves, whether by hook or by crook, more is apparently never enough for them. 

The left will NEVER be happy with what they have because they cannot be satisfied as matters of the very fabric of their most basic thoughts, which they have willfully chosen for themselves as the result of the fundamental assumptions they similarly chose to accept as real and reasonable, virtually all of which are fatally toxic to the truths that reality has set before all men as a lavish banquet for our good health and benefit. Those assumptions invariably lead to psychotic formations, which lead those who so subscribe to act atrociously, feloniously, and all too often murderously. The grim histories of the Soviet Union, Communist China, NAZI Germany, the manifold blood-soaked tyrannies of Africa, as well as those of the extremist Islamists; the petty Southeast Asian tyrannies as exemplified by the Khmer Rouge's killing fields; the almost comedic but similarly bloody tyrannies of meso- and South American "revolutions", and now the soft, but ever hardening tyrannies of modern day Europe, Canada, Australia, and the United States of America, stand in bald-faced testament to the universally destructive nature of all that labels itself as "left" or, ever so ironically, "progressive".

As to how they operate, let us assume for argument's sake the lefties were to get everything they want. That would mean over half of the American population murdered. Fine - now that all the vermin are eradicated, they could then set themselves to the task of building America (or even the world with at least four billion murdered, preferably seven) in the image of their ideals. Ignoring the vagaries of those visions, and even if we assume sharply focused and perfectly defined images in a fit of unjustifiable generosity, those ideals will not be realized because it is not possible to do so.

Why? Glad you asked.

The ideals of the left spring from a deeply ignorant perception of, and assumption about human nature. It persists regardless of reality's lessons to the contrary, due to a stubborn refusal to acknowledge characteristics and qualities of the human animal that rub in a most unwanted manner against that which they demand: a perfect world where everyone is blandly and boringly equal, nobody's feelings are ever hurt, everything is "free", and where truth is a purely subjective notion. In other words, a world of endless wet-dreams and unicorn poo at every meal, as much as you can stuff into your gob.

Indeed, when the overtly fundamental character of humanity is pointed out to a lefty in violent contradiction of their unrealistic views, the predictable response is to retreat into shrieking, howling, and carrying on like ill-bred toddlers as they pitch tantrums worthy of the books. Because of this most unfortunate characteristic of the so-called "progressives", they are emotionally self-wired to concoct political ideas and the attendant requirements of implementation that are blatantly impossible to realize, not to mention patently absurd, prima facie, to anyone in possession of an IQ. Assessing their ideas as rank idiocies lends to them far greater credit than they merit, and hides the greater and most venomous bulk of the ferocious dangers they carry, from immediate scrutiny.

Being intransigently wed to their grotesquely malformed archetypes, they will double-down every time their attempts at bringing their clumsy ideas to fruition fail with perfect and universal predictability. Being utterly convinced of the flawless nature of their lunacies, they are compelled to explain away the endless strings of failures, which invariably requires the identification of a class of scapegoats who in their minds obviously had to have acted in "counter revolutionary" measure to thwart the infallible will of the "state", the "people", "satan", or whatever other nonsensical iconography they will have concocted as the presumed basis of just and absolute authority underpinning their felonious nonsense. The Soviet Union and Communist China are perhaps the premier examples of the typical, ham-fisted, and almost comedic manner in which the dullard-chiefs and other agents of those iconic institutions of the worst that humanity has to offer itself have gone about their business. Comedic, that is, were it not for the hundreds of millions of innocents they murdered in the name of their collectively psychotic visions of how life as a human being should be. Worse in a way yet were the NAZIs, whose authoritarian collectivist tyranny carried a sophisticated architecture that can at least be credited with having provided clear and unarguable benefits to its people, or rather, some of them. They were worse in that their tyranny was far more well thought out and carried forth. The enemies of decency and what for them was defined as proper civil life were all the undesirable people - Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and so forth. Even this might have had merit, had the NAZIs not made the fatal error of over-generalizing, which invariably leads to innocents being caught up in the nets that have been set out ostensibly for real and actual criminals.
There is no dearth of examples of the universal failures of the nonsense we commonly know today as "leftism" or "progressivism".  Failure is woven into the DNA of the world view in question, and there is no surgery possible that can correct this most horrific deformity of thought.  But the truth of this is no impediment to the people who choose to join themselves at their hips to this virulent mind-cancer that destroys all it infects.  And so we move on to the cycle that even the sanitized histories cannot hide.

