Be Vewy Vewy Qwiet

Well, it's that special time of year again, when Muslims the world over go into hibernation during the daylight hours, known as Ramadan.

If you don't live in a predominantly Muslim country (yet), you may not be aware of what it means to observe the Holy Month.  You also may not be aware that the observance is based on the Lunar Year, which is about two weeks shorter than a Solar Year, so over the years, Ramadan slowly precesses up the calendar, coming slightly earlier than the year before.  For instance, when I first moved to Indonesia in 2008, to escape the Shrub Administration in the US, Ramadan was in October.  This year it began in mid-April.  

 And here Catholics thought trying to figure out when Easter comes in any given year was complicated.  At least you know it always happens on a Sunday.

So anyway, during the 29 days of Ramadan, the observant practitioner refrains from eating or drinking from sun up to sun down.  In fact, the strict observers will refrain from even swallowing their own saliva, which in some places offers an interesting sight of hundreds of folks spitting all day long.

In my experience, many folks just sleep all day, so as to avoid temptation.  After about 7am, neighborhoods become deathly silent until about 5pm, when the womenfolk commence to rattling pots and pans in anticipation of sun down.

Ramadan culminates in the Eid al-Fitr, or Idul Fitri in Indonesian, which is the Feast of Breaking Fast.  To give the Western reader a sense of what this is like, imagine Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and St. Patrick's Day all rolled into one.

In Indonesia, Idul Fitri is followed by Lebaran, which is officially a three-day holiday, but in practice is anywhere from two weeks to a month.  This holiday involves mudik (exodus), in which every living being abandons the city to pulang kampung, or return to the home town.  Mudik is followed by lavish feating and one of the most amazing redistributions of wealth known to Humankind.

Leading up to Lebaran, people exchange gift baskets of sumbako, or essential foods, usually rice, fruit syrups for flavoring water, canned goods, and homemade snacks in the form of bite-sized cookies and other sweets.

It is also a time for Tunjangan Hari Raya Keagamaan, or more commonly THR.  This literally means, "Religious Holiday Subsidy".  Employers are required by law to give all employees a 13th month of salary, while out in everyday life, it means everyone and their brother expects a tip for everything and the police become extra diligent in enforcing traffic laws.  Meanwhile, back at the kampung, folks return home with wads of cash (borrowed of course) to hand out to family members, displaying their financial success in the previous year for all to see.

One curious feature of this ostentatious display of imaginary wealth is that new car sales spike just before Lebaran, and then slightly used car sales spike roughly two to four weeks later.

The practical side of all this is that those of us who stay in the cities find ourselves in literal ghost towns for a couple of weeks after 90% of the population scattered to the winds.

Except for this year - and this is the fun part.

This year, Jakarta's illustrious and all-knowing gubbener declared that Lebaran, and specifically mudik, are cancelled in the battle to contain the spread of the Fauci Flu Damn-Panic.  Beginning May 1st, no one will be allowed to leave the city.

In most countries, this kind of officious edict might be taken seriously, but this is Indonesia, where finding creative ways of circumventing the law is a national pastime.  Instead of waiting for the annual THR payment a week before Lebaran, folks began packing up and moving out almost as soon as Ramadan began.

Around my neighborhood, shops and restaurants have shut down.  Food stalls that appear on the streets at sun down have vanished and one can actually stroll down the sidewalk unmolested.  Traffic has dwindled to early Damn-Panic levels.  The floating oil slick euphemistically called "air" in these parts, has cleared.  Offices have emptied out and ride-hailing services have added 25% to 50% to their normal tariffs in hopes of encouraging drivers to roll out of bed.

Given that Idul Fitri begins on May 12th, and under normal circumstances this would all occur around the 9th or 10th, this is really quite humorous, and it highlights not only the illusory self-importance the politicians put on themselves, but also the fact that the people aren't buying the Damn-Panic.

This shows, in all its absurdity, that numbnuts sitting in their pre-embargo ivory towers have exactly zero real power to change human nature.  It shows that folks can't be fooled forever, when they see empty hospital wards and the gubbermint handing out free Fauci Flu vaccines to dogs and cats to inflate the distribution numbers, and especially when they don't see people dropping dead in the streets.

While the early shut-down and exodus has caused some inconveniences, I still thoroughly enjoy seeing the complete repudiation of "authority" and I appreciate the Indonesian impulse to simply ignore the rules when it doesn't suit their purposes.

Most of all, I enjoy watching the delusional "leaders" being mocked in a passive-agressive kind of way.  It's almost as if folks vote for class clowns, in order to isolate them from the sane folks, where we can keep an eye on them and they have to write down all their plans so we can carefully avoid them.

Who said anarchy can't be fun?

============================================

Want to support our efforts without a bunch of corporate "guidelines" in the way?  Drop some bits on us:

Bitcoin: bc1qth6drgzcyt7vlxxpvqh6erjm0lmaemwsvf0272
Etherium: 0xf1F04715704dbC5E2e96E047D4aBc22c611B6E86
Ripple: rMSQzLyE3RHacCLwYPADBbq4RHQ71HpCzw
Litecoin: LQeH2i9vMKMNx5WaLjAGaHWjtfhKL6yqCE

In Search Of A River

Well, it's been an eventful week.  Started off with a massive web virus attack initiated by the NSA and targeting specifically Russia and China, and ended up with special council being appointed to get to the bottom of the Trump-Russia issue, which of course is entirely fabricated to keep eyes away from Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

I've made it abundantly clear I don't care much for Donald Trump.  I think he's a self-aggrandizing circus barker who happens to be a marketing genius, but he's only as good as the people he surrounds himself with, since he's not much of an intellect, just a bundle of impulses that appear to have coherency.  I must admit, though, I miss him using "bigly" all the time.  Great adverb that no one, even the late night blabber-mouths picked up on.

In any event, it's all very exciting and makes for hours of knee-slapping entertainment.  The Russians are certainly bemused, though we must keep in mind that Russians are second only to Germans in their lack of a sense of humor.  The Chinese and North Koreans are completely nonplussed, given that Trump sailed half the US fleet over to the South China Sea to deliver the message that he was ready to talk.  A nice note delivered by the ambassadors would have been more than sufficient.

Given the global circus currently playing on a Fake News channel near you, it seems that humans should try something we haven't done in a long, long time - try life without governments.

Just imagine: no taxes, no police brutality, no wars, no corporations, just folks going about their business pursuing happiness, however one defines that.

One of the greatest books in English literature is Huckleberry Finn.  No one is allowed to read it anymore, because one of the main characters is named Nigger Jim, but its demise is a loss to all humanity.  Here's a link to a free copy.

