10/28/10

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – Action of Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776 The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

MEDIA ROOTS- We have major challenges ahead that are unlike anything the average American today can imagine- challenges that the next 20 years of presidential regimes can’t solve. There isn’t a chirp in the trees, and the stillness in the air is just enough to hear a storm rumbling on the horizon.

It’s time to confront the fact that we have forgotten what freedom is. Do we even remember what being free means?

Freedom is not licensing, it’s not a social security number, and it’s not welfare. It’s neither Medicaid nor Medicare. It is not the CPS, the IRS, the FDA, the Department of Indoctrination (Education), and certainly not bailouts. Freedom is not any of the 90+ taxes created that didn’t exist less than a hundred years ago.

Now let’s talk about what freedom is. It is your sheriff, your city council, and your place of worship – even if that place is simply around your dinner table with your family. It is failure when your ideas don’t work. It is helping others when their farm burns down. It is the right to contract freely, pay what you feel is fair, and charge what you know is right. It is to walk, drive, fly, or slide wherever your heart desires, and without a license. Of course with this freedom comes accountability to the equal rights of others.

Freedom is the feeling that you get when you look your family, friends, and neighbors in the eye, and know you can really trust each other, because of the time you spent together backing each other up and making things happen for yourselves. So how did we wind up here, so far from this?

We’ve been sold the idea of a massive social empire, rather than separate sovereign states. Washington is too out of touch with the problems of average Americans to make effective decisions with our money, and they are too far out of reach to be accountable to the taxpayers. This is why the founders designed mechanisms to prevent an insidious development of a coercive Empire into the founding documents. They knew Washington D.C. would inevitably seek to throne itself, promising heaven on earth if we agreed to sign on the dotted “taxation without representation” line.  The founders believed that you were naturally only subject to your need for food, water, shelter, defense, and personal accountability. 

How free are we without having control over the means of food production? How free can we be if the material essential to our existence come from China, er Wal-mart?  Even the currency in our monetary system is legally counterfeited – it subjects you to the will of a select few, making you dependent as any slave ever was.

Stalin’s 5 year plans; Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”; grand ideas of collectivization resulted in the death of 120 million farmers. Never before in history had so many locally self sufficient people found an early grave at the hands of so few. It was made possible by them subscribing to the myth of a utopia and voluntarily surrendering their means of production. Now we’ve done the same.

What techniques did Hitler, Stalin, and Mao implement to affect the totalitarianism described in our history books? If those at the top are to bring about a massive social state, how on earth do they affect the thinking of millions to agree with a group of central planners? 

In order to bypass free expression, societies indoctrinate their population. Step one in the United States is to subvert the first amendment, which was ratified to protect the ideas despised most. History has shown us time and time again that we must subject ourselves to a polarization of opinion. 

Woodrow Wilson campaigned to steer us clear of the war in Europe. At the same time, the German embassy had placed ads in papers throughout the US, including the New York Times, urging the US to steer clear of the dangerous waters surrounding Britain. Then the ammo laden ocean cruise-ship Lusitania sunk, and over one thousand civilian passengers died. Americans seethed while Germans state-side experienced persecution like never before. Lynching became common-place as Americans sent 100,000 sons to their deaths in Europe.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaign rhetoric assured America that, “If we face the choice – the choice of profit or peace – this nation will answer, this nation must answer. We choose peace.” 

After he took office, FDR immediately initiated a policy to starve the Japanese of oil. Admiral Richardson begged to bring his fleet in Hawaii back home to San Diego, claiming that they were undermanned, and over-exposed.  He was fired. Ten months later, 3,000 Americans are slaughtered at Pearl Harbor in “a day that will live in infamy,” 150,000 Japanese-Americans are jailed in internment camps, and American parents send 400,000 sons to die in the Second World War.

Is it adding up yet? War promotes and sensationalizes the myth that our individual safety is dependent upon a larger government. War centralizes people around a leader. The bigger the threat, the more they centralize. In order to convince a country to mobilize for such hell, governments must stifle polarizing opinions, and promise heaven will follow. 

The Constitution provides Washington the ability to act as a conduit for the states to rally together in the face of a threat too large for any one; the states have strength in numbers for national self-defense while maintaining freedom for their individuals. Why haven’t we managed to do this? How have we come to accept warrantless wiretappings, unreasonable searches, and incarcerations?

As Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitatus melt in the face of judicial review, we have to ask: what are we getting ready for? Why have we surrendered integral freedoms in the pursuit of defense? 

The answer is that we are not defending freedom. Instead, we’re picking a fight with an individual decision to experience terror, a war within our own minds.

