I have always thought of the government as an organized crime racket. The moment I turned eighteen and filed my first tax return I became an anarchist (without actually even knowing what an anarchist was, I was an intuitive anarchist' Lol). The very fact that the tax code is so unnecessarily complex and full of loopholes should tell anyone with a lick of sense that there is some underhanded dealings going on. And don't get me started on the Death Tax, an appropriately foreboding name for a truly villainous standard operating procedure - the fact that the government feels entitled to a large chunk of a person's hard earned estate after they die is the epitome of criminality.
With each passing day, I better understand Albert Jay Nock's seemingly elitist references to "the Remnant" and "the Mass." I want to hope that people can learn, and I believe in the long run, they can. It's the short run that worries me!
"Albert Jay Nock's seemingly elitist references to "the Remnant" and "the Mass.""
Good grief, we've been grabbing books from the same shelves in the library again!
"People" will not willingly and under their own impetus learn any new thing if that thing is not already confirmed and accepted by the rest of society, in which case the learning is motivated by their seeking affirmation. Especially if the learning challenges or calls into question their own status and level of comfort within the prevailing paradigm.
And it's even worse than this. Try to make people understand that if they've done well by the prevailing system, then they have benefitted from crime, and therefore their gains are ill gotten. Not the government - no way! - but they will lynch YOU!
"Good grief, we've been grabbing books from the same shelves in the library again!"
—I have only read "Isaiah's Job." I need to read more.
""People" will not willingly and under their own impetus learn any new thing if that thing is not already confirmed and accepted by the rest of society"
—Good lord. We are infinite beings of light trapped in ridiculous monkey bodies, mostly behaving like ridiculous monkeys.
"Not the government - no way! - but they will lynch YOU!"
—There are moments when I just want to say "bring it on" and take my chances.
—Good lord. We are infinite beings of light trapped in ridiculous monkey bodies, mostly behaving like ridiculous monkeys.
Biologist Edward O. Wilson put it this way:
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
If I could project and multiply mine over all of us, collectively, our anger would be irrepressible. Supernova comes to mind. The fire of creation. Shiva, the Lord of the Dance.
You can equate government taxation with people who farm or hunt and harvest and use the whole animal. Nothing goes to waste. Likewise government wants it all; what we earn, what we own, what we spend, what we save, what we invest and when we die they want whatever is left.
I'm not sure what your belief system entails exactly, but I'm not a fan of our current system. And I don't think any system can resolve the problems with society.
In my view, it is the people themselves that are the problem. If a thousand average people were placed in a perfect paradise that provides everything they need, a place free from dangerous animals, natural disasters, or any sort of government tyranny, they would ruin it in just a handful of generations.
One group would set about polluting the island with trash, while another begins stealing children to raise as slaves and finally a third group who decide they are the police and oppress everyone.
This world started out as an anarchy with plenty of food for everyone. The people throughout history are the ones who made it like this.
To summarise, I think the key to a better world is better people.
All fair points. I make no claims about the possibility of a utopia. I simply hold that to whatever degree people are rotten, it is WORSE to take a small number of (putatively rotten) people and grant them irresistible authority over the rest.
Choosing some people you don't trust and giving them the power to control the other people you don't trust is easily one of the stupidest systems imaginable.
“To summarise, I think the key to a better world is better people.”
How to create good and just and righteous and wise and virtuous and integrous and godly people then? There’s the spiritual concept that human nature is corrupt, i.e. fallen, sensual, even diabolical. (You alluded to this when you talked about putting a thousand people on a tropical paradise with all the food they needed.) The key to making better people is (arguably?) to redeem and rehabilitate human nature. “With men, this is impossible. But with GOD [in the person of Christ, Emmanuel], all things are possible.” If GOD or divine redemption or divine rehabilitation don’t exist, it seems to me that human beings radically changing our nature from diabolical to righteous is a rank impossibility. As a skeptic and a free thinker and a radical inquirer, what do you think?
Thank you for sharing your perspective. As an atheist and a believer in human potential, I see things a bit differently. While I understand the view that human nature can be seen as corrupt or fallen, I believe that we have the capacity to improve ourselves through reason, empathy, and societal progress.
The idea that only divine intervention can redeem human nature might be comforting for some, but it doesn't resonate with my understanding of humanity. History has shown us that humans can and do evolve morally and ethically through education, introspection, and the support of just societies.
Creating a better world with better people, in my view, comes from fostering environments where kindness, justice, and integrity are valued and taught. It involves nurturing critical thinking, empathy, and a sense of communal responsibility.
While some may find this transformation impossible without divine help, I believe in the power of human effort and the possibility of positive change through collective action and shared values. After all, many of the greatest strides in human rights, science, and philosophy have been made by individuals driven by reason and a profound sense of humanity.
Rights are not natural; you have to use force to protect them. They are not some sacred cow that people will not trample on as soon as they will benefit from it. From races to prisons to every stretch of the government, you are only allowed a small degree of freedom because they allow it and in the past thirty or more years, it has steadily had its leash shortened. We live in a time where our government is permeated with so much layers of corruption and bureaucracy that it is mind boggling. All these layers are now at a point where they will resist any attempt to curtail their own power and money. They will continue to squeeze people and curtail rights because to them yes, we are cattle. The proles who only exist to make them rich and powerful.
I view rights as abstractions. The only one your so called rights rights actually matter to is you. You have to convince the other party(person or government) that you have a right. If they deny you have that right, e.g., life, liberty, property you must fight for it, as Christopher said. Who is it that is the biggest violator of our rights? Yes, those guys. The ones who tell us they are protecting our rights, via a document they get to define. That oddly sounds like Stockholm syndrome - your captor is also your protector.
There are the people who claim positive rights, those that must be provided by someone else, such as medical care, food , housing. Isn’t that theft? And if the government gets involved they decide who gets which rights and who will pay for them. Don’t fall for it.
I don't know, Do you suppose his Polish exile was during the Bolshevik onslaught detailed in the SPLC wikipedia article? The vermin make no mention of it. There is this, last updated in July 2020, https://freedomain.com/ which is hideously racist for having no primeday video ads.
People do. Sometimes they win in the lower courts. But the yankee occupation force hires the likes of them to define judicial policy. That makes them the show trial actors guild.
2) The Founding Fathers almost certainly agreed with this yet still wrote the Declaration of Independence.
I'm not a conservative, I am a Christian who seeks to go about my days in an increasingly godly and biblical manner.
My qualm with your letter, though I understand your beef and agree our tax system is corrupt beyond measure, is that you are arguing from an anarchist perspective.
The fact is we do need government BUT not just any government. A "limited" government in so much as the government is only doing government things and nothing more. IE law, order, military/police, justice, and infrastructure.
The problem with America is that we have permitted the government to complicate the tax system in all of these areas (and more) to the point that they are doing the minimal of what they are supposed to while taxing the maximum that they can. Essentially raping and pillaging the nation with the air of legitimacy, which does sound a lot like tyranny to me.
Any functional society will need to pay some type of tax to accommodate the above purposes of government (tariffs count as the consumer still feels it) but it should be napkin sized simple. If there's a "loophole" then it too should be utterly simple, at least then we'd know it explicitly existed. Said loophole could still be immoral but hey at least it wouldn't be crony.
