In an October 5 article written by Brian W. Walsh for the Washington Times, are described two situations which exemplify beyond rebuttal why government itself must go.
In the first instance, an elderly couple, Kathy and George Norris of Spring, Texas, had their home raided by an armed SWAT team – of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents. These government goons tore open file cabinets, rifled through paperwork, and generally ransacked their house. Why? At first when Mrs. Norris contacted some court employees to ask just that question, she was told, “You don’t need to know. You can’t know.” It turned out that Mr. Norris ran a small home-based business importing and selling orchids. Orchids. Apparently Mr. Norris and his overseas suppliers never prepared paperwork required by an obscure international treaty regulating such activity. Norris ended up being convicted in a federal court and served almost two years in Club Fed. At his sentencing, the black-robed monster presiding said, “Sometimes life serves us lemons.” You know the rest about lemonade. This is the level of compassion displayed by such mindless robots. (As an aside, I wonder whether Mr. Norris’s suppliers in Holland or wherever got into dutch with their supposedly less free government. I sincerely doubt it.) In fact, Walsh himself wrote, “If only Mr. Norris had been a Libyan terrorist, maybe some European official at least would have weighed in on his behalf to secure a health-based mercy release.” Mr. Norris suffered from diabetes, heart trouble, arthritis, and Parkinson’s disease. But don’t forget: “Your” government is not only entirely necessary, but is also there to care for you. With that kind of “care,” who needs Lucifer and the Grim Reaper?
In the second case, Krister Evertson was federally prosecuted not once, but twice, for trying to develop clean energy fuel cells. The first time around, it was for failing to put a government-mandated sticker on a UPS package in which he shipped some entirely innocuous supplies. Thankfully, the government actually impanelled a jury bright enough to acquit Evertson. But, true to their loving nature, the feds just went after him on a separate charge. This time around for an alleged technicality violation wherein they claimed that Evertson “abandoned” some of his fuel-cell materials while defending himself on the initial charge. This time, the G-men were able to beat their chests proudly. Evertson, like Mr. Norris, ended up doing nearly two years in a federal cage.
These are not anomalies, folks – rare occurences where the usual rules don’t apply like spotting a UFO or Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. This is business as usual when dealing with government. This is the norm, as routine as it gets, and just because it hasn’t happened to you (yet) doesn’t mean it isn’t always happening to someone else, somewhere in America. Of course, the spin from the Washington Times (all due respect to Mr. Walsh) is that laws must be streamlined, congressional hearings must be convened to solve the problem, all while the bureaucrats who hands-on committed these inexcusable actions are in fact excused, unpunished. After all, they were just “doing their jobs.” Just like at Nuremburg.
There is effectively no difference in principle between the actions of the Nazis, or communists, or the American government. It’s hardly even a matter of degree anymore; the gap is closing. All governments everywhere and throughout history are essentially the same. Thousands of years of experience have proven they can never be “reformed.” Their basic nature denies any possibility of such outright. They can only be abolished altogether. The survival and the advance of free humanity depends upon it.
Translations for this article:
- Spanish, Lo Normal es la Tiranía.
One can find the original article here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/05/criminalizing-everyone/
Wow. Selling orchids – a completely harmless thing – and creating clean energy – not only completely harmless but helpful, and people continue to blame the wrong people for what’s wrong these days.
It never ceases to amaze me how ill prepared people are to defend their homes against tyranny. The war on freedom has been going on for decades, here, in our country, in our homes, before the eyes of our children.
It also amazes me how many sanctimonious judges can live in wood frame houses in communities with people they have ordered be kidnapped, gang raped, caged, and tortured. Gasoline continues to be cheap and plentiful, and Molotov showed many techniques for introducing it to buildings, armored vehicles, etc. (For my own part, I like five parts gasoline, one part motor oil, one part brake fluid. Tampon to seal, very cheap (dollar store) clothesline to fuse. Zima bottles seem especially easy to break. YMMV)
A government powerful enough to take care of everyone’s needs is powerful enough to destroy everyone’s lives.
