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.

Dear Millennials/Snowflakes/SJWs/Numbnuts

Among the copious flaws in the...well, for lack of a better term let's call it thinking of Millennials, Snowflakes and so-called Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) is that they appear to believe that Human Rights are a limited resource, and in order to hand some to one group, they must take it from another.  Sorry kids, that is not the way it works.

Human Rights apply to everyone, no matter what set of divisions you care to place on them.  In order for you to enjoy your rights, you must allow every other belief system the same courtesy.  Additionally, there is no such thing as special rights from some "protected" groups.  We all get the same rights, be they expression, speech, religion, or lack thereof.

For instance, the right to practice any religion you want means that you must also respect the right of atheists to reject all of them.  The right to free speech means not only that you must allow everyone to express their opinions, but you must allow those who so choose to be silent, as well.

Diversity is a thing.  It refers to a broad spectrum of creatures, races, colors, and beliefs.  Diversity means that a great number of possibilities exist, whether one chooses to like it or not.  Diverse ecosystems refer to areas where a great many species co-exist in an interdependent balance.  It doesn't mean that lions are favored over gazelles by legal barriers and regulations that favor the lions.  Lions have as much right to chase gazelles, as the gazelles have to run, kick and hide from the lions.  Neither is right, neither is wrong.  It just is.

Tolerance is the acceptance that life is diverse.  Some societies are male-dominated, and some are female-dominated.  Some societies like to eat pigs, others don't.  Some societies worship one god, while others worship another.  Tolerance is the ability to realize that all societies, regardless of their core beliefs, have the right to exist unmolested, provided they recognize the right of all other societies to exist, as well.  I can no more force someone to be blue-eyed, left-handed and red-headed,any more than someone can force me to get a suntan.  Tolerance is realizing that diverse organisms have an equal right to exist.

Where the United States when horribly wrong was that it allowed the Federal government to take control over the States.  The original concept was that the States would be allowed to have whatever societies they each desired, and would only hand over certain common functions to the central government.  By losing sight of the founding concept, the world has had to endure a nation hell-bent on tellig the rest of the world how it must live, while at the same time screaming words like "diversity" and "tolerance" in the world's face.

I am all for gay marriage.  The right of individuals to seek happiness in whatever manner they choose is their right.  But tolerance states that these people must accept that some communities find this abhorrent, and the gay couples are free to find places that are more accepting.  The government is wrong on two counts 1) it offered a package of special benefits to heterosexual couples who are married, and 2) it forced the entire nation to accept gay marriage, thus violating the concepts of tolerance and diversity.  Had individual communities allowed gay marriage, the rest of the country would likely have changed organically over time, as diverse groups grew more tolerant.

So now the US finds itself being torn apart, because one set of beliefs was in power for a while, and forced its agenda on the rest of the country.  Naturally, the rest of the country reacted by swinging hard to the other extreme and will likely force its values on the first group.  Since the US no longer allows the States to freely chose their own course, there is no alternative.  Once the People demanded sweeping control over all the States and individual communities, they set themselves up to alternately force and be forced, especially since there are only two parties, and so only two likely outcomes.

The lack of tolerance and diversity in the US has finally come to a boil, and one which now the entire world must tolerate, since the US has a habit of forcing itself militarily upon those with diverse points of view.

The fact is, Mister and Miss Millennial/Snowflake/SWJ/numbnut, your lack of thought and study have brought the US to this point.  I don't blame you entirely, my generation and those before me are just as guilty.  However, you must now realize the result of your error, just as the rest of us did.  In a world where people come in all sizes and widths, one size does not fit all.  That is, in fact, the meaning of diversity.  Your job is to tolerate it as much as you can, and change wherever possible.

I highly recommend that you look into the Freeper Project.  Gather all your Millennial/Snowflake/SJW/numbnut buddies together and move to...oh, I don't know, Oregon maybe.  Take over the State and make it into your anti-diverse, anti-tolerant paradise.  Allow other groups to do the same in other States.  Start electing Presidents who respect the right of States to do whatever they want within the borders of the State.  Then work to dismantle the entire Federal infrastructure and return to the Founding ideals.  Start practicing real tolerance and allow real diversity, and stop whining and trying to force everyone else to adopt your goals and agenda.

