Making laws much like littering

(My Clovis News Journal column for April 22, 2016)

I always try to leave my surroundings a little better than I find them. If I see a problem needing to be fixed, I do my best to fix it.

Sometimes leaving the world better means picking up litter, or hooking a loose seat back on a swing for the kids.

Other times there's not much I can personally do and I have to be content pointing out the mess so others can help. Such as when encouraging people to stop littering the world with "laws".

I see laws the same way I see other litter: as clear evidence irresponsible people have been here and left their mark. They toss their trash on everyone else without the slightest hint of awareness of what they have done. Or, in the case of laws, even suffering the delusion they are doing something useful.

While it's easy to walk around and pick up paper and plastic litter, it is harder to put "laws" in their place. Too many people want to leave them where they lie, and get offended if you suggest there's a problem with an obvious solution.

Since I can't physically pick up a law and toss it in the burn barrel, what can I do? I can point out the mess to others so they won't step in it; I don't comfort those who pollute the world with laws, and I don't support those who insist on enforcing them. This helpfulness comes with risk.

Of course, I have cut myself on other forms of litter too. Anything worth doing carries risk.

One thing I haven't experienced yet is having someone see me picking up litter, then running up to knock the trash out of my hand and attack me for what I am doing. This is very different than the reaction when you become aware and concerned about law pollution. Stockholm Syndrome is deeply rooted where laws are concerned.

If you make up a law which must be enforced, you can be sure it isn't a real law. No law is necessary to give you the right to defend yourself or others from attackers or thieves, nor to demand restitution. But, without a law backing them, few would get away with stopping travelers for going a little faster than some arbitrary rule allows, and taking money from them. There are only two kinds of laws; the harmful and the unnecessary. Which of those do you pollute our world with?

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No time like the present (PINNED- new posts below this one)

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Get the message? This is what they are saying

This IS what they are telling you.

This is all I see,  just about everywhere I go. Except that often there is no image, just an poster-sized page of small print citing the Texas law that justifies and legalizes their anti-social behavior.

And it is like a slap in my face.

I am almost tempted to have a bunch of stickers like this printed up and stick them over every anti-liberty bigot's "no guns" sign I see. No, I won't because of property rights, but I am so sick of not being welcome anywhere in this region, it is seriously disgusting.

There is now one exception, which I have been rewarding with my business since they quietly removed their "no liberty allowed" signage a while back. Too bad they are so expensive and don't stock everything I need.

Apparently, from what others have told me, other stores owned by the same companies in other places welcome guns... but not around here. Nope. Almost every door you approach has a anti-rights sign posted.

On the other hand, this is something I'd like to see, but have about given up on, in this extremely anti-gun area of Texas/New Mexico:

Wouldn't it be nice to matter?

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Restroom dramatists

This is how I see the "issue".

Yes, your opinion may differ. That's your business. Make a video laying out your position and link to it in the comments if you feel strongly about it.

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The Endorsement

I am proud to make my official endorsement for 2016.

Drum roll, please...

I endorse....

You.

Who were you expecting?

Only YOU can run your own life. Even if you are an incompetent idiot, you will still do a better job running your own life than some government employee. Only YOU really have your own best interests at heart (even if you screw up), and only YOU know the circumstances of your life and the situation you find yourself in.

I whole-heartedly, without reservation, endorse you.

And there you have it.

So, make it count.

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Clash of the Lowly things

Believe it or not, sometimes a cop shoots a person who deserves to be shot. That isn't the majority of the cases, but it does happen.

Am I supposed to get worked up about it, one way or another?

When a cop shoots a freelance bad guy- a thief caught in the act or an aggressor during an attack- I don't necessarily feel the good guys "won". I feel the same way I feel when a freelance bad guy shoots a cop. It's just a clash of vermin. Bad guy vs. bad guy. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

For all I care they can wipe each other off the face of the planet; the rest of us would be better off. I just always hope no innocent people get hurt in the crossfire between the warring vermin. There are some people you are simply better off staying far away from. Cops are among them.

