I was thinking more about this last night and I always find myself coming back to the Milgrim experiment to which 80% followed orders no matter how terrible and 20% stood up to authority to do what was right, in this case, not harming another because they were told to (even though it was not really happening since it was a controlled experiment). Looking at it from this angle, if 20% of us are at least willing to do this, then that means a decent percentage of us are likely more inclined or aligned with the principles of natural law. If 20% of us can work together in some capacity then we can create change for good by working from that core value. I believe these principles of natural law are at the core of all humans, the 80% (as referenced in this study) have just forgotten and become too heavily molded and influenced to give up their critical thinking to said ruler. As witnessed during the covid mayhem, people that normally would not make the decisions they made, under stress, bowed to authority...because that's what they know and have been trained to do BUT they also thought they were doing good despite the complete abandoment of logic due to the manufactured fear. If these laws are written in our soul, then the 20% can have positive influence, not to control or change anyone but to help others find this inside their own heart and relcaim their sovereign power with the wonderful word, No! A tribe of sovereign individuals who aren't afraid to be themselves yet are aligned under a core value that creates a strong foundation is far different than a tribe bending to a master out of fear...the hive-mind is just the shadow fo the "collective" consciousness that has teetered out of balance. Great post, thank you!
“A tribe of sovereign individuals who aren't afraid to be themselves yet are aligned under a core value” is going to ring and rattle in my brain all day (in a good way)!
I wonder if you have encountered Miles Mathis' take on the Milgrim experiment? If Miles is accurate, that data is corrupted to give us the wrong impression.
I think MM is ‘one of them’ designed to sow confusion… it almost doesn’t matter about that experiment per se. We see plenty of others showing the same results, yes?
Mathis also says we're wrong about why the sky is blue, that Planck's constant is a fake number, angular velocity and momentum equations are wrong. He does allow, in well over three thousand words that the Ether does not exist.
Me too. But after having watched people deputize themselves as enforcers of the regime…including a situation in which I was forced to square off with one such member of the quasi-Stasi…I feel like there had to be at least some truth in Milgram.
Right on. And I am not even talking about the typical levels of "unity." Unity, in the sense that many mean it, is not possible. But we should be united in our stand for our principles, and for those who also truly stand for those principles.
I'm a very social being. Always have been. Always been at the center of things, host-extraordinaire. Though not a big joiner. With both feet, anyways. Prefer to be a mile wide and an inch deep in if a part of any organization or group it's one of many. On the rare occasion when I've decided a group or organization was worth more than a surface, mid-level attention span and interest I find myself elevated into a position of leadership very quickly. Not sought, always a reluctant leader. But others see qualities in me they desire to be a leader. Turns out I excel at it. True since a very young age. At 23 I was promoted manage a 100-person staff and had three assistant managers between ten and twenty years older than me.
Many varied and different career endeavors later, including work in setting public policy, working with state, local and federal political and business leaders where I developed professional and personal relationships with many names familiar to readers of this Stack I had left that arena by 2020. And returned to my hospitality, host-extraordinaire roots when the Plandemic crime against humanity shut down my business. The People Industry was declared "nonessential." And those working in it were declared "nonessential humans." Requiring them to be either independently wealthy or needy dependents on the handouts of more "essential" humans allowed to continue to work and produce wealth.
As a lifetime social being I believed those I was most social with, my social capital, my social (and professional) connections would help pull my network out of the fear that MSM and politicians were inducing. Many previously sharing my skepticism of MSM and politicians. But shockingly few supported me. I was called selfish and even murderous. By former friends who loved my social being. Who previously desired my leadership qualities. Who were previously drawn to me because of my personality and my intelligence, how I articulated things. All tossed away in a matter of days and weeks among about 80% of my group connections. Even the rare supporter would privately message me that they agreed with me, liked my otherwise unpopular shares I'd communicate, but too afraid of losing their own network of friends and associates if they publicly agreed with me.
Group dynamics didn't care about individuals who bucked the direction the group herd was being led to. The slaughterhouse awaited, and any steer that tried to escape it, tried to instigate a stampede that would save us all was disparaged and alienated, atomized. The rejection I felt was hard. To know that the people industry is viewed that poorly, unimportant, an unnecessary, nonessential. frivolous enterprise, easily disposed of at the first sign of danger has sat with me uneasily since. Those who are in the people industry are actually the MOST essential people in the MOST essential industry when danger is present. The social beings, the social places, known as "third places" like bars, restaurants, clubs, coffeehouses, etc are where humanity goes to heal, stay healthy. How societies stay healthy. Healthy connections for groups to intermingle, not atomize. Voluntariness in group associations, cross-group associating with those who aren't your primary group. The most important antidote to tyrannical groups that will atomize all other groups by obliterating them so that individuals seeking group will re-form in approved-by-tyrants groups.
In Basic Military Training they drill and break individuals who join in order to remake them into a cohesive fighting unit. No room for individuals or former allegiances to groups. What tyrants must do is break society, individuals from their voluntary group associations that are healthy so that they/we can be prodded, nudged into their unhealthy groups, a different kind of fighting force that will fight to protect the tyranny from those who oppose it.
I don't know exactly how this long ramble and lament I share fits in with your piece today. But it's in there somewhere that I felt the desire to share. Maybe spur thoughts, insights, analysis that fits patterns to learn from.
It does not seem rambling to me, and it definitely feels apropos.
I will tell you the one main thought that I had the whole way through, and please tell me what you think…
You and I (and many others) realized something during the plandemic about how most people actually are. I too am highly social, and had some of that extraverted nature damaged between '20 and '22. (I wrote about it a few installments ago, in fact: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/meltdown-mutual-protection-local-tribe) People are far more programmable, far more easily turned into weapons of the state, than I ever expected. I thought they (Americans especially) would fight for freedom. I was wrong. The numbers who would are truly small.
So, the bottom line conclusion (for me, and which seems to be emanating for your comments) is this: we need to focus on building our tribe. We need to build parallel groups, institutions, social circles, etc. We need to build OUR world.
As I've contemplated what it all means I've reached no conclusions. I understand and have much deeper appreciation for developing parallel groups, institutions, social circles, etc. Particularly the self-sufficiency aspect. As I've gone deeper with my thoughts down that path I don't see it as a long-term viable option, though.
Communism, Fascism, all of the -ism's that are different brands of totalitarianism/authoritarianism have proponents who've learned from the last century that in order for their "utopian" vision of social engineering obedient, tiered masses/castes to prevail it must be global, it must be *total.* As long as there is a choice for freedom and individualism they cannot and never will achieve their "perfected" society.
The individual is the common enemy of all of the -ism's. That was the basis of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, (Ribbentrop-Molotov). Western liberal free-market democracies that thrive best with strong individuation were their greatest enemy and the bane of their mutual existences:
The saying, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," applies to both winners and losers in a chapter of human history. The lesson that was learned by the various varieties of totalitarianism by the 'losers' was: Don't break the Pact. Before all concepts and expressions of individual, individuation, freedom are extinguished, so no viable options remain. Resistance is Futile all-encompassing and suffocating Borg-like.
If, as I strongly suspect and think, the powers that have joined into a global pact have learned that lesson from history then the whole parallel groups, institutions, social circles, etc will only provide a temporary respite and safe haven. The technological tools of surveillance, control, supply of necessities (just how self-sufficient is your garden, ranch?, how truly self-sufficient are even the Amish in 2024?) are greater than mankind has ever experienced. Murder drones exist. Have movies like "Hunger Games" been prequels? "We'll let you live your lives of hardship outside the comforts of the city - as long as you offer us tribute!" Or will they just up and mass-murder the resistance. Over one-hundred million dead "broken eggs" "statistics" to make the perfect "omelet" Stalin quipped about last century between all of totalitarians in their social re-engineering perfection of man. They are not above it. Not above adding a zero to the end of the 20th century's statistic of broken eggs.