This book has had a profound effect on my life.  It was one of the first books that I critically analyzed in school, meaning it was instrumental in my revelation that great literature had multiple layers of meaning.  More importantly was its message that civilization was often less civilized than living the free life of pure, unadulterated anarchy.

The story is about Huck Finn and Nigger Jim taking a rafting trip down the Mississippi River in the early 1800s.  The river, of course, is a metaphor for life and freedom.  However, whenever the two characters stopped off on the banks, they were immediately burdened with the authoritarian world, where people and institutions began imposing civilization upon the two hapless travelers.

In one adventure, Huck is adopted by a godly woman, forced to bathe and dress "appropriately," and bundled off the church on a regular basis.  Huck is like a fish out of his element, as he lies on the beach of law and order, gasping for freedom, even though he thought he was supposed to meet these expectations as part of the "good life".

In another adventure, Nigger Jim is captured and labelled as a runaway slave.  Again, the assumptions and prejudices of "civilized" society entrap our heroes and force them to flee in fear and disgust.

It is a brilliant book and one which every conscious mind should take in.

For my own experience, some of the best times of my life have been when I had hardly a coin in my pocket, no schedule and thousands of miles from "civilization".  One of my most memorable adventures was backpacking from Morocco to Egypt, through Algeria and Libya, in 1980.

I had undertaken the journey after a run through Morocco to see Casablanca and El Fez.  Wanting to see the pyramids, but finding it rather out of the way to go through Spain, Monaco, Italy, and Greece to go from North Africa to North Africa, I decided to take buses across the Mediterranean coast.

On the first leg of the journey from Tangiers to the Algerian border, I was packed into the barely road-worthy bus with all manner of humans and livestock.  The lack of A/C meant that there was more dust swirling around the inside of the bus than could possibly be found in the entire Sahara desert.  For the remainder of the trip, I opted to sit on the luggage rack welded precariously to the back of the bus, and with a towel wrapped around my head and face, proceeded to watch the unfolding of where I had been.

I had maybe $100 in my pocket at the outset, and roughly $85 when I arrived at the foot of the Great Pyramid.  It took four days of rib-cracking, kidney splitting rides and it was among the best weeks of my life.  No bosses, no one to talk to (my French was pretty limited back then) and nowhere to be in any particular hurry.  Other than the occasional passport stamping routines, I had no authority over me at all, and needed none.

Oh sure, a number of folks tried to rob me or scam me out of my money, but I managed to get through those events relatively unscathed, and they only occurred when I entered cities.  On the open road, life was blissful, quiet and safe.  I imagined myself as Huck Finn at that time, minus the abundant water, which would have been nice for the occasional bath.

The point of all this rambling is this: how much of what we assume is necessary for life to go on do we really need?  And how much of it is just a scam that we have been raised to believe is a critical part of life?

When you really contemplate the unholy mess we call "civilization", almost all of the bad things are CAUSED by authority, not solved by it.  Honestly, outside of "don't cheat, don't steal, don't lie, and don't murder", how many laws actually do us individuals any good?  Most simply protect corporate, government or religious interests, not you and me.  The bulk of civilization benefits a handful of folks at the top of the pile, and the rest of us be damned.

When you look at all the crap going on right now with governments around the world, how much of it actually affects you and me?  Does it really matter that Kim Jong-un is playing with rockets (like a couple dozen other countries that aren't being threatened)?  Does it really matter that Ahok had an opinion about a couple of lines of text?  Does it really make a difference what Trump told Lavrov?  Will Macron or Brexit or the entire EU make damn bit of difference in a thousand years?

How much of the truly important things would still be there without governments?  I'm willing to bet that demand would mean someone would supply electricity, water, housing, and the internet out of sheer self-interest.  In fact, I'm willing to bet all of it would be much better without all the "authority" fingers in those pies.

I would love for some country to take the first step.  Imagine Iceland or Switzerland or even Venezuela declaring an end to government and free, happy living.  I would bet that in 50 years' time, nearly every country on Earth did the same thing.  What would the governments do about it?  After all, there are only a few million "public servants" to us billions of real people.  Not like they'd have much choice.

But, oh, ain't there a whole lot of conditioning and mind control to overcome.

Anarchy Is Bliss

When no one is looking, some jerk declares him- or herself king, appointed by God with unquestionable powers. He or she can take any or all of your property by declaring a new law this morning over breakfast and by the way, you are property, too.  Oh, and their kids will be the all-powerful rulers after they die.  This is monarchy.

All the folks in your neighborhood get together and decide they are going to charge you a fee to use your car on the neighborhood streets.  If you refuse to pay, they will storm your house and take everything you own.  That's called democracy.

All the people in the neighborhood get together and elect a representative to come to your house and extract a fee to use you car on the neighborhood streets.  If you don't comply, they will nominate other representatives to force you to pay, or yet others will take away your property.  This is called representative democracy.

All the companies in your neighborhood bribe the elected officials to take whatever want from you, regardless of whether you follow the rules or not.  This is called fascism.

Self-appointed "representatives" take over all the companies in your neighborhood and use them to take whatever they want from you, regardless of whether you follow the rules or not.  This is called socialism.

All the folks in the neighborhood decide they are going to share everything equally.  One neighbor can come and help himself to your Makita carbide-tipped circular saw for as long as he needs it, but hey!-you can use his Maserati whenever no one else is (which is almost never).  Ultimately, everyone downgrades to the cheapest crap since they will lose it anyway.  This is called communism.

In all the above systems of government are immoral on their face.  There is nothing that justifies any of these organizations in taking your property.  Even if you are duped into participating in an "election" of representatives, there is still no moral justification to deprive you of your property or compel you to follow rules you don't agree with.

In other words, there is no such thing as moral government.  It doesn't exist.  In all of time and history, there has never been a moral government, only less malignant ones.  At some level and at some point, they all use some justification to take your property "for the greater good," and whether the justification is an imaginary deity or 63 million of your neighbors, it is all immoral.

My lifelong friend and a successful Miami lawyer said to me, "Hey, taxes are the price of admission."

I responded, "So, if your neighborhood Kiwanis club decides you owe dues, and if you don't pay, they show up at your door with guns and take your stuff, that's OK?"

"Well, of course not," he said, "But that's different."

"In what way," I inquired.

"Governments operate by the consent of the people.  They create laws and members of society must follow those laws."

"So, if Dade County voters decided that all lawyers should immediciately be divested of their property and codify it in law, that's OK?  Even if they require you to pay taxes to pay the enforcers who show up at your door to take your property and put you on the street?"

"That's an absurd proposition," he argued.  "That cannot happen because there are layers of checks to prevent it."