#CopsAreScum

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 And don't forget to check back tomorrow to see who I am endorsing in 2016.

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My endorsement coming soon

I know you've been holding your breath!

Watch for a major announcement on this blog Monday, as I make my official 2016 endorsement.

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Feel the freedom?

Had to take a non-elective trip to the Big City for medical stuff today, and I don't think I have ever seen so many ScumCars on the highway in my life.

There was a state trooper every few miles- half of them stopped and committing acts of enforcement against people. In one case a couple of them had ganged up on one traveler and were on the phone, probably seeking more molesters to come for back up.

Boy, I feel so protected I need to scrape the freedom off my skin with a cheese grater.

 #CopsAreScum

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Acquire skills!

If you have the right skills you can survive naked in the wilderness, at least until you can make your own clothes and tools to make things easier.

I do not yet have enough skills. I'm not even sure how to define "enough" when it comes to skills.

But every skill you learn will make it easier. Every skill will also make some "thing" unnecessary.

I love looking through "sportsman's" catalogs, especially at their camping gear. But so often I look at things and think "why would anyone buy that when it's so unnecessary".

It's usually because they are missing skills that would make it unnecessary.

It doesn't mean you have to then stop using tools you can buy. Nothing makes you value modern firemaking tools more than learning the skills to do without them. And the same goes for the value of a good knife, and shoes.

Learn skills to make as much unnecessary as possible. Then you can still get the stuff you want, but you won't need it.

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Scum shirt

In case you still believe I'm crazy when I state that cops are scum, just look at this shirt:

It is a cop shirt. It is said to be a very popular design.

I suppose police state enthusiasts may believe it is funny. They apparently believe everyone violated by cops "deserves it".

I see no humor in it. In fact, to me it is about as funny as a shirt showing a Nazi concentration camp with the words "May I interest you in a shower?" emblazoned on the image.

It is certainly NOT the shirt of a good guy, but that of a cowardly bully with delusions of "authority".

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Theft by any other name still theft

(My Clovis News Journal column for April 15, 2016)

What do you call the act of taking property under threat of doing something unpleasant to any victim who refuses to comply? Obviously it is theft.

What do most people call an identical act when committed by government employees? Taxation.

Why the hypocrisy? Giving an act a new name doesn't change its nature. Taxation is theft.

Of course, I have heard some taxation apologists claim your money isn't yours at all- it all belongs to government and you should be grateful they allow you to keep any of it. What couldn't be justified under such an absurd belief system?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. got it backwards when he asserted taxation is the price we pay for a civilized society. In truth a civilized society is what we often manage to create in spite of taxation. Allowing taxation to continue limits how civilized a society can be.

Some people eventually come to terms with the truth that taxation is theft, but still find ways to excuse it. They believe society can't function without taxation.

If you want something not popular enough to be voluntarily funded, you need to let it go. If your idea is good, why would you need to force people to go along, threatening them with prison- or worse- if they'd rather opt out?

If something is wanted or needed, it will happen without robbing your neighbors. It is wrong to force people to pay for things they won't fund voluntarily, and it is evil to force them to finance things they oppose. Things like war, prohibition, government schools, abortions, welfare, and government agencies such as the BATFE which are criminal by their very existence.

Is a parking lot mugging justified if the mugger promises to spend a portion of the money on things you need? Or if he is using the plunder to feed orphans and widows? What if the mugger promises to hire strongmen to patrol the neighborhood to prevent any other muggers from operating in his territory?

If you keep money safely hidden from the mugger in your shoe, have you committed mugging evasion? Do you owe the mugger?

Theft is theft even if you really want to use the money for something good. Taxation is theft even if it pays your salary. Theft doesn't magically become OK if you give a percentage of it back to your victims. And taxation is theft even if you can't imagine living without it.

