Memo to Matt Gaetz, Kash Patel, et al
It's only a crime if it violates natural law.
Note: Today’s post is not an official installment of The Distributed Nation, but it is related, and will use a small excerpt therefrom.
As most of you are by now aware, I do not deem any form of involuntary governance to be morally permissible. The reason is simple:
By the clear, universal laws of nature…
No form of involuntary governance is morally permissible.
That includes America now, or in 1790.
That includes America even when the people I would prefer are in power.
That being said, since my only choice at the moment is involuntary governance, I am glad that at least Donald Trump and his team will be in power, rather than any of the crazed woke globalist weirdos the left would have fielded in a Harris administration.
Like so many of you, I am impressed by a lot of the heavy hitters Trump is tapping for his team. And, like so many of you, I am enjoying the waves of apoplexy and fear his picks are sending through the corrupt villains infesting every layer of the state.
To wit…
Reading that screenshot-meme, my mind wandered to what this process might look like. Mass firings. Data dumps. Corrupt deep-state operatives running for cover or shrieking like whiny children to the press.
Then my mind traveled to the good guys who remain. The ones who actually want to stop human trafficking, not protect, perpetuate, or perpetrate it. The ones who want to shield humans beings from genuine crimes. Then it occurred to me—the state has largely forgotten what is and is not an actual crime.
Our common-law system of courts still have a pretty good idea, because those can only stray so far from natural law. But any law that has come from a legislature must start out as suspect, since such edicts can be completely unmoored from natural law. The result, of course, is state enforcers (police, FBI, etc.) enforcing laws that should never have been made in the first place.
That should not be.
So, I would like to write this quick, open memo to the Trump team members tasked with draining this particular swamp.
I ask you to reboot your understanding of what law is supposed to be. Forget about the false, rights-violative notion that the law is "‘whatever government says it is,’ and must be enforced as such.
No law is legitimate unless its source is natural law and it entirely comports therewith.
To this end—when you are deciding which agents to keep at the FBI, and what they ought to be doing with their time, your touchstone should be this:
Nothing is a crime unless there is an individual victim whose consent has been violated.
There are no (legitimate) ‘crimes against the state.’ A crime requires an individual victim who has been subjected to one or more of the following:
The Crime of Violence
To use force
To attack, injure, or kill the body of any person.
The Crime of Subjugation
To use force or the credible threat of force
To subject any person to any form of authority, control, dominion, or tyranny;
To extract from any person any resources, property, money, tax, or any other thing;
To compel the allegiance, adherence, obedience, vassalage, compliance, service, labor, bodily agency, or any other form of subservience of any person.
To subject the property of any person to any form of overlordship, taxation, control, use, or seizure;
The Crime of Theft
To use force, the credible threat of force, or a violation of consent
To deprive any person of the possession, use, control, occupation, enjoyment, or ownership of any property, personal possession, land, asset, money, product of labor, private information, or any other alienable thing.
The Crime of Trespass
To use force, the credible threat of force, or a violation of consent
To encroach upon, invade, use, or occupy the property of any person;
To cause measurable, substantive, and direct damage to the property of any person.
The Crime of Fraud
To use deception
To deprive any person of the possession, use, control, occupation, enjoyment, or ownership of any property, personal possession, land, asset, money, product of labor, private information, or any other alienable thing.
The Crime of Breach of Responsibility
(In any circumstance in which a specific intentional, reckless, or negligent act has produced a positive obligation of responsibility to a rightful claimant),
To fail, through neglect or choice
To satisfy the terms of a voluntary contract to which one has duly agreed;
To provide restitution and compensation to the victims of a crime one has committed;
To provide restitution and compensation to the victims of a reckless or negligent act one has committed or caused;
To provide for the care and raising of any children one has created.
The Crime of Grievous Coercion
To use brainwashing or extreme manipulation techniques
To deprive any person of agency or control of mental faculties;
To cause any person to commit or undergo any act of violence, subjugation, theft, trespass, fraud, or breach of responsibility;
To subject any person to any Hobson’s choice or no-win scenario.
