Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Bureaucracy violates your rights

Bureaucracy violates your rights

(My Clovis News Journal column for March 7, 2014)

Legalized? Decriminalized? Why?

Most things wrongly made illegal should instead be ignored, which is difficult for those infected with the lust to control. They are not proper areas of governance under any circumstances. Even under the most well-meaning situations, "there ought to be a law" is misguided. No new law is necessary; the laws which were unethically imposed just need to be repealed, be ignored, or be defied.

To bother to legalize or to decriminalize anything which isn't aggression or theft would seem to imply some government authority in that area of life- where none exists.

For example, in Colorado under the new legalized marijuana laws (which the federal government refuses to honor, violating both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments), banks have been caught up in the confusion. Even those which want to to do business with the perfectly legal marijuana shops are refusing, mainly out of fear of federal retribution for refusing to walk the prohibition line. The state and federal rules are at odds, and even with very meticulous federal guidelines which banks are promised they can follow without fear, the risk of entrapment is too great for most to dare.

Which illustrates just one reason banks should also be freed from federal meddling.

I disagree with those who say "legalize and tax it". Taxation feeds the state. Don't feed the beast; starve it.

It would be much better to admit the Constitution doesn't give any authority for prohibition- as a previous generation of prohibitionists once admitted, since they knew they had to pass an amendment to make their anti-alcohol crusade legal, if not right.

A similar situation of too much "law" exists in those states where laws are passed to make it less legally risky to do what humans have always had an inalienable right to do, and an explicit Constitutional protection of that right which allows zero exceptions: to own and to carry any kind of weapon they wish, wherever they go, openly or concealed as they see fit, regardless of age or legal status, without asking permission of anyone, ever.

It is simply the government employee's duty to comply with the Constitution and not violate the right in any way. Period. Yet, look at the parasitic compliance and enforcement bureaucracy which has grown around that very simple human right. There are taxes, license fees, transfer fees, background check fees, etc. All feeding the bureaucracy established for no other reason than to break the law that binds them- and violate your rights.

Those who seek to rule your life would do well to butt out and mind their own business, which means not giving everything a legal status.

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How I think bloggish thoughts

In one of my dozens of spam comments (which Blogger intercepts before you ever see them) the "question" (before the spamiferous link) was posed: "How do you clear your head and center yourself before you write?"

Now that's a spammerbot which deserves an answer.

The way I have found that works best for me is to read my emails, and check posts on Facebook, check out some news stories- and then go do something.

I have blogs write themselves while I shower. Or cut and split firewood. Or do some clothing/hat repair. Or just about anything that gets my mind off writing, without tying my mind up with something else.

It helps if my hands are busy with something (no comments about the shower!) but my thinking brain is unoccupied. I used to find scraping deer or elk hides was a never-ending source of ideas- but that was mostly before I started writing- such a shame (although I did pen a few letters to the editor during those years). Just sitting staring into a fire doesn't work that well for me. Because my hands usually aren't busy, I suppose.

Busy hands; bored brain. When I have trouble finding something to write about, it is usually because one part of that formula is missing. Does that qualify as clearing my head and centering myself?

Now, when I write my Clovis News Journal columns there are two additional steps. After I write what I want to say, I go back and make sure it isn't too long- which always means cutting out an awful lot of words. Then, I go back and find ways to "tone it down" without compromising the message at all- and that's even harder than cutting out words and points I think are important to what I need to say.

So now you know.

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