So, if that's the end goal, the objective, our meager little homestead with whatever weaponry and defensive posture we could build with community won't protect us beyond the temporary sense of safety we'd feel. We'd protect ourselves from our fellow, desperate starving man willing to kill to feed his children. But not from a military-armed and trained police force. Equipped with murder drones. Remember, they have no intention of allowing us free choice, a viable alternative way of life. As long as we exist we will remain an existential threat to them, their utopia.
So what are we to do if that's the case? I've not reached a conclusion. I lean towards the need to confront and defeat the very idea and notion of totalitarianism/authoritarianism as a governing model. Most of us thought we did just that when the Axis powers were defeated in WWII and the Soviet Union was defeated when the Wall fell and perestroika happened. Turned out to be a carefully constructed illusion to keep us from looking inward at our own governance.
Freedom and individual liberty has to win. It must be fostered, nurtured, spread contagiously among our neighbors, in our communities, states, nations. We must make the case for it, once again. In the minds of the overwhelming majority we are somewhere akin to the 1750's-1760's in their notions of freedom. Most have no idea what true freedom really is, and scoff at it, believe it to be dangerous. It took books and pamphlets like Paine's Common Sense shared in lively discussions at brew halls to take scary, foreign ideas and make them palatable, desirable for the masses. We have to make the case, reeducate. Our former friend groups we believed, thought shared our values didn't. Because they never really learned what freedom was, they never really had the case made for them, has always been taken for granted.
"Few will fight Gilead after carefully weighing up the consequences – after all, the most likely outcome is failure and obliteration. What drives forward fights against an oppressive society is a rival vision – a vision of equality, liberty and justice, and a sense that these should be defended, whatever the consequences."
Note: this piece was published during Trump's first administration, the inference being that Trump was the authoritarian who needed to be stood up to. Turns out they are. Who know, he may end up being that threat after all? My support for him is equivocal in that regard. But the piece tells the truth of it. I think whatever we are doing should advance that counsel.
For sure, there are psychos who want to pull off the totalitarian world you describe. And yes, they are in positions of power and influence. But I don’t think they are as all-powerful as all that. There are impediments to their plans.
For one thing, they are not a monolith. There are factions among them.
There are also people in power who are not into their agenda at all. People in governments, and in militaries. There are county sheriffs in the U.S. who are having none of it, and will not enforce their bullshit.
Even some quasi-normie pols are waking up (e.g., passing laws banning weather mod in their respective states).
The internet is waking people up faster than any communication method that has yet existed. I keep hearing people who used to be normies sounding notes that are a little less normie each day. And think of how many people know now Satanic they are. More than ever before!
We outnumber them a thousand to one (or whatever). If enough people decide to freak out, there is NOTHING they can do. And even a small number can create chaos. (Keep in mind also how effective asymmetric warfare is.)
There are a hundred black swans waiting to peck their eyes out. Sovereign debt and unfunded liabilities could collapse economies to the degree that things simply spin out of control.
I could go on, but you get the gist. We cannot give in to that level of despair. We cannot become Pvt. Hudson in “Aliens.” First of all, because I do not believe things are sufficiently bleak to warrant that level of despair. And second, because despair causes inaction, and then the psychos DEFINITELY win.
Take heart, brother. Happy warriors create happy movements, and happy movements attract people. We can do this. We can build a good future for our children.
I describe a remedy, proselytizing the merit of freedom, individual liberty. Becoming prophets of hope. I don't see that as a black pill.
It's all about consent. And the manufacture of. By Mind Managers. Who rape the minds of those we love and care about in our community. They have developed the most powerful tools to manage minds ever known to man. All we have to combat them is appeals to common sense. And being living examples that others want to be like.
I don't know that my message was dark to merit that. I do think what I said is true about what they have arrayed against us. And I don't think they're F'ing around, mass murder isn't a hinderance to them, it's an objective. To see the world around us as it is instead of how we wish it was is necessary for us to change it. The picture I paint is as dark as it really is. Which should inspire us to proselytize even more, harder, better. Not black pill hide. I think the idea of building off separate communities is more of a black pill. We have to find ways to unite under freedom, individual liberty prevails. Not retreat to enclaves of freedom and liberty, isolated from society at large. They can't allow coexistence. There can be only one. I propose us being that one. Individual freedom and liberty wins. Not black pill hide.
I think we are on the same page regarding how wicked they are, and about their overall capabilities. I was just playing around with the black-pill crack. (Hence the 🤣.) Sorry, I did not mean anything more by it. (It’s not always easy to joke around in text discussions.)
Admittedly, though, I did hear more despair than you perhaps intended. And the situation is definitely rough, no doubt.
As far as our favored solutions, I don’t know. I don’t see exit-and-build as hiding or pessimistic, but I do agree that it includes a certain recognition. Actually, two: First, that government cannot be fixed, and second, that not everyone wants to be liberated. But that does not mean we disappear into the forest. It just means we stop repeating the strategy of trying to fix the whole system. But we are still around, and still talking to our fellows. Except we are setting an example and offering a different choice.
It sounds like you are advocating that we adopt your tenants as the basis of our culture, which we had once done to establish the foundation of our country. The novel aspect of your scheme seems to be that we respond to the defense of our culture, adamantly, individually, and collectively as necessary and in contradiction to the will of the crime syndicate. The crime syndicate will then brand that defensive action as criminal to justify a pacifying democide. That;'s how it's always been. What can we do differently this time?
I don't know. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn wrestled with the question in The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956, and offers this confession that is fitting to us now, “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
And also, “At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest. ”
Is it conceivable that we uniformly answer, "What will we never abide?"
These are (obviously!) extremely valid concerns. I think about that Solzhenitsyn quote frequently.
The first problem is this: human beings do not generally do what Solzhenitsyn said we should do. I wrote about this at one point not too long ago. Four guards with guns can keep 1,000 prisoners in a camp, even though those prisoners can easily overpower them. No one individual wants to die, and we do not have the kind of collective rage at captivity that we would need to have to be the kind of species that simply cannot be kept captive. In the Solzhenitsyn scenario, each apartment building was filled with people who did not know whether or not their fellows would join them, and who did not want to stick their necks out as a result.
Can we become the kind of people Solzhenitsyn rightly wanted us to be? Can we overcome our nature and become so fiercely protective of our liberty that we will respond to ANY threat to it? I believe we can, but it will require major changes.
When I say "we," I unfortunately do not mean everyone. I do not think this change can happen species-wide, or at least not without many many centuries of cultural change. But, we can be a smaller we—you and me and people like us. (And sometimes, the brave actions of some do inspire others.)
But we have a second problem, which you also laid out above: groups devoted to freedom are deemed to be a threat and then targeted by the state.
The best solution I have been able to come up with to that problem is this. You asked "What can we do differently this time?" and I think the solution is in there somewhere. We must do something differently this time. Donning camo and forming anti-government militias out in the woods is the definition of insanity at this point. They are just itching to Waco/RubyRidge anyone who does that. Instead, I think we need to take an approach that is peaceful and long-term. We need to be law-abiding, respectable, and kind. We can state clearly that involuntary governance and government-made law are morally impermissible, and that our goal is the eventual liberation from them. But we don't have to fling ourselves in martyrdom at the state. They have guns and the legal monopoly on violence. So we bide our time. We grow in number. We negotiate where we can. We grow in number some more. We watch for opportunities. We grow not only here, but in other places throughout the world—thus making us a phenomenon that cannot simply be dealt with by one angry government. We have no single leader or hierarchy, so we cannot be stopped by a single decapitation. And we grow some more.