“It also amazes me how many sanctimonious judges can live in wood frame houses in communities with people they have ordered be kidnapped, gang raped, caged, and tortured. Gasoline continues to be cheap and plentiful”
Maybe it’s because even Judges have families that could be injured as a result of such action. Or maybe it’s that society rightly considers arson to be a dangerous and criminal act. Behaving like a thug in opposition to state thuggery just results in more damage being done to our world, and I find it worrying that you would endorse such things.
Creating alternative systems of mutual support that will be sustainable in a post statist world is the best and only route to achieving a positive change that is lasting. Build a new society within the shell of the old.
Oops, I was thinking of another commentary writer, Alex, and inadvertently wrote his name instead of yours. My apologies. Had there been a "preview" capability here I would have caught it before making it permanent. Please consider this website improvement.
You are quite right, Kevin, “All governments everywhere and throughout history are essentially the same.” And the major item that *is* the same for all governments is that they all depend on the threat or actual use of physical force to implement their laws/edicts/mandates/etc.
Before liberty promoters anywhere take up arms against the government(s) claiming jurisdiction in their area, I strongly urge them to study Gene Sharp’s works on nonviolent political action. Selective (discriminating) association to exclude those who cause harm is a potentially very powerful method of non-violent action, referred to as ostracism by many down through the ages. It is included in Gene Sharp’s 2nd volume (of 3), “The Politics of Nonviolent Action”, Chapter 4, “The Methods of Social Noncooperation”. I and husband Paul Wakfer use the term “negative social preferencing” for purposeful non-voluntary association (contrasted with positive social preferencing towards those who do provide value) and have described how it is the ultimate effector of social order in a truly free society (The Freeman Society) – http://selfsip.org/solutions/Social_Preferencing.html
Although Sharp is not an anarchist and appears to be actually a statist of the democratic sort, all of his strategy and many of his methods can be employed by anti-statists in bringing about the withering of the State. His collection of strategies and tactics are a valuable resource for study by serious anti-statists. See his website that contains some of his writings and lists all of them – http://www.aeinstein.org/ His books are available in large bookstores and Amazon, and recent interviews of him can be found on the Internet.
Keep in mind that the enforcers of the State are comparatively few in number in relation to the entire populace. When large numbers of people in an area refuse to voluntarily associate with law/regulation/edict enforcers and the reasons made well known, some of them will resign their positions rather quickly. And if it is clear that the same negative social preferencing will be used towards any replacements, the total numbers of enforcers will begin to fall. It is not a quick process – it can not be if it is to be effective towards withering a social system that is still accepted by the majority as being necessary for an orderly society.
"Creating alternative systems of mutual support that will be sustainable in a post statist world is the best and only route to achieving a positive change that is lasting. Build a new society within the shell of the old." Very true, Dave.
The idea that some sort of revolution will/should take place for removing the State anywhere or everywhere and then all problems will be solved is extremely weak. All that would actually occur with a sudden violent removal of a government is what has always taken place in the past – a power vacuum and a rush by factions to fill it. The correct philosophical basis for what replaces the State must be understood and accepted, otherwise any glib talking politician-like individual can easily sway those whose grounding in mutually beneficial social interaction is weak or non-existent.
A self-ordering society of individuals interacting to mutual benefit, each with the goal of maximizing hir lifetime happiness (the purpose of each whether or not s/he recognizes that fact), is possible, even though the vast majority of the current world's populace thinks that governments are a necessity for any order to exist. Individual self-order *without* rule by others is the social system whose members are humans who have become *fully* adult. Just as people can become physical adults, so can they become social adults – if only they are allowed (and even required in the sense that they will not achieve their desires unless they do) to socially mature sufficiently. Understanding the social interaction methodology by which more individuals would progress to become fully socially mature adults requires a paradigm shift in thinking about human interactions. I invite – and even challenge – those who seek a society of individuals interacting to mutual benefit (or are maybe only curious at this point) to read "Social Meta-Needs: A New Basis for Optimal Human Interaction" ( http://selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.h… and then review the twin frameworks of the Natural Social Contract ( http://selfsip.org/solutions/NSC.html ) and Social Preferencing ( http://selfsip.org/solutions/Social_Preferencing…. ), both of which flow from that basis.