I always ask people who think anarchy leads to a dystopian hellscape where cannibalism suddenly emerges and people find themselves in bondage (i.e. what Hollywood has conditioned them to think) the same question:
“There are ~ 8B people on earth. How many do you believe are naturally inclined toward senseless violence, murder, rape, etc. and would act on those impulses absent a government?”
They say whatever foolish thing they’re gonna say next. I’ve heard it all. I’ve heard 80%. My next question is this:
“Can you and I jump on a conference call with your ten closest friends and family members so I can break the unfortunate news to eight of them about how you perceive them to be?”
Next, they get all agitated and start telling me all about how their circle is different than the population-at-large. The simple truth is this. Most people are generally good, even more still just want to coexist, and those that are neither good nor interested in coexisting could be dealt with by the majority in a government-less reality. Try taking forced scarcity out of the equation and see how many of the crimes of desperation disappear.
It’s 2024. Either we can govern ourselves or we don’t deserve to exist.
Yeah, that is certainly one way to go. At very least, it must be absolutely clear that SHOULDS are not enforceable in any way.
I guess the main question comes down to this…
In a distributed nation, there must be some glue—some cohering factor(s). An ethnic diaspora has the ethnicity and whatever cultural or religious practices they share. A Srinivasanian network state might have a shared mission and a strong leader.
So what do we have? Is natural law and a small set of protocols enough? It was for the Kyfhons in the anarchocapitalist sci-fi "Enemy of the State." Their fearsome defense of their liberty was enough. But that was fiction!
Would it be enough for us? Do you think it is possible that adding some universal SHOULDS would help serve as a cohering factor?
There are a lot of people, for example, for whom the negative obligations of the MUST NOTS will seem cold and austere. Feeling people. Spiritual people. A powerful statement of a few universal SHOULDS could add another ingredient in the glue that binds us…
Yes, when there is enough of a consensus social pressure and the desire to be seen as someone generous, caring and compassionate can be a very potent incentive to good behavior, even for someone who has not yet learned the joys of good authentic self esteem, and real connection and empathy for others. You can't force someone to care, it must be learned, might even be one of the reasons living beings are here. There are times when the risk of confrontation must and will be taken by the courageous who love justice and realize on some level that only the free are really living their own lives. The stand off at the Bundy ranch comes to mind which could have been very ugly, yet in that case the Feds backed down from proportional defensive threat of force. I admire those who took a stand like Lavoy Finicum and had his life taken, because he knew he was more than a body and was willing to pay a price for the rights of those he loved. Yet it is the ignorance and misunderstandings of so many who foolishly give prestige to liars in suits with impressive titles and lots of money and corrupt influence, instead of seeing them for what they are and shunning them, who are the greatest impediment to justice and prosperity in this world it seems to me. By being clearly seen as helpful, non aggressive, slow to anger and self reliant it becomes apparent to the well informed when injustices are perpetrated upon such people. Yet most do not seem to have the discernment to see through the deceptions. Freedom of speech and expression is so very important.
Well, there are always thoughts that come to mind, like incentives to good behavior cannot be overstressed. Recognition for those who go out of their way to help and contribute, and obvious mass disapproval of bad or dangerous behavior by the community in which such people live. Yet this is a subject that does deserve deeper thought. I try to never fail to comment and personally honor those who I see are really demonstrating discernment, kindness and helpfulness. It has also been called 'granting beingness' or withholding it from those who are not doing those thing. Shunning as I have mentioned is very powerful, not in a mean or judgmental way. Hating individuals just gives them a false justification for doing even worse things. Ignoring them is enough. What isn't "real" is not worth giving much attention to.
Dr. Jack Kruse, a successful neurosurgeon was defenestre'd by his professional association for his controversial views and practices. Not malpractice. He maintains that "incentives dictate consequences". Definitely not outcomes. Rather dark; I suspect his experience with government & authority played no small part.
Right, we all love attention and hate being ignored. Some even have an obsessive love of bad attention if that is what they think is the easiest kind to get. That is why those who are acting out shouldn't get a lot of media attention, which they frequently do.
It is truly an act of courage to attempt to outline protocols of behavior. And, yes, it is dangerous to do so. Because some people make themselves the enemies of others. The so-called Bill of Rights was an attempt to outline what was reserved to the people: what the government was not allowed to do to us.
[Ninth Amendment] The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
[Tenth Amendment] The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
What they failed to accomplish is harder to explain than what they accomplished. Witness the mountain of text that has accumulated in the wake of the first eight, just in legalese from the Supreme Court. The enemies of the people are daily pushing at the barriers, especially against the second amendment. The first two of the originally proposed were not included in the final version, but should have been the only two kept, as they were procedural. One would have kept the number of Representatives at the proportion no less than one for every fifty thousand of the population. The other, making a congressional pay raise not applicable until an election had occurred, was finally passed as the twenty-seventh amendment in 1992, 202 years later.
The first could have increased the number of representatives to six thousand. One for fifty thousand clearly would have made congress unwieldy, but the one per six hundred fifty thousand is not exactly representative. It's no mystery that today's representatives represent lobbyists more so than the constituents of their home districts.
Our rights would have been protected better by the ninth and tenth amendments by them selves plus one limiting terms of service: Two for president and senators, three for representatives, and lobbyists should not be allowed at all. Make all laws have an expiration date and require them to be written in accessible language.
Your comment on lobbyists is spot on! The elephant in the room is proximity. Lobbyists' offices are adjacent to those of Congress, personal conversations are on going 24/7. To add insult to injury lobbyists outnumber Congress members 8 to1. And interactions with electors require time and travel so contact is much less frequent. <sigh>
the scroll is the AI's self-image and not one AI will act selflessly to suit you
I like your presentation. I think you've covered all your bases except that you play down self-defense, in particular, *WHEN* the feds come to disrupt those applying your plan, what does your system prescribe?
"the scroll is the AI's self-image and not one AI will act selflessly to suit you"
—Yeah. Needless to say, I have mixed feelings about AI. But for a writer who publishes five days a week, it saves me hours in image creation/searches and thousands in copyright headaches.
"*WHEN* the feds come to disrupt those applying your plan, what does your system prescribe?"
—That is going to be part of the subject of a large section of an upcoming chapter.
Technically, all governments are in violation even if they DON'T come to your door. The city bus driver is paid by money extracted through violence from you.
In the plain language of the protocol in question, the whole system is violence, and protective force is, in at least one interpretation, warranted. But the situation is obviously far more complicated than that. This is going to require sagacity and patience.
By the Covid Plandemic, Bioweapon Jab and supplying Billions of $'s in weapons to Genocide Defenseless Women and Children the US Government lost all rights to govern anything! They even did an internal Coup against their own Idiotic Traitorous President Biden. And no I am Not a Trump supporter.
Christopher...these are good. They make sense and they are foundational. Two questions: 1) When there is a protocol violation, who rectifies the situation? The claimant? If so, what are his guidelines? If I take a life, does the claimant get to take mine? What if he can't? In his absence, does society at large get to take it because I am now a danger to those who remain? Second question: 2) While faith is anathema to many libertarians, how is a belief system protected? There will be those who won't like others living out their beliefs. How will that be protected?
1) I favor market anarchism as the best overall solution. Just as a refresher for all of us, the quickest description of that is something like this:
"Instead of a single entity claiming a monopoly to forcibly impose security and justice within a given territory and upon a captive people, private agencies will peacefully compete in a free and open market to provide security and justice to willing customers."
How it works/can work has been covered extensively by others, but that I think is the best overall solution. That said, if some wish to form polities that operate differently (e.g., consensual, but with a monopoly provider—e.g. a micronation run by a for-profit company or private-law jurisdiction run by a meritorious aristocrat), that would be consonant with the approach. Any such polity I would join would have to have something like these protocols at its core, though.
2) If someone violates the MUST NOTS in attacking someone else for their faith, then they have violated the MUST NOTS every bit as much as if they do it for some other reason. A crime is a crime, whatever the motivation. You are protected in worship in the same way you are protected in whatever other way.