Obviously a long-term approach like this does not deliver instant gratification. But look at the Western Marxists/left. Gramsci and Lukacs made it clear what they were up to, and in the 1920s, it all seemed pretty far-fetched. But here, 100 years later, they succeeded beyond even their wildest dreams. We have to commit to a project, knowing that some of us will not get to see it fully blossom.
Do our overlords deserve the kind of reaction Solzhenitsyn laments did not take place? Yes. Is there a place for that? Yes. But totalitarianism comes slowly, one increment at a time, and it is one's neighbors who implement it and staff its ranks. Often, you never even get a single "moment" where such a reaction is possible. Thus, as difficult as it is to accept, I think we must accept that our vision must be long-term. We should build carefully, and then one day, we will be so large in number that they will have no more power to oppress us.
I have been thinking on this distrubuted nation based on natural law. I think that our government needs to get there proverbial boot off of our necks. Meaning, we should take back our ability to grow localized food in our backyards to feed our family's, taking the reliance of the grocery store away slowly. Building communes of family's that work together to achieve that goal. Then using our new independence to create a independent trading system of bartering that's based on trust, if there are bad apples the communes can spotlight and widdle out. We can hold people accountable through transparency. That's an idea I've been thinking about.
I think of myself as more of a independent individual. Yes we have occasional need for others, but we need to be by ourselves, some more of the time than others. But groups have needs, too. And they can come to be destructive of the individual. Even a loving relationship between two people can become destructive of each. For example, when one either is or becomes clingy he or she tends to intrude on the other's privacy. And privacy is a human need.
Larger groups, for whatever reason formed, easily becomes a needless consumer of the members' time--and privacy. An army is probably the worst offender in that category. In battle situations such is necessary. So too is ongoing training and preparation. But the people in charge easily become addicted to command and exercise it when it is not necessary. That is somewhat characteristic of any group formed with a mission in mind. Someone needs to provide focus, which entails some form of control, and control always entails at least some power: always easily abused, no matter how much or little required.
The larger the group, the more it is necessary that members have some ability for relief, whether temporary or permanent. But even in smaller and smallest groups everyone needs that relief.
I hear you, for sure. In this case, though, I am not talking about anything so odious. We are people who believe in natural law and are sick of violations of their rights. We want to live free. I am talking about is making common cause with one another in a way that is slightly more deliberate than simply believing in the same principles. We have already done the “atomized, disorganized, dispersed individuals who believe in similar things” dance. It is not working. Now, it is time to try something a little different. But the DN will not ask (and certainly not require) anything from you. Rather, it simply offers a way to share something in common. And maybe it might be able to help you down the road.
Within that, though, you are free to organize with others, or not, to any degree you wish!
I absolutely agree that. birds of a feather should flock together. In the Uk, the Stand In the Park groups have proved invaluable in putting truthers in contact with eachother locally.
However, I must protest at your thumbnail sketches. The left's ,including Marx ,'love of humanity"! Seriously! Satanist Karl Marx wrote in works other than Das Kapital that he 'brings the world to ruins.' A rather more accurate assessment.
How many tens of millions slaughtered does it take to get a bad rap?
As for the caricature of Rothbard as lacking in empathy, whose side are you on?
He said 'The State is and always has been the greatest enemy of the human race". Totally backed up by the history of the last century and more.
The govt alone "obtains its revenue, not by providing services rendered, but by coercion"
Spot on! A quick look at his most famous quotes show someone thoroughly involved in wanting a better world for humanity, not an iota of autism!
People on the right who try and suck up to the left never succeed in winning them over, and merely demoralise their own side.
Your heart is in the right place, but don't give the far left these concessions.
“Seriously! Satanist Karl Marx wrote in works other than Das Kapital that he 'brings the world to ruins.' A rather more accurate assessment.”
—Yep. I have read, and written about, his evil Satanic poetry.
He did claim, however, to be on the side of humanity in the abstract. It was obviously just a claim, of course. He hated humanity and wanted to destroy us. I could perhaps have given a caveat that I was referring to his claim more than the reality.
Rousseau made the same claim, though I suspect he felt it more sincerely. He was more insane and emotionally unbalanced than he was wicked.
“As for the caricature of Rothbard as lacking in empathy, whose side are you on?”
—I understand (and generally share) the desire to reflexively defend the wonderfully and erudite Murray Rothbard. But if you read back over what I wrote, you will see that it was quite mild, and not a caricature of anyone:
“ I once saw a humorous Cartesian depiction of the political spectrum that placed “autistic Rothbard worshippers born with no capacity for empathy” down in the libertarian corner of the chart. This characterization is rude and overwrought, but like all stereotypes, it has a grain of truth. Libertarians and anarchists are more likely to include, among our number, people with an innate predisposition against joining groups of any kind.”
“ People on the right who try and suck up to the left never succeed in winning them over, and merely demoralise their own side. Your heart is in the right place, but don't give the far left these concessions.”
—My goodness, this has to be a first. I have never been charged with sucking up to the left or giving them any concessions whatsoever. I have been absolutely clear, for more than a quarter century, in my contention that leftism is the worst ideology ever to ooze from the twisted mind of man. I have been charged with being too partisan that way, but never too easy on them. 🤣 Sorry if I gave you a wrong impression!
I wouldn't try to discourage someone who wants to from joining groups which are centered around promoting liberty, but I tend to avoid doing so myself. Your headline implies that therefore I'm subject to being picked off, and that's true. Joiners of groups are also subject to being picked off, and the government pays particular attention to groups which oppose it. Prosecutions tend to cite membership in fringe groups as a reason to hate, and convict, the person(s) being charged with whatever crime(s). I see our dispersal not as a weakness, but as a strength. Would you rather be attacked by a million ants running free or a million ants all bunched in a tiny cluster? I'd take the cluster: it's easier to crush with a single focused blow. Governments love membership lists of groups which oppose them.
Yes, we are social creatures. But our social interactions need not be with people of our same political bent. To avoid joining liberty-minded groups does not mean being a hermit. Focused groups can become echo chambers, to the detriment of critical thought. And like any other groups, they can become mired in petty squabbles: witness the Libertarian party as just one example.
Avoiding groups does not mean we don't support each other. When someone is unjustly targeted by bogus laws, we can make our voices heard just as loudly as individuals as we can as members of a group. We can send checks for legal defense that add up to as many dollars as members of groups can.
FWIW, I am trying to leverage the best of both worlds. Deeming yourself to be a part of a distributed nation of people who share an allegiance to natural law does not change the fact that it is still distributed. In other words, it still has the dispersal to which you refer. And with blockchain-based distributed ledger technology, one’s “membership,” if that is what we are to call it, need not be known to prosecutors or other oppressors.
....... I've always thought that if people could and would simply live by the same early Christian and Western principles that founded America, they really would have little to no need for such a voluminous and enormous legal code. I tend to believe that the best government mankind can have is one that is extremely small in size and limited in scope and one seeking only to do that which is most important to the ensuring a society's daily life and operations run peacefully, smoothly and efficiently. Essentially, if people could really just live and let live, they would find there isn't any need for a mammoth Leviathan overseeing their every move; they would learn that true freedom of association and cooperation and cooperatives in a domestic free market, not collectives as in communism, would actually ensure more freedom and individual liberty and economic prosperity than America has seen in well over 150 years.
I don't particularly like labels to define people, but more than a simple "conservative", for the better part of my life, I have been a bit of a liberty-minded anarchist, which isn't to say I reject any or all government, since it really is necessary due to mankind's avarice and hatred for others. But I do see the need to build stronger mechanisms around our individual liberty and our Inalienable God-given Rights, before we are all reduced to serfs under the common denominator of poverty imposed by an all-controlling, overreaching, psychotic Leviathan, void of love for the human race, loving only its own self and its ravenous continual pursuit over raw power and everything within its sight and reach.