The infallible architecture having failed so faithfully, and those in power being immutably committed to it, the hunt must commence for the human culprits who in the minds of the overlords must exist because the plan and vision cannot possibly be to blame. That subpopulation will be ferreted out by any means necessary, every resource being devoted to their exposure so that the bosses may then have the criminals righteously eliminated with great fanfare, the hatred-fueled rage of the people backing every move. With the evil having been excised, initiation of the next cycle "forward" commences, which perforce will also fail, leading to the next purge. Taken to its logically absurd conclusion, this rinse-and-repeat cycle of fury-driven auto-destruction under the divine guidance of the infallible leftist institutions of "state", we ultimately end up with but two cavemen remaining on the planet, each waiting for the other to fall asleep first as they nervously eyeball each other from opposite sides of the fire. That is what this brand of mindset brings, and nothing better. Dissatisfaction is the inevitable result of the efforts of the left because no other outcome is possible. Given enough latitude, the tyrants butcher and imprison humanity to the brink of extinction, and still they are not satisfied because they have married themselves to a way of existing that can lead to nothing other than dismal failure. Just imagine for a good moment what that really means - what it means to be so willfully blind to your own error that you keep to it as a drowning man clings to anything that he thinks, hopes, will bear him up and preserve his life. Such corruption cannot be given a number, nor can it be characterized sufficiently, suffice to say that it currently represents the greatest threat to the daily lives of everyone on the planet. As the left takes over, it will become apparent to even the most strident denier that humanity shall continue on the path to destruction of all that is good between men unless and until these criminally insane people are displaced and neutralized.

That is the general timbre of our prospects, so long as the raving insanities and inanities of the lunatic progressive continue to direct humanity into what can be nothing better than a future riddled with perpetually increasing levels of wholly unjustifiable and readily avoidable poverty, disease, death, and universal misery. May I prove mistaken in all of this. May the goodness of humanity come forth and set to rights all that is now so wildly and obviously amiss.

And until next time, may you all accept my best wishes.

Property Is Theft?

There are those who with bold stridency declare that "property is theft!"

Let's drill into this idea to see whether it holds any merit.  To that end, let us narrow the channel a mite and focus on a single question, assuming the assertion as a given:

Is your life your property?  That is, do you own your life?

If yes, then let us revert to a syllogistic form to see where this leads:

Property is theft.  [assumption] 

Your life is your property. [assumption] 

If your life is your property, your life is theft [modus ponens] 

Theft is by definition, a crime.  [definition] 

If your life is theft, it is a crime.   [modus ponens]

Criminality subsumes theft, meaning all theft is criminal, though not all crimes are theft. [logical consequence of definitions]

Criminality requires the existence of victims.  [by definition]

The simple act of existing as a living being creates no victim perforce.  [self-evident]

Therefore, one's life as one's property cannot be a crime.  

If one's life cannot be a crime, it cannot be theft, nor can it imply theft. [modus tollens]

Proof by contradiction, extensible to any property one may care to name.

QED.

One might ask the somewhat naive, or perhaps disingenuous question, "what about stolen property?"  The answer there is, of course, very simple: if the property is stolen, it never becomes the property of the thief.  This is, of course, the normative truth, but the truth nonetheless.  It does not mean that the thief does not wield proprietary control over the stolen goods.  It does, however, mean that every act he commits with the stolen property is by its nature one of inherent criminality.  This may not help the victim much, but in the case where the property is discovered as having been stolen, at least the victim may be restored in some measure, and hopefully justice served upon the thief.

We could stop here, as the matter merits no further consideration, but let us continue for the sake of putting the final nails in the coffin of this most absurd notion.

