Liberty's Outpost

The Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society

WHAT IS COMING?
Today (Tuesday morning), two friends sent me an article I've seen before, a "Firearms Refresher Course" that starts out by quoting George Washington ("A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."). It gets more "radical" from there.

It was interesting that these two should send this to me today. Yesterday, two of the transnational progressive web-magazines (Amped Status and AlterNet) published an article called "15 Signs American Society is Coming Apart at the Seams." (AlterNet and the full report is at Amped Status.)

Reason #14 was that ammunition and gun companies are making billions of dollars and cannot keep up with the demand for weapons and ammunition - "Americans are arming themselves to the teeth!"

Reason #15 was that it is claimed by the august Southern Poverty Law Center that more than 100 NEW militia groups have been formed while the total number of militia members has doubled in the past year. Since millions of us are starving and have no health care and no jobs and no future (according to them), all that is needed is a spark for the nation to be flooded with violence!

The logic of David DeGraw is that the "economic elite" are waging war against the American public, the environment has been destroyed by these elite, current government measures are ineffectual and inadequate and causing still more harm, and we are all gonna die (quickly, in this vast "worldwide" and "national" emergency) unless "the people" does something to retaliate against these "economic elite" and the government that is supporting the "coup." To DeGraw and the progressives he claims to speak for, the First Citizen is nothing but a shill for the "economic elite" and the rest of the Administration and Congress are all tools or members.

Now, this may all sound very anti-statist, and despite the irrational nature of many of the arguments (in the same paragraph we are told that 50% of ALL American children are short of food and have to have government food stamps, and then a few lines later the statistic of 1 in 4 is cited; health insurance is equated with "healthcare;" and such things fill the article), this will find a ready audience among many libertarians, especially "left-libertarians."

But in reality, this is nothing more than the same "anti-statis" rhetoric that has been the stock-in-trade for the bogus ("black-flag") anarchists and the socialists (whether Communists, National Socialists/Fascists/Peronistas/Falangists/etc., the "Christian Socialists" or today's Transnational Progressives) from the beginning. The "CURRENT" State is evil and corrupt and destroying us all, and worse, the current state is allowing the great unwashed masses to be destroyed and at the same time, forcing the populace into a massive (and always unsuccessful) popular uprising. They will be destroyed and the revolt will fail, of course, unless the populace accepts and follows the lead of the elite vanguard provided through sheer altruism by the... by the Progressives which include (strange how this works) some of the very elites and their proclaimed doctrines of salvation that are waging the war in the first place!

THEIR state, of course, will be "darned near-perfect" (to quote a friend) and won't have any of the faults of the current regime: everyone will be fed and have all the medical care and all the jobs and all the education that they need, and everyone will contribute to their maximum ability, and we'll all cut greenhouse gas emissions back to 1900 levels and the grass will be green and the rivers will flow and... ultimately, of course, when all the problems are solved (permanently), the state will wither away to be replaced by (take your pick based on the kind of socialism being highlighted - but some form of the Millenium).

We can't buy into it: this is what the demagogues of Athens and Corinth and Rome and Byzantium all promised; this is what the Levellers (and those who preached the Crusades) proclaimed; this is what those who urged on Wat Tyler and his peasants whispered; what the revolutionaries in the Tuileries fervently believed in 1789 and 1791 and 1848 and 1871; what the rabid Abolutionists in Bleeding Kansas and Harpers Ferry preached; what the Bolsheviks in Petrograd announced; what the Brownshirts in Muenchen and Firenza and Madrid and Buenos Aires marched to support; and the tune that the Red Guard and the Ba'athists and Jim Jones and the Khmer Rouge spilled blood to. Indeed, those who "made" Aaron cast the golden calf, the Caliphs that followed the husband of the widow - and no doubt the first Pharaohs of Kemet (Egypt) - spouted this same line. Self-proclaimed human messiahs are not interested in seeing the state wither away or even be violently put down; they work only for a new state in which THEY call the shots - in some cases, CONTINUE to call the shots, and in which the other 99% of humanity are little more than cattle or (at best) favored pets.