I pressed on, "I don't agree with my country going and bombing non-aggressive countries into the Stone Age simply because they want to accept something other than dollars for their raw materials.  If I want to fight it, I must use the very system that is doing the evil acts, pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, hire a team of lawyers who are officers of that same system, just to register my disgust?  I would lose in that stacked game before I even started, since the system can decide whether or not it wants to hear my case."

(Pause) "You can move to another country," he countered.

"Oh, so if I don't agree with the Kiwanis demanding dues for a club I don't want to join, I am free to choose another location where the Rotarians or Lions or whoever can demand fees for clubs I don't want to join?"

"Yep, that's about the sum of it," he declared.

"That's immoral," I protested.

"That's life," he said, dismissing the entire issue.

In point of fact, the only moral form of governance is that of Self.  I have the right and moral authority to govern myself.  That's it.  End of story.  To the extent that my wife has half-interest in my property, she has an equal say in its use and disposal.  In that we have guardianship and responsibility for minor children, we can guide and direct them.  That is the full extent of any human's authority.  No amount of "backup" in the form of guns or people or machines changes the equation.  All they do is modify the odds of the outcome.

Within the bounds of my Self and my property, I have the moral right to use and dispose of it however I like, provided I don't cause harm or damage to anyone else.

Think of it - how many social problems in the world right now would be solved by this simple change?  No need for "special" rights.  No need for draconian laws.  No wars of mass destruction.  No human having more or less authority than any other human.

In other words, anarchy is the only moral form of governance ever conceived by humans, and it is the most vilified form, as well.  Probably a relationship there.

Anarchy does not create chaos, it alleviates it.  When people are left alone to live their lives however they see fit, there is nothing to argue about.  Chaos is caused by immoral acts perpetrated by immoral organizations using whatever justifications come to hand.  What follows is war, strife and despair.

The one thing we all fear most - chaos - is the very thing we create with our institutional "authorities".  Since the information we are given is wrong - by accident or design - we can never make a right choice based on it.  Anarchy is good, moral and necessary for genuine peace and happiness - and it is the one thing the immoral organizations fear the most.

In other words, keep you cotton-pickin' hands off my stuff, and I'll do the same for you.

The Skin On Our Teeth

Well, how do you like them crackers?  We made it through another year more or less intact and slightly less for the wear and tear.  As Igor (that's Eye-Gore) remarked in Young Frankenstein, "Could be worse.  Could be raining."

In any event, it was a good month here on the Far Side.  December marked a new high in visitors, coming within a hair's breadth of our all-time record of 13,000 and change, which we hit shortly before disappearing off the face of the Earth for a couple of years.  Thus, our come-back is complete!

The majority of new visitors are coming from Russia, and they are apparently hacking our site and changing key words in sentences all the way back to 2010, when we started this labor of love.  To all these good folk we say, "Благодарю вас за вашу поддержку и, пожалуйста, приходите еще."

It's been a long year.  Don't know about you, but it seems like the entire year has been spent pushing boulders uphill, only to have them trundle back down again, crushing innocent by-standers on the way.  To those good folks we say, stay down baby, just stay down.

This was supposed to be a good year for me according to Chinese astrology, but I think I got the dirty end of the Monkey.  Here's hoping the Year of the Red Hot Cock (or Red Fire Rooster if you prefer) will bring a bit of luck with it.  Master Tsai says us Oxen will "bring home the trophy" this year.  If it doesn't happen, I'm going to track down Master Tsai and gag him with his rune stones.

God willing and the creek don't rise, this year should bring a little travel.  In March, we are scheduled to take a week in Bali.  Around mid-year, we are hoping for a first trip to Japan, and at the end of the year, we are eyeing a jaunt to Antarctica leaving out of Tasmania.  If all goes according to plan, I will end the year having set foot on every continent and most major islands of the planet.  Still missing Madagascar, Greenland and Baffin, though.

One major obstacle for 2017, is trying to figure out where we go from here.  As long-time readers know, we like to find the anti-trends, which until now was the now-surfaced Populist Wave.  Now that it has gone mainstream, everyone will start fighting over who is in charge and who led the charge and who will get charged.  That is going to pervert the whole thing into the usual mess and here on the Far Side, we have to figure out where everyone will go next.  As we've often noted here, if everyone is running in one direction, you can pretty much bet your last dollar it's the wrong direction.

One thing is absolutely certain for the coming year: the Globalists ain't done yet.  We've watched them panic for the last five years, knowing that this wave of opposition was coming, but they got caught off guard.  They didn't see Trump coming.  In the early parts of the campaign last year, Trump played the role - willingly or not - of the plucky comic relief.  Turns out that was exactly what folks wanted.

The Globalists have no sense of humor that we mere mortals can detect.  Everything for them is a game of life or death.  They have spent nigh on 300 years trying to set up their little fiefdom, and now face losing it all to a clown.  Talk about indignation!  But, they still have hope!

The one thing that is giving the Globalists hope is that folks are still brainwashed into thinking that they need leadership, government and social institutions.  They haven't yet realized that every individual is his or her own best leader.  Basically, if I can talk to God directly, why do I need a priest?  We are still a long way off from that very fundamental realization, and as long as we continue to need government and leaders and authorities, then the Globalists have an "in".

What gives them nightmares is that Trump will be such a bad president that the entire US, and the world while we're at it, will realize that there is no need for leaders.  From a Far Side point of view, that would be the best possible outcome.  Enlightened Anarchy, for anyone who has read Lysander Spooner, is the only way and truly represents a revolution unlike any in history.

OK, whoa!  This is getting too heavy for the first work day of the year.  We started off with out tongue planted firmly in our cheek, and the next thing you know, we are biting it - the tongue that is.

The only way through this coming year is with a serious sense of humor, if that can possibly be achieved.  It's gonna be one wild ride for anyone not prepared to laugh long and hard at life.  We can't, especially now, take anything too seriously or buy in to any one side too far.  If we do, we lose perspective and take things personally, and that leads to heartache and disappointment.  There's enough of that to go around as it is.

No, we must rise above this mess we call civilization and find things like Farcebook censoring centuries-old artworks because Neptune's wee-wee is hanging out.  Good lord, this is the dawning of a Neo-Victorian Era, where everything is parsed to the n-th degree for anything suggestive of gender, sexuality or, for that matter, humanity.

Of course, us smart folks know that it's not about prudery; it's about censoring beauty, form and figure.  It's about destroying rhythm and harmony.  It's about tossing out those things that lead to elevated hearts and minds, and keeping us all wallowing in filth and slime.