The beauty of it is that, even if you were successful in crating your paradise, it wouldn't be long before you were all arguing amongst each other over who is more diverse and tolerant.

The fact of the matter is, human only like to live one way - leave me the hell alone and I'll do the same for you.

Sincerely,
People Of Intelligence

PS: I bet it never occurred to you that when you fight for RIGHTS, you are discriminating against us LEFTIES.  We hereby demand to be included and that you fight for Human Lefts, too.

A Spooner-Fed Radical

Take a moment, if you will, to ponder these two propositions:

• Compulsory membership in any organization is, in fact, slavery;
• The US Constitution offers citizens only two choices: ballots or bullets.

Interestingly, the anti-Trump riots in the US at this time are legitimate reactions, because there is no other remedy allowed by design of the US political system, according to these two propositions.

These are extraordinary statements to many people.  If you live in a country that has a constitution, as the US and Indonesia do, then you are a slave, and your only options are to support slavery by voting, or start shooting if you are a US citizen.  The Indonesian constitution offers no such choice.

These are the propositions of a rather extraordinary political thinker named Lysander Spooner.  To most people, his name is completely unfamiliar, but his writings are the foundation of my own political reasoning.  He lived in the US from 1808 to 1887, and is probably one of the great anarchists of all time.  He is also the spiritual father of UPS, FedEx and DHL, but that's a different issue.

Spooner is probably as close as I get to having a "hero." His thinking was so far off the beaten path as to make him one of the few truly free thinkers of all time.  He influenced writers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his essays form the basis for much of modern libertarian thinking.

I first encountered Spooner at a place called Patriot Oil in Midland, Texas in the early 1990s.  Patriot Oil was the most underground of underground bookstores anywhere in the country.  Located off the interstate in a remote part of West Texas, it was owned and run by a man who had turned his independent gasoline station into an outlet for any and all materials generally considered subversive - meaning they successfully opened people's minds to the tyranny all around them.

By the way, you could also buy surplus ordinance obtained from a near-by military base.  Everything from hard-to-get caliber rounds to mortars and small rockets were arranged in displays around the property.

I had made a pilgrimage to this isolated gas station for the express reason of obtaining materials that could not be had anywhere else (the internet had not yet become what it is now).  Many of the titles in this other-worldly bookstore in the middle of nowhere were photocopied texts of public domain pamphlets, books, essays and letters.  They were arranged haphazardly on shelves in the office, outside and scattered across the garage, where spattered motor oil and tire black smudges had made the top pages unreadable in many cases.

Here. one could obtain copies of The Anarchist's Cookbook and The Poor Man's James Bond, as well as Lysander Spooner and Ludwig von Mises.  This was radical stuff, and my heart was pounding as I scanned the saddle-stitched volumes.  I was in the presence of words that had put men in jail and even gotten them killed.  This was heady stuff for a fledgling radical.

I purchased enough reading material to fill a carry-on bag, since the 36-hour round-trip to remote West Texas was not something one wanted nor could afford to do on a regular basis.  Among those materials was a rather short book called No Treason, by Lysander Spooner.  I had no idea at the time, but it was destined to heavily influence my thinking up to this point.

Spooner is the radical's Radical.  He presents some of the most insightful and erudite arguments against government of all kinds, and especially constitutional governments, that I have ever encountered.  He makes the case that the individual is, for the most part, self-governing and doesn't need massive institutions full of blowhards making lofty speeches about unobtainable concepts.  Humans merely need a judiciary to mediate contract disputes among themselves.  The rest is complete bunk.  And when you finish reading his arguments, it is hard not to agree.