God did not make us to be pets - nor cattle. We cannot let ourselves be seduced into either embracing the man on a white horse or the self-appointed vangaard of the masses - we have to be free and independent and answer to God for our own actions. Otherwise, we have never truly lived.

I am printing this in its entirety: South Dakota has taken a first (albeit very small and faltering) step back to real freedom. It may not succeed but I pray that it does.

HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 1013
A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION, Reasserting sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers and serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates.
WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."; and
WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more and the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and
WHEREAS, today, in 2009, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government and many federal mandates are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and
WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and
WHEREAS, any Act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States of America, or Judicial Order by the judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of the United States of America by the Constitution of the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of any of the several states or their citizens constitutes a nullification of the Constitution of the United States of America by the government of the United States of America; and
WHEREAS, a number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from Congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fourth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the State of South Dakota hereby reasserts sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that this concurrent resolution serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

Adopted by the House 3 MAR 09, Sustained by the Senate 5 MAR 09. (Note: governor's signature is not required.)

South Dakota is not alone: http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/02/23/state-sovereignty-resolutions/

I am far from alone in bashing the old-style mainstream media (MSM) for their behavior - as indeed the continuing bankruptcy and even disappearance of a lot of them (the Rocky Mountain News, San Francisco Examiner, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, etc.) demonstrates. This Sunday is a perfect example of that. It was not a really busy newsday for a Sunday: that merchant captain made another, successful escape attempt from his pirate captors and three pirates got the justice they deserved; three children were shot execution-style in Louisiana; massive riots in Thailand caused the ASEAN meeting to be cancelled; the Zimbabwe dollar is officially toast; Mexico is officially blaming the USA for its druglords being so well armed; and more - yeah, the Obamas went to church today for the first time in months. The Washington Post - that flagship of the liberal, Tranzi, bleeding press - has a special E-mail alert service that you can sign up for to get important news fast. News like the airliner that went into the river in NYC, like Daschle withdrawing his name for HHS secretary, like the pitiful excuse for human trash that shot up an ICE center in NY. You get the picture. If I'd expected anything on their e-alert today, it would have been that Captain Phillips saved the First Citizen's political bacon by making a successful escape attempt there in the Indian Ocean. But no, of course that is not what the publishers who believe that "free flow of information is essential to a successful democracy" chose to fill my in-box with. No, THAT privilege of place was the flash announcement that Mr Obama had "fulfilled a campaign pledge" to give his daughters a puppy. Now, THAT is "essential" to successful democracy, indeed. And the old media wonders just why it is being flushed down the toilet and we are finding other things to line our birdcages with!

"Democracy, n.:
- A government of the masses.
- Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of
direct expression.
- Results in mobocracy.
- Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights.
- Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate,
whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice,
and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
- Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, [chaos]."
-- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25
(1928-1932)
Source: published by the US War Department, Washington, D.C., November 30, 1928
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/U..S..Army.Training.Manual.No..2000-25.Quote.7CCA

Last week, 04 NOV 2008, we practiced "democracy." The Electoral College worked the way it was supposed to, making a fairly close victory (52% to 46%) into a clear "mandate." Of course, only 119 million people voted, out of a total population of 300 million, of which at least 200 million (and probably closer to 240 million) are eligible by age, lack of felony convictions, lack of proven insanity or feeblemindedness, and residence in one place long enough to register and vote. So even with the low number, Mr. Obama is the "choice" of less than a third of the qualified electors: no much of a "mandate."