Right now we have cartels over running the southwest, ranchers getting killed, Iraqi veteran sheriffs with bounties on their heads, and states being sued by the Federal government. Meanwhile you and your spouse are working your asses off, your kids are never home, your extended family is spread all over the globe, your television continuously lies to you, and you barely have time to mow the lawn you should be cultivating. No wonder we feel so powerless.

We let this happen. We’ve subjected ourselves to unconstitutional taxing, banking, currency, corporations, welfare programs, military growth, and imperial expansion. We’ve outsourced labor and material from tyrannical third world nations, and have bought into an education system that requires us to incur massive personal debt for a degree no one needs. Yet we’re looking around, confused? 

We have sold ourselves out!  We abandoned the belief in our own communities, the true source of our wealth, and traded it for the scraps of Washington’s printing press.  Are you going to throw your sons and daughters into the infernos of the next Great War based on promises from congressional critters?  Do you have any idea how far down this road we’ve gone? 

This country is about to drive off a cliff, and this is our last chance to put the brakes on before there is no avoiding the freefall into the jagged ravine below.  The wealthiest are jumping ship and dealing with the scraps they get as Washington taxes 70 plus percent of their transfers to the far-east. All of this is happening as you continue to struggle daily to make ends meet. Still think everything’s going to work itself out after these next elections? 

The time has passed to be able to affect change in our federal government. It’s over. Let all the unscrupulous history go. Forget about trying to understand “the issues”. You’ll never understand 2000 pages of unconstitutional healthcare reform. 

If you really want your life, your street, and your town to be better, it starts by understanding that you are the answer! Whoever is seated in the Presidential throne isn’t supposed to matter, but whoever holds your sheriff’s position does. Those who represent your state in the federal seat of government have failed you. The system is not working right now. On the other hand, your city council can work for you.  Every time you vote for a president you get screwed. You don’t need to understand everything to know things are fucked up. So what can “We the People” do about it? 

Rally. Find your neighbors. Have BBQs. Talk about things. Make it normal to have serious conversations.

I will get out there and say “no John, I’m not saying collectivism is bad. It’s just as natural as individualism, but there’s a time for both. No one argues against helping those who can’t help themselves. The real question is at what level do we collectivize to do so? For what reasons should we mobilize to deal with challenges? Shouldn’t we have the right to abstain from a collective effort if we don’t support? Whether we rally around Washington, our state capital, our town, or this grill, a government isn’t of the people through involuntary servitude.” 

Having a government of the people is not a spectator sport. It’s a contact sport. If you’re retired, get off the golf course. We need you. If you’ve lost your job, or can’t find one, then regroup with your family, and look for a leader.  If you can’t find one guess what? It’s you. I know…. scary, huh? The founders felt the same way. No one in their right mind should seek out public service. What I’m describing is exactly what happened in 1776, only they had something we don’t- the ability to survive locally. Chances are, you don’t have this ability. But you have something they didn’t, something they thought worth fighting for, worth dying for: The Constitution of the Republic of the United States of America. And they certainly paid for it.

So what can this document do for us legally? It can fix everything almost immediately. In the face of recent armed raids on organic food stores, illegal federal searches of political activists’ homes, unconstitutional firearms regulations, taxes levied for enumerated powers, random IRS audits, we can re-assume the state sovereignty that is articulated in the 10^th Amendment, and we can reclaim the natural rights implied by the 9^th Amendment by demanding that your sheriff, your city council, and your town justice serve you by keeping their word to be American and to follow the Constitution!

If you don’t care about your natural rights, your local sovereignty, and the radically liberating ideas upon which our Republic was founded, then clearly America is over. However if you do care, and haven’t learned what these documents can do for you and your family, it’s less than 20 pages long – read it while it’s still here. You will quickly see how these ideas have led us to be the most industrious, most innovative, most charitable culture in human history since July 4^th, 1776 – in spite of the constant attacks on our civil liberties from within since day one.  This has been a 234 year civil rights revolution, and for it to survive and thrive it must be firmly planted in a fertile mind, a mind that truly believes in itself.  Please spend time with your wonderful neighbors around the grill, peacefully rally for sovereignty, and find the answers to heaven on earth closer to home.

“I, state your name, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice; So help me God.”

“Oath of enlistment into the United States Armed Forces,” Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962

“I, state your name, hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

“Oath of Allegiance,” 8 C.F.R. Part 337 (2008), taken by all immigrants who wish to become United States citizens

Yossarian.

Photo by Beverly & Pack

“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.