The biggest issue is the American people did this to ourselves. Salesman as politicians sold Americans a bill of goods that gradually expanded their purposes more and more. Americans in-turn assumed it was the government's right responsibility (welfare, education, etc.) and therefore voted in favor of taxes to support that. If we only ever voted for what truly remained in the government's rightful sphere then the government would be proper government size, taxes would be proper size, and we'd have just enough positive capital to take care of said responsibilities, save for natural disasters, and then give back to the people once a cap is met (I know that last is most unlikely but a boy can dream).
And with that I imagine that is why the revolution started. It wasn't that they didn't want to pay any taxes. It was that the King was imposing taxes beyond his reasonable and appropriate sphere of concern and, in that, was necessitating a rightful backlash of his citizens as he become no longer a king but a thief.
Thank you for the polite and irenic nature of your comments.
"1) Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's"
—It is dangerous ground to get into an argument about religion, so I won't, and I will respect whatever interpretations you may have. I will just say briefly that I have heard plenty of interpretations of this line that suggest that Jesus was—wink-wink, nudge-nudge—saying that NOTHING is Caesars. Also, I have heard an interpretation of Paul's various statist references that he was trying to appease a Roman audience. But that is all an aside…
"My qualm with your letter, though I understand your beef and agree our tax system is corrupt beyond measure, is that you are arguing from an anarchist perspective."
—I am. I am a libertarian anarchist.
I spent most of my adult life being where you (sound like you) are now: a "limited-government" conservative. Then I started working on a book and doing a deep dive into what that meant—into the principles that undergird that ideology (principles largely shared libertarians).
This took me further down the line, until I started sounding minarchist notes very similar to what you are saying now: a desperate desire to believe that an extremely limited government is both necessary and possible.
Eventually, however, I drew all the principles out to their logical conclusions and those conclusions became inescapable.
Still, it was hard to accept until I started reading about how a condition of voluntary order ("anarchy") could actually work. At that point, I had run out of excuses.
The logical process is, at least in part, represented by the chart at the end of these two posts:
I won't hammer you, but you are the exact cohort I am trying to convince. If we get conservatives (who are large in number and strong in energy, and who have the right core principles) to take the journey I have, human liberty wins!
So if you are interested, we can keep the discussion going over time.
You nailed it! I am truly grateful for your Substack and all your efforts to educate Substackistanians on the reality of Freedom.
This has been my personal 'struggle' with Government and politics all my life. I suspect the same is true for most. I emphasize 'struggle' as this natural response to 'vigilance' is inescapable of the Human Condition. Vigilance is a predicate word. It's Propositional definition is conditional. "Eternal vigilance" is nonsensical, Logically fallacious, Sophistry. Anyone making this statement either doesn't understand what they are saying, or they do, and they're being manipulative of the conversation.
Vigilance is a human condition propositional of anxiety.
As a survivor of an extremely violent parachuting 'accident' and moderately severe Traumatic Brain Injury nearly 40 years ago, I am very familiar with the anxiolotic dysfunction of hyper vigilance. I would not respond well to anyone saying anything as ridiculous as "eternal vigilance". It's a moronic statement that means 'eternal anxiety' or it means nothing.
Nonetheless, I know my personal experience is anecdotal, but that doesn't explain away the Human Condition that we all experience. The struggle against the inherent oppressive nature of Government.
All humans struggle against oppression. One particularly demented human used it as propaganda for his psychotic oppressive regimes standard of Government. 'Mein Kampf' = 'My Struggle'.
FTR - Jihad also means 'struggle'.
The human struggle for Freedom is innate among humanity. It's part of the Human Condition.
Having patient, pragmatic, humans like yourself, to help ordinary people understand, is what's mighty about being human. Because Freedom is at the core of what it truly means to be Human, and to love and appreciate humanity and being human. Humanity begets humanity. Love begets love. Freedom begets freedom. This is the part that people get distracted away from. Being present of mind and knowing, that 'being' what you want to the world to 'be' is the only way to achieve that goal. It begins and ends with individual action.
This essay made my day. I'm going to go outside and touch grass.
Thank you. And sorry that you got so badly injured all those years ago. (I must confess some curiosity as to why you put ‘accident’ in scare quotes.)
Thank you also for backing up by sense of annoyance with the “eternal vigilance” nonsense. I didn’t give it much direct thought until recently, and with your added logic on the subject, I now find it even more annoying!
I will keep doing my best, Atomic. More good stuff coming soon.
Enjoy the grass. I am going to have to cut mine soon!
I quoted accident only because it's hard to classify something intentional as accidental, but that works for the Army. In all candor there's also my personal contribution to being there voluntarily and being highly motivated to get out of the aircraft as soon as the door opened and me telling the PFC in front of me he better move fast, because I was going to be right on top of him going out the door, only to have the red light come on when I was one foot out the door and past the point of no return. Only three of us made it out. In a horrible January storm that pushed all the way from the Arctic down through the middle of the country 31 January 1985. We caught the Southern edge at Fort Rucker, Al. We thought we were safe that far South. Winters are typically pretty mild in LA - Lower Alabama.
It was otherwise an extremely successful Pathfinder mission, all things considered. The Pathfinder Team on the ground successfully put us on the drop zone. If I hadn't wanted out so intensely - which is another story entirely, I would have flown back to Dothan AP with the rest of my company when they scrapped the training because of the storm. I would have been right as rain for a career in 1SFG.
There's a lot more to the stories, but that's the gist of the experience not being an accidental accident. It's more accurate to say the wind was blowing so hard I couldn't stick the landing, and the landing stuck me, and I was dragged for nearly a kilometer at about 40 -45 miles an hour, face down, while being unconscious, having a seizure, and nearly biting through my tongue. Mother Nature beat me senseless that day for sure. Or was it Saint Michael giving me the smackdown for my arrogance?
Interesting point, Atomic. Yes struggle is part of nature's evolution. Yet manufactured struggle is a completely different scenario. It's a human intervention devised by unscrupulous beings. Completely.
What point is that? I don't recall even stating an argument?
I mean, I describe MY own personal experience, and MY appreciation for Christopher Cook, and The Freedom Scale... right? That's not an argument. It's a description of anecdotal personal experience as it relates to the Human Condition, and appreciative praise.
"Manufactured struggle"? How exactly is struggle manufactured? What exactly is struggle manufactured from? Where is struggle manufactured, and what is the manufacturing process, is there an International Standards Organization number for the manufacture of struggle?
After reading the definition of manufacture, it's clear to me, that "struggle" cannot be manufactured.
Nonetheless, whatever "manufactured struggle" is, it has nothing to with me, my experience, or my appreciation for Christopher Cook and The Freedom Scale. It's non sequitur.
I'll overlook the inherent condescension of your unsolicited no sequitur. Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying.
...? Whoa, sorry. I was not arguing with you. Just making a point that not everything is worth struggling for, to see the difference. And I'll not respond to your comments. If that's your position. It's a free country in SUBSTACK,dude. Chill.
I'm not selling anything either so you're off the hook. ✌️🎸😎
Why are you using dramatic effect? Take ownership of what you write. We're all adults here. Some more than others.
I can only presume you understand how the English Language works.
Please, try to remain pragmatic. A sense of humor helps. Don't get offended because I make light of "manufactured struggle", or point out the inherent condescension of your response?
Your comment made zero sense. It's non sequitur to what I wrote. That's not my fault. It's your comment. You wrote it. I read it. It didn't make sense. It still doesn't.