Writing at the time of the American Civil War, Spooner argues that any union from which the members cannot extract themselves is, in point of fact, slavery.  Thus, the Civil War did not end slavery, but rather expanded it to all citizens.  By denying the States the right to leave the Union, the federal government was basically stating that the Union was a compulsory thing, much like prison for felons, and therefore was not dedicated to liberty and freedom.

Furthermore, Spooner argues that the Constitution has no authority.  The phrase often used is the "social contract," in which the Constitution forms a contract between the People and the government, noting the powers granted and the structure desired.  However, as he points out, the Constitution does not contain several of the parts of a contract, such as Warranty and Performance, nor does it have a place for the Parties to signify their compliance.  In other words, it is not a contract and the government is not bound to behave in any particular way.  The only means by which the People can indicate their complicity is by voting, so that voting becomes not a right but a binding agreement to follow whatever they are told.

After reading Spooner, one is convinced that, instead of the People agreeing to a form of government, they have instead volunteered for slavery, because the government has no penalty for non-performance and it has the force of grievous bodily harm to force the People to comply.  Voting is simply a voluntary submission to this one-sided arrangement, since the individual is forced by threat of death to submit to government without the means or right to force government to heel.

In the case of the US Constitution, the only two remedies that the individual is given are either to vote, or to shoot.  There is no middle ground, since the government reserves the right to reject any law suit brought against it, and protest and petition - as has been shown again and again - is completely useless.  Even when one refuses to vote, one is still compelled to submit to the System, even though one has clearly demonstrated a lack of willingness.  

In polite circles, this is known as slavery.

As Spooner so adroitly points out, this is the fundamental flaw in Enlightenment thinking.  Just because an elite few draft a Constitution that becomes the Supreme Law of the Land does not compel the individual to comply with it if he or she does not sign the "social contract."  When any of the Parties to a Contract are forbidden under pain of death to withdraw from the agreement, it is no longer a Contract, it is servitude.  Since the masses are generally inculcated from birth with submission to the government, none of the People freely choose their slavery and none have any means to extract themselves from it, short of the use of arms.

Not only is it vital for the thinking person to read the Enlightenment writers to understand just how revolutionary and profound that philosophy was - and what the Illuminati were really trying to achieve - but it is equally important to read Lysander Spooner to understand exactly how the Snakes have usurped that amazing awakening, and turned humanity's greatest attempt at liberty and freedom into a tool for even deeper enslavement.

Spooner is a sobering read for the conservative and liberal alike.  He demonstrates clearly and succinctly the basic flaw in the thinking of both sides.  He also makes a solid case for enlightened anarchy and why we really don't need government at all.

Truly, the greatest weapon We the People possess is education.  It is the only means by which we can fight the true root of all evil: government.  As Henry David Thoreau so beautifully put it, "There are thousands striking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."  Reading Spooner is to watch in amazement a man who is striking deep blows to the root.

The Kafwellian Dystopia

Those of us who are level-headed and clear thinking, e.g. the rest of the world, should sympathize with America right now.  That country finds itself in the unenviable position in which half the country fervently believes the Anti-Christ has just been revealed, and the other half piously believes that the Second Coming has just occurred, and both are right.  In fact, one might think of the situation as the Second Coming of the Anti-Christ.

One the one hand, the Anti-Christers are so convinced that TEOTWAWKI has arrived, that they've decided to get a head-start on the death and destruction bit.  They have spent their life savings to hire a fleet of buses to haul them around from town to town, where they can help folks get going on burning down civilization and destroying culture.

On the other hand, the Second Cominites, in their orgiastic revels, are blind to the fact that the Old Baddies they just threw out are all getting reappointed by their Savior.

It's a rather pitiable position for a nation to be in.  Not only does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing, they are both engaged in beating the living daylights out of each other, while both are wondering where the hell those attacks are coming from.  One can only assume that Kafka and Orwell have sat up in their graves and are gleefully watching the proceedings.  It is the birth of a whole new form of governance called Absurdist Kafwellian Dystopia, in which even the Elites who run the place haven't a clue what they are doing.