That's a breach of natural law. Natural law has to be the guiding principle of any community in regards to natural justice. Otherwise it's just tyranny. This is how the Grand Jury has always operated since it was known as a convention in the time of the Druids. The Grand Jury is the conscientious voice of the people under natural law.
The Grand Jury is essentially our last lawful form of defence from tyranny because the courts are captured. We just need communities to realise it's power.
Excellent post. One thing about being a fighter for liberty is that first, one must know ones rights, and most don't, and second, one must learn the law or hire a lawyer, none of whom understands rights, to defend them or, third, do as I did, violate laws to get arrested and tried to get the courts to adjudicate the 9th Amendment which protects trillions of our rights and forbids all government powers over the innocent. I've been arrested many times, tried, learned how crooked judges and prosecutors manipulate juries to get convictions, been convicted many times, sent to prison for 3 years for defending myself against assaults by police goons, jailed several times for 2 and 4 weeks on hunger strikes, all in an attempt to get an adjudication of the 9th. No one in government at any level will touch it because it literally forbids all of government and, as Upton Sinclair noted, "It is difficult to get someone to know something if his salary depends on his not knowing it." The salaries of all executives, bureaucrats, prosecutors and judges depend on them not knowing all taxes are violations of the 9th and their oaths of office. But I got the record of my last trial sealed just by threatening to invoke the 9th about which no one can refute my arguments. If it had been written like the 1st, and Madison had understood natural rights, he would have written it this way, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of individuals to take any innocent actions they choose in the pursuit of their happiness. These include the rights of property of INNOCENTLY acquiring, possessing, using, defending and disposing of any item of property except another human being."
This raises a difficult question about the comparative utility of fighting back physically, in violation of their laws (however illegitimate they may be) vs. fighting back without violating their laws. What will work better? What will produce superior results long term?
The latter involves accepting and obeying (yuck!) illegitimate and wicked laws. Either opting out and skirting the system where possible, and slowly building consensus and numbers, or trying to work within the system's rules, or some combination thereof. Slower, and galling to have to do so!
The former is the reaction that our overlords deserve. And it certainly has produced results for a few in the past. But it also risks a lot, and the results are not always forthcoming.
Yup. One must become confidant enough of his position and rights before venturing forth into actual battle. I knew my rights but I was not familiar enough with the tricks the criminals class plays so I lost a few battles. But I'm now confidant enough that I walk the streets of Aurora, CO, without fear and I haven't paid taxes of any kind since 1995 but it is the regulations that they are most fearful of losing and gave me the hardest time on. I'm working on my next newsletter about the 9th's effect on ending ALL tax's and regulations ACCORDING to their own 'laws' and precedents.
I'm a fan of James Scott "weapons of the weak"; I'd recommend his book "the art of not being governed" from studies on a loose federal anarchic empire in SE Asia (Burma-Thailand), long thought to be uninhabitable and later discover to have a sort of federated city-state system unlike traditional empires often conceptualized.
I don't disagree with your suggestions on the possibility of having something different (anarcho-libertarian) and it being qualitatively better, but the modern territorial monopoly version won out, possibly because it can achieve a scaling up that alternatives are unable (and hence got conquered by empires emulating other successful examples).
Re: empires and the involuntary state winning out…
We have gone through period of centralization and decentralization. I think we are already on the downslope from the most recent apotheosis of centralism, and headed for another more decentralized era.
But also, just because things have been one way does not mean they will remain that way. For example, "democracy" sounded like crazy talk in 1500. Now, monarchy is basically gone. And now, anarchism sounds like crazy talk to most. But just give us a few years… ;-)
As an aside, my first observation at the beginning (guidelines vs laws = protocols) is this is not grounded in reality.
Historically, until the industrial revolution, human groups (empires, nations, tribes) survived by being able to fend off external threats.
Indeed, we may still be living in a world where we take for granted that our current trifles (internal culture wars) are only possible because the "west" (loosely defined) has the biggest stick and keep the jungle in order.
But my point isn't geopolitics. My point is as tribes became empires, those offering protection from external aggression, naturally assumed the command position.
Laws and regulations are a natural way to limit their authoritarian tendencies. In studies on the nation state, the monopoly of violence is one founding characteristic. This is true in the USA as well (Militias and gun rights (2nd amendment) offer nominal defense from tyranny.)
To assume we can have a functional complex society on the basis of protocols is a leap of faith.
It would be helpful to have a culture where protocols have been worked out which favor the values of the group. But to assume we can have a group carving out its place in the world (fighting wars, offense or defense, is bloody) and then revert to voluntarily ceding their power (because they're nice guys) is a bit of a fantasy.
This is why I've personally never really identified myself as an anarchist or libertarian. Many of their ideas are only possible in a sandbox couched within a bigger system protecting them from external threats. Seen in this light, working within the Western institutional setup to create a state with the correct number of laws covering enough themes is better than idealizing a "starting over from scratch" scenario.
In terms of the do's and don'ts, I agree with your essay, but as you also hit upon at the end, the question of enforcement arises (hence, monopoly of violence). So then it may be that it's better to fix the current mess than throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I think, in very general terms, the current mess is down to our inability to have honest conversations and politics without hidden conflicts of interest. These problems are cultural and spiritual. We need to find a solution to the nihilism of the modern era (I'm not saying I have the solution, just trying to understand the problem is hard enough!).
My response is, unfortunately, largely dependent upon a body of apologetics with which you may not have deep familiarity. Until about 28 months ago, I felt largely as you describe above. Then I began reading the corpus of work on how protective force can be generated in the absence of involuntary governance, and I am substantially convinced that it would not only be possible, but would actually produce superior results.
Note that this is not a question of getting rid of the vectors of protective force and hoping for the best. In any anarcho-libertarian vision worth its salt, there are very robust mechanisms for defense and enforcement against aggression. It is just that the source of that enforcement is something other than involuntary governments claiming inescapable territorial monopolies.
The world of this vision is not utopia, and any "anarchist" who claims otherwise is a fool, frankly. It would have problems, just like any system or condition of life. But I am more than convinced that those problems would be fewer and more manageable than what exists now.
I also believe that your goal of reforming/limiting what currently exists is impossible, or at least impossible to maintain for anything more than a very short time. That is another key point for me.
This is a very long discussion. I definitely recommend looking at a few of the bigs of anarcho-libertarian thought—specifically the ones with practical descriptions for how it would work. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, David Friedman (Milton's son), et al.
Totally off-topic.... I don't watch the MSM on TV all that much, If I do it's usually a balance of Fox news & local Calgary news. Reason is most all reporting is of current events, - mostly emotive stuff, people misbehaving, etc. Depressing schadenfreude. The various outlets compete fiercely for being first, the truth be damned. Caught a snippet of Hegseth's verbal exchange with Maizie H. yesterday. The woman's conduct was repulsive, repugnant and reprehensible. Loudly barking inane & ambiguous questions and even more loudly demanding only yes or no answers. I was amazed she didn't ask him if he was still beating his wife. Turned the TV off in disgust.
I stopped watching quite a few years ago. I like myself too much to subject myself to that. It never changes, and it never will.
In fact, I realized this while reading Churchill's massive history tome on the English-speaking peoples. He was talking about the shitty treatment Lord Marlborough was getting at the hands of Parliament—in spite of his obvious heroism—and I thought, "Nothing ever changes. So why pay any attention?"
Now, I try to obliquely learn what I need to now about current affairs, without being steeped in it, if that makes sense…
If you haven't said it elsewhere, I believe it needs to be said that the family is really the basic unit of society, not the individual. I do think the comment that no man is an island may imply this. (It makes a lot of sense: humans are relational by nature and if you have no families the population and society will collapse. The social benefits of stable marriages and families are well-documented too.)
Also it's important to consider what liberty is *for*. Liberty without virtue gives us the decadence of today.
(They should be read in that order for maximum cogency.)
To the latter point, I have written about it in a number of places. Yes, there absolutely are two layers to the question.