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Being nice to violators

How nice should you be to murderers, rapists, and thieves? How nice should you be to their friends and family who support and approve of their nasty deeds? What if they have all been carefully brainwashed for a lifetime to not see their acts as murder, rape, or theft?

Does this excuse them and obligate you to overlook what they do? To be nice to them?

This is the exact situation with those who work for government.

It doesn't matter if you are talking about a kindergarten teacher, the janitor who mops the courthouse, or the cop who murders a jaywalker who he claims appeared to have a gun.

If you work for government in any capacity, you are doing wrong. You are harming rightful liberty. Do you still expect your victims to be nice about it?

I understand those who say they are undermining the State from the inside. And maybe this occasionally does some good. I also understand they need to not be noticed as infiltrators so as to not be kicked out. But if you put on the uniform and hang out with the bad guys, you must expect to be shot as an enemy. It's a hazard you knew and accepted when you chose that path, and it's no one else's responsibility to coddle bad guys just because you may be in their midst of your own free will.

I'm not talking about "collateral damage", but someone actively taking part in living undercover as a bad guy, even if you are trying to destroy them. If this is what you are really doing, and you can live this life without doing any harm, I hope you avoid getting caught up in it. And, I'm just talking about whether people should be nice to the bad guys, not about defense.

If you are one of the bad guys, I'm probably not going to be nice to you. Nor should you expect me to. You can whine or make up "laws" to try to force me to act like you want, but that just shows how bad and weak you really are. Good luck with that.

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The feds are not the biggest danger to your guns

The right to own and to carry weapons- including, but not limited to, guns- is a natural human right. It exists everywhere at all times, in spite of what governments may say, just because you were born human. There is no legitimate or ethical way to restrict or ration this right. None at all.

This means the Second Amendment couldn't have created that right. It will still exist even if the Second Amendment is abolished. The right existed long before the first government was dreamed up, and it will still exist millennia after the last government has collapsed in upon itself.

People worry a lot about the feds making up new anti-gun "laws", but almost all those laws end up being enforced by their accomplices in local law enforcement. Law enforcement is always breaking the law by doing so.

"Just doing my job" and "I don't make the laws, I just enforce them" doesn't cut it. Those excuses didn't work in Nuremberg and they won't work in America.

Every time you read in the sheriff's report about someone being arrested on "illegal weapon" or "illegal carry" charges you are seeing how evil the local law enforcers are. I realize it may be an easy way to arrest someone who couldn't easily be arrested otherwise. It is still wrong. It is committing a wrong openly and then announcing it. It is arrogant and disgusting.

Who needs to worry about the feds with local bullies doing their dirty work for them?

I don't "believe in" the Constitution. It either created the problem we now live in or did nothing to prevent it. But many of those who recognize the evil of anti-gun "laws" still claim to support the Constitution, while also supporting those who violate it.

Enforcing any anti-gun law is a serious crime, if the Constitution means anything. It is a serious violation of natural human rights even if the Constitution is irrelevant. There is no justification for it. You can tell how much a person cares about liberty (and how much they respect the Constitution) by how supportive he is of those individuals who enforce gun laws. There's a term for those who enforce anti-gun "laws": domestic enemies.

The really awful thing is that while private property owners have the right to tell visitors to not bring guns onto their property (even if it exposes them as cowardly vermin), government has no such right, and is in fact specifically prohibited from doing so, by the document they point to as giving them the "authority" to exist. Yes, this means the "no guns" sign at the post office or at the government "public" school is a serious crime; not the rightful act of ignoring that sign.

But statists want to try to have it both ways. It never works like that and never will.

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You will be violated. Your move.

People are going to do things to you they have no right to do. They will violate you. It's just life.

A few of these bad guys won't even bother trying to justify their acts, but most will.

Most of the justifiers will claim they possess a magical quality they'll call "authority", and will claim this quality can turn evil into good when they use it.

They are liars, of course.