That's why they'll censor Neptune, but not Andres Cerrano or Millie Brown.  The goal is not whether a god's wee-wee is exposed, or whether it is a grotesque display of genderism.  It's all about removing beauty from the world.

Beauty and humor.  I mean, listen to some of the "best" comics out there.  They aren't funny.  All they do is spew vileness and people laugh because, 1) it makes them nervous, and 2) they can't believe they paid for that trash.

In the old days, humor was a means to show us our stupidity.  Look at George Carlin, arguably one of the greatest comics of all time.  His career spanned more than 50 years because he made us laugh at ourselves and at the institutions we take oh-so-seriously.  He was the Great Anarchist who did not destroy except that he built up.

With any luck, 2017 will be a George Carlin year.  If all goes according to plan, we will en masse realize how stupid we've been to follow anyone, much less politicians and priests (rabbis, imam, whatever).  Humanity will begin the seriously funny job of dismantling all these ridiculous control systems that deign to own us, and begin replacing them with beautiful things, funny things, things that help us rise above the daily Bravo Sierra of life.  We can all still be deprogrammed, even the millennials, though obviously humans don't like realizing how stupid there are.

I don't know where I'm going with this, really.  I started off in one direction, then doubled back to take of blind turn into oblivion.

In any case, the point is that we made it through another year, and the coming year, like every single one preceding it, will be full of shocks and surprises, good times and bad, and most of the bad will be brought on us as punishment by our erstwhile owners who don't like uppity servants.

Please ensure that your seatbelt is securely fastened, and that your seatbacks and tray tables are in their upright and locked positions.  The captain has warned of turbulence ahead.  Smoke 'em if you got 'em.  Don't worry what the little sign says.

Seems we always get by on a wing and a prayer, and the skin of our teeth.

At The Mercy Of Symbols

How often have you stopped to consider how much of our lives are controlled by symbols?  When you think about it, we are literally ruled in every aspect of our lives by abstractions.  We submit to costumes, pictures and pretty words without hardly a thought to what we are doing.  Isn't it time we started questioning some of our most basic assumptions?

At the root of most cultures is something called 'law'.  Law is nothing more than a symbol for morality and ethics, not the real thing.  Law assumes that human beings are incapable of being kind, generous and loving, and substitutes those real things with codified penalties for not acting like human beings.

Those who profit from making, enforcing and judging laws tell us that without them, humanity would devolve into chaos.  Yet there are precious few cases to point to where the absence of law has led to utter dehumanization.  In fact, it has never, in anything approaching human history, been tried.  The reason is simple: in any group of humans, there are always those who want privileged positions of power over all the other humans.

The only palpable examples where the absence of law existed are war zones, which are artificial contrivances by the very people who create the laws.  Because war is, by definition, the breakdown of normal order, the result is naturally chaos and anarchy.  To point to those situations as justification for legal systems is rather disingenuous, at best.

In fact, the vast majority of people do not need laws.  Most people live their lives blissfully uncaring about laws because they don't need them.  Any given individual is driven by a desire to be left the hell alone to go about their business of raising and providing for a family.  For the most part, legal systems impinge on that normal desire.  Policing agencies, tax authorities and government at all levels are all designed to do one thing: interfere with the individual's life.

To do that, government agencies use a complex set of ritual costumes, logos, emblems, songs, pledges, and ultimately weapons to force people to conform to an abstraction that approximates morality and ethics.  We are all indoctrinated from birth to fear those symbols and do whatever they order without question under penalty of death.  Incarceration is nothing more than a form of living death because it robs us of some amount of our lives.  However, most of the infractions encoded as law are of little consequence other than to maintain control over the individual for the profit of another individual.

For instance, drug laws do little to protect me from you.  People who do drugs do little harm to others.  One could argue that the drug user harms their family, but that is hardly the concern of society.  That is a problem for the family to address and deal with.  Others argue that the drug user is a drain on society in lost productivity and additional resources such as healthcare.

That person's productivity means absolutely nothing to society other than in the loss of tax revenue to the state.  As for additional resources used, that is only a concern in cases where society at large is robbed of productive output to pay for the drug user's needs.  If the drug user is forced to pay for his own care, how has that affected society in general?

There are many people, commonly referred to as bleeding-heart liberals, who say that it is society's responsibility to save the individual from himself.  I beg to differ.  Society's function is to provide a mutually supportive network of individuals.  If someone doesn't want to avail themselves of it, why must they be forced, except as an exercise in control exerted by people who believe they are empowered to do so?

How many times have we heard that we should respect the office, if not the man?  We are supposed to show due respect for judges, elected officials and the like by the virtue that they hide behind revered symbols.  A judge is no more qualified to determine whether I am right or wrong than any other person on the planet.  But put him in a black robe and surround him with flags and seals and seat him on a platform, and suddenly this man stands above all other humans in his ability to determine the fate of others.

Take away the symbols and these people are indistinguishable from any other sot on the street.  They are just a fallible and prone to error as any other human on Earth.  The only difference between a judge and a rapist is that the judge has been trained to manipulate a symbol called 'law'.  But it sure doesn't take a judge to know that the rapist's actions are wrong.

A policeman is no more immune from the temptation to commit crime than any other human.  But give them a silly little uniform with lots of emblems and badges and suddenly that stand apart from all other humans as enforcers of an abstraction called 'law'.  It doesn't take long before the human in the silly suit starts to think that he is more special than the rest of us because people fear the symbols he hides behind.  That feeling of power almost invariably translates into the belief that he can break the law with impunity.

These are but a few examples, but once you start pondering this problem, you quickly realize that we grant a tremendous amount of our personal power and responsibility to nothing more than symbols.

Money is a symbol, and those who accumulate a significant amount of money are perceived to be more special than the rest of us.  You can take a homeless man and a banker, have them say the exact same thing, but people will discount the homeless man while giving great weight to the banker.  The only difference between the two is a suit and some money...symbols.

Another good example: how many people do you know with college degrees that are complete boneheads? Yet how many employers would give greater weight to the degree (a symbol) over someone far smarter with an 8th grade education?  And this in spite of the fact that some of the greatest minds in history did not complete a high school level education.

Symbols run our lives, but we devote precious little time to questioning the basic assumptions behind those symbols.  Take TeeVee commercials, for instance.  Take any old actor, put them in a white lab coat and sling a stethoscope around his neck, and suddenly we imbue him with the authority to speak about our medical needs.  Put a ring on his finger and we assume he is married - take it off and we assume he is not.

Place an actor in a kitchen with a bag that has a loaf of bread and a bunch of celery sticking out of it, and we assume that they just came home from shopping, not stealing those items from their neighbor.  Put an actor in overalls and have him wipe his hands on a rag, and suddenly he's an expert on car engines and motor oil.  And worst of all, take a celebrity face and have them expound on the virtues of your product and people will give his opinion far more weight than some putz standing on a street corner.