There was a priceless moment when Donald Trump, the Anti-Savior for lack of a better term, met with Barack Obama, the outgoing Anti-Savior.  One can only assume from the look on Trump's face that the Secrets of the Universe have just been revealed to him, and it looks nothing like the world he had planned on.  He has been handed the keys to Gringott's Wizarding Bank, only to find it stuffed to the rafters with perfectly ordinary lead ingots and not a horcrux in sight.

Suddenly, as the inebriated fog of celebratory and commiserative parties slowly wears off, both sides are beginning to realize the wisdom of P. J. O'Rouke's famous satirical invective, "Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards."  As folks stumble out into the glaring sunlight, they are dazzled both by their stupidity for both having been taken for a ride, and for not having chosen a more palatable Anti-Christ.  Even Mr. Trump seems a bit overwhelmed by his own rhetoric, if that makes the reader feel better.

Trump honestly never thought he'd get elected, which some people might find rather quizzical.  He entered the race to steer the dialogue; that's it.  What he found was that he had tapped a nerve more raw than biting one's tongue while enjoying a particularly spicy bowl of Tom Yum.  At some point, he realized he was too far in to quit, though he knows the next mouthful of Tom Yum is gonna hurt something fierce.

It's an amazing crazy quilt of interests who have all been playing a game of brinkmanship, and all of them have tumbled over the cliff.  As they all plunge inexorably towards the rocks below, they are all fighting each other to be the last ones to land, thinking the leading corpses will cushion the blow just enough to claim victory.

It is nice to think that Americans have learned their lesson now, and if they make it to another election, will choose the sane option of avoiding polls altogether.  After all, if no one participated in the circus, there wouldn't be much a circus to watch.  All shows require an audience, otherwise they are just rehearsals.

When will people realize that the only viable option is to not surrender ANY personal sovereignty to ANYONE for ANY REASON?  One need only look at history to understand that, in the end, NO ONE is ultimately happy with the outcome of any election, because it always means having to bow down to some undesirable result, no matter who claims victory.

So as we watch the absurd pageant of quasi-religious fervor unfold like the legendary Corpse Flower of Sumatera.  This is an appropriate metaphor because not only does the enormous flower smell like rotting flesh, it is also a parasite, an apt metaphor in so many ways.

If you swear allegiance to an abstraction or subscribe to a creed that you did not create, then you are part of a System that cannot be reformed from the inside.  The System is so inculcated into daily life that to change any part of it ripples out into the most insignificant parts of daily life.  Like a gangrenous limb, it must be entirely cut off.  There is no curing bit by bit.  The only way forward is to bit the bullet and get it over with.

Instead, the vast majority of people with endure any amount of absurdity and indignity, rather than suffer the momentary pain of the cure.  In fact, most will come to convince themselves that the bizarre and unwieldy System is preferable to any alternative, even liberty and individual sovereignty.  Ultimately, nothing will change until the pain of the System is so unbearable that there is no alternative but to crush it and take whatever follows, which as the people of Iceland learned is actually a far better choice.

Most people are terrified of making choices and taking responsibility for them.  They would rather play the victim and have institutions that rush to their aid, but they rarely realize the enormous price they pay for such cure, choosing to pay the price of liberty for the childlike state of eternal childhood.

And so the Kawellian (to coin a term) farce proceeds apace.  The Absurdist Dystopia grows unabated, sucking the life out of people like a massive parasite that the masses willingly accept out of fear of personal responsibility.  Such is the nature of insanity.

On the plus side, though, it makes for a helluva comedy.

Rant Du Jour

If it's any comfort to you folks in the West, Asia's economy has slammed on the brakes, too.

When I first came to Indonesia in 2008, the country had 8% growth, the energy industry was going gangbusters, and foreign investment money was pouring in like a waterspout in monsoon season.  Cina was on a building spree to end all Building sprees, buying up Indonesian coal like it was the last supply on Earth.  Everyone was making money hand over fist.

Then the bottom fell out.