No one is better suited to look out for my own best interests than myself, so it never has made a great deal of sense to me to hand such authority to strangers, which is pretty much always a guarantee of trouble on down the line. Our society and order within it depend a whole lot more on individuals interacting together by way of freedom of association, infinitely more than on arrogant, narcissistic, psychopathic jackbooted assholes who claim they have mandates to act on behalf of millions of people, based solely on being the lesser of two evils.
Americans have lost that crucial anarchist insight exhibited to some large degree by our founders, who also sought to create a very limited government. They understood that the state and its authority was not needed or wanted in any but a few matters that were of importance to any successful society, which is why they were enumerated within the Constitution. For the most part, they knew every way imaginable that any centralized, mammoth State was both unnecessary and harmful to people and any society it ruled, which they explained in some great detail in both The Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers. They understood that humans have an innate tendency to cooperate and provide one another mutual aid in order to survive.
All authority derived from anything other than voluntary consent is inherently illegitimate.
Americans have relinquished more of their freedoms and liberties than one would have ever thought possible, given how we were founded as a nation and a people and the independent strength of will that coursed through American society in its founding years. The people have simply reclined in front of their televisions as power and authority has been delegated to unelected, too often corrupt, fat-ass self-serving, greedy bureaucrats, and this must be reversed as quickly as possible, the sooner the better, as the people wake up and become serious about defending our Inalienable God-given Rights and our individual liberty, by eradicating entire agencies and cutting deep into the cancerous fat flesh of the Leviathan, slashing local, state and federal budgets to the core, ridding ourselves of all but the most important and necessary government entities.
Far more troubling than any of this also remains the fact that, as a people and a culture, Americans have become unstable and far removed and unmoored from the basic moral foundation, the virtues and the principles that the nation was founded upon, and we are seemingly set adrift from life framed by core values of Christianity and Western civilization -- liberty, equality under the law, personal sovereignty and autonomy -- the values set forth in the Bill of Rights, now either taken for granted or summarily dismissed out of hand. All of this leaves us standing at the edge of a dark bottomless pit and a thousand years of darkness, if we don't soon get back on the path that defends our rights and this republic, a path of reason that rejects the flawed precepts of communism and the fundamental transformation of America and once more embraces the value of the individual and true freedom and liberty for all.
Man on Edge of Dark Chasm, Family Waiting - Life, Love, Cinematic Image 16:9 - Stock Image & Prompt | 2Moons
On October 18th 1787, Robert Yates, under the pseudonym Brutus, wrote:
"Perhaps this country never saw so critical a period in their political concerns. We have felt the feebleness of ties by which these United States are held together, and the want of sufficient energy in our present confederation, to manage, in some instances, our general concerns. Various expedients have been proposed to remedy these evils, but none have succeeded. At length a Convention of the states has been assembled, they have formed a constitution which will now, probably, be submitted to the people to ratify or reject, who are the fountain of all power, to whom alone it of right belongs to make or unmake constitutions, or forms of government, at their pleasure."
Once again, America faces "so critical a period", one of the most critical times in my lifetime, despite the recent election of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the still not-so "united" States of America. The communists are rife throughout the ranks of all levels of government and society in every major city all across the country, and it is known they will without doubt persist in their treason, their criminal and violent acts and all the riots and chaos they are often wont to create, unwilling to allow America to withdraw from their fundamental transformation of America into a totalitarian communist state.
Hard as we may try to patiently educate those Marxist-Maoist Democrat communists and globalists to the value of the ideas and principles of true freedom and liberty under a righteous government, striving to improve upon what remains today, the hardline communists of America will never relent until they are gone or those who follow have eradicated our republic and vanquished our culture to the ashbin of history. The burning question then remains, as to just how long we attempt to coexist peacefully with these enemies-from-within, while they consistently resort to treason and violence, before finally saying "Enough" and pushing every last single red, radical communist into the ocean to depart to parts unknown or into their graves.
A day is coming in our country that will demand hard choices from America's hard men. And it may require that they slit the throats of every last red, radical communist in the country.
In a fundamental sense, we largely have the same views. I spent the bulk of my adult life fighting against leftism, and advocating for the kind of limited government that you herein describe. Now, however, I have moved one step further. I am now an actual full-blown anarchist.
I have been writing in detail for the last couple of years about how I got there and why. It would be hard to sum all that up here. Simply, though, I suppose we could boil it down to three categories.
1. Why involuntary governance, even if it is extremely limited, is morally impermissible. I have done tons of work to demonstrate this in painstaking philosophical detail.
2. Even if such government were morally permissible, it is impossible to keep government limited. It will always grow, and that toothpaste can never be put back in the tube. The absolute best that one can hope for, in such a scenario, is a complete reboot…whereupon whatever new limited government gets set up will immediately start to grow beyond its bounds. (The U.S. government's/system's grow did not begin in 1960, 1932, or 1865. It started growing before the ink was dry on the Constitution. In fact, it is interesting that you quoted Brutus, since the anti-Federalists understood that that would happen—that the Constitution would not protect from this growth. [Neither would the Articles of Confederation, but at least it would have taken longer for the growth to happen.])
3. Market-anarchic principles/concepts CAN work to restrain the bad apples among us. The legitimate functions of a limited government (justice, security, roads) can be accomplished by private agencies operating in a free and open market. (They can, and in some ways such mechanisms already do function, and there are places and times in the past in which actual market anarchist did function for centuries.)
This last one is always the sticking point. It sounds to me like you are now where I was about 26 months ago: all the information points to anarchism, but that last remaining fear that only government can maintain order keeps us from taking that last swim to Anarchist Island. But when I started actually reading from the corpus of work on how market anarchism can do so successfully, I realized it was safe to give in to those realizations and swim that last short distance from minarchism to anarchism.
If you are interested, I can point you to some of the better works in that corpus, and/or to some of the work I have done.
“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are” - B. Franklin (?)
As long as we are being picked off one by one, those who are not willing to put themselves or their families at risk will not stand, which significantly hampers the formation of any group. That keeps us weak and ineffective. That's the goal of those who oppress us, to keep us separated and and therefore, weak. Fear is used to make us distrust and suspect each other. We worry about who might turn on us or might only be pretending to be on our side. It keeps us isolated and alone.
Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?
And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.
Right on Christopher! I fully agree on Not joining groups as I'm not one to join groups though I have been involved in too many in my business career out of business necessity but I have thankfully minimized that for the next generation to take that on if they wish to.
We have no choice but to have "Groups" of some type for our and the Programs survival!
I was thinking more about this last night and I always find myself coming back to the Milgrim experiment to which 80% followed orders no matter how terrible and 20% stood up to authority to do what was right, in this case, not harming another because they were told to (even though it was not really happening since it was a controlled experiment). Looking at it from this angle, if 20% of us are at least willing to do this, then that means a decent percentage of us are likely more inclined or aligned with the principles of natural law. If 20% of us can work together in some capacity then we can create change for good by working from that core value. I believe these principles of natural law are at the core of all humans, the 80% (as referenced in this study) have just forgotten and become too heavily molded and influenced to give up their critical thinking to said ruler. As witnessed during the covid mayhem, people that normally would not make the decisions they made, under stress, bowed to authority...because that's what they know and have been trained to do BUT they also thought they were doing good despite the complete abandoment of logic due to the manufactured fear. If these laws are written in our soul, then the 20% can have positive influence, not to control or change anyone but to help others find this inside their own heart and relcaim their sovereign power with the wonderful word, No! A tribe of sovereign individuals who aren't afraid to be themselves yet are aligned under a core value that creates a strong foundation is far different than a tribe bending to a master out of fear...the hive-mind is just the shadow fo the "collective" consciousness that has teetered out of balance. Great post, thank you!
