Saturday, January 13, 2024

Liberty needs constant maintenance

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for December 10, 2023)




It would be nice if you could set liberty in motion and forget about it. Unfortunately, like a clock, you will at least have to keep winding it or replacing the battery. Or, if it has a cord, you must rely on someone else to keep the power flowing.

As long as others insist on keeping government around, liberty will have to be maintained. Some consider this a flaw. I wonder if these people took one shower years ago and expect it to last.

Entropy happens. Things tend to crumble over time because there are many more ways for anything to go wrong than to go right. There are many ways to violate liberty and one way to experience whole liberty. Each little violation of anyone's rights is a chip or a crack in the edge of liberty.

This damage needs to be fixed by someone. Defend your own liberty and fix the violations you experience. It's also necessary for you to be vigilant for damage to others.

There are ways to approach liberty, even if intentions are good, which aren't helpful.

If liberty is like a finely crafted watch, government is like a hammer. They are natural enemies.

You don't keep a watch running in good order by repeatedly hitting it with a hammer. Even a child's hollow plastic hammer isn't helpful, although it may not do any real damage. The bigger and heavier the hammer gets, and the harder it is swung, the more damage it does to the watch. Don't ask how I know.

Many people seem to believe they are helping liberty by being part of the hammer collective by joining the military, holding a government job, or entering politics. They are helping create a bigger hammer, or helping swing it at the watch face, but they are not helping the delicate internal mechanisms of liberty.

They are causing the damage those who understand and respect liberty will need to repair. Repair is easier if you can convince people to stop hitting it, but you can't wait until they grow up and understand before you start doing your part.

Any time you see someone damaging liberty, step in and do your best to fix it. You'll probably be wasting your time trying to talk them out of their actions, but there's always something you can do. Do what you can. The future of human liberty depends on you.

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I couldn't do this without your support.

It's still a crime gang


If a crime gang pays a caring person to feed homeless puppies, it’s still a crime gang.

If a crime gang gives food to people, helps them pay their bills, offers "protection", schools their children, and feeds homeless people, it's still a crime gang. Even if it calls itself "government".

Not everything a crime gang does has to look like crime. But if it gets the money for these "services" through theft ("taxes") or counterfeiting (the Federal Reserve) it's a crime gang. Everything it does is tainted by that legacy of crime. Even if you want someone to do those things.

Once you see government as just another crime gang, you are seeing reality a little better than most do.

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If you want to support what I do, you will. If not, you won't.
Thank you.