News
I have no right to freedom and have as much as I deserve. Neither a state nor anyone else is obligated to provide me freedom. The exercise of my will and any resulting consequences are matters of judgment for which I hold no other responsible. If I had freedom to exercise my will without interference, I would fly. Gravity owes me no more freedom to fly than my neighbor owes me the freedom to paint my house green. I am aware that actions and inactions have consequences, and some consequences are preferred over others. Good judgments result in favorable consequences, while poor judgments result in unfavorable consequences. To make one person responsible for another’s poor judgment is conducive to making haphazard judgments, since critical consideration of one’s actions becomes less consequential. When states get out of the way of equalizing consequences, people will take greater care in the judgments they make relative to their acts and perceived consequences. Self-reliance is a better tool to peace and prosperity within a societal structure than is the tool of state-reliance, because it promotes a greater perceived value of prudence. My motivation as an individual anarchist is to seek an understanding of my life and attempt to structure it based on what makes sense to me. I do not seek a universal societal structure that serves my beliefs. My opposition to those who represent the state or other forms of institutionalized coercion is their claim of eminent domain over the lives of their subjects. I find their claim of domain over my life to be invalid and false. For me to believe their claim would be to mentally enslave myself. How others view such claims over their lives is their business. Some may feel it necessary and rewarding to partake in the selection of a new claimant periodically; I find such participation for myself degrading. The idea that freedom to vote makes one free is false. It is no less slavery when one is allowed to select their master every few years. To be free is to believe your life is of your creation and domain and not the creation or domain of a demagogue. Demagogues and their advocates lure their victims by demeaning self-reliance. Without self-reliance someone else becomes responsible for your life - a very attractive, hypnotic notion. "Why become responsible for anything? Just sit back and enjoy the ride through life at the expense and obligation of someone else." I find the notion of giving up my life too great a price to pay for such a ride.
Individualist Anarchism, 7/13/12
Don't expect governments to give you more freedom. As we've witnessed in recent years, they can only remove freedom. Only you can define what freedom means to you and then pursue that path in your personal life and through broader activism.
Do You Know What Freedom Is?, 7/5/12
So to conclude, when it comes to health care, here are some of your real rights that bureaucrats have been usurping away from you:
You have a right to see a doctor if you want to.
You have a right to not see a doctor if you don’t want to.
You have a right to buy insurance.
You have a right to not buy insurance.
You have a right to not participate in a government-controlled medical scheme.
You have a right to not be vaccinated.
You have a right to not take prescription drugs.
You have a right to exercise your own ways of preventative medicine.
You have a right to take vitamins and nutritional supplements.
You have a right to access your vitamins and nutritional supplements. And a right to be free of the Big Pharma-FDA revolving door attempting to shut down supplement makers for the sake of Big Pharma profits.
You have a right to drink raw milk.
You have a right to farm and grow your own food on your own property, and a right to share it with your neighbors, and it’s none of government bureaucrats’ business!
You have a right to be free from sniveling, cowardly, control-freak bureaucrats who don’t like your independence sending S.W.A.T. teams to your property to terrorize (or murder) you for providing for yourself and your family.
You have a right to refuse a government bureaucrat’s order to buy health insurance.
And you have a right to tell the government to stick it.
The 'Right to Health Care', 7/3/12
"Government (of whatever form) cannot righteously rule without consent of the governed. Without your consent, this entity cannot rightfully claim or require any contractual obligation upon you. No individual or collective entity can declare legitimate authority over your life or property without your explicit consent. Without your consent, their claims of ruling you can then only be backed by threatening violence upon you, further illustrating their illegitimacy. And no, you cannot be rightfully born into such an arrangement, just as you cannot be rightfully born a slave. Make your claim to individual sovereignty clear by declaring and affirming your personal secession." (10:18)
Roger Young: I Do Not Consent To Be Governed, 6/29/12
Keep this story in mind, which was told to me yesterday.
During the height of the Soviet Empire a physicist was planning to escape the USSR. He was cleared to travel, but, of course, he was not allowed to take with him any wealth he had.
The man cleared the Soviet checkpoint with one piece of luggage and a couple of suits thrown in. And, oh yeah, he managed to take all his wealth with him.
How did he do it?
Before he left, he sold off all his assets and bought platinum with the funds. He stretched the platinum into wire and made coat hangers out of the wire. He threw his suits over the "hangers" and cleared the checkpoint without incident.