The US and EU economies tanked and China's exports were chopped off at the knees.  Western sanctions against Russia put the halt on the next hottest economy around (which was the real intent).  Southeast Asia, which was basically the low-cost labor supplier to China, along with the coal, suddenly found jobs drying up.

A combination of oil price cuts and really, incredibly short-sighted bureaucratic blunders on the part of Indonesia's Energy Ministry caused the bottom to fall out of the industry here.  And when I say bottom fall out, I mean the backup to the backup of the bottom fell out, too.  The sudden black hole in the government's budget has caused it to go on a tax hunt like never before in this country.

They are scrutinizing tax returns.  They are going through every title and deed.  They are hog-tying mud-caked tribesmen with bones in their noses (oh, yes, still have them) and forcing them to get tax numbers and start reporting their non-existent incomes.  The government is terrified also that a bunch of out-of-work, bored folks will suddenly realize how cushy and out-of-control all those ministries have gotten.

See 1998 for an example of what happens when that occurs.  People have gotten quite accustomed to upward mobility around these parts.

The areas of Jakarta, like Kemang, where all the ex-pat execs used to live have dried up.  Houses that used to rent for a month what a "normal" house gets for a year have stood empty for months.  All the oil companies have pulled out most of their ex-pat staff and are running on skeleton crews until the ministry comes to its senses.  By that I mean that current rules require exploration risks to be 100% on the company, all equipment imported for drilling can never leave again, and the government gets a majority share of production for doing nothing.  This is not to mention wonderful cabotage laws that require only Indonesian-flagged vessels to operated in national waters.  Bye-bye ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total.

A combination of greed, corruption and the attitude that good times always continue are sinking the ship of state.  Can you say "panic?"

None of this is to say that it's not happening in the rest of the world, too.  The Globalists have pushed too hard and tried to jump too far on the final leg of their take-over plans.  The blow-back comes in the form of all the nationalist movements worldwide, such as Brexit, Trump and the astounding rise to sainthood of Vlad the Putinator.

Alternative economic systems, such as ASEAN and BRICSA, that still respect national boundaries and cultures, while replacing the over-ripe and rotting carcass of the Western banking system, are coming into their own.  China's battle for the 9-Dash Line in the South China Sea is a direct dart in the eye of Western hegemony.  The unbridled gold-buying spree in China, India and Russia show a long-term plan to reinforce monetary foundations and stabilize economic shocks that are coming as the post-WW2 alliances and agreements start to unravel.

Honestly, I have no problem with globalism, per se.  The problem has been that for the last 60 years, the push has been to free corporations from national boundaries and level the playing field for faceless, soulless entities, at the cost of individual freedom and the sanctity of culture.  I would be quite happy to get rid of the money-making scam that is commonly evident in visas and passports for human beings.

However, the Western concept of corporations has shown repeatedly that these monster "legal entities" cannot be trusted and should never be allowed to slip the regulatory leash.  In other words, free the people, not the mega-corps.

When free to choose, people will always gravitate to areas with their common language, culture, foods, and sensibilities.  On the other hand, corporations don't care about any of that.  They are predatory and will slither into every nook and cranny, and gut the place of anything valuable unless they are tightly controlled.

People will care for their land.  Corporations will suck every penny of profit out of it until there is nothing left but waste.

When I say "people first," I am not referring to the liberal catch-phrase that hides a multitude of "diverse" evil.  I am referring to taking the yoke off of all us individuals.    Yes, it's a libertarian pipe-dream, but one that has the benefit of never having been tried. There's been a lot of lip service to "liberty" and "freedom," but in fact that has only been shared with the privileged few and not the masses.

In many ways, Karl Marx was right, but the execution has failed miserably, because true communism only works on small scales with ethnically and culturally homogeneous populations.  Massive state infrastructure that forces "diversity" and jumbled populations to work together is doomed to fail, as it has repeatedly.

People will smoke.  People will do drugs.  People will eat fatty foods.  Let them the hell alone.  Just don't steal my stuff, leave my family alone and don't murder anyone who isn't trying to do one of the previous two things.  What more do you need for a decent life?

