“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will.  But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.  I do not add “within the limits of the law,” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” – Thomas Jefferson

MEDIA ROOTS- Being free is an experience you must consciously choose to have. For example, think of the pictures you take, the poems you write, or the clever contraptions you fashion from seemingly useless materials: where does it all come from? It comes from you- not a savior, and certainly not a government. Every thought you have comes from you. You guide your body and your mind, you collect knowledge and experiences, and you fashion them to reflect upon an expression of yourself.

Free expression is your first amendment right. If that does not matter to us, than we are already slaves. Your government is obliged to defend it. I swore an oath to defend it. I did not swear an oath to a Fuhrer (Emperor), or to an institution, but rather to the idea that we are all born with unalienable rights. So when is free expression unjust? When must we obstruct it?  Can we? 

The answer lies within the mechanism chosen to produce accountability. Up until you hurt or threaten to hurt someone, your free expression cannot legally be obstructed in any way. In fact, it must be defended. So who says what is right and wrong? Our constitution gives that responsibility to a jury of our peers, and their judgment provides the mechanism for accountability. They are tasked with hearing a case and deciding if rights should be denied to an offender.  They decide the moral answer on that case and that case alone. Are all homicides equal?  Are all acts of theft the same?  Is a substance inherently wrong to possess?  Should we be forced to pay for insurance?  The moral relativity depends upon the moral compass of your peers and the circumstances for a particular case. If you don’t hurt your neighbor, then a truly free society lets you go in peace. A free society also takes nothing from its people without permission. It is alarming just how many non-violent drug offenders there are in our jails today, and how little government revenue comes from charity. 

If we have arrived at a place where we can now recognize individuals as the source of all ideas, all innovation, and all feelings, then we can see how individuals are the source of morality in this world as well. This is a key belief that any tyrant must undermine. If a tyrant hopes to enslave a free man, he must first replace this belief in an individual with promises of heaven on earth, equity, and entitlements. He must victimize, produce threats, pit groups against each other, and shake a free man’s confidence in himself. This is precisely why most local cultures in Moldova, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Uzbekistan, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine were nearly destroyed after 70 years of banned expression of their uniqueness by their leaders. Could it be that the people in those countries had ways of expressing themselves that were in fact senior to the doctrine of Russia’s former Soviet Union? How inconvenient for tyrants when a people are free in their hearts. To be free in your heart and soul is the native state of man.

We hear so much about this idea of separation of church and state. This is not actually spelled out anywhere in our Constitution, rather it’s implied by the first Amendment, which erects a wall to prevent the collusion of any church into the Republic. Consider this: your neighbor practices a religion privately in their own home, and you have no problem with it. Imagine if their beliefs became law?! Sadly, this is easily found throughout history. How do you think a church ended up in every town from Kosovo, to Moscow, Dublin, and Madrid? Perhaps it was spread through collusion followed by coercion. This is not an attack on the church or any other organized ideology. I’ll rally for any faith based system, and will protect your private and peaceful devotion to it- but I sometimes wonder where our ability to think has gone. What has come of the burnings at the stake, or of the men and women of science who believed the earth was round, or that it revolved around the sun?  People have been viciously, savagely, and tortuously attacked and murdered for simple free expression. Where else can we find this sickness?

In more recent history, the world has witnessed eugenics. Imagine if science said that depending on certain cranial measurements, DNA characteristics and genetics, you may or may not be put on a train car with a one-way ticket to extermination. That’s right, science colluded with government to round folks up and have them killed. To a lesser extent, Soviets groomed their children for certain jobs and left them no other choice for them to live their lives another way. The state decided where they would go and what they would do based upon testing and “science”.

More recently,  in December of 2009, Germany sent the fathers of eight families to jail for refusing to allow their children to attend a state mandated sexual education program. According to their statistics, children are less likely to become pregnant or contract STDs if they take the class. Apparently it’s no longer the parent’s choice of how they should teach their own children about the “birds and the bees.” Once again we see science colluding with lawmakers to make these decisions for you. 

The last institution that our Constitution sought to maintain separate from the government was the monetary system. Our founding fathers sought to establish a government that would defend and preserve a free market, one that hasn’t effectively existed in the United States since the early 1900s.  If paper money has no inherent worth, then how should we trust it to hold any value?  If I work hard expending my physical and intellectual energy, how do I know that what I’ve earned is real?  A fiat money supply system is one that allows us to trade more easily, but imagine if the world had only one legal paper money to trade?  If the supply of money were monopolized by a single organization, then no one would ever be able to hold them accountable for their actions or keep them from manipulating that system. More importantly, what type of person would seek to proliferate and influence it? 

The only universal currency that is immune to such manipulation is precious metals, and the only way to keep fiat money resistant to devaluation is to have alternatives available, as it is in the supply of any product. The suppliers compete and are held accountable by the consumers, and the next thing you know they all back their little bills with a contractual promise to pay- redeemable into something tangible. This is precisely how and why the United States dollar became the world’s reserve currency. We had a large and booming economy which was producing a lot of fiat currency, and the money was backed by gold. The departure from the gold standard was a crucial and required step for government collusion and control over your economic system- it transferred your wealth and your energy elsewhere.  Folks, that’s slavery.  It is a process of enslavement- an engineered decline and a covert transformation of a free market, and subsequently the inevitable, comfortable end of individualism.

Remain asleep if you choose.

It may be time to stop trusting your current institutions- they are not what we began with and they are certainly not what was intended. The once “free market,” the market that had once been accountable to the consumer, has been buddying up with a government that is supposed to be of you, for you. Don’t blindly trust science either. PhDs and politicians are walking hand-in-hand, like the clerics and the monarchs of 500 years prior. There are less than ten companies representing most major industries- pharmaceuticals, automobiles, banking, media, fuel… it’s not a free market that brought this lack of choice.

Americans need and crave alternatives – we demand alternatives. When will it be time for us to hold our government accountable?

The recent health care bill that was passed, which your legislators did not have time to read, is about 2000 pages long. Our Constitution, on the other hand, is only 18 pages on Microsoft Word, 12pt, Times New Roman. Demand that your religious, scientific, and economic institutions stand apart from your government as the Constitution requires. Reserve government as a conduit for accountability to each other, to which we are all subject. The fundamental ill here is not resolved by voting based on a few issues, an ideology, group identity, and certainly not on the presidency. 

The Constitution is not some neo-conservative movement. It was the first radical movement of individual liberation. It was built upon a movement away from Monarchs. Our founders were the original liberals in the true sense of the word. To liberate. To free. They provided an opportunity for every idea to be expressed, a mechanism to prevent the domination of any one person or group over the rest, and they built a Republic for Americans- Americans who are brave, noble souls and rugged individuals, willing to stand for nothing less than being a truly free human being, in every thought and with every breath.

“What we are trying in all of these discussions and talks here is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind.  Not accept things as they are, but to understand it, to go into it, to examine it, give your heart and your mind and everything that you have to find out the way of living differently, but that depends on you and not somebody else.  Because in this there is no teacher, no pupil, there is no leader, there’s no guru, there’s no master, no savior.  You yourself are the teacher, you are the pupil, you are the master, you are the guru, you are the leader.  You are everything.  And to understand is to transform what is.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Yossarian.