If your life is not your property, then a universe of absurdity opens before us, where quite literally anything goes because all consistency of logic and reason will have winged away into the mists of oblivion.  The simple fact of the assertion as true makes every human being who has ever lived a criminal by mere virtue of his birth; a felon with no possible avenue of redemption , save to go home to mom's basement, also a product of theft, retrieve dad's revolver, also a product of theft, and blow his own brains out.  But are they even his brains?  How can they be, if to have brains, possessing them as "property", is in itself the crime of theft?  The absurdity of rapidly growing Gordian Knot of wild insanity is, I pray, self-evident to all.  But just in case it isn't...

Food becomes property when one takes it up to eat.  One eats to continue his life, but if eating involves the assumption of property, which is theft and by that virtue a crime, then the act of continuing one's life becomes a crime by virtue of that assumption.  Are we to accept that the very acts of continuing our existences are then crimes?

One's life is his property. Were it not, one would hold no right to it and, therefore, no valid claim.  It would be up for grabs... or would it?  It would seem that nobody would have valid claims to anything, including their lives.  The world descends instantly into the depths of dementia with the acceptance of three simple words. You would have no right to defend your life against, ironically, "theft" by another, whether it were to enslave, or maim, or murder you.

One's life is what I have come to label as his "First Property".  All creatures are enjoined by their fundamental nature to preserve their First Property by any and all means at their disposal; to fight to preserve themselves at any and all cost. If someone attempts to deprive me of my First Property, I will take whatever means I deem necessary to prevent that from happening, up to and including depriving the thieves of their First Property. This is called "self defense" and nobody but the most insanely corrupt individuals deny such acts as those of a fundamental nature common to all human beings and, by logical extension, all living creatures.  Poke a paramecium, a single-celled eukaryotic organism, and it shoots trichocysts at you, small pointy darts, in defense of its First Property. 

To believe that property is theft is to believe in the validity of chaos, the deeper implication being that all human action is criminally invalid. After all, even if our lives are theft, how can anything we do be non-criminal, save perhaps to relinquish that which we have stolen, including our lives?  To accept the notion is to accept that we are irredeemable creatures, that all acts are criminal in their fabric,  and that there is nothing good that issues from humanity, whether a kind word or the saving of the lives of one's fellows in distress.  This is the reductio ad absurdum of the idea that property is theft.

If all property is the product of theft, which is a felony, then by direct implication there can be no valid human action. To interact with another human being in any endeavor, including sexual congress which may lead to new life, which is property and therefore theft, is to engage in the possession, manipulation, transfer, and/or destruction of stolen... erm... "property". And here we see the notion itself, that property is theft, gives rise to a fundamental, self-reinforcing, and inescapable contradiction, some of the branches of which can loop into infinity.  The absurdity is self-evident the moment one stops to think on the idea in even the most cursory manner.

Example of such a loop: Those who subscribe to the property-is-theft notion also, and paradoxically, tend also to subscribe to the idea of removing the property of others by force, that which one has stolen.  But how can this be valid when one is stealing stolen property?  So now someone else steals the stolen property that you then stole from the thief.  But now he who stole it from you is the thief, so someone steals it from him.  And so on it goes because the mutually antagonistic ideas of property is theft, and we must take by force the products of theft, work in self-reinforcing battle between fundamentally incompatible notions.  Logically speaking, once you enter that loop, you cannot get out, save perhaps by more criminal action through the violation of the moral duties that those mutually reinforcing ideas place upon the individual by direct implication.

If you don't accept the idea of confiscating such property, then you are by direct implication accepting theft as valid, or at the very least, tolerable.  That being the case, the sky becomes the limit of human prerogative.  Johnny then becomes entitled to rape Janey because the theft of Janey's bodily integrity is no longer an issue.

Confused yet?  Horrified?  Disgusted?  Eyeballs rolling from your sockets? You should be and they should be, because this is the sort of raving lunacy to which "property is theft" gives direct and rapid rise.

Furthermore, you as a human being, if you endeavor to continue your life while believing that property is theft, are then a criminal hypocrite whose only obligation is to immediately end your own life because even to feed yourself is theft and the continued support of the product of theft. This is wildly and insanely idiotic on its face and we have soundly demonstrated why it is so.