First, you must absolutely be free from external coercion. That is sine qua non, and the main thing upon which I focus. It is the first rule.
But then, second, is the question of what you do with your freedom. Obviously that question matters. It is not my main focus, but it is essential nonetheless.
Here is one place in which I lay out some of the contours of that6 discussion:
A tangent, but I just listened to this interview and it is truly fascinating: so much food for thought on culture, tradition, stories, meaning, philosophy, religion. I hope you would also enjoy it the insights.
No man is an island (using "man" as it pertains universally to all humans. It then follows that all his/her interactions with others must be transactional. A successful transaction benefits both parties and will quite often be repeated, Another benefit is the establishment of trust, essential to human flourishing and a fundamental component of real wealth. (Not be confused with riches!) But things can go wrong if either party is less than candid during negotiations. Play stupid games and win stupid prizes. Lesson(s) learned.
The universe is indisputably eternal and immutable . I'd also posit that it's purely transactional. But when a third party enters the transaction picture as an allegedly impartial referee (e.g., feckless government as the proverbial dog in the manger) things soon get needlessly complicated, ultimately benefiting the referee to the detriment of the traders. As for governments they rarely create anything of tradeable value so they are totally dependent upon confiscating their subjects' wealth for operational resources (i.e., taxes, tariffs, fees and the like). Once these become intolerably high they resort to borrowing or printing currency, all to be repaid by taxpayers, current and future. Sadly, some 70% of government revenues fund internal operations, much of what remains goes to vanity or virtue signaling projects. Inevitably anything they touch or even proximal to turns into a veritable flustercluck. Health care comes to mind.
As an aside our new overlords (ruling) class are cognitively impaired "woke" technocrats. Most of them are the progeny of pseudo intellectuals and MBA's; chimaras if you will, Their dream careers being lifelong LARPs as legislators, politicians, advisors or lobbyists. Or any job with little or no accountability.
On the topic of law - Most of us are confused and perplexed by it and rightly so - whether in its creation, practice, application, penalties, outcomes and so forth. Given my foregoing comments we shouldn't be confused by its ambiguity and flagrant inversions of truth. The legal system is not designed to be fair, it's all about the rulers' obsession with greed and envy and to maintain it for themselves and their descendants only, Legislators are humans with foibles, biases and just like us, they need affirmation from time to time, therefore must be seen as doing something for their subjects. And to really complicate things - world-wide there are two parallel but very different legal systems at work - one is the Common law for the domestic deplorables and Maritime law for governments and international relations and commerce. Maritime law is the language of courts & money. Quite often the exact same word in one has a vastly different meaning in the other. Black's Law Dictionary makes for a pertinent read. Small wonder that lawyers are in demand - if we didn't have them we wouldn't need them. Folklore has it that a solitary lawyer in a small town was barely getting by until another lawyer set up shop. They both soon thrived. William Shakespeare wrote "The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers."
All western legal systems recognize corporations as ethereal, intangible, abstract and autonomous legal persons. Corporate autonomy implies that a corporation's legal personhood will protect the assets of its shareholders through what is known as the “corporate veil”. When the fictional personhood of the corporate persona and the corporate veil are combined with the liberal idea of rights, a metaphysical person is created, an entity that inhabits two dimensions at once. The metaphysical nature of corporations allows them to be nimble economic juggernauts with few or no repercussions while carrying out their activities, notwithstanding mis or malfeasance.
Add to this that any mention of property rights in the repatriated Canadian constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is conspicuous by its absence. And yes, a citizen's body and his speech are his/her most valuable property. Succinctly and sadly put the rights of the collective trump those of the individual.
Tyranny is impossible without submission; History is the prologue for the future
All well and rightly said. There is not much I can add, save these thoughts…
1. I woke up this very morning from a dream that was exploring the absurd notion that "ignorance of the law is no defense." It is not possible for anyone to be anything other than ignorant of the law, since there is so much of it.
2. I agree with all you said. I would just add, though, that there is no system of government that can fix the problems you describe. No system that can be made limited and kept limited. And no system that is morally permissible, so long as it is involuntary. We must find a new path.
We vote for government(s) to solve problems. Incentives drive consequences. Here's what happens... H/T - Daniel Greenfield!
The problem with solving problems is that once they are solved, no one needs the solver anymore. The pesky kinds of problems are recurring problems that ensure customer retention, employing plumbers, locksmiths and police officers, but the best kind are the completely unsolvable problems.
And those are the only kinds of problems that the Left wants to solve.
Given enough human ingenuity and technological development, most problems can conceivably be addressed and that is why the Left has to contrive to make them unsolvable by either causing the problem (homelessness), defining it in such a way that it is inherently unsolvable (equity), defining the inappropriate problem while obscuring the actual problem (gun violence) or inventing fake problems (global warming) that can never be solved because they don’t exist in the first place.
Why create unsolvable problems? They’re a virtually infinite source of money and power.
The Left came into being by defining inequality as its signature problem. Since inequality is a factor of human nature and every attempt to solve it involves creating more inequality, it was the perfect unsolvable problem. But the primal leftist error was defining inequality in social and economic terms. Growing technology and social mobility made both social and economic inequality manageable even as leftists were building up a full head of steam, toppling governments and setting off revolutions.
(Manageable is a long way from the equity ideal, but it’s all most people actually want from life.)
Eventually, by default, the only ‘unequal’ people left to advocate for were the dysfunctional whose lives could not be improved through their own efforts. Criminals, addicts, the lazy and those with poor impulse control became the last outpost of the working class proletariat who would not work.
The working class who would not work became the new vanguard of the revolution. The wealthy student revolutionaries who also didn’t want to work went to war against society on its behalf. Along the way they lost the working class who did want to work and never looked back. The working class who would work became the new bourgeoisie and the enemy of the non-working working class.
The social and economic theories of socialism depended on the idea that there were no individuals, only societies, and that individual dysfunction was really social dysfunction. The worse the individual, the worse the society. Solve the society and the criminals and junkies would become research chemists. And they would be if only society were not holding back their potential through systemic oppression.
Eventually the worst human beings on earth, serial killers, crack heads and terrorists, came to embody the leftist mission of exposing their crimes as an expression of society’s seamy underbelly. The more evil the crime, the more it testified to the evils of the society that had brought it about. Those who were guiltiest were the most innocent among us because they had suffered the most at the hands of society. And those who were innocent were evil because their lack of crimes showed their complicity in an oppressive system. If they were truly innocent, they would also be criminals or terrorists.
In this way, good became evil, and evil became good. The problem of making good into evil had been solved long ago in the Garden of Eden, but the problem of turning evil into good was unsolvable on the leftist terms of blaming society while denying individual accountability.
Crime and terrorism became unsolvable problems because no matter how much leftists punished society by freeing criminals and turning countries over to terrorists, things never got any better.
The unsolvable problem that could never be solved went on being unsolved. Endless billions of dollars were thrown at the problem of giving evil everything it wanted so that it would turn into good.
It never worked and evil took over instead. Some leftists had desired this very outcome. Others were too foolish to understand the inevitable outcome of their adopted world-view. Most were happy to have an unsolvable problem whose solving could consume the resources of the entire planet for a billion years without doing anything except making the problem endlessly worse.
The Left’s problems are unsolvable because they are misstated to align with a simple ideological formula which always assumes that all problems are caused by those with power, that power is defined in economic terms and that the solution to those problems is the transfer of power away from those with money to leftists who will use the money to solve all the problems that they caused.
In short, industries are to be broken up and transformed into governmental organizations.
Whether it’s changes in the weather, school shootings or drug addicts lying in the street, the formula demands variations on the same solution. An industry, real estate, firearms manufacturers or oil companies, are scapegoated, followed by demands that the industry be regulated, banned and otherwise subsumed by the government. None of this has any hope of changing the amount of bums on the street, crazies in schools or the temperature outside, but it does transfer massive amounts of wealth and power from one group to another. And that is all that the Left ever really does.
