Silver

If I had any money I'd buy all the silver I could afford right now.

On the other hand, if I were you I wouldn't take any financial advice from someone who is always broke and seems to get more so every year.

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People can't be forced to be free

People can't be forced to be free

(As originally written, not as published. As usual. On another note, I've decided to see if I can remember to put my liberated CNJ columns up at the top once I post them in their entirety. This one was originally published on April 1.)

There is no way to force someone to be free. As a libertarian I see the absurdity of that impossible notion. So when I point out the wrong of liberty-destroying laws I am not demanding that those who feel they need them give them up. That would be trying to force them to be free. On the contrary, they can live under any handicaps they choose. How is that for irony? They are free to be enslaved if that is what they clamor for.

The problem arises when those counterfeit "laws" which attempt to regulate or control something other than an attack or theft are imposed on those of us who don't need them and don't consent to them. Those of us who are not afraid of other people living free within the full scope of their rights. Your right to be a slave ends at the other guy's right to liberty.

I see the words "liberty" and "freedom" as having distinct meanings; unlike some who use them as synonyms. There is some overlap, though. Freedom is doing what you want, whether right or wrong. Liberty is the freedom to act as you want, but only within the boundary of your rights. You might be free to rob a stranger at gunpoint, but since you have no right to do so, and would violate his property rights if you tried, you have no liberty to commit this act. In fact, he would be well within his rights to use deadly force to stop you, regardless of the legal opinion of The State.

Rather than forcing someone to be free, the best you can do for someone else is to remove obstacles to their liberty if it is your legitimate business to do so without violating anyone else's rights in any way. The most commonly ignored way to do this is to simply stop doing things yourself that violate their liberty.

This means you should stop using laws which force others to do things, or forbid them from doing things, for "their own good". This means withdrawing support for those who violate the liberty of those "under" them. This means you should accept that other people will have opinions that you may find reprehensible, just as your opinions may be extremely offensive to someone else. As long as no one is forced to participate- as long as there is no coercion or fraud- it is no one else's business. No matter how much you may be offended or frightened by their non-coercive actions. This also means that while no one has the authority to forbid you from living in liberty, you have no authority to try to force them to be free. Not here and not in Afghanistan.

"Credible threat"

A couple of posts on a couple of different blogs, especially in the comments, inspired some thoughts that I will share with you. It concerns striking the other guy before he has a chance to strike you.

One detail that seems to trip up many people when the Zero Aggression Principle is discussed is when it's OK to act in self-defense before a serious, or even deadly, blow has been struck against you. I think the only time it is OK is when there is a "credible threat" of harm.

To me a credible threat is when, to the best of your knowledge, the threatener has the intention to follow through with the threat and the means to actually carry it out.

A braggart who just wants to look big in front of his friends, but who is too weak to actually do you any damage and who is unarmed (listen up, goverthugs in the Pentagon) is not a credible threat no matter what he says, and an armed person who has no intention of attacking you, even if they are justified, (listen up, LEOs) is also not a credible threat.

Of course, if you attack first anyway, he has no obligation to take it without fighting back, and once you attack, no matter who you are or what you think your "job" is, YOU are a bad guy. Even if you "win". If that is OK with you, then who am I to tell you to get a conscience? You do what you think you must and live with the consequences, all of them, like a self-responsible person.

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Governments lie

One thing I know as surely as I know I have 10 fingers is that governments lie.

You can endlessly debate all kinds of details and definitions such as whether thumbs are fingers or whether I know how to count or what "government" is or what constitutes a "lie" or whether the lies are "necessary", etc... but that's just avoiding the truth that everyone knows unless they are too stupid to remember to breathe: governments lie.

Just a reminder...

If anyone is planning to buy anything from me soon- shirts, books, flags- or make a donation, now would be a good time since I'm still in dire need of funds.

Osama/Obama

It bewilders and sickens me how fast the "conservatives" are to accept the word of a known liar, whom they otherwise are smart enough to distrust, when he claims Osama is now dead, just because it serves their death-cult worship of the military.

Osama bin Laden is/was a despicable, evil man, but unlike Obama, he never threatened my liberty in any way. I know who the real terrorists are and I will not be distracted by silly charades. I'll await the next move.

"I'd like to solve the puzzle, Pat"

O_ _m_ - _ _ _th - c_ _t_f_c_t_

"Obama birth certificate"!