Well said, AM.
“A tribe of sovereign individuals who aren't afraid to be themselves yet are aligned under a core value” is going to ring and rattle in my brain all day (in a good way)!
I wonder if you have encountered Miles Mathis' take on the Milgrim experiment? If Miles is accurate, that data is corrupted to give us the wrong impression.
I think MM is ‘one of them’ designed to sow confusion… it almost doesn’t matter about that experiment per se. We see plenty of others showing the same results, yes?
He might be!
Mathis also says we're wrong about why the sky is blue, that Planck's constant is a fake number, angular velocity and momentum equations are wrong. He does allow, in well over three thousand words that the Ether does not exist.
I believe a better critique of Milgrim's experiment was given by Saul McLeod: https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html
Thank you for this. I'm not familiar with Mr. McLeod, but shall review this link.
I haven't but I have often wondered about the data as I am a skeptic in general. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I'm intrigued.
Me too. But after having watched people deputize themselves as enforcers of the regime…including a situation in which I was forced to square off with one such member of the quasi-Stasi…I feel like there had to be at least some truth in Milgram.
Beautiful Angela!
United We Stand. Divided we fall. Not a difficult choice for me...
Right on. And I am not even talking about the typical levels of "unity." Unity, in the sense that many mean it, is not possible. But we should be united in our stand for our principles, and for those who also truly stand for those principles.
Humbly, I offer:
The End of (Social) Entropy (article): https://amaterasusolar.substack.com/p/the-end-of-entropy
All My work is towards that goal, knowing the tipping point is only about 10%. If 20% join in, it's all downhill!
I'm a very social being. Always have been. Always been at the center of things, host-extraordinaire. Though not a big joiner. With both feet, anyways. Prefer to be a mile wide and an inch deep in if a part of any organization or group it's one of many. On the rare occasion when I've decided a group or organization was worth more than a surface, mid-level attention span and interest I find myself elevated into a position of leadership very quickly. Not sought, always a reluctant leader. But others see qualities in me they desire to be a leader. Turns out I excel at it. True since a very young age. At 23 I was promoted manage a 100-person staff and had three assistant managers between ten and twenty years older than me.
Many varied and different career endeavors later, including work in setting public policy, working with state, local and federal political and business leaders where I developed professional and personal relationships with many names familiar to readers of this Stack I had left that arena by 2020. And returned to my hospitality, host-extraordinaire roots when the Plandemic crime against humanity shut down my business. The People Industry was declared "nonessential." And those working in it were declared "nonessential humans." Requiring them to be either independently wealthy or needy dependents on the handouts of more "essential" humans allowed to continue to work and produce wealth.
As a lifetime social being I believed those I was most social with, my social capital, my social (and professional) connections would help pull my network out of the fear that MSM and politicians were inducing. Many previously sharing my skepticism of MSM and politicians. But shockingly few supported me. I was called selfish and even murderous. By former friends who loved my social being. Who previously desired my leadership qualities. Who were previously drawn to me because of my personality and my intelligence, how I articulated things. All tossed away in a matter of days and weeks among about 80% of my group connections. Even the rare supporter would privately message me that they agreed with me, liked my otherwise unpopular shares I'd communicate, but too afraid of losing their own network of friends and associates if they publicly agreed with me.
Group dynamics didn't care about individuals who bucked the direction the group herd was being led to. The slaughterhouse awaited, and any steer that tried to escape it, tried to instigate a stampede that would save us all was disparaged and alienated, atomized. The rejection I felt was hard. To know that the people industry is viewed that poorly, unimportant, an unnecessary, nonessential. frivolous enterprise, easily disposed of at the first sign of danger has sat with me uneasily since. Those who are in the people industry are actually the MOST essential people in the MOST essential industry when danger is present. The social beings, the social places, known as "third places" like bars, restaurants, clubs, coffeehouses, etc are where humanity goes to heal, stay healthy. How societies stay healthy. Healthy connections for groups to intermingle, not atomize. Voluntariness in group associations, cross-group associating with those who aren't your primary group. The most important antidote to tyrannical groups that will atomize all other groups by obliterating them so that individuals seeking group will re-form in approved-by-tyrants groups.
In Basic Military Training they drill and break individuals who join in order to remake them into a cohesive fighting unit. No room for individuals or former allegiances to groups. What tyrants must do is break society, individuals from their voluntary group associations that are healthy so that they/we can be prodded, nudged into their unhealthy groups, a different kind of fighting force that will fight to protect the tyranny from those who oppose it.
I don't know exactly how this long ramble and lament I share fits in with your piece today. But it's in there somewhere that I felt the desire to share. Maybe spur thoughts, insights, analysis that fits patterns to learn from.
It does not seem rambling to me, and it definitely feels apropos.
I will tell you the one main thought that I had the whole way through, and please tell me what you think…
You and I (and many others) realized something during the plandemic about how most people actually are. I too am highly social, and had some of that extraverted nature damaged between '20 and '22. (I wrote about it a few installments ago, in fact: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/meltdown-mutual-protection-local-tribe) People are far more programmable, far more easily turned into weapons of the state, than I ever expected. I thought they (Americans especially) would fight for freedom. I was wrong. The numbers who would are truly small.
So, the bottom line conclusion (for me, and which seems to be emanating for your comments) is this: we need to focus on building our tribe. We need to build parallel groups, institutions, social circles, etc. We need to build OUR world.
Is that about the size of it for you as well?
Many similar experiences and real-time thoughts.
As I've contemplated what it all means I've reached no conclusions. I understand and have much deeper appreciation for developing parallel groups, institutions, social circles, etc. Particularly the self-sufficiency aspect. As I've gone deeper with my thoughts down that path I don't see it as a long-term viable option, though.
Communism, Fascism, all of the -ism's that are different brands of totalitarianism/authoritarianism have proponents who've learned from the last century that in order for their "utopian" vision of social engineering obedient, tiered masses/castes to prevail it must be global, it must be *total.* As long as there is a choice for freedom and individualism they cannot and never will achieve their "perfected" society.
The individual is the common enemy of all of the -ism's. That was the basis of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, (Ribbentrop-Molotov). Western liberal free-market democracies that thrive best with strong individuation were their greatest enemy and the bane of their mutual existences:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234008336_The_Hitler-Stalin_pact_discussion_of_the_Non-Aggression_Treaty_and_the_secret_protocols
The saying, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," applies to both winners and losers in a chapter of human history. The lesson that was learned by the various varieties of totalitarianism by the 'losers' was: Don't break the Pact. Before all concepts and expressions of individual, individuation, freedom are extinguished, so no viable options remain. Resistance is Futile all-encompassing and suffocating Borg-like.
If, as I strongly suspect and think, the powers that have joined into a global pact have learned that lesson from history then the whole parallel groups, institutions, social circles, etc will only provide a temporary respite and safe haven. The technological tools of surveillance, control, supply of necessities (just how self-sufficient is your garden, ranch?, how truly self-sufficient are even the Amish in 2024?) are greater than mankind has ever experienced. Murder drones exist. Have movies like "Hunger Games" been prequels? "We'll let you live your lives of hardship outside the comforts of the city - as long as you offer us tribute!" Or will they just up and mass-murder the resistance. Over one-hundred million dead "broken eggs" "statistics" to make the perfect "omelet" Stalin quipped about last century between all of totalitarians in their social re-engineering perfection of man. They are not above it. Not above adding a zero to the end of the 20th century's statistic of broken eggs.