Our entire lives are run by symbols, and more insidious, those symbols are controlled by people who want something from us that we would otherwise be unwilling to give up.  The fact of the matter is, if all authority figures were to disappear tomorrow, it wouldn't take long before life settled right back to normal.  Sure, there would be a few bad apples, but they wouldn't last long as now you and I and our friends and neighbors would start relying on each other rather than muscle-bound boneheads in silly outfits who could care less whether we lived or died - as long as they get their pension and paycheck from you.

Individuals are more than capable of running their own affairs.  Mutually supportive groups of individuals are far more effective than layers of authorities whose only motivation is to get paid for producing nothing.  The only thing that keeps us from doing away with the whole damn lot of them is symbols, and the conditioning we receive to surrender our personal power and responsibility to those symbols.

We are fast approaching an epoch in history where all the symbols that have ruled us for millennia will break down.  As we sit here, all those layers of authority are crashing down around us.  People no longer trust government.  Money is no longer all-powerful.  Laws have so far overstepped the bounds of reason that people are rejecting them out of hand.  Schools, religion, science are decaying rapidly.  Eventually, the preponderance of lies and weight of corruption will erode any last vestiges of trust in the underpinning symbols of our civilization.

What then?

We have come to a point in history when those who manipulate symbols are making a concerted effort to unify all their symbols into a worldwide power base.  At the same time, individual humans have been empowered like no other time in history.  All the while, humans are going increasingly distrustful and unwilling to surrender their power to traditional symbols because of the heavy weight of corruption behind them.

When it all collapses, as it must at this point, are we prepared to take back the individual responsibility implied by the loss of the symbolic power structure that has ruled our civilization for thousands of years?

This is an important question and one that must be widely debated over the next couple of decades.  How we answer that question will determine the course of humanity for a long time to come.  It will profoundly affect every aspect of life for our descendants.  Will we simply replace our current symbols of power with another system like it?  Or will the individual become the ultimate symbol of ethics, morality and enlightenment?

Our technology has placed power at the most democratic level possible - the individual.  This is an awesome responsibility, but also a liberating one.  We have the ability now to make each person their own legislature, judge, pope, and police.  We have the power to make each of us an authority, expert and professor.  But we can just as easily piss away the opportunity and allow the corruption to continue unabated.

Will we continue to respects the office or the person holding it?  Will we continue to allow the will of others to be forced upon us through fear of symbols?  Will we take back the responsibility to chose our own paths, and accept the consequences good or bad?  Or will we continue to abdicate that personal power out of laziness and ignorance?

The profound implications of our current epoch are mind-boggling in their breadth and scope, but the challenge before us should not stop us from thoroughly considering what we want for humanity going forward.  Our progeny will either respect us or deride us for the choices we make now.

The first step is a complete examination of the symbols we fear and submit to in our daily lives.  Is self-rule really as frightening and chaotic as we are told, or is that a fairy tale to reinforce the stranglehold on power that a very few have in our society?

Perhaps it's time we found out.

Quis Custodiet?

One of Indonesia's leading newspapers, Kompas, ran the above-the-fold headline today that said, "Political Corruption is Systemic."

Wait for it...

NO SHIT SHERLOCK.

Why is it that people are continuously surprised by the obvious?  I mean, if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten.  It's one of those basic rules in life that we all have to learn.

Corruption is endemic to ANY political system.  Any time a group of people is empowered to take the productive work of any other group of people for supposed services rendered, there will be corruption.  It is a fact of life that is as old as government itself, especially when that power involves a bureaucracy to maintain the systems of government.

The way it works is this: first a government will create a list of "services" that it performs for the general populace; then it creates a bureaucracy to shuffle the paperwork to obtain those services; then the piles of paperwork grow to the point that obtaining those services takes months, if not years; then the bureaucrats start taking bribes to "expedite" applications; then the politicians all want a cut of the bribes.

It's a very simple process from A to Z, and when the politicians and bureaucrats continue to get away with the corruption, it reinforces the system of corruption and it continues to grow and become more endemic until it either becomes completely stalled and untenable, or the people rise up and throw the bastards out.  History tells us that one or the other is inevitable.

One of the key signs of a fascist state is that the legal code becomes so complex and Byzantine that the average citizen is a felon just for waking up in the morning.  This creates a system of corruption as the citizens try to maneuver their way through this system without going to jail.  Naturally, the citizen is willing to pay whatever it takes to stay "free" and out of the tangled nightmare that is The System.  Naturally, the politicians and bureaucrats are willing to take the money to leave people alone.

Until the last couple of years, Indonesians have been very provincial.  They could not afford to leave the country, so they had no experience with other governments and other systems.  Therefore, they tended to see their own system as being the most corrupt, and others (like the US) as less so.

Indonesians demanded, and received, a governmental body called the KPK (corruption eradication commisiion), whose job it was to investigate and punish corruptors.  However, it too became corrupt as the politicians and bureaucrats, swollen with bribe money, were willing to pay the overseers a portion of their take to stay out of the spotlight.

It goes as far back as Ovid, the Roman poet, who asked the famous question, "Quid custodiet ipsos custodies?"  Who will watch the watchers?  It is a problem as old as civilization itself.

What it comes down to is human nature and what Lord Acton so rightly observed, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The more centralized and remote power systems become, the more corrupt and uncontrollable they become.  It is a fact that cannot be disputed.  It is human nature to become more corrupt as the ability to catch and hold a person responsible for their actions becomes less of a threat.

Ultimately, this is the central problem with a global government.  Ironically, it is also the reason that it will never come to be.

The problem is this: as we plod ever closer to a central world government, the more corrupt those at the core will become.  In the end, they will factionalize and begin infighting the closer ultimate power comes to reality.  Finally, the whole thing will collapse as the sharks begin feeding on each other for every shred of power they can secure.

It has already begun.  Joseph Farrell, in his book Babylon's Banksters, makes a compelling case for the fact that the erstwhile global governors are already eating each other for ultimate control.  Ultimate control means ultimate corruption, and no system that is totally corrupt can stand.  It must, of its own corruption, collapse.

Many books have been written on the rise and fall of great empires.  Without exception, they are studies in corruption and decay.

Therefore, it stands to reason that the least corrupt governments are the most likely to survive and offer the best possible state for the citizenry.  Given the fact that large systems collapse, it is thus only small and controllable governments that work best.  For that reason, decentralized regional governments are the most feasible, and governments on the level of communities are the best.  It must be kept in mind, though, that any amount of power will corrupt any number of bureaucrats.

