The Ultimate Minority

We establish governments to protect our rights, and delegate to them the exclusive use of force in the resolution of conflict when our rights are violated.

Rights are based in property. Your rights to the ownership of your property (including your own body, your labor, and the things you acquire through lawful exchange with another) are absolute and inalienable.

So now this government, which we established to protect our life, liberty, and property… taxes our property. And if we don’t pay the state its ransom, it uses the force we delegated it to take our property away.

Something has gone horribly wrong here. This does not sound like a right to ownership to me, it sounds like we are privileged to hold land so long as we’re paying tribute to the state – a privilege that will be revoked and the land taken away from us if we don’t pay.

I got involved today in helping a family member understand the foreclosure process. Take a look at the wording of this FAQ from the Clinton County, MI web site:

Q. If I don’t pay my taxes, will I really lose my house and property?

A. YES. Property owners who had delinquent taxes under the old law could lose their property, but they had more time to pay and more “second chances”. Under the new law, if your taxes are delinquent for three years, that’s it. You’ve lost the property.

Q. What happens after my property is Foreclosed? How do I get it back?

A. FORECLOSURE IS FINAL. YOU CANNOT GET YOUR PROPERTY BACK AFTER IT HAS BEEN FORECLOSED. PROPERTY THAT HAS BEEN FORECLOSED WILL BE SOLD AT PUBLIC AUCTION.

That reads like an owner extending privileges to me. It also reads like an overbearing parent threatening punishment on a misbehaving child – “That’s it, you lose!” and “WE’LL YELL AT YOU IN CAPS TO ASSURE THAT YOU UNDERSTAND.”

You don’t own your property, you lease it from the state. The parasite that is government has grown into a full-scale disease, with complete control over the host.

When people submit themselves to a legislature of their own making, it is obvious that they cannot let that legislature destroy that which they had hoped to secure in entering into society. Whenever the legislature tries to take away or destroy the property of the people, or reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, it puts itself into a state of war against the people, who are then immediately justified in rejecting it.

- John Locke

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, a free audio book on Librivox.org.

I downloaded this book in two parts and listened to it 2-3 times in just a few days. It is that good.

Thoreau was jailed for not paying a tax. He chose not to pay the tax because he did not support the US government for its support of slavery and its war with Mexico. Thoreau believed that by funding the government, he was sanctioning its actions, so he opted out.

When he was jailed, he remained defiant and spent his time reflecting on the nature of the state and its use of force. He urges us to withdraw support for illegitimate government, and hints that if everyone did, they would have no room to fill their prisons with all of the non-compliants. His friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, visited him at the jail and asked him what he was doing in there. Thoreau’s response was to question what Emerson was doing “out there.”

The reading of this book is excellent. It is one of those rare moments that I enjoyed the voice of the reader better than my own. He brings Thoreau’s words to life with drama and power. Check them out at:
Part One

Part Two

Step One:  Separate the US government and its actions from the American people and the American system as an ideal.

“We” didn’t invade Iraq, the US government and its twisted leadership did.  “We” didn’t “invite the attacks of 9/11,” our government and its foreign policy created resentment by people who see it as an imperial occupier of their land, and manipulator of their governments.

When you see people get all up in arms because someone criticizes the government, and they attack that person as “un-American” or “unpatriotic,”  stop and think:  What is un-American about criticizing bad government?  What is patriotic about blindly following a government that is violating the law?

A true patriot stands for the principles upon which this country was founded.  He insists that his government follow the Rule of Law, the Constitution of the United States.  He remembers that the oath of office binds the sworn to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

There is nothing patriotic about blindly obeying and following government with a “my country right or wrong” mentality.  In fact, this is the opposite of patriotism.  It is belligerent nationalism, jingoism…State worship.  It is the major contributing factor allowing government to devolve from a constitutional republic to tyranny, because in order to survive, all governments, regardless of form, must have legitimacy in the eyes of their constituents.

The scoundrel is the one who, under the guise of “patriotism,” does not question the actions of government, he merely follows.  He values the status quo, and sees government as legitimate in its role of keeping the order.  And he is easily led to accept tyranny and despotism as necessary to keep order in a society of miscreants.

He would have been a Tory in the American Revolution.  He would have been a national socialist in Hitler’s Germany.   And he will be the one to accept without question those who rule him if this country becomes a military dictatorship.