Please, this is your opportunity to elucidate what "manufactured struggle" is supposed to mean, even if it doesn't relate to what I wrote, because I seriously haven't a clue.
It's not fair to Laffer to accuse him of believing that government should maximize its own size, but yes, that's what left-wing people believe. We are slaves building pyramids for our pharoahs, and it is the size of the pyramids that we exist to optimize.
You are the second one to presume that I was bashing Laffer for this. I wrote poorly in that regard, for I did not mean to give that impression. I have added a footnote to clarify.
Nice slaves/pyramids metaphor. When will people wake up!?
It's difficult to say. Natural rights certainly exist given the natural psychological transformations humans go through. All of these natural rights are high-order abstractions of something that either 1. Stopped something from removing the ability to transform or 2. Facilitated the ability to transform better. How can I know this? Simply because if you remove all natural rights “discovered” through jurisprudence, philosophy, death, and observation then the psychological chances of contentment, goal attainment, future security and possibility plummet creating an environment of chaos within the individual of which creates an environment of chaos outside the individual. But the idea is that one shouldn't make it any worse than it has to be so the human will pick areas of their life that are weak and full of holes and become the tyrant.
So to answer the question: it starts as a violation and turns into a removal “as if" they didn't exist. “As if" they never existed and any mention of it is to be met with extreme prejudice. Therefore we have a responsibility to not be weak and fracture our own lives when government violates and invades: its to use that as fuel to research, learn, understand, look further, dive deeper, look in places one doesn't want too. It's to unify under one understanding: that there is divinity in every individual. And this divinity provides the answer to these natural rights. And this divinity needs to be recognized and yielded to by the state. (That is not a proposition for a mix of church and state. That is a proposition for government to see the preciousness in all life from birth to individuals on death row no matter their transgressions and trespasses. For their life is too precious for something as grotesque as the state to have control over. Grotesque compared to life that is.
I am not as conversant in this psychological approach. But the first thing that occurs to me is to ask—do you believe that an entity such as the state could ever actually recognize and yield to the divinity you describe?
As long as it's separated and allowed to pursue their own aims. Separate as in federal to state to local. The more that gap closes the more "the state" won't yield. The more the "middle ground" / "middle class" is destroyed, the more those gaps in between federal state and local close.
They don't have to be an oppressor. So long as impositions are just, public, and agreed upon is it oppression? So long as citizens are not subject to harsh exercises of authority is it oppression? If the local representative has truth in mind, because the county representative does, and the state, and the federal, and the ethos of justice, public information, and agreement is all met properly why would they be an oppressor? Would you rather a representative beholden to (a/the) law, a law all has agreed upon with compassionate consideration of all peoples involved, or someone who is not beholden to the social restrictions that in-turn create freedom?
We agree on it as a society. There is an element of acceptance of a negative for something that helps with productivity. For example, there were over 42 thousand auto deaths in the USA in 2022, we as a society, accept that negative to continue to have vehicles on the road. If a leader wants to take vehicles off the road because of safety issues it must be met with the demand of the people. If there's a split demand within the society about the direction, we should take then a proper discussion is in order. How we go about that discussion must be agreed on as well, agreement is directly linked to the public's reaction and what has worked in the past. If no conclusion can be reached, then reference to third parties and outsourcing research may be in order. There is an endless string of potential solutions through the system of conversation, to be fair, there is an endless string of potential problems stemming from the same system but there is no alternative that is as productive in creating cross-cultural peace.
As for (so-called) “limited government”, even if it’s authentically conservative and interpreting the Constitution according to the original intent of the framers, it’s forever too late to save the country from crushing corruption. Evidence? Here’s a good quote, but I can’t be bothered to link to its source:
{begin quote} No one, no statisticians, and not even this government itself, has any clue as to how many federal laws exist. No one knows how many rules, restrictions, and regulations there are, and it is impossible to find an answer to this question. The Federal Register alone, the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations, has well over 85,000 pages. The Code of Federal Regulations through 2019, has 186,000 pages, and the Federal Register Pages for the past decade eclipsed 800,000 pages. This alone is unimaginable. But of course, there are more. There is a law for every aspect of our lives in this country, and there are a completely separate set of international laws, State laws, county laws, city laws, and licensing laws for every activity or thought. This is total insanity, and why every single ‘citizen’ can be deemed a criminal at any given moment. Even as far back as in the times of Roman historian Tacitus, he stated that, “The more corrupt the State, the more numerous the laws.” The U.S. has more laws by far than any other nation on earth in history, and therefore is the most corrupt and criminal of all time.{end quote} Tacitus knew what he was talking about and it’s completely applicable now.
Yep. But that is just the end-state condition of something that was inevitable from the start.
Also, I have been learning over the past year that there was no single "original intent of the framers." They all agreed on the objectives of the Revolution, but it broke down from there. And some of them had agendas VERY different from the others.
It certainly didn’t help that George Washington was a Freemason and that Alexander Hamilton was a monarchist and that Thomas Jefferson decided to form the first American political party.
It’s difficult to discern which foundational and basic laws are unjust to begin with and which laws (or rules) are divine.
It seems to me that rules need to be different for children — who have not yet developed the intelligence and reasoning skills and discipline — who don’t conceive of axioms such as (1) being a “sovereign, self-owning person” and (2) natural rights. Additionally, children may understand their parents’ right to discipline them as violating their right to not be disciplined. (This is unfamiliar territory to me in terms of how I reason about rights and responsibilities.)
I do think that everyone inherently understands the rule “As you desire others to treat you, treat others”. I think that every individual understands to a certain degree, based on his or her maturity, “this is how I want to be treated”. Too simplistic?
Not too simplistic, but too vague. I want daily massage. Do I have to treat others that way? Disallowing “the initiation of coercive force” is much better. Everyone understands that too, and better.
Children complicate everything. Basically, they are sovereign beings with the same rights as all others, but they are it capable of full communion with those rights from the get-go. So their parents hold their rights in conditional and temporary proxy, and release that control at a (hopefully) commensurate with a child’s increasing capabilities and ability to assume responsibility.
Ah, "limited government". Like a cancer surgeon removing just 3/4 of the malignant tumor, writing the word "constitution" on the remainder, and telling the patient, "You're good to go!"
And as for the Con(Job)stitution, I like Lysander Spooner's take:
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist."
as well as the more pithy "The Constitution is the casket in which the Declaration was buried."
Even raising the question in the title is a form of acceptance.
EVERY form of government is criminal and against natural law.
EVERY!
So participation in elections is a form of surrendering. I don't elect anybody on the federal level because the whole federal level is an uninterrupted crime.
The only way to deal with any form of government is total refusal.
The more people do this, the faster freedom will come.
@Courageouslion explained this total refusal today quite well:
The problems with government are the same as with anarchy: human beings have the propensity to violate each others' rights. How best to deal with those violations is the question that various forms of government have attempted to answer. Every form of government to date has attempted some form of might makes right. Under anarchy, which has never been tried, there is no way to control the use of might.
There are two questions to which no one has developed answers that a functional majority can agree. First, what are the parameters of right? America's founders attempted to enumerate at least the most critical of them in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but managed not much beyond the statement that all men have certain natural rights, among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, none of them defined.
The second question is what are the parameters of might? Superior physical strength? Strength in numbers? Mastery of weapons? Willingness to apply any means at one's disposal?