Under the presumption of this notion, one cannot even get to the question of whether that which one creates, whether for oneself or for another, is at any time his property or that of another.  Creation of anything material becomes an act of theft.  And what of ideas?  If I create a new notion, is that theft?  If I share it with the world, have I now implicated every human being in a criminal act?  The can of worms that opens before one's eyes with the acceptance of this falderal idea that property is perforce theft, has no discernible end.  The litany of questions to which the idea leads, stretches on well beyond the horizon, outward to the sides, and upwards and downwards until we drown in them, not a single one having a sufficient and reasonably acceptable answer.

Once again, and to be a broken record, the absurdity of this idea that property is theft nudges past the limits of infinity.

Conclusion: property is not theft, it is not perforce the product of theft, and that anyone who subscribes to this notion is mentally unsound, morally so, or both.

If you have heretofore bought into the notion that property is theft, you may now confidently and comfortably disabuse yourself of this folly, for you no longer have the excuse of ignorance.

Live long, prosper, and as always please accept my best wishes.

We Are As Slaves On A Prison Planet

Many people are fond of embracing the lie that slavery had been abolished by the forces of good.  This fact befuddles me most perfectly.

Let us be clear: slavery is abolished on paper only and, practically speaking, only in certain forms and by certain parties for certain other parties.  Let us be further clear that those certain parties of the first part reserve for themselves every privilege of the slave master while the proletariate are denied such latitude.  They hypocrisy alone is staggering, much more so the wild criminality that this represents.

Slavery is alive and well in the human world. 

Starting at the bottom, there is all manner of sex trafficking going on all over the globe. Muslim nations openly conduct slave trade of all forms. Then, at the supposed "top" of the heap are Europe and America, both of which are metastatic with the slavery cancer. Sex trafficking is the obvious case, but the far deeper cancer is that of taxation and generalized "state" tyranny. "Governments" enact violative statutes that address no crime, yet falsely criminalize the acts in question, whether it be purchasing the services of a prostitute, buying/possessing/using "illicit" drugs, possessing a firearm without some arbitrary permission, or what have you. They then have the brass to call those statutes "law", which is one of the biggest lies ever told by tyrants, who make up any phony baloney nonsense as their caprice might move them.

Americans, and in general we are become an appallingly stupid race, believe they are "free". To that, I will tell anyone that if they truly believe that biggest of all lies, then do and by all means stop paying your property tax. In time, you will receive a nicely worded letter reminding you of your alleged delinquency. In more time you will receive a series of other letters, each new one less friendly than the last. Finally, a sheriff's deputy or two will come to evict you from what is supposed to be your property, which of course it is not. If you resist, they will become violent. Resist enough, and they will murder you.

Does that sound anything like freedom? If it does, then you stand in deep need of lessons in what actually freedom is.

The ENTIRETY OF HUMANITY is up to its eyeballs in slavery, make no mistake about that. That you are in some places afforded an expansive cage makes no difference to the fact that you are indeed a slave because you are by no means free to exercise your rightful prerogatives as a Freeman, but are only given permission to exercise a comparatively very limited set of choices as per the deign and whim of the Tyrant, who eternally reserves the right to rescind any and all rights any time he pleases, with or without cause.

The enlarged cage of the pretty slavery that has been foisted upon the world is now mistakenly conflated with actual freedom. That is the saddest joke of all recorded human history.

Civilization has proven itself liberty's undoing and the utter destruction of our freedom, in point of practical fact. Setting that first stone at Sumer was perhaps the greatest error ever made by anyone. But now that we are here, it is in fact possible to institute a free architecture and to dispose of all tyrants and with them, their tyrannies. The only question that remains is whether the human race will ever cough up enough self-respect to make it happen. At this juncture, that prospect appears grimly unlikely, which is a terrible shame because the human world could be ever so much better than it is, were it not for the deep and intransigently abiding corruption of the Mean Man.

Humans.

Give it all a think and, until next time, please accept my best wishes.