We end up with the most logical solution to this mess we humans tend to create: the government of ONE is the best possible form of rule.  If the individual becomes corrupt, he cannot infect more than what he can control, and all he can control is that which he owns.

Many people ridicule this idea as 'anarchy', but it is what the libertarians call "enlightened self-government".  The individual will do everything possible to protect what is his, thus he will avoid corruption in order to enlist the support of others (friends, family, etc.) in his effort to protect his possessions.  The theory is that the less corrupt a person is, the more likely others are to assist him.

In the end, 'anarchy' produces the best form of governance for any group of people.  Those who are least corrupt will engender the most support and goodwill from the most number of people, and so will be the most successful.

Vendors who routinely short-change customers will not stay in business for long.  In the same way, in an anarchic system, only those who are perceived to be the most honest will receive support of large groups of people.

Anarchy does not require voting, which can be corrupted (a la United States).  It does not require licenses, deeds, titles, or any other form of bureaucracy, since those who perceive you to be honest in your public dealings will most likely protect your interests against outside challenges.  Anarchy requires individuals to be honest, upright and competent.  It is the nature of that system.

The minute I delegate power to someone else, then they -- no matter how honest and trustworthy -- will have the temptation to become corrupt and abuse your power, since it is not theirs and they perceive no loss to themselves in squandering what is yours.

The solution is deceptively simple, and it is the most likely to protect rights and property, but it is also the most difficult thing to convince people of this fact.  We have become so used to centralized government and we have become so spoiled by the ability to leach off the productivity of others (welfare, socialized medicine, etc.) that we cannot see any other solution.  Yet the logic is inescapable.

Under the system we currently subscribe to, we have only escalating layers of 'watchers', creating ever more vast bureaucracies, engendering ever more corruption and in-fighting for control.  It is an untenable system and must collapse of its own weight and corruption.

Two of the most successful governments on Earth are the Icelandic and Swiss systems because they leave the greatest amount of power in the hands of the individuals.  However, as we have seen in recent years, even those systems are subject to corruption, though they are the most able to deal with it, since the power is still closest to the individual.

In a system of delegation of power, the individual is most likely to get run over by that system, since the inherent mentality is that the good of the many is more important than the good of the individual.  But, the opposite is true.

When the individual feels secure in person and property, he is more likely to work on behalf of the group, since he will have surplus that he is able to deploy in the community to build the perception that he is a good and trustworthy person, thus reinforcing the desire of the community to protect his rights and property.

So-called anarchy -- or enlightened self-interest -- is the only system of governance that can possibly work over the long term, while preserving the rights and property of the individual.  It is the only system that is self-righting, automatically correcting corruption and similar problems.  There is only one weakness...

Humans have an in-born desire to serve a leader.  It is part of our genetic code and is pounded into our brains from birth, though education, religion and other community forces.  As long as humans view themselves as servants, both willing to hand over power and accept scraps from a master's table, then we will have the corruption and decay and power-hungry elites that we have suffered under for millennia.

It is only when we, as individuals, take full responsibility for our actions and well-being that we will throw off the yoke of government that is corrupt and ultimately self-defeating.

The only thing wrong with anarchy is that it has never been tried on any scale that could prove the point.  As a species, we have been so hell-bent on servitude that we don't even trust ourselves to act in our own best interest.  Rather, we must establish organs of State (and make no mistake, religion is an organ of State) to force us to do what we know is best for us in the first place.

If you do not delegate your power, then no one will have power over you.

So simple, yet so hard to achieve.

Fear Begets Fear

READER NOTE: The first installment of Radio Far Side will be up this week.  Keep checking back...

Si Pitung

Here's the thing: ALL governments everywhere and at all times have been, are and shall ever be corrupt.  Period.

We have spent the past 5,000 years of documented history trying one form or another of government, only to watch it completely turn on us and eat us alive until we rise up in bloody indignation and slaughter the beast we created.  Then we turn right around and create more governments.

Why is it, in 5,000 years, no one has ever questioned the underlying assumption that we need governments at all?  I suppose we are all eternal optimists who while away our lives hoping and praying that THIS king's inbred progeny will be good, or the NEXT elected leader will have principles and integrity.

Whatever the cause, we haven't learned in all this time that concentrating power of any kind and amount will only attract megalomaniacs and psychopaths whose sole aim is to accumulate more power and protect it with the military might of the nation.

In America, no one seems to get that Homeland Security has nothing to do with Joe the Plumber.  The bespoke 'homeland' is THEIR power base, and the 'security' is for THEM, not us.  We are the threat from which THEY need to secure themselves.

You will notice that the US Constitution begins with three simple words: We the People.  Most folks don't stop to consider that in the English language, upper case letters only precede first words in sentences, proper nouns, and words with special definitions within the context of the document in which they are used.  Of those options, only the last one explains the capital 'P' in "People".  That means the word is not the common one used in daily speech, but a specially defined term.  In this case, it refers to the 55 men that met in secret to create the document.

The American federation is no more viable or special than any other attempt to force diverse people into a single cubby hole.  Other notable examples include the EU, the Venetian mercantile state, the Holy Roman Empire, the UK's colonies, or any of several dozen other examples.

Robin Hood

What we really should do is create a special, cordoned off area somewhere on Earth, preferably the Gobi desert, and anyone who thinks they have the moral authority to rule or judge other people should be sent there, where they can rule over and judge each other to their heart's delight.  The only rule is that they can never leave that area, since thoughts like those never go away.  It's a fault of their genetic make-up.

In this way, the rest of us can get on with our lives in peace, without governments, taxes, militaries, or corporate persons.  And without fear.

At their most basic levels, all governments operate on one basic principle: Fear.  Fear of boogymen.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of the government itself.  It's all based on fear.  They create fear, thrive on fear and manipulate fear symbols.

Any student of the human condition knows that people instinctively rally when threatened.  It's not difficult to use this instinct to create and centralize power.  Almost every meme propagated by government-controlled media involves fear.  Whether it is fear of personal crime to justify police forces, or fear of outside attack to justify militaries, in the end, the fear is used to create and maintain control systems that ultimately work against the very people who pay for the supposed protection.

What's interesting to note is that folk heroes usually represent anarchy and the impulse to throw off fear and the control structure.  Look at Robin Hood, or the pirate legends, or the gangsters of the 1930s America, or Si Pitung here in Indonesia.  All of these romanticized characters share the common notion that the protectors of the common man fight power and control structures.  They represent our basic desire for freedom, not only from control structures, but from fear itself.