Sorry, that's old news. The answer is "Osama death certificate". You lose- America loses.

Anyone else find it suspicious that when the news of the indisputable fakery involved in the released "Obama birth certificate" looked like it might actually no longer be avoidable to the news media, Osama's cryonically preserved, I mean "freshly dead" corpse appears? Convenient timing or something more sinister?

And, no, I don't give a rodent's orifice where Obama (or Bush or ???) was born since no one has the right or the authority to rule over any other person, no matter the results of any election or coup. But it does go to show how dishonest these parasites are.

Voting in self-defense; no consent

I understand the sentiment of "voting in self defense". I have even done it in the past.

The thing is, I think a self-defensive voter needs to make very clear that the voting is only done to try to avoid difficulties later by either "legalizing" liberty, or by rejecting a "legalized" restriction on liberty, but that if the results of the election go against liberty the voter has no intention of going along with the result.

There is NO consent. Liberty is NOT subject to a vote!

I still think it's better to laugh at the whole silly rigged game.

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Shut me up? Here's how...

Wanna know one thing that really makes me mad?

I am surrounded by pro-government extremists who constantly subject me to their silly and archaic opinions, but I am expected to remain silent and not express my opinion. My opinions are "not polite" or "socially acceptable", I suppose.

I am expected to not make any efforts to defend myself intellectually from the infectious memes of the government extremists, and certainly take no actions to defend myself.

Even the peaceful and humorous act of putting up a sign is seen as a shameful thing. I am apparently an embarrassment. Had I put up a sign supporting even a candidate they didn't like, it would have been OK, I guarantee. But because my sign exposes the illegitimacy of the whole rigged game, it is "wrong".

I don't make an issue of my disagreement with the one who gives lip-service to freedom while supporting the pro-life [sic] protesters and seeking quick "solutions" through Law and enforcement. It's that ridiculous mythical "harm to society", you know, that must be prevented.

I say nothing about the ones who work for and support The State with their careers in some of the most cruel institutions of The State (public schools and prisons), and with their votes.

I say nothing to those who belong to the most popular Death Cult in America, which celebrates the modern Crusade (and Crusaders) in its worship [sic] services while ignoring the realities of the War on Terror/War on Liberty and is fine with torture as long as it happens to "them".

Because I don't buy into all of that nonsense, and because I have previously dared to let them know where I stand (even though I don't harp on it constantly), I am the bad one.

How about this: You stop making it necessary for me to defend my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness/property from your goverthugs and "laws" and I'll shut up. I don't want to think about The State or any other idiotic superstition, but I have no choice when you make it a constant threat. Keep your filthy government to yourself!

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Campaign truth

The town is cluttered with campaign signs for the upcoming mayoral race.

Yay.

So, I just placed this sign in my yard to add a little reason to the debate.

PS: I just wish that, for once, my every action was not met by the person who claims to be my partner with eye-rolling, sighs, disgust, and derision. And frequently anger. It gets old.

Fixing the US budget

For this exercise I'll ignore for a moment that the US is a criminal government and that taxation is always and without exception wrong. I'll pretend for a moment that The State has a legitimate place in life. Now, how would I fix the US budget.

Easy. Just cut the total budget, which means every every single individual budget item, in the fe(de)ral government by the same 99.9%. If an agency previously had a budget of $10 million, under the new plan the budget is now $10,000. Can't do "the job" for that amount? Then shut down and give the assets back to those whose money paid for them.

That should get the government back fairly close to the limits the Constitution set upon its "authority" and would solve the budget crisis. Any "extra" money that is not spent on budget items would go toward paying down the debt, unless the government just defaults.

I don't "need" The State, and neither do you.

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Sociologist could benefit by talking to me

I'm going to step out on a limb again and say that someone who is supposedly smarter than little ol' me has got it wrong. Again.

In this TED video, sociologist Sam Richards almost gets it right, but then he gets sidetracked and caught in the quicksand of the "progressive" mindset. I'm mostly talking about his first exercise in empathy (in the first 3:30 of the video) where he uses the Chinese and Americans in a thought experiment. Watch at least that part then come back and read the rest here.

If, as in his example, "the Chinese" got fabulously wealthy by mining and exporting American coal back to China, then they are buying it from the property owners. Right? Well, in the absence of government, they would be. That's where he misses the point.