The U. S. Constitution is, at bottom, a delineation of what powers (might) should be bestowed on Federal, State, and Local government, the remainder being retained by the people. The problem, from the start, is that anyone on whom power over others is bestowed invariably will seek to expand it, and everyone who gives up certain powers to others, in doing so, cannot take them back, short of rebellion or outright revolution. In other words, as Lord Acton stated, "Power tends to corrupt." Corrupt whom? He did not say, but I will. Both those who wield it and those who submit to it are corrupted by it.
And that applies to government and to anarchists. The Christian answer is that the only power one should always submit to is that of God, the only incorruptible power. I believe that. However, it does not account for living among those who 1) won't submit to God, or 2) retain the right to define the will of God. The former are the atheists, the latter religious leaders. All of the rest of us either submit to leaders or interpret the will of God for themselves.
The last issue, I suggest, is how are we to know the will of God? The only way is for God to reveal his will to us. The Christian belief is that He revealed his will in the Bible. Many sects of Christianity teach that He also reveals his will to us directly, either instead of through the Bible or in addition to it, many times that is exclusively through self identified prophets. Again, the Christian answer does not solve the issue of those who won't submit to any form of authority.
"The problem, from the start, is that anyone on whom power over others is bestowed invariably will seek to expand it, and everyone who gives up certain powers to others, in doing so, cannot take them back, short of rebellion or outright revolution."
—Yes, exactly. From the start. Which means it needs to be avoided from the start.
"In other words, as Lord Acton stated, "Power tends to corrupt." Corrupt whom? He did not say, but I will. Both those who wield it and those who submit to it are corrupted by it."
—Actually, in the rest of that quote, he makes clear that power attracts rotten people. People who start out corrupt and then are worsened by power. Which comports with much of what we have observed over the last 10,000 years, does it not?
"All of the rest of us either submit to leaders or interpret the will of God for themselves."
—God gave us free will, and put us in a free universe. That must mean that freedom is important to Him. He did it even knowing "the risks," as CS Lewis said. And he gave us natural law, the moral implications of which are clear. Carry those to their logical conclusions and libertarian anarchism (plus moral behavior) is the only way of life that truly comports with the "Law of Nature and of Nature's God."
"The Christian belief is that He revealed his will in the Bible."
—Yeah, but we cannot force that on others. The ONLY form of force that is legitimate is protective force, deployed in response to and to defend against the initiation of coercive force. That is it. No other force is morally permissible.
"Again, the Christian answer does not solve the issue of those who won't submit to any form of authority."
—No one needs to submit to authority. If they initiate coercive force against someone else, they will be made to submit to protective force (whether they like it or not. But that force will not be deployed by authorities, it will be deployed by the harmed individual or agents acting on behalf of the harmed individual. Imposed, nonconsensual authority is a great evil.
"Under anarchy, which has never been tried, there is no way to control the use of might."
—That is not so.
The only thing I am prepared to add is, never been tried on a national scale.
Wherever it has been tried it has descended into chaos because there is no possible moral defense from evil people. They can be killed, but only if one is willing to use whatever means to get it done. The evil person (your term, rotten) will continue to disrupt, and there is will always be others to take his place.
I've read that piece. I found it informative, but it does not refute my last sentence. I am subscribed to your substack and will continue to learn from it. I'm sure you are aware that certainty, not question, is the enemy of discovery. I have hope that we will learn from each other and that we will avoid enmity.
Although, to speak from my perspective for a moment…
I answer (99.9% of) everyone's comments every day, and so I encounter the same things repeatedly. One of them is >certainty< that market anarchism cannot possibly work—and usually, the less a person knows about market anarchism, the more certain they are that it can never work no matter what.
To whatever extent I am known here on Substack, I am known for (generally) keeping my cool even in the face of hostility. But I too can sometimes write too hastily, or pay insufficient attention to my tone…and sometimes, even I get a little exhausted and maybe sound somewhat testy at times. 🤣 But it is not my intent.
So yeah, bro, we'll keep talking and see what good things we can discover!
I, also, sometimes get testy, so when I do, please know that is not my intention. In light of how little we know compared to what there is yet to be known, humility is critical to progress.
I have always thought of the government as an organized crime racket. The moment I turned eighteen and filed my first tax return I became an anarchist (without actually even knowing what an anarchist was, I was an intuitive anarchist' Lol). The very fact that the tax code is so unnecessarily complex and full of loopholes should tell anyone with a lick of sense that there is some underhanded dealings going on. And don't get me started on the Death Tax, an appropriately foreboding name for a truly villainous standard operating procedure - the fact that the government feels entitled to a large chunk of a person's hard earned estate after they die is the epitome of criminality.
"Give us a portion of your money or we will hurt you."
With a blindfold, there is no way to know whether this is being said by criminals or government. There is no practical difference.
Except you might be allowed to fight back against criminals.
The key difference is how many of your friends and neighbors will or will not come to your aid in defending yourself against this criminal attack.
Sadly, most of our friends and neighbors still support the government mafia stealing our money via taxation.
With each passing day, I better understand Albert Jay Nock's seemingly elitist references to "the Remnant" and "the Mass." I want to hope that people can learn, and I believe in the long run, they can. It's the short run that worries me!
"Albert Jay Nock's seemingly elitist references to "the Remnant" and "the Mass.""
Good grief, we've been grabbing books from the same shelves in the library again!
"People" will not willingly and under their own impetus learn any new thing if that thing is not already confirmed and accepted by the rest of society, in which case the learning is motivated by their seeking affirmation. Especially if the learning challenges or calls into question their own status and level of comfort within the prevailing paradigm.
And it's even worse than this. Try to make people understand that if they've done well by the prevailing system, then they have benefitted from crime, and therefore their gains are ill gotten. Not the government - no way! - but they will lynch YOU!
"Good grief, we've been grabbing books from the same shelves in the library again!"
—I have only read "Isaiah's Job." I need to read more.
""People" will not willingly and under their own impetus learn any new thing if that thing is not already confirmed and accepted by the rest of society"
—Good lord. We are infinite beings of light trapped in ridiculous monkey bodies, mostly behaving like ridiculous monkeys.
"Not the government - no way! - but they will lynch YOU!"
—There are moments when I just want to say "bring it on" and take my chances.
"—There are moments when I just want to say "bring it on" and take my chances."
I hear you, brother.
—Good lord. We are infinite beings of light trapped in ridiculous monkey bodies, mostly behaving like ridiculous monkeys.
Biologist Edward O. Wilson put it this way:
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
"Except you might be allowed to fight back against criminals."
Hah! Try that and it's highly likely you'll invite the state to prosecute you and throw you in jail. The state has the monopoly on violence. Bastards.
The stories of people prosecuted for defending themselves fill me with a rage that the universe is insufficiently large to contain.
It's the Orwellian old saw: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
It's invert reality, or clown world. It's intended to infuriate and exasperate the right-minded - we are their mortal enemies, you see.
Well, there are far more of us…
If I could project and multiply mine over all of us, collectively, our anger would be irrepressible. Supernova comes to mind. The fire of creation. Shiva, the Lord of the Dance.
You can equate government taxation with people who farm or hunt and harvest and use the whole animal. Nothing goes to waste. Likewise government wants it all; what we earn, what we own, what we spend, what we save, what we invest and when we die they want whatever is left.
Not really. The hunter or farmer is reaping the fruit of his/her own efforts.