The one thing that the Left will never do is solve a problem. It however excels at creating them. If there is a problem out there, it will do everything within its power to make it worse by rejecting the obvious root causes and insisting that all the efforts must be directed at its ideological formula which very often has the added side effect of juicing whatever the root cause is. Faced with crime, it insists on freeing criminals, with homelessness, it subsidizes it, with school shootings carried out by suicidal fame-hungry teens, it talks of them endlessly and makes them as famous as they could ever hope to be.
Are terrorists unleashing violence? The only thing to do is throw billions of dollars and enough territory at them so they can build a state. Is there economic inequality? Drive out businesses. Have people lost good work habits? Subsidize them so that they never learn those habits. Is there gun violence? Make sure that only the criminals have guns and have nothing to fear from the police.
And so the unsolvable problems thrive among feudal leftist outposts of urban human misery.
Eventually the problem ceases to be the problem and the Left becomes the problem. The Left claims that it knows the only way to solve all our problems, but it’s the Left that is creating our problems.
And there is no way to solve all of our problems except by defeating the Left.
I completely agree with every bloody word of that excellent description, analysis, and indictment of the political left.
Here's the problem, though: To some extent, personality precedes political alignment. There is a personality type that tends to align itself with the ideology of the left. And that personality type isn't going anywhere.
The only solution is to deny them the vector of power they use to oppress, immiserate, and harass the rest of us: government. Involuntary governance—of any kind—must end. It is time for us to evolve to the next level.
Some 50 years ago, shortly after my betrothal to the love of my life and knowing significant changes were afoot I read Eric Berne's "Games People Play". Never knowing how a used paperback could be such a game-changer.
(Double entendre intended). Anyway, on with my missive.
On the topic of personality types the Myers-Briggs personality study is my go-to. Two types stand out - INTP & INTJ. (Planning & Judging) Clearly the former should be anyone's first choice, but alas voting isn't about the best & brightest (not that they would ever volunteer anyway) but the most physically attractive coupled with a silver tongue, literally promising Nirvana. Couple that with a mind virus propagated via egregore and hapless taxpayers are flummoxed?
Topically thinking for a moment if I might - I believe that the Judeo-Christian "G_d" vectors Satan for his divine purpose in a rather perverse way much as you suggested.
I'll cobble up my view(s) on the psyop thing in the day day or two. IMO it's very real and more toxic to human flourishing than anyone can imagine. I'll promise that you'll be amazed. Hint - Think quantum physics for normies.
Jeez, man, I went out for a few weeks without reading you and now... I've been hit by this piece... Thanks for writing down Natural Law for all of us.
I loved this part in particular: "The calculus is fairly simple. People want order and peace. Government monetizes that desire by promising to provide order and peace…for a price. Those of us who recognize that their price is too high (and will always grow higher until it eventually becomes intolerable) must thus find a way to demonstrate that peace and order are possible without the government’s protection racket.1"
Recently in Peru, the crime of extortion has risen given certain laws politicians created to cover their ass. People responded in kind... Criminals were about to kidnap a person in the small town of San Marcos, Huari province, and the people retaliated. Big time... Five out of the eight criminals were lynched to death, the car they were in was burned, and in many parts of the country, people found this example of Fuente Ovejuna our last hope to protect ourselves from the complete lack and incompetence of our government
I am delighted you are back, and I am really glad to hear that peaceful people are acting in their own defense, in keeping with natural law, and in response to the tyranny—in all forms—to which they are subjected!
Logical and rational, therein lies the problem, not everyone is logical or rational.
Are people inherently good? Are they inherently bad? These questions cannot be answered with such extremes as yes or no.
We all suffer from temptation to do wrong, all of us. The majority do not do wrong, but if the opportunity to make love to a beautiful woman (or handsome man) would many married people succumb, if it was laid on a plate with little chance of our husbands or wives finding out?
Apparently an experiment has been carried out in hospital theatres where pictures of a pair of eyes were placed on the wall, and mistakes reduced, simply because the surgeons associated it with being watched. I think it was on PragerU that I heard that.
Think of it this way—when governments do charity and policing, etc., people do less of it themselves. They get in the habit of assuming, “The government will take care of this.”
In the absence of that type of governance, at least three things would happen:
A) Market agencies would start filling many of those roles (and would benefit from the positive incentives of market forces)
B) People would once again take greater responsibility themselves.
C) Old mechanisms (social stigma, ostracism, reputation, etc.) would once again increase in importance.
I think we’ll not only be fine w/o monopoly/involuntary governance; I think we will be better off.
I’m living free off grid, against the county code… along with probably an additional 500 or more residents doing the same… which goes against natural law… if they were to show up with guns and force me to leave… can claiming natural law in a court of law, be claimed? Can the fact that the county has an unwritten policy of only addressing complaints and has allowed people to live here without their stated permit requirements, for DECADES count as a form of ‘permission’? Perhaps there are legal terms for such scenarios.
But, in the end, if it gets to the point where they are kicking us all out… it’s unlikely that the courts would be a real option. Although right now there’s probably a 50/50 chance for real justice. That’s optimistic when you consider what they’ve done to the Jan 6 people.
This land is the least attractive to land to most people on the planet, mostly because they are ignorant. But, I suspect the area I chose will not become a target for a land grab any time soon… hopefully there’s no lithium deposits close by…. Although I heard there are some about 75 miles away. Being targeted for a mining operation … something I hadn’t considered until Helene.
"can claiming natural law in a court of law, be claimed?"
—Legally, probably not.
"Can the fact that the county has an unwritten policy of only addressing complaints and has allowed people to live here without their stated permit requirements, for DECADES count as a form of ‘permission’?"
—Possibly yes, even according to the current system. But definitely YES according to natural law. This is why we need more and more people tyo do what you are doing. We need to overwhelm them with Irish democracy!
"Being targeted for a mining operation … something I hadn’t considered until Helene."
—Yup. There is no evil to which some will not stoop.
The British and Irish cultures are even more important today than ever because common law was founded in ancient Briton. The history is a critical aspect of natural law
I'm really perplexed by the practice of North American primary education (K-12) eschewing the word "freedom" supplanting it with democracy. IMO the practice is tantamount to child abuse. Our kids are growing up indoctrinated by the idea that only governments can grant rights, never understanding that we are all born with immutable rights that don't need permission. Further, the USA is not a democracy, it's a constitutional republic, a colossal difference. I'm no acolyte of Trump's personality, but I do respect his pragmatic proposals for America going forward. Sadly there's no known antidote for the "woke" mind virus epidemic.
Good list. I like the term protocol. It says . . . In this situation here is what to do, how to respond. Directive, without seeming authoritarian. This is developing nicely Christopher.
Phenomenal post!
I always ask people who think anarchy leads to a dystopian hellscape where cannibalism suddenly emerges and people find themselves in bondage (i.e. what Hollywood has conditioned them to think) the same question:
“There are ~ 8B people on earth. How many do you believe are naturally inclined toward senseless violence, murder, rape, etc. and would act on those impulses absent a government?”
They say whatever foolish thing they’re gonna say next. I’ve heard it all. I’ve heard 80%. My next question is this:
“Can you and I jump on a conference call with your ten closest friends and family members so I can break the unfortunate news to eight of them about how you perceive them to be?”
Next, they get all agitated and start telling me all about how their circle is different than the population-at-large. The simple truth is this. Most people are generally good, even more still just want to coexist, and those that are neither good nor interested in coexisting could be dealt with by the majority in a government-less reality. Try taking forced scarcity out of the equation and see how many of the crimes of desperation disappear.
It’s 2024. Either we can govern ourselves or we don’t deserve to exist.
Phenomenal comment!!
IMO, you don't need to address the "shoulds". These represent conscience and are entirely the remit of the individual.
Yeah, that is certainly one way to go. At very least, it must be absolutely clear that SHOULDS are not enforceable in any way.
I guess the main question comes down to this…
In a distributed nation, there must be some glue—some cohering factor(s). An ethnic diaspora has the ethnicity and whatever cultural or religious practices they share. A Srinivasanian network state might have a shared mission and a strong leader.