How one man escaped with his wealth, 4/19/12
Will the book convert anyone straight over to the cause of liberty? Probably not. Can it be a step on that road, a building block in a young person’s or even older reader’s journey towards that end? Sure, and an enjoyable one at that.
Is the 'Hunger Games' Trilogy a Libertarian Manifesto?, 4/12/12
All of these measures don’t mean that you will never be served with a subpoena. It means that if you are lucky you can respond with the glorious “certification of no records. “ But it will still be a win if you can reduce the number of records that you have to produce from millions down to dozens. It is a lot easier, less expensive and will protect more privacy.
Three Steps To Handle a Subpoena, 3/7/12
The countries of the developed world are experiencing a new class of refugee – members of the middle- and upper-class. These rungs of the socio-economic ladder are realizing that their countries of residence are in many ways going rapidly downhill without much hope of a short- or medium-term reversal. This is particularly true for national economies, taxes and regulations, and in terms of deteriorating individual liberty.
As a result, many are seeking permanent expatriation, or a "back door" destination, should a sudden move become necessary. In fact, after internationalizing your assets, establishing the back door is the next most important diversification strategy for most.
How to Discover Your Own Personal Shangri-la, 12/26/11
When one hears the term wiretapping, normally one thinks of secretly recording phone calls of others; some may have thoughts of Watergate. However, under some crafty interpretations of the legal definition of wiretapping, several people have found themselves as suspects of this offense for filming their encounters with public officials. Most people familiar with the Free State Project are aware that Pete Eyre and Adam Mueller (aka Ademo Freeman) were recently acquitted of the felony wiretapping charges in Massachusetts. Some people may even be aware that the 1st Circuit Court ruled that filming public officials while on duty is a “basic and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.”
It's good to see courts, and juries, recognizing the fact that filming cops is not a crime. I encourage everyone to carry a camera (or two) just in case the need arises to film an encounter with a “public servant.” You may be able to hold them accountable, and possibly protect yourself from jail.
Courts Uphold Right to Film Police, 9/20/11
Sovereignty and Security
Sovereignty is our birthright. Certainly everyone deserves to have security too. Where in the Bible or anywhere else does it say that you can only have one or the other?
A little bit about the Issue of Supposed Risk
As you know and is apparent to people like us, we live in a conditioned, tamed, dumbed down society. Starting as young as possible, we are taught to think and behave acceptably and unquestionably, within a narrow range in most areas of thought.
Generally, freedom and sovereignty topics are ignored by our families, our teachers and by our religious leaders and everyone else. We all know many otherwise intelligent and progressive people who do not want to know anything out of the norm about what freedom is and means or about what money is all about and how it is created or about how banking or the 'loan' or income tax or traffic ticket industries work, etc. Most people seem to want to trust the 'experts' about these things - the professors, the attorneys, the CPAs, etc. who are conditioned as much as anyone else, even though they may come to know a few just slightly disturbing 'secrets' within their own, often specialized fields.
People like us are not of the norm. Somehow, through a sudden epiphany or catastrophe or a more gradual life process of some sort, we have awakened out of the mass hypnosis at least in some major way. We have come to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that some of the 'truths' that we have been taught are based upon layer upon layer of false presumptions, and, in fact, are not truths at all. We have taken the red pill, so to speak.
A common experience, especially of recent red pill takers, is a feeling of alienation with family and friends who liked it a lot better when you didn't know anything but the blue pill, like them. It's good to learn quickly that there is no point in arguing or defending or even explaining red pill matters to blue pill personalities, because, at best, they only look at you with glazed eyes; worse, they might think you need to be institutionalized and/or 'properly' medicated.
You can't reason or logic anyone out of being brainwashed and it's never honorable to argue, actually - some, in this place, may feel very hopeless and very lonely. Oftentimes it can feel very challenging to talk with anyone about one's realizations, let alone do anything about them. Subtly, or maybe not so subtly, these realizations have a way of nagging at you though, don't they?
How old were you when you first realized that the official JFK assassination story was a big lie? Where were you when you first realized that 9/11 was an inside job? What was it like when you first looked at a $20 bill and realized that there was something terribly wrong that it was just a piece of paper? Have you fully grocked yet that every penny of income tax you have ever paid is testiment to and funding of your slavery? If so, you no doubt have changed the errors of your prior ways...