Now, he admits that the Chinese only got access to this coal through political deals with Rulers. Deals that enrich the Rulers at the expense of those who actually owned the coal. Why doesn't he think about who owns the coal, and why they are not able to exercise that ownership? Why doesn't he see where the problem originates? The State is the root of this problem; not the resource or those who acquire it.

Where I think he gets it wrong the worst is that he assumes that the Americans in this scenario would be stupid enough to blame the Chinese people and resent their prosperity when the culprits are the political deal-makers in America. They are the thieves. Politicians are always thieves. They are good at making unaware followers blame someone else, though.

Maybe some people are too stupid to see who is really to blame, but that "political elite" better not bet their lives on it.

Now, watch the rest of the video. The funny thing is that he makes the assumption that you and I haven't already put ourselves in the shoes of those who are defending themselves from violent invaders. Or, am I really that different from you?

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Making up rules out of thin air

You can't just make up any rules you want. At least that's what people have told me. But they never seem to apply that same principle to The State or other supposedly "voluntary collectives".

I'm sure you have heard the news that Arizona's governor signed a "law" protecting the Gadsden flag from homeowner association rules. (On a slight tangent, I wonder if the "law" would apply to Time's Up flags as well.)

I think homeowner associations are awful. I can't imagine why anyone would consent to live under one, and yet I can see many ways someone might not have a choice. But, yes, they have a right to make rules forbidding the flags, I suppose, but those rules are still wrong. And the governor has no real authority to make another rule that violates the right of the association to make a wrong rule. Two wrongs don't make a right, even when the second one tries to correct a wrong. No new "laws" are needed; just get rid of the bad "law" that allows the wrong thing to happen in the first place.

Sometimes you are wrong to do what you have a right to do. For example, you would have the right to shoot a trespassing child but it would be wrong to do so.

You might have the right to ban visitors from carrying concealed guns but it's wrong to do so in all but the most unlikely and extreme theoretical cases. Maybe if you had a powerful magnet in your home that would attract the gun and cause it to rip through the flesh of the visitor and bounce toward the magnet, shredding everything in its path, you could make a claim that you really "need" to prohibit guns on your property, but any ferrous metal would be just as dangerous as a gun in that case.

And you might have a right to ban people from flying a particular flag at their home, but trying to actually do that with a rule is the wrong thing to do. And passing another "law", thereby adding to the law pollution we already suffer from, is not the right way to fix anything.

So, you can't just go around making up any rule you want- well, you can, but you might be wrong to do so.

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Trespassing

You may have noticed that when I talk of things that are unequivocally wrong, I list aggression and theft/fraud. I will occasionally mention "and sometimes, trespassing". Why only sometimes?

It is because I see trespassing in a slightly different light. I'm a little uncomfortable placing it in the same category as aggression and theft.

First of all, as I implied in my definition of "trespasser", if you are there with the owner's permission I don't consider you a trespasser. Not even if you failed to abide by the rules that gave you access and if the permission was contingent on those rules being followed. It may not be nice of you, and you should immediately leave when asked to do so. Regardless of whether the rules are legitimate or not, you broke an agreement, but you are not trespassing.

This is the reason I think personal property rights trump real estate rights, a la "Bubble Theory".

The bigger point and the core truth is that you can trespass without causing any harm (offending someone is not "harm") and without having any ill intent.

A lost person stumbling around in the woods can easily become a trespasser but may not damage the violated property in any way and may not have intended to trespass to begin with.

I have also known of trespassers who knew they were entering private property but who had no ill intent or ulterior motive at all, and who even assumed they would be welcome.

I have been on both sides of the equation. I have dealt with trespassers of both types on many occasions and never felt the need to get tough with them. No harm, no ill intent- no real problem.

This is why, unless there is more to the story, I don't view trespassing as a wrong on the same level as aggression and theft. But... maybe I'm wrong to think that way. At least it's something to mull over.

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The "Obama as baby chimp" pic

I would imagine you have heard the controversy over the picture that some politician forwarded that portrayed Obama as a baby chimp, with his chimp parents. If you haven't, I'm sure a search engine could find it for you. The kneejerkers out there are decrying the joke as "racist". Give me a flying break.

First of all, Obama's parents were not of the same "race", so the pic is implying that his "white" mom was a chimp, too; not just his "black" dad. And then Obama himself is a "racial" mixture and is also portrayed as a chimp. That seems pretty even-handed to me. Offense handed out all around. If being a chimp is somehow insulting, that is. Plus, I still see lots of pics of Bush as a chimp. No one claimed that was "racist". In fact, I think both instances would be insulting to chimps if they were aware of them.