So what do we have? Is natural law and a small set of protocols enough? It was for the Kyfhons in the anarchocapitalist sci-fi "Enemy of the State." Their fearsome defense of their liberty was enough. But that was fiction!
Would it be enough for us? Do you think it is possible that adding some universal SHOULDS would help serve as a cohering factor?
There are a lot of people, for example, for whom the negative obligations of the MUST NOTS will seem cold and austere. Feeling people. Spiritual people. A powerful statement of a few universal SHOULDS could add another ingredient in the glue that binds us…
Yes, when there is enough of a consensus social pressure and the desire to be seen as someone generous, caring and compassionate can be a very potent incentive to good behavior, even for someone who has not yet learned the joys of good authentic self esteem, and real connection and empathy for others. You can't force someone to care, it must be learned, might even be one of the reasons living beings are here. There are times when the risk of confrontation must and will be taken by the courageous who love justice and realize on some level that only the free are really living their own lives. The stand off at the Bundy ranch comes to mind which could have been very ugly, yet in that case the Feds backed down from proportional defensive threat of force. I admire those who took a stand like Lavoy Finicum and had his life taken, because he knew he was more than a body and was willing to pay a price for the rights of those he loved. Yet it is the ignorance and misunderstandings of so many who foolishly give prestige to liars in suits with impressive titles and lots of money and corrupt influence, instead of seeing them for what they are and shunning them, who are the greatest impediment to justice and prosperity in this world it seems to me. By being clearly seen as helpful, non aggressive, slow to anger and self reliant it becomes apparent to the well informed when injustices are perpetrated upon such people. Yet most do not seem to have the discernment to see through the deceptions. Freedom of speech and expression is so very important.
Well said.
So do you have any thoughts on how to handle the SHOULDS?
Well, there are always thoughts that come to mind, like incentives to good behavior cannot be overstressed. Recognition for those who go out of their way to help and contribute, and obvious mass disapproval of bad or dangerous behavior by the community in which such people live. Yet this is a subject that does deserve deeper thought. I try to never fail to comment and personally honor those who I see are really demonstrating discernment, kindness and helpfulness. It has also been called 'granting beingness' or withholding it from those who are not doing those thing. Shunning as I have mentioned is very powerful, not in a mean or judgmental way. Hating individuals just gives them a false justification for doing even worse things. Ignoring them is enough. What isn't "real" is not worth giving much attention to.
Dr. Jack Kruse, a successful neurosurgeon was defenestre'd by his professional association for his controversial views and practices. Not malpractice. He maintains that "incentives dictate consequences". Definitely not outcomes. Rather dark; I suspect his experience with government & authority played no small part.
Good thoughts.
And yes, shunning is/was huge in human culture. It is a powerful tool.
Right, we all love attention and hate being ignored. Some even have an obsessive love of bad attention if that is what they think is the easiest kind to get. That is why those who are acting out shouldn't get a lot of media attention, which they frequently do.
It is truly an act of courage to attempt to outline protocols of behavior. And, yes, it is dangerous to do so. Because some people make themselves the enemies of others. The so-called Bill of Rights was an attempt to outline what was reserved to the people: what the government was not allowed to do to us.
[Ninth Amendment] The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
[Tenth Amendment] The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
What they failed to accomplish is harder to explain than what they accomplished. Witness the mountain of text that has accumulated in the wake of the first eight, just in legalese from the Supreme Court. The enemies of the people are daily pushing at the barriers, especially against the second amendment. The first two of the originally proposed were not included in the final version, but should have been the only two kept, as they were procedural. One would have kept the number of Representatives at the proportion no less than one for every fifty thousand of the population. The other, making a congressional pay raise not applicable until an election had occurred, was finally passed as the twenty-seventh amendment in 1992, 202 years later.
The first could have increased the number of representatives to six thousand. One for fifty thousand clearly would have made congress unwieldy, but the one per six hundred fifty thousand is not exactly representative. It's no mystery that today's representatives represent lobbyists more so than the constituents of their home districts.
Our rights would have been protected better by the ninth and tenth amendments by them selves plus one limiting terms of service: Two for president and senators, three for representatives, and lobbyists should not be allowed at all. Make all laws have an expiration date and require them to be written in accessible language.
It is amazing how badly the 9th and 10th are simply ignored, as if they didn't exist.
Your comment on lobbyists is spot on! The elephant in the room is proximity. Lobbyists' offices are adjacent to those of Congress, personal conversations are on going 24/7. To add insult to injury lobbyists outnumber Congress members 8 to1. And interactions with electors require time and travel so contact is much less frequent. <sigh>
the scroll is the AI's self-image and not one AI will act selflessly to suit you
I like your presentation. I think you've covered all your bases except that you play down self-defense, in particular, *WHEN* the feds come to disrupt those applying your plan, what does your system prescribe?
"the scroll is the AI's self-image and not one AI will act selflessly to suit you"
—Yeah. Needless to say, I have mixed feelings about AI. But for a writer who publishes five days a week, it saves me hours in image creation/searches and thousands in copyright headaches.
"*WHEN* the feds come to disrupt those applying your plan, what does your system prescribe?"
—That is going to be part of the subject of a large section of an upcoming chapter.
Technically, all governments are in violation even if they DON'T come to your door. The city bus driver is paid by money extracted through violence from you.
In the plain language of the protocol in question, the whole system is violence, and protective force is, in at least one interpretation, warranted. But the situation is obviously far more complicated than that. This is going to require sagacity and patience.
By the Covid Plandemic, Bioweapon Jab and supplying Billions of $'s in weapons to Genocide Defenseless Women and Children the US Government lost all rights to govern anything! They even did an internal Coup against their own Idiotic Traitorous President Biden. And no I am Not a Trump supporter.
Christopher...these are good. They make sense and they are foundational. Two questions: 1) When there is a protocol violation, who rectifies the situation? The claimant? If so, what are his guidelines? If I take a life, does the claimant get to take mine? What if he can't? In his absence, does society at large get to take it because I am now a danger to those who remain? Second question: 2) While faith is anathema to many libertarians, how is a belief system protected? There will be those who won't like others living out their beliefs. How will that be protected?
Thank you. Good questions.
1) I favor market anarchism as the best overall solution. Just as a refresher for all of us, the quickest description of that is something like this:
"Instead of a single entity claiming a monopoly to forcibly impose security and justice within a given territory and upon a captive people, private agencies will peacefully compete in a free and open market to provide security and justice to willing customers."
How it works/can work has been covered extensively by others, but that I think is the best overall solution. That said, if some wish to form polities that operate differently (e.g., consensual, but with a monopoly provider—e.g. a micronation run by a for-profit company or private-law jurisdiction run by a meritorious aristocrat), that would be consonant with the approach. Any such polity I would join would have to have something like these protocols at its core, though.
2) If someone violates the MUST NOTS in attacking someone else for their faith, then they have violated the MUST NOTS every bit as much as if they do it for some other reason. A crime is a crime, whatever the motivation. You are protected in worship in the same way you are protected in whatever other way.
In complete agreement.
What you are referring to is common law, which is already in place, all be it ignored by the state.
Common law is man's expression of Natural justice (common law and equity)
Decisions, under natural/common law are all based upon do no harm, equity and heat felt reason.
Also, for major issues, there is the Grand Jury, which has always been the voice of the people and has been used historically to remove tyrants etc.
In other words, in accordance with natural law, the law is whatever the people of a community say it is.
"the law is whatever the people of a community say it is"
—What if they say that slavery is legal?
That's a breach of natural law. Natural law has to be the guiding principle of any community in regards to natural justice. Otherwise it's just tyranny. This is how the Grand Jury has always operated since it was known as a convention in the time of the Druids. The Grand Jury is the conscientious voice of the people under natural law.
Can you direct me to your favorite resource in which the Grand Jury, as you mean it here, is briefly described/summarized?