Ultimately, we must realize that no outside control will ever truly save us from outside threats.  We have police, but still have crime.  We have the military, but still get attached.  We have laws, but still have corruption.  We have to come to grips with the fact that we are no worse off, and in many cases are better off, without government.  In most countries, government sucks better than half of the wealth and labor of their subjects into slush funds that are used to propagate more government, which sucks more wealth and labor until the subjects are either destitute or rise up and slaughter the controllers.

This cycle hasn't changed for thousands of years, and obviously is not changing now.  If anything, the only outcome is greater and greater centralization of power and force.

History proves two things, greater centralization of power always ends in disaster, while those times when individuals controlled their own lives and destinies exhibited the greatest levels of peace and industriousness.  The more we pay for government, regardless of the perceived benefit, the more that government will turn on us and become the enemy from which we thought it was supposed to protect us.

As ever major philosophy has taught, the beginning of wisdom and the liberation of Self begins with the conquering of Fear.  Once we have liberated ourselves from Fear, there is no need for government.  We realize that nothing can protect us from the unknown and unexpected, except our prepared minds and willingness to work on our own behalf.

Death ultimately takes us all.  The measure of the life that precedes it is the degree of fear with which we face that simple truth.  Death is the root of all fear, and by coming to grips with it, we conquer fear and no longer require protectors.  If we don't need protectors, there is no justification for government.  And without government, we are free individuals able to pursue our best course in life.

In the end, anarchy works because most people are busily pursuing their lives.  They instinctively know that chaos serves no good purpose, and so don't create any and actively rebel against it.  In fact, chaos only reigns when fear takes large groups of people, who then react without reason or conscious thought.  Once again, fear is the root cause.

Blackbeard

Consolidation of wealth and power is the cause of corruption.  Governments, by their very nature, is consolidation, and thus are always corrupt.  We create government to protect us from the unknown.  Because of corruption, governments always end up protecting themselves, and thus become the cause of the unknown.  Conquering our fear of the unknown negates the need for government, and thus there is no consolidation of wealth and power, thus no corruption.  Therefore, anarchy is the best and most natural state of being, and rather than being chaos, is in fact based on the lack of fear.  So it stands to reason that only through enlightened self-interest can we hope to be free of corruption, coercion and force.

Our fear drives us to create governments.  The governments ultimately turn on us and become the cause of fear.  It is a vicious circle and one that has plagued humanity for all of its recorded history.  Until we change ourselves, we can not hope to change the world.

Me, A Name I Call Myself

All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one... characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers. - Henry David Thoreau

It is a stealth weapon of the elite to confuse political thought and labels.  If one controls the definition of a word, then one controls all thoughts and ideas associated with that word.  This is why Orwell made such laborious points about the NewSpeak dictionary and Big Brother's control of vocabulary.

In this US political season, there are many labels being thrown around, and in fact, it is not much different than it has been for many decades.  It used to be a habit to smear folks with the term 'communist.'  The McCarthy era went on 'witch hunts' for Commies.  Yet I daresay pure communism has rarely existed, and certainly never at the level of national political control.

Today, the media and opponents smear Ron Paul with the label of 'libertarian,' though Ron Paul is hardly a pure libertarian, nor does the body of thought called 'libertarianism' have much to do with the common perception of it.

In order for social dialogue to be effective in parsing real leaders, it is vital that the language be clear and unambiguous.  For this reason, the elites relish the idea and ability to control definitions.  In doing so, they control outcomes and masses.  Thus, it behooves us to be absolutely clear on the definitions of political thought, so that we know exactly who we are electing and what they will do when they get there.

One of the most egregious examples of mis-definition is the word 'democracy.'  Democracy is probably one of the worst forms of government ever devised, since it is absolutely dependent on the masses being educated and enlightened.  Otherwise, it always devolves into the classic two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner.

The concept of America making the world 'safe for democracy' is so absurd and so wicked, as to be laughable if it weren't damaging so many lives.  Nothing is safe with or for democracy.  Everything is at the whim of the majority.  All rights, property and wealth are subject to whether 50.1% of the masses want what you have.  And if you are a reviled minority, then the majority can round you up and hang you whenever they damn well feel like it.

The elite love democracy, because they have mass mind control down to an art form.  Since they can manipulate at least 50.1% of the masses, they can do pretty much anything they like and blame it on the 'majority'.

For this reason, the US founders virtually spat the word democracy from their mouths.  They studied ancient Greek history and knew that any system based on it was doomed to corruption and dictatorship.  Instead, they turned to a Roman concept called  a 'republic'.

The idea of a republic is that there are a basket of rights that are sacrosanct and 'unalienable' (think unable to make a lien against them).  These rights can not be taken away by the majority, nor can they be contracted away.  In other words, a free man can not make himself a slave, but a slave has all the rights of a free man.

This is why the US Constitution dilutes the power of voting as much as possible.  The House is directly elected, but they are balanced by a Senate that was supposed to be elected by the State legislators.  People vote for electors, who in turn vote for the president.  The vice president was supposed to be the second-highest vote-getter.

There's also a Bill of Rights in that Constitution.  This was to be the basket of rights that were untouchable..."Congress shall make no law..."  No majority, no matter how big, was ever to have the power to abridge, amend or rescind those rights.

Both democracy and repulicanism were supposed to be reactions to monarchy.  Monarchy invests all sovereign power in a single individual, whose successor is a genetic relative.  All political, social, legal, and religious power was centered in this one individual.  If they happened to be good, then the masses flourished and things were peachy-keen.  If the monarch was evil and corrupt, then the entire country suffered for it.

Hardly a basis for stable governance.

A very old form of governance is something called communism, from the same root as community.  This form can not work on a mass scale.  In fact, masses of people are anathema to the whole idea of communism.  It only works on the scale of extended families, or possibly small villages.  Monasteries are a form of communism merged with monarchy.

They idea is that the group of people involved work together for the common good.  On the scale of a village, some folks grow food, others hunt, others are blacksmiths or leatherworkers, etc., and they pool their output for the benefit of everyone in the community.  If I'm a farmer, then I put my harvest in the pool and take out a pair of shoes for the kids and a shirt for myself.

One can see that scaling that sort of lifestyle up to even the size of a city wouldn't work.  Obviously, communism is unsuitable for mass society and therefore, has never existed on that scale.

So, along comes socialism.  Here, the concept of communism is adapted to mass society by vesting all power in the State.  Thus, the State owns and controls everything, and distributes the fruits of production to its constituents as needs arise.  However, this system is susceptible to corruption.  Inevitably, those who control the distribution keep the lion's share for themselves, which in turn calls for creation of vast bureaucracies of watchers to watch the watchers, all of whom become corrupt as they all try to take the cream off before passing out the dregs to the folks who actually produce the goods.