This entire article is misdirection.
The income tax is an excise, which means that unless you profited from government privilege, YOU HAVE NO INCOME.
And yes, the Supreme Court just confirmed this last month:
https://dawnfrench.substack.com/p/fresh-from-the-supreme-court
Another way to frame this discussion is this:
Many argue that we need a government to protect us against the threat of invasion by foreign governments.
In other words, the vast majority of governments across the world are something we should be afraid of. They will attack you and steal from you.
But you don't have to worry about the one that we grew up in. That's the only one that's ok. That's the one that's going to save you.
Yes! Well said. Exactly.
Have you considered writing about these topics more frequently?
Yes, I'm planning to write up a storm.
Currently I've only got a post on skepticism, but eventually I'm going to criticise everything.
Arguing from some sort of anarchic/voluntaryist perspective, I hope…?
I'm not sure what your belief system entails exactly, but I'm not a fan of our current system. And I don't think any system can resolve the problems with society.
In my view, it is the people themselves that are the problem. If a thousand average people were placed in a perfect paradise that provides everything they need, a place free from dangerous animals, natural disasters, or any sort of government tyranny, they would ruin it in just a handful of generations.
One group would set about polluting the island with trash, while another begins stealing children to raise as slaves and finally a third group who decide they are the police and oppress everyone.
This world started out as an anarchy with plenty of food for everyone. The people throughout history are the ones who made it like this.
To summarise, I think the key to a better world is better people.
All fair points. I make no claims about the possibility of a utopia. I simply hold that to whatever degree people are rotten, it is WORSE to take a small number of (putatively rotten) people and grant them irresistible authority over the rest.
I agree.
Choosing some people you don't trust and giving them the power to control the other people you don't trust is easily one of the stupidest systems imaginable.
“To summarise, I think the key to a better world is better people.”
How to create good and just and righteous and wise and virtuous and integrous and godly people then? There’s the spiritual concept that human nature is corrupt, i.e. fallen, sensual, even diabolical. (You alluded to this when you talked about putting a thousand people on a tropical paradise with all the food they needed.) The key to making better people is (arguably?) to redeem and rehabilitate human nature. “With men, this is impossible. But with GOD [in the person of Christ, Emmanuel], all things are possible.” If GOD or divine redemption or divine rehabilitation don’t exist, it seems to me that human beings radically changing our nature from diabolical to righteous is a rank impossibility. As a skeptic and a free thinker and a radical inquirer, what do you think?
Thank you for sharing your perspective. As an atheist and a believer in human potential, I see things a bit differently. While I understand the view that human nature can be seen as corrupt or fallen, I believe that we have the capacity to improve ourselves through reason, empathy, and societal progress.
The idea that only divine intervention can redeem human nature might be comforting for some, but it doesn't resonate with my understanding of humanity. History has shown us that humans can and do evolve morally and ethically through education, introspection, and the support of just societies.
Creating a better world with better people, in my view, comes from fostering environments where kindness, justice, and integrity are valued and taught. It involves nurturing critical thinking, empathy, and a sense of communal responsibility.
While some may find this transformation impossible without divine help, I believe in the power of human effort and the possibility of positive change through collective action and shared values. After all, many of the greatest strides in human rights, science, and philosophy have been made by individuals driven by reason and a profound sense of humanity.
As you've guessed I don't believe in God.
And I don't think it's possible to transform or fix the majority of people. Instead, we can just identify those who don't need to be fixed.
Or at the very least, those likely to be sympathetic.
For instance, if you put together a list of people who refused the covid vaccine you'd already have better than average.
Rights are not natural; you have to use force to protect them. They are not some sacred cow that people will not trample on as soon as they will benefit from it. From races to prisons to every stretch of the government, you are only allowed a small degree of freedom because they allow it and in the past thirty or more years, it has steadily had its leash shortened. We live in a time where our government is permeated with so much layers of corruption and bureaucracy that it is mind boggling. All these layers are now at a point where they will resist any attempt to curtail their own power and money. They will continue to squeeze people and curtail rights because to them yes, we are cattle. The proles who only exist to make them rich and powerful.
Rights can be natural and still require protective force in their defense.
But you are correct that they are not a magic force field. They must be defended—from criminals as well as from government.
I view rights as abstractions. The only one your so called rights rights actually matter to is you. You have to convince the other party(person or government) that you have a right. If they deny you have that right, e.g., life, liberty, property you must fight for it, as Christopher said. Who is it that is the biggest violator of our rights? Yes, those guys. The ones who tell us they are protecting our rights, via a document they get to define. That oddly sounds like Stockholm syndrome - your captor is also your protector.
There are the people who claim positive rights, those that must be provided by someone else, such as medical care, food , housing. Isn’t that theft? And if the government gets involved they decide who gets which rights and who will pay for them. Don’t fall for it.
The USA is the most corrupted throughout and still people believe in the lies…
It is only the most corrupt because it is the largest. All governments are corrupt, the difference is in degree only.
Thank you, Debbie, for saving me the trouble.
What she said.
My pleasure.
“ Are We Just Animals on a Government Farm?”
Of course we are 🐓🐖🐑🐄🐐 🐴
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Cs-VIDKSY
"Delusional chattel."
-- Stefan Molyneux
What is Stephan up to these days? The last I saw, he was in Eastern Europe (marching with Poles, I think).
I don't know, Do you suppose his Polish exile was during the Bolshevik onslaught detailed in the SPLC wikipedia article? The vermin make no mention of it. There is this, last updated in July 2020, https://freedomain.com/ which is hideously racist for having no primeday video ads.
Why doesn’t anyone ever sue the SPLC?
People do. Sometimes they win in the lower courts. But the yankee occupation force hires the likes of them to define judicial policy. That makes them the show trial actors guild.
That reminds me of 'Animal Farm' by George Orwell... You know what's up 😉👍
1) Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's
2) The Founding Fathers almost certainly agreed with this yet still wrote the Declaration of Independence.
I'm not a conservative, I am a Christian who seeks to go about my days in an increasingly godly and biblical manner.
My qualm with your letter, though I understand your beef and agree our tax system is corrupt beyond measure, is that you are arguing from an anarchist perspective.
The fact is we do need government BUT not just any government. A "limited" government in so much as the government is only doing government things and nothing more. IE law, order, military/police, justice, and infrastructure.
The problem with America is that we have permitted the government to complicate the tax system in all of these areas (and more) to the point that they are doing the minimal of what they are supposed to while taxing the maximum that they can. Essentially raping and pillaging the nation with the air of legitimacy, which does sound a lot like tyranny to me.
Any functional society will need to pay some type of tax to accommodate the above purposes of government (tariffs count as the consumer still feels it) but it should be napkin sized simple. If there's a "loophole" then it too should be utterly simple, at least then we'd know it explicitly existed. Said loophole could still be immoral but hey at least it wouldn't be crony.
The biggest issue is the American people did this to ourselves. Salesman as politicians sold Americans a bill of goods that gradually expanded their purposes more and more. Americans in-turn assumed it was the government's right responsibility (welfare, education, etc.) and therefore voted in favor of taxes to support that. If we only ever voted for what truly remained in the government's rightful sphere then the government would be proper government size, taxes would be proper size, and we'd have just enough positive capital to take care of said responsibilities, save for natural disasters, and then give back to the people once a cap is met (I know that last is most unlikely but a boy can dream).