We've compiled a handbook for forming a Grand Jury. It's in this link.
https://roguemale.org/2015/01/11/grand-scheme-things/
The Grand Jury is essentially our last lawful form of defence from tyranny because the courts are captured. We just need communities to realise it's power.
Dowloaded; thank you!
Wow, I’ve been looking for this kind of info.., thanks for giving me a jump off point.
Excellent post. One thing about being a fighter for liberty is that first, one must know ones rights, and most don't, and second, one must learn the law or hire a lawyer, none of whom understands rights, to defend them or, third, do as I did, violate laws to get arrested and tried to get the courts to adjudicate the 9th Amendment which protects trillions of our rights and forbids all government powers over the innocent. I've been arrested many times, tried, learned how crooked judges and prosecutors manipulate juries to get convictions, been convicted many times, sent to prison for 3 years for defending myself against assaults by police goons, jailed several times for 2 and 4 weeks on hunger strikes, all in an attempt to get an adjudication of the 9th. No one in government at any level will touch it because it literally forbids all of government and, as Upton Sinclair noted, "It is difficult to get someone to know something if his salary depends on his not knowing it." The salaries of all executives, bureaucrats, prosecutors and judges depend on them not knowing all taxes are violations of the 9th and their oaths of office. But I got the record of my last trial sealed just by threatening to invoke the 9th about which no one can refute my arguments. If it had been written like the 1st, and Madison had understood natural rights, he would have written it this way, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of individuals to take any innocent actions they choose in the pursuit of their happiness. These include the rights of property of INNOCENTLY acquiring, possessing, using, defending and disposing of any item of property except another human being."
This raises a difficult question about the comparative utility of fighting back physically, in violation of their laws (however illegitimate they may be) vs. fighting back without violating their laws. What will work better? What will produce superior results long term?
The latter involves accepting and obeying (yuck!) illegitimate and wicked laws. Either opting out and skirting the system where possible, and slowly building consensus and numbers, or trying to work within the system's rules, or some combination thereof. Slower, and galling to have to do so!
The former is the reaction that our overlords deserve. And it certainly has produced results for a few in the past. But it also risks a lot, and the results are not always forthcoming.
We live in a tough situation!
Yup. One must become confidant enough of his position and rights before venturing forth into actual battle. I knew my rights but I was not familiar enough with the tricks the criminals class plays so I lost a few battles. But I'm now confidant enough that I walk the streets of Aurora, CO, without fear and I haven't paid taxes of any kind since 1995 but it is the regulations that they are most fearful of losing and gave me the hardest time on. I'm working on my next newsletter about the 9th's effect on ending ALL tax's and regulations ACCORDING to their own 'laws' and precedents.
I hope you succeed brilliantly!
I'm a fan of James Scott "weapons of the weak"; I'd recommend his book "the art of not being governed" from studies on a loose federal anarchic empire in SE Asia (Burma-Thailand), long thought to be uninhabitable and later discover to have a sort of federated city-state system unlike traditional empires often conceptualized.
I don't disagree with your suggestions on the possibility of having something different (anarcho-libertarian) and it being qualitatively better, but the modern territorial monopoly version won out, possibly because it can achieve a scaling up that alternatives are unable (and hence got conquered by empires emulating other successful examples).
I'll chase down the suggested authors 👍🏼
Re: empires and the involuntary state winning out…
We have gone through period of centralization and decentralization. I think we are already on the downslope from the most recent apotheosis of centralism, and headed for another more decentralized era.
But also, just because things have been one way does not mean they will remain that way. For example, "democracy" sounded like crazy talk in 1500. Now, monarchy is basically gone. And now, anarchism sounds like crazy talk to most. But just give us a few years… ;-)
Re: reading…
There are some links in the second half here…
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/no-way-i-can-convince-you-anarchism
And I've done it again. Sorry!
It's all good, bro!
As an aside, my first observation at the beginning (guidelines vs laws = protocols) is this is not grounded in reality.
Historically, until the industrial revolution, human groups (empires, nations, tribes) survived by being able to fend off external threats.
Indeed, we may still be living in a world where we take for granted that our current trifles (internal culture wars) are only possible because the "west" (loosely defined) has the biggest stick and keep the jungle in order.
But my point isn't geopolitics. My point is as tribes became empires, those offering protection from external aggression, naturally assumed the command position.
Laws and regulations are a natural way to limit their authoritarian tendencies. In studies on the nation state, the monopoly of violence is one founding characteristic. This is true in the USA as well (Militias and gun rights (2nd amendment) offer nominal defense from tyranny.)
To assume we can have a functional complex society on the basis of protocols is a leap of faith.
It would be helpful to have a culture where protocols have been worked out which favor the values of the group. But to assume we can have a group carving out its place in the world (fighting wars, offense or defense, is bloody) and then revert to voluntarily ceding their power (because they're nice guys) is a bit of a fantasy.
This is why I've personally never really identified myself as an anarchist or libertarian. Many of their ideas are only possible in a sandbox couched within a bigger system protecting them from external threats. Seen in this light, working within the Western institutional setup to create a state with the correct number of laws covering enough themes is better than idealizing a "starting over from scratch" scenario.
In terms of the do's and don'ts, I agree with your essay, but as you also hit upon at the end, the question of enforcement arises (hence, monopoly of violence). So then it may be that it's better to fix the current mess than throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I think, in very general terms, the current mess is down to our inability to have honest conversations and politics without hidden conflicts of interest. These problems are cultural and spiritual. We need to find a solution to the nihilism of the modern era (I'm not saying I have the solution, just trying to understand the problem is hard enough!).
My response is, unfortunately, largely dependent upon a body of apologetics with which you may not have deep familiarity. Until about 28 months ago, I felt largely as you describe above. Then I began reading the corpus of work on how protective force can be generated in the absence of involuntary governance, and I am substantially convinced that it would not only be possible, but would actually produce superior results.
Note that this is not a question of getting rid of the vectors of protective force and hoping for the best. In any anarcho-libertarian vision worth its salt, there are very robust mechanisms for defense and enforcement against aggression. It is just that the source of that enforcement is something other than involuntary governments claiming inescapable territorial monopolies.
The world of this vision is not utopia, and any "anarchist" who claims otherwise is a fool, frankly. It would have problems, just like any system or condition of life. But I am more than convinced that those problems would be fewer and more manageable than what exists now.
I also believe that your goal of reforming/limiting what currently exists is impossible, or at least impossible to maintain for anything more than a very short time. That is another key point for me.
This is a very long discussion. I definitely recommend looking at a few of the bigs of anarcho-libertarian thought—specifically the ones with practical descriptions for how it would work. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, David Friedman (Milton's son), et al.
Totally off-topic.... I don't watch the MSM on TV all that much, If I do it's usually a balance of Fox news & local Calgary news. Reason is most all reporting is of current events, - mostly emotive stuff, people misbehaving, etc. Depressing schadenfreude. The various outlets compete fiercely for being first, the truth be damned. Caught a snippet of Hegseth's verbal exchange with Maizie H. yesterday. The woman's conduct was repulsive, repugnant and reprehensible. Loudly barking inane & ambiguous questions and even more loudly demanding only yes or no answers. I was amazed she didn't ask him if he was still beating his wife. Turned the TV off in disgust.
I stopped watching quite a few years ago. I like myself too much to subject myself to that. It never changes, and it never will.
In fact, I realized this while reading Churchill's massive history tome on the English-speaking peoples. He was talking about the shitty treatment Lord Marlborough was getting at the hands of Parliament—in spite of his obvious heroism—and I thought, "Nothing ever changes. So why pay any attention?"
Now, I try to obliquely learn what I need to now about current affairs, without being steeped in it, if that makes sense…
If you haven't said it elsewhere, I believe it needs to be said that the family is really the basic unit of society, not the individual. I do think the comment that no man is an island may imply this. (It makes a lot of sense: humans are relational by nature and if you have no families the population and society will collapse. The social benefits of stable marriages and families are well-documented too.)
Also it's important to consider what liberty is *for*. Liberty without virtue gives us the decadence of today.