I know several of them personally, and I see many of them in the news media.  To them I say, as Samuel Adams did:

Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

The quote above, “War is the Health of the State,” is that of Randolph Bourne, and it sums up my personal view of war. This has not always been the case.

I thought it appropriate to give a personal history of my views, to show how I was once like so many in my understanding of war, and to introduce some of the readings and thoughts that have led to my current perspective.

I was 7 years old when U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war was over, so I do not have many memories of that conflict. January 1991 marked the beginning of the Gulf War, and the beginning of my personal evolution.

I was 25 years old when the U.S. military launched Operation Desert Storm. I tuned in to CNN daily to gather all of the information that I could. I marveled at the footage and the commentary depicting surgical strikes, scud missile intercepts, bunker-busters, and bouncing betty’s.

While I’ve always taken issue with big government, I put aside my differences for the cause – war has a rallying effect. I didn’t know much about the history of the Middle East, but I listened intently to the talking heads and politicians as they explained who the villains were, who we were there to save, and how our presence was necessary. I remember the debate as to whether the U.S. should “police the world” and thought, perhaps, it was our reluctant role to keep the peace, fight the spread of tyranny, and promote liberty around the world. We were, after all, the world’s lone superpower after the fall of the Soviet Union.

I remember studying the rules of the draft, and learning that as a 25 year old, I would be late in line to have my number called up. Four months after the U.S. invasion, I would turn 26 and would be (mostly) clear of the draft. But my friends and I talked often about what it would take for us to get involved, as we were patriotic young men and believed in the cause of liberty. We weighed in on the questions of how long this war would go, to what degree it would escalate, how many countries would be involved, and who would be fighting whom, as the criteria for our involvement.

I cheered our troops on, and when the war was over I went to a t-shirt printing shop and had a shirt made with the U.S. flag emblazoned on the front, and radical looking letters shouting “Anybody Else Want Some?” written across the flag. It was a big hit when I wore it in public. The people were swelled with pride in a swift, decisive victory. All was well with the world; we had shed the demons of Vietnam, my country had shown that it can deliver justice in rapid fashion, and the war was over.

I was a war supporter.

Next entry: Part 2

Do you know the difference? Unfortunately, most people think we live in a democracy. Every day in the media, in speeches by our elected representatives, the word “democracy” is used as though it were synonymous with freedom.

It is not. Democracy is antithetical to freedom.

Our Founding Fathers were clear on the distinction, and were clear on the fact that they had established a Republic. Not a democracy.

In fact, the word “democracy” appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution guarantees “to every State in this Union, a Republican Form of Government.”

Our Pledge of Allegiance states “…And to the Republic, for which it stands…”

Refer back to my earlier post on Individual Rights. You were born with them – therefore, sovereign power resides with the Individual. No majority vote can take away your rights.

In a democracy, sovereign power resides in the group as a whole. And so, majority vote rules. Rights can be granted and taken away from the individual. So can property.

The purpose of a republic is to secure the rights of the individual. Our Constitution was specifically designed to limit the powers of government, to assure that the rights of individuals were not compromised. It uses negative language regarding the role of government throughout: “Shall not abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, and shall not be violated, nor be denied.”

We are, today, in the downward spiral of democracy. Both on the individual rights front, and on the fiscal policy front.

Alexander Fraser Tytler said: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

What has resulted is a top-down government with central power at the top (federal) and the states all lining up like calves to suck at the teet of the federal government. Exactly the opposite of the intended design.

When asked what kind of government had been established, Ben Franklin stated “A Republic – if you can keep it…”

Consider these statements:

“I am an American Citizen, therefore, I have these rights…”

- or -

“These rights are granted to me by the Constitution…”

- or -

“The U.S. Government gives me these rights…”

All of the above statements are WRONG. Yet most people probably wouldn’t take issue with them.

Your government does not grant you rights. Government is an institution designed to acknowledge and protect your rights.

The constitution did not grant your rights. It was a document designed to define and limit the power of government. The Bill of Rights enumerates your rights, but it did not create them.

Your Individual Rights are inherent in being human. It doesn’t matter where or when you were born – you have the same rights. The only difference is the degree to which they are violated by the government you live under.