And with that I imagine that is why the revolution started. It wasn't that they didn't want to pay any taxes. It was that the King was imposing taxes beyond his reasonable and appropriate sphere of concern and, in that, was necessitating a rightful backlash of his citizens as he become no longer a king but a thief.
Thank you for the polite and irenic nature of your comments.
"1) Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's"
—It is dangerous ground to get into an argument about religion, so I won't, and I will respect whatever interpretations you may have. I will just say briefly that I have heard plenty of interpretations of this line that suggest that Jesus was—wink-wink, nudge-nudge—saying that NOTHING is Caesars. Also, I have heard an interpretation of Paul's various statist references that he was trying to appease a Roman audience. But that is all an aside…
"My qualm with your letter, though I understand your beef and agree our tax system is corrupt beyond measure, is that you are arguing from an anarchist perspective."
—I am. I am a libertarian anarchist.
I spent most of my adult life being where you (sound like you) are now: a "limited-government" conservative. Then I started working on a book and doing a deep dive into what that meant—into the principles that undergird that ideology (principles largely shared libertarians).
This took me further down the line, until I started sounding minarchist notes very similar to what you are saying now: a desperate desire to believe that an extremely limited government is both necessary and possible.
Eventually, however, I drew all the principles out to their logical conclusions and those conclusions became inescapable.
Still, it was hard to accept until I started reading about how a condition of voluntary order ("anarchy") could actually work. At that point, I had run out of excuses.
The logical process is, at least in part, represented by the chart at the end of these two posts:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/is-any-government-morally-permissible
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/exact-moment-i-became-anarchist
A good reading list on the subject is at the end of this post:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/no-way-i-can-convince-you-anarchism
And today's post is very pertinent to this discussion.
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/finding-libertys-sweet-spot
I won't hammer you, but you are the exact cohort I am trying to convince. If we get conservatives (who are large in number and strong in energy, and who have the right core principles) to take the journey I have, human liberty wins!
So if you are interested, we can keep the discussion going over time.
Bravo. Thank you. 👏👏👏👏👏👏🙏🏻💪🧠
You nailed it! I am truly grateful for your Substack and all your efforts to educate Substackistanians on the reality of Freedom.
This has been my personal 'struggle' with Government and politics all my life. I suspect the same is true for most. I emphasize 'struggle' as this natural response to 'vigilance' is inescapable of the Human Condition. Vigilance is a predicate word. It's Propositional definition is conditional. "Eternal vigilance" is nonsensical, Logically fallacious, Sophistry. Anyone making this statement either doesn't understand what they are saying, or they do, and they're being manipulative of the conversation.
Vigilance is a human condition propositional of anxiety.
As a survivor of an extremely violent parachuting 'accident' and moderately severe Traumatic Brain Injury nearly 40 years ago, I am very familiar with the anxiolotic dysfunction of hyper vigilance. I would not respond well to anyone saying anything as ridiculous as "eternal vigilance". It's a moronic statement that means 'eternal anxiety' or it means nothing.
Nonetheless, I know my personal experience is anecdotal, but that doesn't explain away the Human Condition that we all experience. The struggle against the inherent oppressive nature of Government.
All humans struggle against oppression. One particularly demented human used it as propaganda for his psychotic oppressive regimes standard of Government. 'Mein Kampf' = 'My Struggle'.
FTR - Jihad also means 'struggle'.
The human struggle for Freedom is innate among humanity. It's part of the Human Condition.
Having patient, pragmatic, humans like yourself, to help ordinary people understand, is what's mighty about being human. Because Freedom is at the core of what it truly means to be Human, and to love and appreciate humanity and being human. Humanity begets humanity. Love begets love. Freedom begets freedom. This is the part that people get distracted away from. Being present of mind and knowing, that 'being' what you want to the world to 'be' is the only way to achieve that goal. It begins and ends with individual action.
This essay made my day. I'm going to go outside and touch grass.
Good day, to the Internet.
Peace, out.
Thank you. And sorry that you got so badly injured all those years ago. (I must confess some curiosity as to why you put ‘accident’ in scare quotes.)
Thank you also for backing up by sense of annoyance with the “eternal vigilance” nonsense. I didn’t give it much direct thought until recently, and with your added logic on the subject, I now find it even more annoying!
I will keep doing my best, Atomic. More good stuff coming soon.
Enjoy the grass. I am going to have to cut mine soon!
I quoted accident only because it's hard to classify something intentional as accidental, but that works for the Army. In all candor there's also my personal contribution to being there voluntarily and being highly motivated to get out of the aircraft as soon as the door opened and me telling the PFC in front of me he better move fast, because I was going to be right on top of him going out the door, only to have the red light come on when I was one foot out the door and past the point of no return. Only three of us made it out. In a horrible January storm that pushed all the way from the Arctic down through the middle of the country 31 January 1985. We caught the Southern edge at Fort Rucker, Al. We thought we were safe that far South. Winters are typically pretty mild in LA - Lower Alabama.
It was otherwise an extremely successful Pathfinder mission, all things considered. The Pathfinder Team on the ground successfully put us on the drop zone. If I hadn't wanted out so intensely - which is another story entirely, I would have flown back to Dothan AP with the rest of my company when they scrapped the training because of the storm. I would have been right as rain for a career in 1SFG.
There's a lot more to the stories, but that's the gist of the experience not being an accidental accident. It's more accurate to say the wind was blowing so hard I couldn't stick the landing, and the landing stuck me, and I was dragged for nearly a kilometer at about 40 -45 miles an hour, face down, while being unconscious, having a seizure, and nearly biting through my tongue. Mother Nature beat me senseless that day for sure. Or was it Saint Michael giving me the smackdown for my arrogance?
OH MY GOODNESS!!!!
Interesting point, Atomic. Yes struggle is part of nature's evolution. Yet manufactured struggle is a completely different scenario. It's a human intervention devised by unscrupulous beings. Completely.
What point is that? I don't recall even stating an argument?
I mean, I describe MY own personal experience, and MY appreciation for Christopher Cook, and The Freedom Scale... right? That's not an argument. It's a description of anecdotal personal experience as it relates to the Human Condition, and appreciative praise.
"Manufactured struggle"? How exactly is struggle manufactured? What exactly is struggle manufactured from? Where is struggle manufactured, and what is the manufacturing process, is there an International Standards Organization number for the manufacture of struggle?
After reading the definition of manufacture, it's clear to me, that "struggle" cannot be manufactured.
Nonetheless, whatever "manufactured struggle" is, it has nothing to with me, my experience, or my appreciation for Christopher Cook and The Freedom Scale. It's non sequitur.
I'll overlook the inherent condescension of your unsolicited no sequitur. Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying.
...? Whoa, sorry. I was not arguing with you. Just making a point that not everything is worth struggling for, to see the difference. And I'll not respond to your comments. If that's your position. It's a free country in SUBSTACK,dude. Chill.
I'm not selling anything either so you're off the hook. ✌️🎸😎
Why are you using dramatic effect? Take ownership of what you write. We're all adults here. Some more than others.
I can only presume you understand how the English Language works.
Please, try to remain pragmatic. A sense of humor helps. Don't get offended because I make light of "manufactured struggle", or point out the inherent condescension of your response?
Your comment made zero sense. It's non sequitur to what I wrote. That's not my fault. It's your comment. You wrote it. I read it. It didn't make sense. It still doesn't.