So, if that's the end goal, the objective, our meager little homestead with whatever weaponry and defensive posture we could build with community won't protect us beyond the temporary sense of safety we'd feel. We'd protect ourselves from our fellow, desperate starving man willing to kill to feed his children. But not from a military-armed and trained police force. Equipped with murder drones. Remember, they have no intention of allowing us free choice, a viable alternative way of life. As long as we exist we will remain an existential threat to them, their utopia.
So what are we to do if that's the case? I've not reached a conclusion. I lean towards the need to confront and defeat the very idea and notion of totalitarianism/authoritarianism as a governing model. Most of us thought we did just that when the Axis powers were defeated in WWII and the Soviet Union was defeated when the Wall fell and perestroika happened. Turned out to be a carefully constructed illusion to keep us from looking inward at our own governance.
Freedom and individual liberty has to win. It must be fostered, nurtured, spread contagiously among our neighbors, in our communities, states, nations. We must make the case for it, once again. In the minds of the overwhelming majority we are somewhere akin to the 1750's-1760's in their notions of freedom. Most have no idea what true freedom really is, and scoff at it, believe it to be dangerous. It took books and pamphlets like Paine's Common Sense shared in lively discussions at brew halls to take scary, foreign ideas and make them palatable, desirable for the masses. We have to make the case, reeducate. Our former friend groups we believed, thought shared our values didn't. Because they never really learned what freedom was, they never really had the case made for them, has always been taken for granted.
Our job #1:
https://www.sciencealert.com/would-you-stand-up-to-an-authoritarian-regime-or-conform-here-s-the-science
"Few will fight Gilead after carefully weighing up the consequences – after all, the most likely outcome is failure and obliteration. What drives forward fights against an oppressive society is a rival vision – a vision of equality, liberty and justice, and a sense that these should be defended, whatever the consequences."
Note: this piece was published during Trump's first administration, the inference being that Trump was the authoritarian who needed to be stood up to. Turns out they are. Who know, he may end up being that threat after all? My support for him is equivocal in that regard. But the piece tells the truth of it. I think whatever we are doing should advance that counsel.
Whoa, bro, that was a black-pill! 🤣
For sure, there are psychos who want to pull off the totalitarian world you describe. And yes, they are in positions of power and influence. But I don’t think they are as all-powerful as all that. There are impediments to their plans.
For one thing, they are not a monolith. There are factions among them.
There are also people in power who are not into their agenda at all. People in governments, and in militaries. There are county sheriffs in the U.S. who are having none of it, and will not enforce their bullshit.
Even some quasi-normie pols are waking up (e.g., passing laws banning weather mod in their respective states).
The internet is waking people up faster than any communication method that has yet existed. I keep hearing people who used to be normies sounding notes that are a little less normie each day. And think of how many people know now Satanic they are. More than ever before!
We outnumber them a thousand to one (or whatever). If enough people decide to freak out, there is NOTHING they can do. And even a small number can create chaos. (Keep in mind also how effective asymmetric warfare is.)
There are a hundred black swans waiting to peck their eyes out. Sovereign debt and unfunded liabilities could collapse economies to the degree that things simply spin out of control.
I could go on, but you get the gist. We cannot give in to that level of despair. We cannot become Pvt. Hudson in “Aliens.” First of all, because I do not believe things are sufficiently bleak to warrant that level of despair. And second, because despair causes inaction, and then the psychos DEFINITELY win.
Take heart, brother. Happy warriors create happy movements, and happy movements attract people. We can do this. We can build a good future for our children.
I describe a remedy, proselytizing the merit of freedom, individual liberty. Becoming prophets of hope. I don't see that as a black pill.
It's all about consent. And the manufacture of. By Mind Managers. Who rape the minds of those we love and care about in our community. They have developed the most powerful tools to manage minds ever known to man. All we have to combat them is appeals to common sense. And being living examples that others want to be like.
I don't know that my message was dark to merit that. I do think what I said is true about what they have arrayed against us. And I don't think they're F'ing around, mass murder isn't a hinderance to them, it's an objective. To see the world around us as it is instead of how we wish it was is necessary for us to change it. The picture I paint is as dark as it really is. Which should inspire us to proselytize even more, harder, better. Not black pill hide. I think the idea of building off separate communities is more of a black pill. We have to find ways to unite under freedom, individual liberty prevails. Not retreat to enclaves of freedom and liberty, isolated from society at large. They can't allow coexistence. There can be only one. I propose us being that one. Individual freedom and liberty wins. Not black pill hide.
I think we are on the same page regarding how wicked they are, and about their overall capabilities. I was just playing around with the black-pill crack. (Hence the 🤣.) Sorry, I did not mean anything more by it. (It’s not always easy to joke around in text discussions.)
Admittedly, though, I did hear more despair than you perhaps intended. And the situation is definitely rough, no doubt.
As far as our favored solutions, I don’t know. I don’t see exit-and-build as hiding or pessimistic, but I do agree that it includes a certain recognition. Actually, two: First, that government cannot be fixed, and second, that not everyone wants to be liberated. But that does not mean we disappear into the forest. It just means we stop repeating the strategy of trying to fix the whole system. But we are still around, and still talking to our fellows. Except we are setting an example and offering a different choice.
It sounds like you are advocating that we adopt your tenants as the basis of our culture, which we had once done to establish the foundation of our country. The novel aspect of your scheme seems to be that we respond to the defense of our culture, adamantly, individually, and collectively as necessary and in contradiction to the will of the crime syndicate. The crime syndicate will then brand that defensive action as criminal to justify a pacifying democide. That;'s how it's always been. What can we do differently this time?
I don't know. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn wrestled with the question in The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956, and offers this confession that is fitting to us now, “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
And also, “At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest. ”
Is it conceivable that we uniformly answer, "What will we never abide?"
These are (obviously!) extremely valid concerns. I think about that Solzhenitsyn quote frequently.
The first problem is this: human beings do not generally do what Solzhenitsyn said we should do. I wrote about this at one point not too long ago. Four guards with guns can keep 1,000 prisoners in a camp, even though those prisoners can easily overpower them. No one individual wants to die, and we do not have the kind of collective rage at captivity that we would need to have to be the kind of species that simply cannot be kept captive. In the Solzhenitsyn scenario, each apartment building was filled with people who did not know whether or not their fellows would join them, and who did not want to stick their necks out as a result.
Can we become the kind of people Solzhenitsyn rightly wanted us to be? Can we overcome our nature and become so fiercely protective of our liberty that we will respond to ANY threat to it? I believe we can, but it will require major changes.
When I say "we," I unfortunately do not mean everyone. I do not think this change can happen species-wide, or at least not without many many centuries of cultural change. But, we can be a smaller we—you and me and people like us. (And sometimes, the brave actions of some do inspire others.)
But we have a second problem, which you also laid out above: groups devoted to freedom are deemed to be a threat and then targeted by the state.
The best solution I have been able to come up with to that problem is this. You asked "What can we do differently this time?" and I think the solution is in there somewhere. We must do something differently this time. Donning camo and forming anti-government militias out in the woods is the definition of insanity at this point. They are just itching to Waco/RubyRidge anyone who does that. Instead, I think we need to take an approach that is peaceful and long-term. We need to be law-abiding, respectable, and kind. We can state clearly that involuntary governance and government-made law are morally impermissible, and that our goal is the eventual liberation from them. But we don't have to fling ourselves in martyrdom at the state. They have guns and the legal monopoly on violence. So we bide our time. We grow in number. We negotiate where we can. We grow in number some more. We watch for opportunities. We grow not only here, but in other places throughout the world—thus making us a phenomenon that cannot simply be dealt with by one angry government. We have no single leader or hierarchy, so we cannot be stopped by a single decapitation. And we grow some more.