I recognize that the Crime of Subjection technically renders the entire operation of the government of the United States to be a criminal enterprise. It requires reasoning, some immersion in voluntaryist apologetics, and time to understand why that statement is inescapably true.
So let’s just set that aside for now and focus on the rest. Baby steps.
With hope and gratitude,
The People Who Dwell in These Lands
What do y’all think—any chance of this working?
LOL probably not. But it’s true nonetheless.
About ten years ago while I was riding my bicycle around town a thought came to me that put our system of law into stark relief for me. I was riding in a downtown residential area with very narrow streets, cars parked on it with doors prone to swinging open right in front of you by a driver not thinking about cyclists riding by. It was dangerous for a cyclist to ride on street there. Yet the law in the city was cyclists must ride on the street, riding on the sidewalk was subjected to a $40 fine. I reasoned that my life and health was worth at least that much. And willfully chose to ride on the sidewalk. The law allowed for cyclists to ingress/egress from the sidewalk to the street at the end of the block, I always figured I'd just use that excuse if ever caught.
Occasionally I'd encounter the random pedestrian who shouted angrily at me that cyclists had to ride on the street and to get off 'their' sidewalk. I'm a pedestrian, too. And hate encountering the cyclists who pass me dangerously, either riding too fast or too close for my sense of safety. And being a conscientious person, when I made the choice to ride on sidewalks there I was always very courteous. I'd ride very slowly for every pedestrian encounter. I'd use my bell to announce my presence if I was overtaking from behind. Slow. Courteous. Those who shouted angrily didn't care, they just had hatred for all cyclists who used their safe space. Not without good reason, experience with others. I didn't begrudge them or shout back, either apologizing or ignoring if they were hostile.
I questioned the origins of banning cyclists on sidewalks. Which was for that exact reason, to avoid cyclist/pedestrian conflicts. But my life mattered more. My natural law right to live. Overrode positive law prohibitions on using that typically empty space. If natural law was in practice a safe mutual accommodation of the sidewalk would be acceptable. All parties, particularly the one with the higher duty of care, the cyclist, sharing the sidewalk safely wouldn't be a violation. Only by imposition of positive law was that a crime, no matter how safe and courteous a rider was.
The same understanding of law came to me about five years ago. I had lost my ID while traveling, was waiting for several weeks to get replacement birth certificate, new ID. I was meeting several friends out at a bar. My appearance is very obviously over 21, father time shows my five+ decades of life. The bouncer at the bar refused entry to me because I didn't have my ID. Yes, sure, we can all say that's just his job, we're accustomed to presenting ID for bars. But it also defied common sense. I'll ignore the argument about the requirement for 21+ proof for drinking (was 18+ when I was younger), its own natural law v positive law dynamic. But just focusing on the requirement for proof of age made no sense. When a positive law is passed to regulate a behavior that behavior is what is being regulated. I needed to be 21+ to enter a bar under the law.
But the *enforcement* of the law is where my lack of ID came into play. It allowed for no common sense, as in, "of course this person a handful of decades old is obviously old enough to enter a 21+ bar. But the enforcement of the law, passed ostensibly to prevent under 21 from being in bars, was where positive law intruded over common sense, natural law. I failed to meet the "legal proof of age" enforcement criteria. So the law that was passed to require persons be 21+ to enter a bar was actually a law requiring possession of a document attesting to that. Not a law regulating a behavior, it was a law regulating an administrative process.
Which is what happens with all positive law. It's where common sense and natural law becomes divorced from law. Positive laws aren't passed to regulate behaviors so much as they are passed to regulate processes. And process violations are not violations of natural law, only positive law.
Just some anecdotal thoughts I've had along my life journey to understanding the law we live under, and how positive law grows into the monstrosity of administrative power that it is today. Imperfect a device as it may be.
Allways worth speaking the truths that need to be heard. This ought to be posted in every legislative office in the nation, and carefully considered before passing any legislation, or hearing any court case. Clear logical and ethical.