But hold on... It's one thing to see "America: Freedom to Fascism" or read "Creature from Jekyll Island" - it's another thing to take on a traffic judge or a draft board or a bank or the IRS, or the entire U.S. government, for that matter. After all, everybody knows somebody who knows someone who was embarrassed or penalized or fined or went to jail or even killed doing it, don't they?
Reminder #1: Don't do anything until you know what you're doing.
Instead, get educated, stay educated, get groundwork laid however it is that you find will best serve you... and then act deliberately, in a grounded and confident manner to competently address whatever is in front of you, one step at a time. This first rule is obvious, isnt it? There is no risk in getting educated. Knowledge really is power. Ignorance is where unnecessary risk really lies.
Probably, the first thing to understand is that the basis for all of commerce, all of law and all of human relating is our inalienable right and ability and necessity to contract.
Reminder #2: From this moment on, be in honor.
Every demand that can ever be presented to anyone is just an offer. There are only five possible categories of responses to any offer. Never ignore. Never argue. Rather, righteously and graciously, refuse an offer to contract as long as you're not already otherwise obliged to do so, or accept or ar least conditionally accept whatever the offer is. That's it. Simple. Don't dishonor (ignore or argue), as dishonoring is risky. Where is the risk of being in honor? Where is the risk in being timely and truthful?
Reminder #3: Control your contracts and your contracting.
This is actually what sovereignty is all about. Those who don't control their contracts are not sovereign; those of us who do, are. By controlling our contracts, we control our property, starting with our bodies and our minds.
The truth is, no one can stop you from controlling every contract you ever enter in to, as long as you know just a few basic subrules:
Reminder #3a: Wherever possible, avoid making positive statements.
Don't take a position that you might have to prove or defend. No one can prove anything, so always make the adversary prove everything. Don't even explain; instead, rely on negative averments. Don't brag about your sovereignty, for instance - 'course you're demonstrating your non-sovereignty if you do - make them prove you're not. How can they, as long as you're feeling and being in your sovereignty in this moment? All of their so-called proofs can only come from the past. Positive statements are risky - saying the same thing in the negative is not; don't you see?
Reminder #3b: Ask questions.
The one who asks the questions, controls the situation. Innocence is good. Ignorance can be useful. There are always good questions that one can use to respond to any accusation, for instance. Probably, the best way to prepare whenever you may find yourself on the accused side of a court case, is to take an hour or two or eleven and write down and become real familiar with all of your questions. When, in doubt, come back with a question.
When, Heaven forbid, you answer your door to an angry FBI agent, shoving some document you mailed to some government agency in front of you, yelling at you: "Is this your signature on this document?" Instead of saying Yes when you're unsure of the consequences and instead of saying No which would be the 'crime' of lying to a federal officer, say: "Oh, is there something wrong with that instrument?" which can follow with "Well, if there's nothing wrong with that instrument, then why are you here?" Answers can be risky. Questions aren't.
Reminder #3c: Turn any argument you may be inclined to make into a conditional acceptance.
Always stay in honor: "I'll accept that/ pay that/ do that... upon proof of claim/ upon receipt of just consideration/ if you'll do this..."
One more thing:
Being free and sovereign is not about one line you draw or one line you cross and then the entire universe changes. 99% of the time, whatever you're dealing with that is in front of you has nothng to do with anything else. Each decision is separate.
Be deliberate. Avoid haste. If feeling semi-panicked, it is good to remember to take a breath; look around you a see that there are infinite possibilities. Establish what step one is and then act only from a position of righteousness and strength.
Be a purist if it suits you. For instance, drive your car without government issued driver's license and/or registration if you're fully prepared to do so - and know that many who take this path are hassled by the police much of the time. Otherwise, use a driver's license without being a victim. The phrase "without prejudice" printed above your signature on a government form provides adequate notice in many cases that you're not trading any God given rights in exchange for State privileges, that you're contracting on your terms, not theirs.
Sovereignty and true security go hand in hand.
Be smart. Don't argue or preach to a cop or any other fanatic statist. Don't spit into the wind.
Sovereignty is not about self-image, but it is about knowing who you are and who you aren't. True security is not the kind that comes with slavery, but the kind one earns by applying one's resources with integrity in life.
|