Socialism is doomed to collapse from an ever-swelling political class who become ever-more corrupt and self-centered.  The collapse is exacerbated by the eventual dissatisfaction of the masses who do all the work and get none of the benefits.  Like a teetering inverted pyramid, eventually the masses yank the rug out from under the system and it crashes down in a heap of ruins (see USSR).

The complete reverse of socialism is fascism, whereby all power and control is vested in corporate interests.  The business elite own and control everything, including government, and set out to establish an environment that favors them at the expense of all others.  This is the current state of things in the US.  Corporate interests manipulate the system so that the corporate elite siphon off the wealth for themselves and throw the scraps to the masses.  Fascism is an insidious form of government, because it appears to operate in the interests of all, in that everyone thinks they have an equal chance to get a piece of the pie.  But, the elite control the legal system, among other things, and simply change the rules when any one group gets too close to challenging their hegemony.

This form of government is doomed to collapse for many of the same reasons as socialism.  In fact, there's little that distinguishes the two, other than who ultimately benefits at the top.  Socialism and fascism are like Ismael and Isaac.  They are half-brothers but doomed to hate each other for all time, since the controllers at the top differ by degree and title.

In this same group, we'll call it a cousin, is theocracy.  Here, the monarch is a god or gods who ostensibly appoint a bureaucracy to see to their Earthly duties.  Ultimately, you end up with the same thing as the latter two forms - a ruling elite who scrape off the cream for themselves in the name of protecting society.  The only difference is that this bunch of bastards nominally answer to invisible forces, for which only they have the hotline.  Basically, it's a monarchratic socialist state with an invisible chairman.

There are a couple dozen variations on all this.  There's constitutional monarchies, and capitalist socialism, and democratic republics (talk about juxtapositions).  But all result in the same thing: a corrupt few controlling the masses by manipulating symbols of power to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Here's where libertarianism stepped in.  Now, to hear the US mass media tell it, libertarianism is like Reaganomics on steroids.  The gist of it is that the philosophy is presented as unleashing corporations from any pretense of government control and letting them run amok in a capitalist orgy of rape and pillage.  This is why Ron Paul is painted as crazy and libertarianism is slandered as lunatic fringe.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  First of all, Ron Paul is not a pure libertarian, and second, libertarianism has nothing to do with unfettered corporate greed.

In its purest form, libertarianism is the concept that all people, everywhere, are completely sovereign within themselves and their property.  In other words, every man is a king and every woman a queen, and within the confines of their proptery, they are ultimate rulers over all they survey.  The more property you own, the bigger your kingdom.  And within that property, you are the ultimate law and order.  Whatever you say, goes.  Period.

Where it gets a little sticky is outside of your property.  Here, the Biblical axiom takes over: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  In other words, your rights stop at the self and property of another.  Any attempt to enforce your beliefs or exercize your rights over another is a literal act of war.

The only means of interaction with others is by contract, which literally works much like treaties between nations.  You are allowed to take or give as much as you like, as long as you abide by the terms of the contract you make.  Thus, every employee becomes a contractor.  All public works are performed by groups of people acting under contract.  Each contract becomes a form of Constitution, limiting and defining the powers of the parties involved within the scope of work in the contract.

It's an interesting and exciting political philosophy.  You can run your oil company, but the minute you spill some and cause a mess on my property, then you - personally - are liable for it, as is everyone under contract with your company.  If you want to run a meth lab in your house, more power to you.  But if your operation blows up and damages my property, you are liable, as are the folks working with you.

Libertarianism is the ultimate form of personal responsibility.  You are absolute monarch within the limits of your property, which includes your body.  But if any of your actions impair the property or rights of anyone else, then you lose your wealth making them whole again.

What makes libertarianism so appealing, at least to me, is that it completely decentralizes power.  Instead of small bodies of elites governing the thoughts, actions and wealth of the many, there are seven billion governments all acting organically with each other.  There is no public property, only that which isn't owned by someone.  There are no forced innoculations or militarized police or even lawyers, such as we know of them now.

Instead, there are only people.  No strawman entities like corporations.  No governmental bodies with power to force you to do anything you don't want.

The concept is so foreign to most people's thinking that they can't conceive of such things.  No welfare?  No subsidies?  No taxes?  How would we survive?  No armies?  No drug/terror/poverty wars?  How would we make anyone follow our ways?

Once you start looking seriously at it, though, you find that Ron Paul is pretty darned far from being libertarian.  Sure he espouses a lot of the ideas, but the basis of his rhetoric is really just a return to the founding ideals of the US, which is a damn sight closer to libertarianism than currently exists, but it is NOT libertarianism.  In pure libertarianism, there could be no central authority or power to tax or presidency to run for.  It wouldn't exist.

It's important in this election season to clarify the terms being thrown around.  America is not a democracy, nor has it every been one.  Ron Paul is NOT a libertarian, nor has he ever been one.  Liberals and conservatives are neither.  Democrats and Republicans are neither.

America is a fascist state.  Granted, it is not the most severe example...yet.  But it is important to both realize that fact and decide where you stand on the issue.  It would help if you look up the history of fascism (dating back to the Roman period) and see how they always end.  Look up democracy, while your at it.  Notice that you don't live in one, first, and second, that you don't want to.

Finally, examine pure libertarianism.  It's a scary concept for many folks, since they can't imagine being personally responsible for their lives.  However, I find it most appealing in many ways.  Though Indonesia has a socialist repulic form of government, at the street/practical level, the people have a strong libertarian impulse that I find refreshing.

Freedom is a scary thing.  Having only yourself and your family and friends to rely on is terrifying for a lot of folks.  They would rather use the guns and force of government to take your property and wealth to support them, or at least give them the illusion of security.  The problem is, the more power you give to government to make you secure, the more the government will become your worst enemy.

Ultimately, the fairest and most egalitarian social order is libertarianism, but the world is not ready for it.  Our ancestors used to live that way, but we have become so socialized and dependent on some form of authority structure that the very idea of personal responsibility causes cold sweat and trembling knees.

Part of what scares the hell out of the elite with the internet is that it has empowered the libertarian in all of us. Groups like the TorProject.org and Anonymous and others are painted as anarchists, but really they are libertarians fighting for the right to take care of their own.  The elite must shut down the internet before these groups can become powerful enough to do things like launch their own communications satellites, or build subnets that don't rely on government control, or land robots and people on other planets - all without the aid and coercion of government control and power.  In fact, all of those efforts are based on contract and free association, which are the roots of libertarianism.

Makes me want to run over to the bookshelf and take down Emerson and Thoreau!