Please, this is your opportunity to elucidate what "manufactured struggle" is supposed to mean, even if it doesn't relate to what I wrote, because I seriously haven't a clue.
Cheers!
It's complicated. But I'll entertain your curiosity.
By emulating nature, as most evil genius do, we today are merely living in a "simulation" of authority. Based upon a child parent dycodomy...
Awh, forget it. You win! I have no idea what I'm writing.
Have a good evening.
Cheers mate.
*dichotomy
Excellent analysis. And those who make a living off our money become ever more greedy and corrupt. The system encourages it.
And many of us are encouraging and abetting it by claiming that having such masters rule over us is our only possible way to live.
This entire article is misdirection.
The income tax is an excise, which means that unless you profited from government privilege, YOU HAVE NO INCOME.
And yes, the Supreme Court just confirmed this last month:
https://dawnfrench.substack.com/p/fresh-from-the-supreme-court
It's not fair to Laffer to accuse him of believing that government should maximize its own size, but yes, that's what left-wing people believe. We are slaves building pyramids for our pharoahs, and it is the size of the pyramids that we exist to optimize.
You are the second one to presume that I was bashing Laffer for this. I wrote poorly in that regard, for I did not mean to give that impression. I have added a footnote to clarify.
Nice slaves/pyramids metaphor. When will people wake up!?
It's difficult to say. Natural rights certainly exist given the natural psychological transformations humans go through. All of these natural rights are high-order abstractions of something that either 1. Stopped something from removing the ability to transform or 2. Facilitated the ability to transform better. How can I know this? Simply because if you remove all natural rights “discovered” through jurisprudence, philosophy, death, and observation then the psychological chances of contentment, goal attainment, future security and possibility plummet creating an environment of chaos within the individual of which creates an environment of chaos outside the individual. But the idea is that one shouldn't make it any worse than it has to be so the human will pick areas of their life that are weak and full of holes and become the tyrant.
So to answer the question: it starts as a violation and turns into a removal “as if" they didn't exist. “As if" they never existed and any mention of it is to be met with extreme prejudice. Therefore we have a responsibility to not be weak and fracture our own lives when government violates and invades: its to use that as fuel to research, learn, understand, look further, dive deeper, look in places one doesn't want too. It's to unify under one understanding: that there is divinity in every individual. And this divinity provides the answer to these natural rights. And this divinity needs to be recognized and yielded to by the state. (That is not a proposition for a mix of church and state. That is a proposition for government to see the preciousness in all life from birth to individuals on death row no matter their transgressions and trespasses. For their life is too precious for something as grotesque as the state to have control over. Grotesque compared to life that is.
I am not as conversant in this psychological approach. But the first thing that occurs to me is to ask—do you believe that an entity such as the state could ever actually recognize and yield to the divinity you describe?
As long as it's separated and allowed to pursue their own aims. Separate as in federal to state to local. The more that gap closes the more "the state" won't yield. The more the "middle ground" / "middle class" is destroyed, the more those gaps in between federal state and local close.
I like subsidiarity. But still, a local oppressor is still an oppressor.
They don't have to be an oppressor. So long as impositions are just, public, and agreed upon is it oppression? So long as citizens are not subject to harsh exercises of authority is it oppression? If the local representative has truth in mind, because the county representative does, and the state, and the federal, and the ethos of justice, public information, and agreement is all met properly why would they be an oppressor? Would you rather a representative beholden to (a/the) law, a law all has agreed upon with compassionate consideration of all peoples involved, or someone who is not beholden to the social restrictions that in-turn create freedom?
"So long as impositions are just, public, and agreed upon is it oppression?"
Agreed upon by whom?
We agree on it as a society. There is an element of acceptance of a negative for something that helps with productivity. For example, there were over 42 thousand auto deaths in the USA in 2022, we as a society, accept that negative to continue to have vehicles on the road. If a leader wants to take vehicles off the road because of safety issues it must be met with the demand of the people. If there's a split demand within the society about the direction, we should take then a proper discussion is in order. How we go about that discussion must be agreed on as well, agreement is directly linked to the public's reaction and what has worked in the past. If no conclusion can be reached, then reference to third parties and outsourcing research may be in order. There is an endless string of potential solutions through the system of conversation, to be fair, there is an endless string of potential problems stemming from the same system but there is no alternative that is as productive in creating cross-cultural peace.
This is to the question: "is government violating our rights or did they never exist?"
As for (so-called) “limited government”, even if it’s authentically conservative and interpreting the Constitution according to the original intent of the framers, it’s forever too late to save the country from crushing corruption. Evidence? Here’s a good quote, but I can’t be bothered to link to its source:
{begin quote} No one, no statisticians, and not even this government itself, has any clue as to how many federal laws exist. No one knows how many rules, restrictions, and regulations there are, and it is impossible to find an answer to this question. The Federal Register alone, the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations, has well over 85,000 pages. The Code of Federal Regulations through 2019, has 186,000 pages, and the Federal Register Pages for the past decade eclipsed 800,000 pages. This alone is unimaginable. But of course, there are more. There is a law for every aspect of our lives in this country, and there are a completely separate set of international laws, State laws, county laws, city laws, and licensing laws for every activity or thought. This is total insanity, and why every single ‘citizen’ can be deemed a criminal at any given moment. Even as far back as in the times of Roman historian Tacitus, he stated that, “The more corrupt the State, the more numerous the laws.” The U.S. has more laws by far than any other nation on earth in history, and therefore is the most corrupt and criminal of all time.{end quote} Tacitus knew what he was talking about and it’s completely applicable now.
Yep. But that is just the end-state condition of something that was inevitable from the start.
Also, I have been learning over the past year that there was no single "original intent of the framers." They all agreed on the objectives of the Revolution, but it broke down from there. And some of them had agendas VERY different from the others.
It certainly didn’t help that George Washington was a Freemason and that Alexander Hamilton was a monarchist and that Thomas Jefferson decided to form the first American political party.
It’s difficult to discern which foundational and basic laws are unjust to begin with and which laws (or rules) are divine.
"It’s difficult to discern which foundational and basic laws are unjust to begin with and which laws (or rules) are divine."
—Is it, though? Don't we intuitively know?
If you have a moment, see what you think of this:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/five-rules-govern-any-society
It seems to me that rules need to be different for children — who have not yet developed the intelligence and reasoning skills and discipline — who don’t conceive of axioms such as (1) being a “sovereign, self-owning person” and (2) natural rights. Additionally, children may understand their parents’ right to discipline them as violating their right to not be disciplined. (This is unfamiliar territory to me in terms of how I reason about rights and responsibilities.)
I do think that everyone inherently understands the rule “As you desire others to treat you, treat others”. I think that every individual understands to a certain degree, based on his or her maturity, “this is how I want to be treated”. Too simplistic?
Not too simplistic, but too vague. I want daily massage. Do I have to treat others that way? Disallowing “the initiation of coercive force” is much better. Everyone understands that too, and better.
Children complicate everything. Basically, they are sovereign beings with the same rights as all others, but they are it capable of full communion with those rights from the get-go. So their parents hold their rights in conditional and temporary proxy, and release that control at a (hopefully) commensurate with a child’s increasing capabilities and ability to assume responsibility.
Ah, "limited government". Like a cancer surgeon removing just 3/4 of the malignant tumor, writing the word "constitution" on the remainder, and telling the patient, "You're good to go!"