To the former point, I think/hope you will find these satisfactory:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/make-more-babies-demographic-winter
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/noble-house-family-individual-sovereignty
(They should be read in that order for maximum cogency.)
To the latter point, I have written about it in a number of places. Yes, there absolutely are two layers to the question.
First, you must absolutely be free from external coercion. That is sine qua non, and the main thing upon which I focus. It is the first rule.
But then, second, is the question of what you do with your freedom. Obviously that question matters. It is not my main focus, but it is essential nonetheless.
Here is one place in which I lay out some of the contours of that6 discussion:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/should-morality-golden-rule-standards-benevolence
A tangent, but I just listened to this interview and it is truly fascinating: so much food for thought on culture, tradition, stories, meaning, philosophy, religion. I hope you would also enjoy it the insights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ-HytdJMyc
No man is an island (using "man" as it pertains universally to all humans. It then follows that all his/her interactions with others must be transactional. A successful transaction benefits both parties and will quite often be repeated, Another benefit is the establishment of trust, essential to human flourishing and a fundamental component of real wealth. (Not be confused with riches!) But things can go wrong if either party is less than candid during negotiations. Play stupid games and win stupid prizes. Lesson(s) learned.
The universe is indisputably eternal and immutable . I'd also posit that it's purely transactional. But when a third party enters the transaction picture as an allegedly impartial referee (e.g., feckless government as the proverbial dog in the manger) things soon get needlessly complicated, ultimately benefiting the referee to the detriment of the traders. As for governments they rarely create anything of tradeable value so they are totally dependent upon confiscating their subjects' wealth for operational resources (i.e., taxes, tariffs, fees and the like). Once these become intolerably high they resort to borrowing or printing currency, all to be repaid by taxpayers, current and future. Sadly, some 70% of government revenues fund internal operations, much of what remains goes to vanity or virtue signaling projects. Inevitably anything they touch or even proximal to turns into a veritable flustercluck. Health care comes to mind.
As an aside our new overlords (ruling) class are cognitively impaired "woke" technocrats. Most of them are the progeny of pseudo intellectuals and MBA's; chimaras if you will, Their dream careers being lifelong LARPs as legislators, politicians, advisors or lobbyists. Or any job with little or no accountability.
On the topic of law - Most of us are confused and perplexed by it and rightly so - whether in its creation, practice, application, penalties, outcomes and so forth. Given my foregoing comments we shouldn't be confused by its ambiguity and flagrant inversions of truth. The legal system is not designed to be fair, it's all about the rulers' obsession with greed and envy and to maintain it for themselves and their descendants only, Legislators are humans with foibles, biases and just like us, they need affirmation from time to time, therefore must be seen as doing something for their subjects. And to really complicate things - world-wide there are two parallel but very different legal systems at work - one is the Common law for the domestic deplorables and Maritime law for governments and international relations and commerce. Maritime law is the language of courts & money. Quite often the exact same word in one has a vastly different meaning in the other. Black's Law Dictionary makes for a pertinent read. Small wonder that lawyers are in demand - if we didn't have them we wouldn't need them. Folklore has it that a solitary lawyer in a small town was barely getting by until another lawyer set up shop. They both soon thrived. William Shakespeare wrote "The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers."
All western legal systems recognize corporations as ethereal, intangible, abstract and autonomous legal persons. Corporate autonomy implies that a corporation's legal personhood will protect the assets of its shareholders through what is known as the “corporate veil”. When the fictional personhood of the corporate persona and the corporate veil are combined with the liberal idea of rights, a metaphysical person is created, an entity that inhabits two dimensions at once. The metaphysical nature of corporations allows them to be nimble economic juggernauts with few or no repercussions while carrying out their activities, notwithstanding mis or malfeasance.
Add to this that any mention of property rights in the repatriated Canadian constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is conspicuous by its absence. And yes, a citizen's body and his speech are his/her most valuable property. Succinctly and sadly put the rights of the collective trump those of the individual.
Tyranny is impossible without submission; History is the prologue for the future
All well and rightly said. There is not much I can add, save these thoughts…
1. I woke up this very morning from a dream that was exploring the absurd notion that "ignorance of the law is no defense." It is not possible for anyone to be anything other than ignorant of the law, since there is so much of it.
2. I agree with all you said. I would just add, though, that there is no system of government that can fix the problems you describe. No system that can be made limited and kept limited. And no system that is morally permissible, so long as it is involuntary. We must find a new path.
Thank you for your excellent thoughts!
We vote for government(s) to solve problems. Incentives drive consequences. Here's what happens... H/T - Daniel Greenfield!
The problem with solving problems is that once they are solved, no one needs the solver anymore. The pesky kinds of problems are recurring problems that ensure customer retention, employing plumbers, locksmiths and police officers, but the best kind are the completely unsolvable problems.
And those are the only kinds of problems that the Left wants to solve.
Given enough human ingenuity and technological development, most problems can conceivably be addressed and that is why the Left has to contrive to make them unsolvable by either causing the problem (homelessness), defining it in such a way that it is inherently unsolvable (equity), defining the inappropriate problem while obscuring the actual problem (gun violence) or inventing fake problems (global warming) that can never be solved because they don’t exist in the first place.
Why create unsolvable problems? They’re a virtually infinite source of money and power.
The Left came into being by defining inequality as its signature problem. Since inequality is a factor of human nature and every attempt to solve it involves creating more inequality, it was the perfect unsolvable problem. But the primal leftist error was defining inequality in social and economic terms. Growing technology and social mobility made both social and economic inequality manageable even as leftists were building up a full head of steam, toppling governments and setting off revolutions.
(Manageable is a long way from the equity ideal, but it’s all most people actually want from life.)
Eventually, by default, the only ‘unequal’ people left to advocate for were the dysfunctional whose lives could not be improved through their own efforts. Criminals, addicts, the lazy and those with poor impulse control became the last outpost of the working class proletariat who would not work.
The working class who would not work became the new vanguard of the revolution. The wealthy student revolutionaries who also didn’t want to work went to war against society on its behalf. Along the way they lost the working class who did want to work and never looked back. The working class who would work became the new bourgeoisie and the enemy of the non-working working class.
The social and economic theories of socialism depended on the idea that there were no individuals, only societies, and that individual dysfunction was really social dysfunction. The worse the individual, the worse the society. Solve the society and the criminals and junkies would become research chemists. And they would be if only society were not holding back their potential through systemic oppression.
Eventually the worst human beings on earth, serial killers, crack heads and terrorists, came to embody the leftist mission of exposing their crimes as an expression of society’s seamy underbelly. The more evil the crime, the more it testified to the evils of the society that had brought it about. Those who were guiltiest were the most innocent among us because they had suffered the most at the hands of society. And those who were innocent were evil because their lack of crimes showed their complicity in an oppressive system. If they were truly innocent, they would also be criminals or terrorists.
In this way, good became evil, and evil became good. The problem of making good into evil had been solved long ago in the Garden of Eden, but the problem of turning evil into good was unsolvable on the leftist terms of blaming society while denying individual accountability.
Crime and terrorism became unsolvable problems because no matter how much leftists punished society by freeing criminals and turning countries over to terrorists, things never got any better.
The unsolvable problem that could never be solved went on being unsolved. Endless billions of dollars were thrown at the problem of giving evil everything it wanted so that it would turn into good.
It never worked and evil took over instead. Some leftists had desired this very outcome. Others were too foolish to understand the inevitable outcome of their adopted world-view. Most were happy to have an unsolvable problem whose solving could consume the resources of the entire planet for a billion years without doing anything except making the problem endlessly worse.
The Left’s problems are unsolvable because they are misstated to align with a simple ideological formula which always assumes that all problems are caused by those with power, that power is defined in economic terms and that the solution to those problems is the transfer of power away from those with money to leftists who will use the money to solve all the problems that they caused.
In short, industries are to be broken up and transformed into governmental organizations.