If left the hell alone, people will do what is right for themselves and the ones they care about.  And they will collect in groups of like-minded folks who all have similar goals and cultures.  Let them.

But when Uncle Globalist wants to come in and rape and plunder your wealth using the deadly power of the government, well he should be roped, chained, tarred and feathered.  Maybe even a good turn in the pillory for some humiliation and ridicule might do him some good, as well.  But for gods' sake, don't enable him with TPP and TTIP and all those other alphabet fuels on the fire.

Kind of got off topic there, didn't I?

Well, that's why you come here and lurk in the corners, isn't it?

A Gift Unopened

Have you ever stopped to consider how much time, effort and wealth is squandered on leaders?  Or how utterly useless they are?

What is it about humans that make us go through so much toil and trouble to prop up people who are rarely better equipped to lead than anyone reading these words?  Most leaders in the world are no more capable of leading than any one of us, and yet we go through absurdly expensive selection rituals to find one person who can survive the process and then invest all our hopes and desires in them.

These leaders are no more intelligent or special than any one of us.  In many cases, they are far less so.  These leaders are little more than functionaries whose job it is to push papers and attend banquets.  So if the leaders are nothing special, then what is it about the rest of us that compels us to go through these rituals and then wait in vane for the leaders to fulfill the desires we have invested in them?

It's not for lack of trying that we haven't gotten rid of these useless figureheads.

The Enlightenment had a vision of the "sovereign individual."  All of the powers of the State were to be invested in each human being.  Through a social focus on education, the individual would be empowered to rule himself, and his home and property would be, in effect, his realm of supremacy.  In effect, every human of majority age would be a king or queen, a sovereign over their own lives and property, made benign and beneficent by access to learning never before made available to the masses.

Marx and Engels envisioned a system labelled Communism, where the State would ultimately be made irrelevant and the individual finally empowered to be their own supreme authority.  Few people realize this, since few have read The Communist Manifesto, but these men didn't want another system to replace something else, they wanted the ultimate demise of systems altogether, and created a roadmap to achieve it, if it were ever followed, which it has never been.

  Libertarianism is a sort of amalgam of these two, which is not difficult given the very similar goals.  The only difference between all sides is the means by which to achieve the target.

These three roadmaps were based on the Protestant Reformation and the idea that individuals were just as capable of reading the Bible and interpreting it for themselves, and didn't need a centralized power structure guarding the keys of wisdom and selecting compliant leaders to promulgate the system, rather than the common good.

What all of these concepts have in common is the empowerment of the individual over the collective and the need for leaders and authorities.  They are all predicated on a single event in history: the invention of movable type and Gutenberg's press.  By making books infinitely reproduceable, without the need for rooms full of scribes and caligraphers, prices plummeted and information became available to huge populations that were never able to access it before.

With one invention, the need for authorities and leaders was wiped out and the masses empowered with the same information as the elite.  This led to an explosion of creativity: the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution.  Every single person now had access to the same resources that were once the sole purview of the elite.

The internet is no less revolutionary.  Now cheaper and broader than at any time in history, individuals have access to vast libraries of information.  Books and data formerly only available to scholars and select elites is now just a click away, and most even downloadable to a personal library.  My own digital library probably contains a significant proportion of the library at Alexandria, and can be accessed without leaving my chair.

And yet...

People still turn to leaders and authorities.  We still prefer to have a perceived expert tell us what an author said, rather than going direct to the source.  We still think we are incapable of self-sovereignty and self-determination.  We still flock in annual rituals to select leaders who have spent inconceivable amounts of time and money to gain a position of power over us.

Are we so weak, so gullible that we can't see how much power we posses, and how little we require over us?  Has our educational system been so diluted that we don't see the power that is sitting right in front of us?  Are we so mis-led that we truly believe we cannot read and understand information for ourselves?