And as for the Con(Job)stitution, I like Lysander Spooner's take:
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist."
as well as the more pithy "The Constitution is the casket in which the Declaration was buried."
The tumor analogy is awesome! Are you going to make that into a meme? May I?
The Spooner quote, when I first heard it, was a Eureka moment.
As to the pithy one, I have been making that point, kind of, but I have never heard that exact expression. Who said it?
Please do make a meme of that, I will love to see it if you do!
The casket quote is from my friend Jim Davidson of L5 News here: https://l5news.substack.com/p/x-rated-tweetie-bird-app and here: https://spaceprivenews.substack.com/p/rebellion/comments.
He in turn credits it to Bill Buppert. https://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/09/william-buppert/the-constitution-the-god-that-failed/
Just getting to know Jim, but he's great!
Looking forward to reading his rebellion piece (I have similar thoughts myself) and the Buppert piece!
Even raising the question in the title is a form of acceptance.
EVERY form of government is criminal and against natural law.
EVERY!
So participation in elections is a form of surrendering. I don't elect anybody on the federal level because the whole federal level is an uninterrupted crime.
The only way to deal with any form of government is total refusal.
The more people do this, the faster freedom will come.
@Courageouslion explained this total refusal today quite well:
https://www.courageouslion.us/p/why-i-dont-vote-9f6?r=8mqdm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
And also these reasons: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/vote-or-not-vote
Beautiful Christopher! Especially as much of the $ extracted from humans is used horribly and terribly against humanity such as:
* The Pentagon can't find 3 TRILLION $'s, hee, hee! Rummy Rumsfeld on 9-10-2001. some Conservative.
* The Pentagon is missing up to 20 Trillion now!
Is this CIA Black OPS $? Or CIA Black Ops $ and/or plush survival dens for the Psychotic/Predator/Parasites.
* Terrible wars Genociding millions of mostly civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Palestine etc and US military killed-wounded and damaged.
* Give-aways for no benefit.
Very well said, Christopher.
The problems with government are the same as with anarchy: human beings have the propensity to violate each others' rights. How best to deal with those violations is the question that various forms of government have attempted to answer. Every form of government to date has attempted some form of might makes right. Under anarchy, which has never been tried, there is no way to control the use of might.
There are two questions to which no one has developed answers that a functional majority can agree. First, what are the parameters of right? America's founders attempted to enumerate at least the most critical of them in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but managed not much beyond the statement that all men have certain natural rights, among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, none of them defined.
The second question is what are the parameters of might? Superior physical strength? Strength in numbers? Mastery of weapons? Willingness to apply any means at one's disposal?
The U. S. Constitution is, at bottom, a delineation of what powers (might) should be bestowed on Federal, State, and Local government, the remainder being retained by the people. The problem, from the start, is that anyone on whom power over others is bestowed invariably will seek to expand it, and everyone who gives up certain powers to others, in doing so, cannot take them back, short of rebellion or outright revolution. In other words, as Lord Acton stated, "Power tends to corrupt." Corrupt whom? He did not say, but I will. Both those who wield it and those who submit to it are corrupted by it.
And that applies to government and to anarchists. The Christian answer is that the only power one should always submit to is that of God, the only incorruptible power. I believe that. However, it does not account for living among those who 1) won't submit to God, or 2) retain the right to define the will of God. The former are the atheists, the latter religious leaders. All of the rest of us either submit to leaders or interpret the will of God for themselves.
The last issue, I suggest, is how are we to know the will of God? The only way is for God to reveal his will to us. The Christian belief is that He revealed his will in the Bible. Many sects of Christianity teach that He also reveals his will to us directly, either instead of through the Bible or in addition to it, many times that is exclusively through self identified prophets. Again, the Christian answer does not solve the issue of those who won't submit to any form of authority.
"How best to deal with those violations is the question that various forms of government have attempted to answer."
—A few, kind of. Most have simply been ruffians finding a way to control and be predatory upon a captive group of people.
"Under anarchy, which has never been tried, there is no way to control the use of might."
—That is not so.
Anarchy (in this sense) does not equal chaos: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/four-definitions-word-anarchy
Private-law societies have been tried, and succeeded for centuries: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/building-island-3-historical-examples-anarchism
"The problem, from the start, is that anyone on whom power over others is bestowed invariably will seek to expand it, and everyone who gives up certain powers to others, in doing so, cannot take them back, short of rebellion or outright revolution."
—Yes, exactly. From the start. Which means it needs to be avoided from the start.
"In other words, as Lord Acton stated, "Power tends to corrupt." Corrupt whom? He did not say, but I will. Both those who wield it and those who submit to it are corrupted by it."
—Actually, in the rest of that quote, he makes clear that power attracts rotten people. People who start out corrupt and then are worsened by power. Which comports with much of what we have observed over the last 10,000 years, does it not?
"All of the rest of us either submit to leaders or interpret the will of God for themselves."
—God gave us free will, and put us in a free universe. That must mean that freedom is important to Him. He did it even knowing "the risks," as CS Lewis said. And he gave us natural law, the moral implications of which are clear. Carry those to their logical conclusions and libertarian anarchism (plus moral behavior) is the only way of life that truly comports with the "Law of Nature and of Nature's God."
"The Christian belief is that He revealed his will in the Bible."
—Yeah, but we cannot force that on others. The ONLY form of force that is legitimate is protective force, deployed in response to and to defend against the initiation of coercive force. That is it. No other force is morally permissible.
"Again, the Christian answer does not solve the issue of those who won't submit to any form of authority."
—No one needs to submit to authority. If they initiate coercive force against someone else, they will be made to submit to protective force (whether they like it or not. But that force will not be deployed by authorities, it will be deployed by the harmed individual or agents acting on behalf of the harmed individual. Imposed, nonconsensual authority is a great evil.
"Under anarchy, which has never been tried, there is no way to control the use of might."
—That is not so.
The only thing I am prepared to add is, never been tried on a national scale.
Wherever it has been tried it has descended into chaos because there is no possible moral defense from evil people. They can be killed, but only if one is willing to use whatever means to get it done. The evil person (your term, rotten) will continue to disrupt, and there is will always be others to take his place.
That is not the type of anarchy to which I refer: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/four-definitions-word-anarchy
I've read that piece. I found it informative, but it does not refute my last sentence. I am subscribed to your substack and will continue to learn from it. I'm sure you are aware that certainty, not question, is the enemy of discovery. I have hope that we will learn from each other and that we will avoid enmity.
Nope, no enmity!
And also no certainty.
Although, to speak from my perspective for a moment…
I answer (99.9% of) everyone's comments every day, and so I encounter the same things repeatedly. One of them is >certainty< that market anarchism cannot possibly work—and usually, the less a person knows about market anarchism, the more certain they are that it can never work no matter what.
To whatever extent I am known here on Substack, I am known for (generally) keeping my cool even in the face of hostility. But I too can sometimes write too hastily, or pay insufficient attention to my tone…and sometimes, even I get a little exhausted and maybe sound somewhat testy at times. 🤣 But it is not my intent.
So yeah, bro, we'll keep talking and see what good things we can discover!
I, also, sometimes get testy, so when I do, please know that is not my intention. In light of how little we know compared to what there is yet to be known, humility is critical to progress.
Yup and those farms are called “countries”.
💯