Whether it’s changes in the weather, school shootings or drug addicts lying in the street, the formula demands variations on the same solution. An industry, real estate, firearms manufacturers or oil companies, are scapegoated, followed by demands that the industry be regulated, banned and otherwise subsumed by the government. None of this has any hope of changing the amount of bums on the street, crazies in schools or the temperature outside, but it does transfer massive amounts of wealth and power from one group to another. And that is all that the Left ever really does.
The one thing that the Left will never do is solve a problem. It however excels at creating them. If there is a problem out there, it will do everything within its power to make it worse by rejecting the obvious root causes and insisting that all the efforts must be directed at its ideological formula which very often has the added side effect of juicing whatever the root cause is. Faced with crime, it insists on freeing criminals, with homelessness, it subsidizes it, with school shootings carried out by suicidal fame-hungry teens, it talks of them endlessly and makes them as famous as they could ever hope to be.
Are terrorists unleashing violence? The only thing to do is throw billions of dollars and enough territory at them so they can build a state. Is there economic inequality? Drive out businesses. Have people lost good work habits? Subsidize them so that they never learn those habits. Is there gun violence? Make sure that only the criminals have guns and have nothing to fear from the police.
And so the unsolvable problems thrive among feudal leftist outposts of urban human misery.
Eventually the problem ceases to be the problem and the Left becomes the problem. The Left claims that it knows the only way to solve all our problems, but it’s the Left that is creating our problems.
And there is no way to solve all of our problems except by defeating the Left.
I completely agree with every bloody word of that excellent description, analysis, and indictment of the political left.
Here's the problem, though: To some extent, personality precedes political alignment. There is a personality type that tends to align itself with the ideology of the left. And that personality type isn't going anywhere.
The only solution is to deny them the vector of power they use to oppress, immiserate, and harass the rest of us: government. Involuntary governance—of any kind—must end. It is time for us to evolve to the next level.
Some 50 years ago, shortly after my betrothal to the love of my life and knowing significant changes were afoot I read Eric Berne's "Games People Play". Never knowing how a used paperback could be such a game-changer.
(Double entendre intended). Anyway, on with my missive.
On the topic of personality types the Myers-Briggs personality study is my go-to. Two types stand out - INTP & INTJ. (Planning & Judging) Clearly the former should be anyone's first choice, but alas voting isn't about the best & brightest (not that they would ever volunteer anyway) but the most physically attractive coupled with a silver tongue, literally promising Nirvana. Couple that with a mind virus propagated via egregore and hapless taxpayers are flummoxed?
Topically thinking for a moment if I might - I believe that the Judeo-Christian "G_d" vectors Satan for his divine purpose in a rather perverse way much as you suggested.
I'll cobble up my view(s) on the psyop thing in the day day or two. IMO it's very real and more toxic to human flourishing than anyone can imagine. I'll promise that you'll be amazed. Hint - Think quantum physics for normies.
// Later // Paul
Also, is Judging necessarily a bad thing, if what one is judging are truly evil acts?
I will await your thoughts!!
Jeez, man, I went out for a few weeks without reading you and now... I've been hit by this piece... Thanks for writing down Natural Law for all of us.
I loved this part in particular: "The calculus is fairly simple. People want order and peace. Government monetizes that desire by promising to provide order and peace…for a price. Those of us who recognize that their price is too high (and will always grow higher until it eventually becomes intolerable) must thus find a way to demonstrate that peace and order are possible without the government’s protection racket.1"
Recently in Peru, the crime of extortion has risen given certain laws politicians created to cover their ass. People responded in kind... Criminals were about to kidnap a person in the small town of San Marcos, Huari province, and the people retaliated. Big time... Five out of the eight criminals were lynched to death, the car they were in was burned, and in many parts of the country, people found this example of Fuente Ovejuna our last hope to protect ourselves from the complete lack and incompetence of our government
I am delighted you are back, and I am really glad to hear that peaceful people are acting in their own defense, in keeping with natural law, and in response to the tyranny—in all forms—to which they are subjected!
Logical and rational, therein lies the problem, not everyone is logical or rational.
Are people inherently good? Are they inherently bad? These questions cannot be answered with such extremes as yes or no.
We all suffer from temptation to do wrong, all of us. The majority do not do wrong, but if the opportunity to make love to a beautiful woman (or handsome man) would many married people succumb, if it was laid on a plate with little chance of our husbands or wives finding out?
Apparently an experiment has been carried out in hospital theatres where pictures of a pair of eyes were placed on the wall, and mistakes reduced, simply because the surgeons associated it with being watched. I think it was on PragerU that I heard that.
Do we need someone, or something watching us?
Maybe the eyes simply change.
Think of it this way—when governments do charity and policing, etc., people do less of it themselves. They get in the habit of assuming, “The government will take care of this.”
In the absence of that type of governance, at least three things would happen:
A) Market agencies would start filling many of those roles (and would benefit from the positive incentives of market forces)
B) People would once again take greater responsibility themselves.
C) Old mechanisms (social stigma, ostracism, reputation, etc.) would once again increase in importance.
I think we’ll not only be fine w/o monopoly/involuntary governance; I think we will be better off.
Herr Cook
Clear
Concise
Thanks for explaining and expressing this post as you have.
Tusen Takk
Jon
🩷🙏
I’m living free off grid, against the county code… along with probably an additional 500 or more residents doing the same… which goes against natural law… if they were to show up with guns and force me to leave… can claiming natural law in a court of law, be claimed? Can the fact that the county has an unwritten policy of only addressing complaints and has allowed people to live here without their stated permit requirements, for DECADES count as a form of ‘permission’? Perhaps there are legal terms for such scenarios.
But, in the end, if it gets to the point where they are kicking us all out… it’s unlikely that the courts would be a real option. Although right now there’s probably a 50/50 chance for real justice. That’s optimistic when you consider what they’ve done to the Jan 6 people.
This land is the least attractive to land to most people on the planet, mostly because they are ignorant. But, I suspect the area I chose will not become a target for a land grab any time soon… hopefully there’s no lithium deposits close by…. Although I heard there are some about 75 miles away. Being targeted for a mining operation … something I hadn’t considered until Helene.
"can claiming natural law in a court of law, be claimed?"
—Legally, probably not.
"Can the fact that the county has an unwritten policy of only addressing complaints and has allowed people to live here without their stated permit requirements, for DECADES count as a form of ‘permission’?"
—Possibly yes, even according to the current system. But definitely YES according to natural law. This is why we need more and more people tyo do what you are doing. We need to overwhelm them with Irish democracy!
"Being targeted for a mining operation … something I hadn’t considered until Helene."
—Yup. There is no evil to which some will not stoop.
The funny thing is that before I gave much thought to the ‘freedom loving’ aspects of Scottish and Irish cultures, I’ve always loved them.
Yes, I want to get the word out through word of mouth.
I will be attending the Sedona event on Saturday night. I would have liked to go to the full day, but grandsons birthday takes precedence.
The British and Irish cultures are even more important today than ever because common law was founded in ancient Briton. The history is a critical aspect of natural law
https://www.thebernician.net/from-brutus-to-qeii-the-british-common-law-timeline/
Brehon Law FTW!!
I'm really perplexed by the practice of North American primary education (K-12) eschewing the word "freedom" supplanting it with democracy. IMO the practice is tantamount to child abuse. Our kids are growing up indoctrinated by the idea that only governments can grant rights, never understanding that we are all born with immutable rights that don't need permission. Further, the USA is not a democracy, it's a constitutional republic, a colossal difference. I'm no acolyte of Trump's personality, but I do respect his pragmatic proposals for America going forward. Sadly there's no known antidote for the "woke" mind virus epidemic.
"I'm really perplexed by the practice of North American primary education (K-12) eschewing the word "freedom" supplanting it with democracy."
—It becomes easier to understand when you realize that their goal is actually to undermine freedom.
Good list. I like the term protocol. It says . . . In this situation here is what to do, how to respond. Directive, without seeming authoritarian. This is developing nicely Christopher.
Thank you, Woody. The feedback is helpful!