If so, then it is a sad commentary on both our leaders, and ourselves.  Our leaders have betrayed us by taking power away from us, rather than handing it out to us.  These leaders have destroyed our educational system, which is the key to personal empowerment.  They have made us more dependent on them, than on ourselves.  They have given us fish, rather than taught us how to fish.

The promise of such great movements as the Enlightenment is all but dead, even at the moment when we have been most empowered.  We would rather spend hours on YouTube watching empty content, than reading Plato and discussing it in online fora.

How sad.  How utterly wasted is this personal empowerment.

When authorities censor information, it is an admission of fear.  They are afraid that we will know what they know, and act on it.  If the history of the world for the past 500 years has taught us anything, it is that authorities will do anything to keep us ignorant and enslaved.

It is the greatest irony in history that at the very moment the power of the ages is at each of our fingertips, that we are the most controlled and enslaved people of all time.  And all because our leaders would rather we learn to put condoms on cucumbers, than to learn the basic skills of liberty and independence: grammar, logic and rhetoric.

In fact, if you search "trivium" on Google, the entire list of top references are for a pop band.

How we have squandered our birthright.

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!

Welcome To Botany Bay

"My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either." - Christopher Hitchins

Welcome to the penal colonies

One of the best American thinkers in recent years was a Brit.  Hitchins' geopolitical views were absolute rubbish.  He couldn't shake the monarchist prejudice.  But his cultural and social commentary were spot on.  In fact, he was almost as insightful as Mark Twain or H. L. Mencken. 


But that's neither here nor there.  What I really want to talk about is government, and the imperative that humanity faces to get rid of the Frankensteinian monster we collectively have created.


All government, everywhere at all times throughout history, is nothing more than publicly sanctioned force.  That's it.  If you need a complete and unabridged definition of it, that says it all.  Government is the right to compel, cajole and kill people to get them to follow someone else's idea of The Right Thing.  Furthermore, it is the power to legally steal our money to do it.


The only reasonable and sane thing to do, is to wipe all governments everywhere out of existence.


Oh sure, there have been attempts to create the uncreatable.  Some were even notable.  Switzerland, Iceland, even the united [sic] States of America.  At some point, though, they all devolve into corrupt, seething morasses of unethical, immoral and unjust cruelty and violence.  All governments, no matter how lofty the founding ideals, eventually force you and me to follow an external code of morals and regulate what you and I do, say, eat, drink, inhale, excrete, and create.

One hears it all the time.  In the US, people bellow at the top of their uneducated lungs that "this is a christian country!"  Here in Indonesia, it's "this is a muslim country!"  All seem to forget that all countries are lumps of dirt that happened to rise above mean sea level, and that the dirt has no allegiance to any one nor any ideal.  It's simply dirt.


All human beings are nothing more than self-ambulatory balls of dirt and water.  Granted, we have an amazing capacity for reason, though few ever exercise it.


Most of us are happy to trip through life believing whatever was mashed into our heads from birth.  We believe certain old books because, well, gosh...they're OLD!  The greatest minds ever produced by our species have tried and failed to prove the existence of various gods and souls and other mystical stuff.  Not one has ever succeeded.  Thomas Aquinas resorted to faith.  Einstein resorted to non-randomness.  Newton threw up his hands.  Lao Tsu called it mu.


Ultimately, most folks resort to something called 'god', and they are willing to slaughter, torture and enslave until you believe it too.  To achieve that end, different groups of people set up different types of government to pass different types of laws to force you and me to do things this way or that way.


In some countries, abortion is an industry, in others it's murder.  Either way, it's only a matter of how money to which person to get what you want.  In some countries, marijuana is illegal and punishable by years in prison and/or death, while in others it's a subsidized crop.  In some countries, you can run naked in the streets if you want, while in others, you must cover your body from head to toe or be lashed into submission.


Why, for god's sake, hasn't anyone ever tried to just leave people alone?