Obviously a long-term approach like this does not deliver instant gratification. But look at the Western Marxists/left. Gramsci and Lukacs made it clear what they were up to, and in the 1920s, it all seemed pretty far-fetched. But here, 100 years later, they succeeded beyond even their wildest dreams. We have to commit to a project, knowing that some of us will not get to see it fully blossom.
Do our overlords deserve the kind of reaction Solzhenitsyn laments did not take place? Yes. Is there a place for that? Yes. But totalitarianism comes slowly, one increment at a time, and it is one's neighbors who implement it and staff its ranks. Often, you never even get a single "moment" where such a reaction is possible. Thus, as difficult as it is to accept, I think we must accept that our vision must be long-term. We should build carefully, and then one day, we will be so large in number that they will have no more power to oppress us.
I have been thinking on this distrubuted nation based on natural law. I think that our government needs to get there proverbial boot off of our necks. Meaning, we should take back our ability to grow localized food in our backyards to feed our family's, taking the reliance of the grocery store away slowly. Building communes of family's that work together to achieve that goal. Then using our new independence to create a independent trading system of bartering that's based on trust, if there are bad apples the communes can spotlight and widdle out. We can hold people accountable through transparency. That's an idea I've been thinking about.
You are not alone in those very wise thoughts, and other efforts are thinking along similar lines. That will have to be a part of what we are doing!
Rock n Roll then!
Right on, hombre!
I think of myself as more of a independent individual. Yes we have occasional need for others, but we need to be by ourselves, some more of the time than others. But groups have needs, too. And they can come to be destructive of the individual. Even a loving relationship between two people can become destructive of each. For example, when one either is or becomes clingy he or she tends to intrude on the other's privacy. And privacy is a human need.
Larger groups, for whatever reason formed, easily becomes a needless consumer of the members' time--and privacy. An army is probably the worst offender in that category. In battle situations such is necessary. So too is ongoing training and preparation. But the people in charge easily become addicted to command and exercise it when it is not necessary. That is somewhat characteristic of any group formed with a mission in mind. Someone needs to provide focus, which entails some form of control, and control always entails at least some power: always easily abused, no matter how much or little required.
The larger the group, the more it is necessary that members have some ability for relief, whether temporary or permanent. But even in smaller and smallest groups everyone needs that relief.
I hear you, for sure. In this case, though, I am not talking about anything so odious. We are people who believe in natural law and are sick of violations of their rights. We want to live free. I am talking about is making common cause with one another in a way that is slightly more deliberate than simply believing in the same principles. We have already done the “atomized, disorganized, dispersed individuals who believe in similar things” dance. It is not working. Now, it is time to try something a little different. But the DN will not ask (and certainly not require) anything from you. Rather, it simply offers a way to share something in common. And maybe it might be able to help you down the road.
Within that, though, you are free to organize with others, or not, to any degree you wish!
I absolutely agree that. birds of a feather should flock together. In the Uk, the Stand In the Park groups have proved invaluable in putting truthers in contact with eachother locally.
However, I must protest at your thumbnail sketches. The left's ,including Marx ,'love of humanity"! Seriously! Satanist Karl Marx wrote in works other than Das Kapital that he 'brings the world to ruins.' A rather more accurate assessment.
How many tens of millions slaughtered does it take to get a bad rap?
As for the caricature of Rothbard as lacking in empathy, whose side are you on?
He said 'The State is and always has been the greatest enemy of the human race". Totally backed up by the history of the last century and more.
The govt alone "obtains its revenue, not by providing services rendered, but by coercion"
Spot on! A quick look at his most famous quotes show someone thoroughly involved in wanting a better world for humanity, not an iota of autism!
People on the right who try and suck up to the left never succeed in winning them over, and merely demoralise their own side.
Your heart is in the right place, but don't give the far left these concessions.
“Seriously! Satanist Karl Marx wrote in works other than Das Kapital that he 'brings the world to ruins.' A rather more accurate assessment.”
—Yep. I have read, and written about, his evil Satanic poetry.
He did claim, however, to be on the side of humanity in the abstract. It was obviously just a claim, of course. He hated humanity and wanted to destroy us. I could perhaps have given a caveat that I was referring to his claim more than the reality.
Rousseau made the same claim, though I suspect he felt it more sincerely. He was more insane and emotionally unbalanced than he was wicked.
“As for the caricature of Rothbard as lacking in empathy, whose side are you on?”
—I understand (and generally share) the desire to reflexively defend the wonderfully and erudite Murray Rothbard. But if you read back over what I wrote, you will see that it was quite mild, and not a caricature of anyone:
“ I once saw a humorous Cartesian depiction of the political spectrum that placed “autistic Rothbard worshippers born with no capacity for empathy” down in the libertarian corner of the chart. This characterization is rude and overwrought, but like all stereotypes, it has a grain of truth. Libertarians and anarchists are more likely to include, among our number, people with an innate predisposition against joining groups of any kind.”
“ People on the right who try and suck up to the left never succeed in winning them over, and merely demoralise their own side. Your heart is in the right place, but don't give the far left these concessions.”
—My goodness, this has to be a first. I have never been charged with sucking up to the left or giving them any concessions whatsoever. I have been absolutely clear, for more than a quarter century, in my contention that leftism is the worst ideology ever to ooze from the twisted mind of man. I have been charged with being too partisan that way, but never too easy on them. 🤣 Sorry if I gave you a wrong impression!
"empathy" is a verb. It is grifters demanding your money for the sake of others that only they can save.
People can have empathy, or not, as they wish. So long as redistribution is not forced.
Of course, as you rightly point out, it always is, and empathy is always the excuse!
I wouldn't try to discourage someone who wants to from joining groups which are centered around promoting liberty, but I tend to avoid doing so myself. Your headline implies that therefore I'm subject to being picked off, and that's true. Joiners of groups are also subject to being picked off, and the government pays particular attention to groups which oppose it. Prosecutions tend to cite membership in fringe groups as a reason to hate, and convict, the person(s) being charged with whatever crime(s). I see our dispersal not as a weakness, but as a strength. Would you rather be attacked by a million ants running free or a million ants all bunched in a tiny cluster? I'd take the cluster: it's easier to crush with a single focused blow. Governments love membership lists of groups which oppose them.
Yes, we are social creatures. But our social interactions need not be with people of our same political bent. To avoid joining liberty-minded groups does not mean being a hermit. Focused groups can become echo chambers, to the detriment of critical thought. And like any other groups, they can become mired in petty squabbles: witness the Libertarian party as just one example.
Avoiding groups does not mean we don't support each other. When someone is unjustly targeted by bogus laws, we can make our voices heard just as loudly as individuals as we can as members of a group. We can send checks for legal defense that add up to as many dollars as members of groups can.
Join if you like. I'll (probably) pass.
I hear you, and I get it.
FWIW, I am trying to leverage the best of both worlds. Deeming yourself to be a part of a distributed nation of people who share an allegiance to natural law does not change the fact that it is still distributed. In other words, it still has the dispersal to which you refer. And with blockchain-based distributed ledger technology, one’s “membership,” if that is what we are to call it, need not be known to prosecutors or other oppressors.
I stand alone and fight!
I don’t care what you do!
Godspeed!
....... I've always thought that if people could and would simply live by the same early Christian and Western principles that founded America, they really would have little to no need for such a voluminous and enormous legal code. I tend to believe that the best government mankind can have is one that is extremely small in size and limited in scope and one seeking only to do that which is most important to the ensuring a society's daily life and operations run peacefully, smoothly and efficiently. Essentially, if people could really just live and let live, they would find there isn't any need for a mammoth Leviathan overseeing their every move; they would learn that true freedom of association and cooperation and cooperatives in a domestic free market, not collectives as in communism, would actually ensure more freedom and individual liberty and economic prosperity than America has seen in well over 150 years.
