Do you consider yourself a slave to gravity? Or to your body?
If not, why would you consider yourself a slave to "government"?
The theft and coercion that get called "government" are a reality of the world. (Just as are theft and coercion that don't get any particular label attached.) To say that this makes you or others a slave is a defeatist attitude. It may be all around you, but it only enslaves you if you let it.
You have a brain. Use it to find ways around the theft and coercion. Find ways to use "government" against itself (not against others) when backed into a corner. It can be satisfying to watch a pack of dogs turn on each other.
Don't accept the status of slave that the thugs and goons would want you to accept. Navigate the real world the best you can, always living by the ZAP, and never giving the bad guys more power than they really possess.
"Government" exists. You are not a slave to it unless you want to be.
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To be a slave is not being able to act freely where your actions do not harm others without endangering your life or liberty. If you do act freely where the government has forbidden you to, even though your actions do not violate the rights of others, you can and will get slapped in chains and sent off to one of the many state or federal "plantations". If you resist you can and will be killed. The only solution, if you want to retain your physical liberty, considering the tyranny of an illegitimate State as it stands now, is to restrict your actions to those that are approved for you, the slave. (If it is not expressly permitted, it is forbidden. All hail the Imperial State. Dissenters will be shot!) ;-)
ReplyDeleteD.M.Mitchell -
ReplyDeleteI respectfully disagree, respectfully because I take your point and understand the danger of acting without regard to teh power (right or wrong) of the state.
However, the only chance you have to be a free man, which is the natural state of a man, and that which should be protected and encouraged by the state, is to be one and act like one.
If you (however reluctantly and grudgingly) accept the fate that others impose on you, without a fight, you will destroy yourself.
It is no easier to make all of us slaves than it is to make all of us free, so there is nothing gained by submitting - outside of a temporary truce or cease fire between you and the state. So be it.
It costs too much to abdicate as you suggest. I think you can tip you hat to the bastards when confronted with overwhelming force, and slide away to choose another fight and another day.
Perhaps I am a coward, but until a few more brothers want to stand up with me, I am not making a martyr of myself either.
But that doesn't means I quit the fight. It is not within me to do so - and I think you probably stand with me there.
Rich
I spent several years as a real slave on a federal plantation... for not violating the rights of others. I don't wish to repeat that experience. Until enough people speak out against the tyranny of the State, and are ready to stand up against it, I will keep a low profile, writing a few things here and there, making comments, like on this site, but I will be very careful not to do anything that is my right to do, under the principle of inalienable rights that does not violate the rights of others, but that the State has declared illegal. I have vowed not to go so easily if there is a next time.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not hard to live this way. There is very little, if anything, that I need to do that the State has forbidden... so far.
You might want to click on my name. It will take you to my dissertation: The Myth of Inalienabe Rights as Applied to the War on Drugs: The Tyranny of Legislating Morality. It's long but, I think, well worth the read, especially when you get down to the addendum titled: Crime, Organized Crime, and Criminals.