Chimps are not a race of human, so how does comparing a person to a chimp qualify as "racist"? Would it be racist to show Obama as a snake or a bunny or a toadstool or a rock?

Finally, do chimps have "race"? If they do, humans (other than maybe Jane Goodall) can't tell by looking. Which means it must be pretty superficial. Could chimps discern that humans have "race"?

I think Obama is a very, very corrupt and bad person. As has been every other president I have ever learned much about. Being a chimp would be a vast improvement.

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Zombie Judges

I recently had to deal with a judge. Yeah, I shudder at the remembrance too.

I've seen the man around town. He is old, extremely feeble, and deaf. In dealing with him I discovered that he couldn't hear me when I tried to tell him I had resolved the situation by complying with The State's demands. He reminded me of nothing so much as a zombie.

I mean, he seriously had no clue I was even speaking and I was maybe, at most, 3 feet from his ears.

In my case The State was "only" stealing my money (since I complied), but what about instances where the stakes are higher? A zombie who is more dead than alive has no business making decisions that affect the lives of others; not for The State and not even under private, consensual arbitration. Although, I suppose under arbitration you could get away with screaming "Listen to me while I try to tell you something relevant, you zombie!"

I know someone who was on a jury in this guy's municipal court a few months ago. She said the judge kept dozing off during the trial. Not the behavior of a responsible person at all!

He may have been a decent guy once, even though I disagree completely with the coercive nature of his employment, but it is way past time for him to do the responsible thing and retire. Some might say it isn't all his fault. I'm supposing he is an elected judge, after all- which goes to show how irresponsible voters are. As if you didn't already know.

264 miles

I'm 264 miles from the "border", and yet today I saw a Border Patrol van stopping a car right here along the highway.

Go away! I want nothing to do with your sort of disgusting control-freaks. You have no business being anywhere, but certainly no legitimate business 264 miles from that which you pretend you have the authority to patrol.

I guess that "Constitution-Free Zone" just keeps growing, and growing, and growing. Yeah, I know. There is no longer anywhere that the Constitution is obeyed by the criminal US government, or its more local co-conspirators, in any instance. And things like this just go to illustrate that point.

Catching writers off-guard

How to respond when someone says "I read your column"?

It always catches me off-guard. I guess I don't expect people to actually read what I write; not people I could run into during the course of my day, anyway.

I think I've answered "you do?" on some occasions. Especially when someone says they have read my columns, but give no indication if they liked them, or whether they agreed with them, or if they think I should be locked away forever for my opinions.

Yesterday I was caught off-guard by someone who said he read my "stuff" and I just said "I'm sorry". I'm not sure if I was being humorous or not, since he gave no further feedback. I was thinking "...and...???" Anyway, I asked which "stuff". I guess he has read a bit of all of it. Still not sure what he thought of it, though.

Usually when people tell me they read my column they do so in a conspiratorial manner. They sidle up and say "Hey, I really enjoy your columns" and then slip away quietly before I can say much more than a quick "thank you". This is the most fun feedback.

I've also had people comment favorably and leave me wondering if they actually understood what they read- like when the one woman thanked me for "standing up for good moral values". Me? LOL!

Maybe I should write myself a few scripts for such occasions.

Patriots' Day "4-19"

"4-19". "Patriots' Day".

Once upon a time being a "patriot" wasn't so bad. Now... well, the worst devils wrap themselves in patriotism in order to get away with all sorts of horrid things.

"Patriots" join the military and "law enforcement" in order to crush individual liberty and impose the will of The State. Those in the military who go overseas even endanger their friends and family "back home" by their actions of building and supporting the US Empire. "Patriots" torture people for god and country. "Patriots" molest children at airports. "Patriots" support the actions of a criminal government and snitch on the good people who oppose The State.

If true patriotism were supporting the ideals that the country was supposedly founded upon- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness/property- well, then I could get behind that. That's no longer the case. In fact, those who are the biggest danger to those ideals are celebrated as the biggest patriots. That's just screwed up.

Message to the control freaks and enforcers

"We don't need you.

We don't want you.

We don't respect you.

We won't tolerate you much longer."

Will Grigg gets it right again.