But most people will buy it, because in their minds "authority" is permission to do bad things. Things they know they shouldn't do, but will somehow believe are OK as long as you have "authority". Yes, it is just that dumb.

All that stuff is beside the point. The point is, what are you going to do about it? What will you let the violators get away with?

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Government is always at war with Liberty

Government is a perpetual War on Rightful Liberty. That's its entire justification and purpose.

Oh sure, its supporters lie and say its there to "protect your rights", or to be the final arbiter in disputes, but those are provably false.

In fact, when government is claimed to "protect your rights", what happens to those rights? If they aren't completely violated and made "crimes", they are at least made subject to permission and license... which in reality is still just violating them.

And what good is a final arbiter when he is one of the parties in the dispute? Less than no good at all, is what. If you have a problem with me stealing from you or molesting your daughter, do you really want the final say on the matter to be mine? Then why allow government to have the final say in matters of "taxation" or "weapons violations" or anything else that wouldn't even be an issue except for counterfeit government rules?

In all cases government is only there to violate your rights and to fight its war on your Rightful Liberty. You don't need that kind of abuse- there are enough freelance bad guys out there to deal with, and having to expend energy on keeping yourself safe from the "help" does nothing but empower all the bad guys.

The thing is, the bad guys of The State vastly outnumber the freelance bad guys they claim to be protecting you from- probably at least hundreds to one.

I have been violated by freelance bad guys so few times in my life I could probably count the times on my fingers.

But every single day I am violated multiple times by employees of The State. Whether it is every time I am forced to pay a "tax", or every time I am not allowed to use my property as I wish, or every time I am prohibited from carrying a gun where and how I want, or when I am forced to pay attention to my speed rather than paying attention to traffic and road conditions, or whatever. Sure, you might say most of those are minor- and they are- but they are still violations of rightful liberty. And one violation is too many.

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Charged with 'Possession of...'

 Possession of anything, no matter what it is, can never be a real crime.

It doesn't matter how much you wish it were so.

That goes for drugs, guns, large amounts of cash, "open containers", or anything else.

For one thing, it is easy to plant some prohibited item on a person you want to find a reason to punish. Cops do it all the time, and if you believe they don't you might ought to consider a few thoughts.

Is it easy to plant something on someone? Is it likely you'd get caught doing so? Is the benefit of planting it outweighed by the small risk of being caught? Is it likely that anyone who voices the concern that the prohibited item was planted will be ostracized as siding with the "criminal"- and quite probably lumped in and accused of the same "crime" the supposed criminal was accused of?

The answers to all those questions, if one is honest, shows that planting prohibited items goes on all the time.

Sure, some people actually do have guns and use them aggressively. Some people do use and sell "drugs"- although making this "illegal" was one of the most evil acts of statism ever committed. Some people involved in things the government disapproves of do carry around big wads of cash. So what?

For a real crime, as opposed to a government "crime", to have been committed, an individual or their property has to have been violated individually by the individual person who is responsible. Possession of anything doesn't cut it. Not ever.

But, when the "authorities" can parade (or speak of) the prohibited things being found in the possession of a person they are seeking to punish, and when the general population cheers for the "bad guy" getting caught. it is just too convenient. Advocating these sorts of "laws", or supporting enforcement of them, plays right into the wrong hands.

Simple possession, of anything, can never be a crime, even if in some cases it might be ethically or morally wrong. Anything else is just too ripe for abuse by the real bad guys: the bullies who call themselves government.

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Just a common cop

The other day I saw a cop and the thought came to me "He's just a common cop."

Yep. That's what they are: a common cop, or even a "common badge". Lowly scum, just like any other common criminal-type property-violating, aggressive scum.

These "people" need to be reviled just like other "common criminals" are. They are worse, in fact, since they seem to feel entitled to worship due to their vile position. Few burglars would expect to lead a parade or have people thank them for what they do. But, cops? All the time.