Here's an idea...I believe the sky is green.  I seek out others of like mind and we form a community.  If believing the sky is green is beneficial, we thrive culturally and economically.  If you are born into this community, but over time you come to believe that the sky is yellow, then you find another community of like mind and pack your bags.  Or better yet!  We build a community of people who indivisually believe the sky is many different colors, and we acknowledge that difference and use it to build a stronger community.


The latter was an idea called 'diverisity'.  Once upon a time, there was this soupy, loopy idea that we all just celebrate 'diversity'.  Naturally, over time it evolved into, "Believe my definition of diversity or I will beat, torture and ostracize you."  Same old BS, different name.  Ultimately, it became the belief that everything is diverse except those who don't believe as we do.


Governments are like sports teams.  Many people say, "Oh, such-and-such is MY team!"  No it isn't.  It is the sole property of an owner, and it exists to enrich that owner.  Your mindless support and loyalty of the team only serves to make someone else rich and the expense of food and lodging for your family.


It's the same with governments.  People say, "It's my country and I love it!"  In reality, it is owned by a few folks in the background, and all your mindless support and loyalty and blind obedience serves only to enrich the owners, not you or me.


The process is the same everywhere at all times.  People set up governments to protect them.  The governments set up regulatory agencies to oversee the groups who potentially could do the people harm.  The groups give money to the regulators, who end up protecting the groups from the people who first gave birth to the monster.

Over and over and over and over...at all times everywhere.


Like the child who sees the government thug standing around menacing regular folks:


"Daddy, why is that man dressed like Darth Vader and pointing a gun at me?"


"He's there to protect us from ourselves, son, so we don't do anything to ourselves that will impair our ability to make money for the owners."


"Oh, I see."


It's always the same.  We're going to create a society that is full of peace and harmony, where everyone can hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" and hug trees.  God help you if you want to sing "Hokey Pokey" and slap cats, though.  That'll get you 20 years of hard labor in Sing Sing and lifetime labels that will prevent you from ever getting a job again, so that you are forced to sing "Hokey Pokey" on street corners, so they will keep throwing you in jail, so you can have a place to sleep and food in your belly.  Makes perfect sense, since the money to incarcerate you is legally stolen from me by Darth Vader-wanna-bes to protect me from "Hokey Pokey."


So what's the point, you graciously ask, and I'm glad you did.


The US is arguing over shutting down the federal government.  To me, there's no argument.  Shut it down!  It's just a bunch of steroid-addicted, pea-brained micro-willys that put on a show for us that we call Our Team.  It's not our team.  It's owned by a bunch of mysterious reptilians who sole aim in life is to take money from you and give it to themselves.  Our aim, of course, is to earn money and keep it in our pockets.  It's the polar opposite of Our Team, since our team would be on our side.


After all, what has the FCC ever done for you, except prevent you from seeing a multi-thousand dollar pair of enhanced mammary glands and hearing words you hear 20 times a minute in the average movie on the very same TeeVee set?


What has the IRS ever done for you (though I bet you can make a list of done to you)?  What has the FBI ever done for you?  What have ANY of the alphabet goons ever done FOR you?  By that, I mean direct, personal benefit that you can quantify and prove.


I'll bet, if you're one of the three people left who doesn't work for the government, you can't think of one, single, solitary thing.  And the ones shrieking about it being the end of the world are the California state nurses earning $300k+ per month, or the New York toll booth atendent getting $100k+ per month, or all the useless freakin' numb-buckets in CONgress shoving YOUR money in THEIR pockets.


Governments are now and have ever been social welfare for moral and ethical degenerates, like Newt Gingrinch.  Shut them all down.  Start fresh with a new idea.  Leave me the hell alone and I'll do the same, neighbor.  Set foot on my property with malice, and you'll get a case of lead poisoning.  Very simple concepts, very difficult to get people to realize it.

No one expects the Inquisition!

The only reason governments keep springing up is because the owners want your labor and wealth.  No other reason at all, no matter how lofty the rhetoric.  Put the lazy bastards out of work.  Make them find productive things to do that really benefit society.


What Hitchens said about George W. Shrub could apply equally to every single government employee that ever lived:

"He is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things."