I don't particularly like labels to define people, but more than a simple "conservative", for the better part of my life, I have been a bit of a liberty-minded anarchist, which isn't to say I reject any or all government, since it really is necessary due to mankind's avarice and hatred for others. But I do see the need to build stronger mechanisms around our individual liberty and our Inalienable God-given Rights, before we are all reduced to serfs under the common denominator of poverty imposed by an all-controlling, overreaching, psychotic Leviathan, void of love for the human race, loving only its own self and its ravenous continual pursuit over raw power and everything within its sight and reach.
No one is better suited to look out for my own best interests than myself, so it never has made a great deal of sense to me to hand such authority to strangers, which is pretty much always a guarantee of trouble on down the line. Our society and order within it depend a whole lot more on individuals interacting together by way of freedom of association, infinitely more than on arrogant, narcissistic, psychopathic jackbooted assholes who claim they have mandates to act on behalf of millions of people, based solely on being the lesser of two evils.
Americans have lost that crucial anarchist insight exhibited to some large degree by our founders, who also sought to create a very limited government. They understood that the state and its authority was not needed or wanted in any but a few matters that were of importance to any successful society, which is why they were enumerated within the Constitution. For the most part, they knew every way imaginable that any centralized, mammoth State was both unnecessary and harmful to people and any society it ruled, which they explained in some great detail in both The Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers. They understood that humans have an innate tendency to cooperate and provide one another mutual aid in order to survive.
All authority derived from anything other than voluntary consent is inherently illegitimate.
Americans have relinquished more of their freedoms and liberties than one would have ever thought possible, given how we were founded as a nation and a people and the independent strength of will that coursed through American society in its founding years. The people have simply reclined in front of their televisions as power and authority has been delegated to unelected, too often corrupt, fat-ass self-serving, greedy bureaucrats, and this must be reversed as quickly as possible, the sooner the better, as the people wake up and become serious about defending our Inalienable God-given Rights and our individual liberty, by eradicating entire agencies and cutting deep into the cancerous fat flesh of the Leviathan, slashing local, state and federal budgets to the core, ridding ourselves of all but the most important and necessary government entities.
Far more troubling than any of this also remains the fact that, as a people and a culture, Americans have become unstable and far removed and unmoored from the basic moral foundation, the virtues and the principles that the nation was founded upon, and we are seemingly set adrift from life framed by core values of Christianity and Western civilization -- liberty, equality under the law, personal sovereignty and autonomy -- the values set forth in the Bill of Rights, now either taken for granted or summarily dismissed out of hand. All of this leaves us standing at the edge of a dark bottomless pit and a thousand years of darkness, if we don't soon get back on the path that defends our rights and this republic, a path of reason that rejects the flawed precepts of communism and the fundamental transformation of America and once more embraces the value of the individual and true freedom and liberty for all.
Man on Edge of Dark Chasm, Family Waiting - Life, Love, Cinematic Image 16:9 - Stock Image & Prompt | 2Moons
On October 18th 1787, Robert Yates, under the pseudonym Brutus, wrote:
"Perhaps this country never saw so critical a period in their political concerns. We have felt the feebleness of ties by which these United States are held together, and the want of sufficient energy in our present confederation, to manage, in some instances, our general concerns. Various expedients have been proposed to remedy these evils, but none have succeeded. At length a Convention of the states has been assembled, they have formed a constitution which will now, probably, be submitted to the people to ratify or reject, who are the fountain of all power, to whom alone it of right belongs to make or unmake constitutions, or forms of government, at their pleasure."
Once again, America faces "so critical a period", one of the most critical times in my lifetime, despite the recent election of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the still not-so "united" States of America. The communists are rife throughout the ranks of all levels of government and society in every major city all across the country, and it is known they will without doubt persist in their treason, their criminal and violent acts and all the riots and chaos they are often wont to create, unwilling to allow America to withdraw from their fundamental transformation of America into a totalitarian communist state.
Hard as we may try to patiently educate those Marxist-Maoist Democrat communists and globalists to the value of the ideas and principles of true freedom and liberty under a righteous government, striving to improve upon what remains today, the hardline communists of America will never relent until they are gone or those who follow have eradicated our republic and vanquished our culture to the ashbin of history. The burning question then remains, as to just how long we attempt to coexist peacefully with these enemies-from-within, while they consistently resort to treason and violence, before finally saying "Enough" and pushing every last single red, radical communist into the ocean to depart to parts unknown or into their graves.
A day is coming in our country that will demand hard choices from America's hard men. And it may require that they slit the throats of every last red, radical communist in the country.
https://sinosoviran.substack.com/p/liberty-in-america-remains-at-risk
In a fundamental sense, we largely have the same views. I spent the bulk of my adult life fighting against leftism, and advocating for the kind of limited government that you herein describe. Now, however, I have moved one step further. I am now an actual full-blown anarchist.
I have been writing in detail for the last couple of years about how I got there and why. It would be hard to sum all that up here. Simply, though, I suppose we could boil it down to three categories.
1. Why involuntary governance, even if it is extremely limited, is morally impermissible. I have done tons of work to demonstrate this in painstaking philosophical detail.
2. Even if such government were morally permissible, it is impossible to keep government limited. It will always grow, and that toothpaste can never be put back in the tube. The absolute best that one can hope for, in such a scenario, is a complete reboot…whereupon whatever new limited government gets set up will immediately start to grow beyond its bounds. (The U.S. government's/system's grow did not begin in 1960, 1932, or 1865. It started growing before the ink was dry on the Constitution. In fact, it is interesting that you quoted Brutus, since the anti-Federalists understood that that would happen—that the Constitution would not protect from this growth. [Neither would the Articles of Confederation, but at least it would have taken longer for the growth to happen.])
3. Market-anarchic principles/concepts CAN work to restrain the bad apples among us. The legitimate functions of a limited government (justice, security, roads) can be accomplished by private agencies operating in a free and open market. (They can, and in some ways such mechanisms already do function, and there are places and times in the past in which actual market anarchist did function for centuries.)
This last one is always the sticking point. It sounds to me like you are now where I was about 26 months ago: all the information points to anarchism, but that last remaining fear that only government can maintain order keeps us from taking that last swim to Anarchist Island. But when I started actually reading from the corpus of work on how market anarchism can do so successfully, I realized it was safe to give in to those realizations and swim that last short distance from minarchism to anarchism.
If you are interested, I can point you to some of the better works in that corpus, and/or to some of the work I have done.
My understanding of and sympathy for the rationale about posting your picture is nearly total.
Thanks! This one was especially crappy, and AI is a slippery slope to a weird place, but time is also precious!
TOTALLY with you, brother!
“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are” - B. Franklin (?)
As long as we are being picked off one by one, those who are not willing to put themselves or their families at risk will not stand, which significantly hampers the formation of any group. That keeps us weak and ineffective. That's the goal of those who oppress us, to keep us separated and and therefore, weak. Fear is used to make us distrust and suspect each other. We worry about who might turn on us or might only be pretending to be on our side. It keeps us isolated and alone.
Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?
And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.
- Ecclesiastes 4:11-13
Well said.
We’ve tried being a dispersed, atomized people—sharing a love of liberty, but never getting together. Now it’s time to try something new!
... before it's too late for us.
💯
Right on Christopher! I fully agree on Not joining groups as I'm not one to join groups though I have been involved in too many in my business career out of business necessity but I have thankfully minimized that for the next generation to take that on if they wish to.
We have no choice but to have "Groups" of some type for our and the Programs survival!
Yes, and this/these won’t be like other groups!
I'm sure!
This has been my way of thinking since I was about 14. Wasn't really a viable option then. It's a necessity now.
We’re on our way!