#CopsAreScum

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All have identical, equal rights

(My Clovis News Journal column for April 8, 2016)

I see politics as a flawed attempt to get along with people you don't like. Flawed, because using the violence of laws to try to make people do what you want leads them to pull the same stunt against you. It's the ultimate "an eye for an eye" opera, which never ends unless one side stops.

One sad thing I've noticed is people preemptively poking themselves in the eye-- doing their enemies' work for them-- without realizing what they are doing. They do this by supporting the political party "their people" have historically identified with regardless of how it actually treats them.

I wonder why people do these harmful things to themselves.

Why do most feminists, LGBTQs, and environmentalists support the Democratic Party, when it doesn't actually support them?

Why do most conservative Christians, gun owners, and entrepreneurs stand behind the Republican Party, when it betrays them whenever it gets the chance?

The mainstream parties are out for their own best interests, willing to use whoever they can dupe,  as long as they find them convenient. As soon as the favors are due, they get amnesia about who gave them their power. And their supporters forgive and forget.

On all these matters libertarians-- even the Libertarian Party, if you still believe politics can solve anything-- are more welcoming to all the above than either of the mainstream parties.

The only thing anyone might miss in libertarianism is the lack of license to violate others or their property. If this is your desire, you're on your own. It doesn't matter what your excuse is, how bad you want to reserve the option, how "necessary" you believe it is, or who assures you it's OK.

Libertarians know beyond a shadow of a doubt, and are willing to put their lives where their mouths are, that every human on the planet has equal and identical rights. Whether the "powers that be" respect those rights or not. Regardless of what you own, who you love, where you were born, what language you speak, what you worship, how much melanin is in your skin, or which chromosomes you have.

Unfortunately, this eliminates any excuse to use laws to make anyone subservient to anyone else. No legal favoritism and no legal hindrances. Many people can't tolerate this equality.

This causes me to reach the sad conclusion that for most people it's not enough to experience liberty-- someone else must have their liberty violated, too. Which explains why we still suffer politics and governments.

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Great and Fearful "Laws"

I'm not afraid of your "laws".

I don't honor or respect them, either.

Nor do I want or need them.

They are nothing to me. Less than nothing.

Laws never stop bad guys from hurting me, and if bad guys who use laws to violate others want to hurt me they don't need laws to help them do so.

Sure, the most cowardly bad guys hide behind "laws", but they'd hide behind something no matter what.

Respect for the law seems an empty thing to hold on to. A very silly thing.

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Statist Language Games

(Previously posted to Patreon)

Control the language and you control thought. Sometimes to the point that thoughts outside of the box aren't even possible. How can you think something when there are no words to express it? Or if the words have been redefined to the point they are meaningless?

Nowhere is this reality as obvious as in the use of "legal definitions".

Legal definitions are written by statists. Statists who believe in the State and in "laws" that create the State and prop it up. "Laws" which create "authority" and privileges and obligations... which have no foundation in reality.

Maybe in some cases they were halfway decent statists who wanted to promote liberty, but the very notion of a legal definition is statist.

When people focus on legal definitions they are being brainwashed into statism.

People who "study law" seem to get sucked into the superstition worse than people who don't. They begin to believe human-written "law" is legitimate. And "important". And somehow "truth".

At least I sure see a lot of evidence of that.

**Magical words will fix everything, if you just say them the right way.**

**Look at the words on this paper; they don't say what you believe they say, and if you know what they *really* mean, you can show this to the Rulers and they'll leave you alone.**

Stuff like that.

It's where you get the self-contradictory idea of the "sovereign citizen".

And those who fall for this the hardest get really angry at people who don't buy into their superstitions. I just had one (who was also posting links where he blamed everything on Jews, and demonstrated he doesn't have a clue what "libertarian" means) call me an idiot on Facebook. I count that as an endorsement.

But he seems to really believe that if a definition is the "legal definition", it means something more than what the word means, and it can be used to advance his agenda- whatever that may be.

Well, good luck playing a game that was rigged so that you can never really win. As for me, no thanks.

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