But more to the point, Electoral College or not, one man-one vote or not, is WHAT we were electing: is it a government administrator; a chief executive? Or is it a monarch? Even dictators can and are elected by popular vote: consider Hitler, Mussolini, and Peron. (Or if you dare, consider Lincoln and Roosevelt and Bush II.) Do we, by the mere act of voting once in four years (twice if you count the primaries), surrender our destinies, our daily choices, to a single man - even if that man is sharing the power to some degree with 535 people in Congress and 9 in the Supreme Court? It appears, too often, that is what we think - or at least, that is how we act.

Whether through the Electoral College or not, the modern American presidential election process claims to be, and appears to be, a "form of direct expression" of the will of the American people.

It is a will I challenge, a process I deplore - not because it is not a good idea to decide peacefully who will be a coordinator, a facilitator, or a organizer, but because NO ONE has the God-given power to determine what I and any other of the 300 million of us can do in our lives, and NO ONE should be given that power through ANY method.

P J O'Rourke has accurately described democracy as "two wolves and a lamb sitting down to vote on what's for dinner." Democracy, sooner or later, comes to the point where it reverses the ancient motto, "Vox populi, vox Dei" (the voice of the people is the voice of God; that is, people will speak in accordance with God's will, or to put it another way "Under God, the people rule") to where the people claim to have BECOME God and believe that EVERYTHING is subject to majority rule vote. It is evil, and more insidiously evil than most, because it sounds so good on the surface.

We will suffer through eight more years of "democracy:" we already have the demogogism, the license, and the agitation; the true discontent and chaos (not anarchy, but chaos) will be here soon enough.

This news story was published recently in one of England's major papers.

UK: Jury decides that threat of global warming justifies breaking the law
Independent [UK]

“The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage. Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a ‘lawful excuse’ to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of ‘lawful excuse’ under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage — such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire. The not-guilty verdict, delivered after two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises the stakes for the most pressing issue on Britain’s green agenda and could encourage further direct action.” (09/10/08)

I am moderately familiar with Kent and the Maidstone area, having flown in and out of Kent on my last visit to the United Kingdom. It is a pleasant land, lush and green and densely populated (at least by Western standards), but increasingly, it is filled with evil people. Not viciously evil, mind you, but mundanely evil and lacking in thought. I don't know if these Greenpeace activists were local Kentish types, or if they came from elsewhere to do their damage. But clearly, the good burghers of Kent, or at least those sitting on this jury, agree with them.

The particular evil involved here has several elements:
First, there is environism. For all intents, modern "environmentalism" has become a religion with very little reason or rational mental processes involved: thus the "mental" is removed. A particularly large cult within the general "environist" religion is the Global Warming crowd, which these people firmly believe in.
Second, there is a general streak of Luddite belief and practice here. These people presumably live in houses or flats with electricity, running water, and flush toilets. They presumably drive or walk or ride at night. They also work (those that DO work) for the most part in places in which the owners or managers would not be able to employ them without benefit of electricity and all the work it does, including pumping the water (Kent isn't as flat as Kansas, but certainly is flatter than most American states) and treating the waste water that they use and generate. Yet they are willing to destroy one of the plants that provides this basic necessity of life. Luddites are, I am convinced, related to the grasshopper of Aesop's fable.
Third, there is (in addition to the environist lack of intelligence) a general lack of intelligence exhibited both by the vandals and the court (specifically the jury). Even IF shutting down the Kingsnorth power station would prevent an imaginary threat (global warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse glasses) from coming about, a mere thirty-five thousand pounds sterling of damage is hardly going to shut down such a station for more than a few days. Not only that, but if the wrongdoing is so minor relative to the "needed" action to stop the "greater harm," the applicability of the Criminal Damage Act is questionable at best.

Regardless of the evil demonstrated by the act and the acquittal, this opens a door - a barn door, even a hanger door, for more mischief, more evil, more destruction, more insanity. A court has determined that global warming is a threat which justified £35,000 of vandalism in one location in one county. Now, thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of Greenpeace terrorists and their ilk have a blank check to ravage the infrastructure of England, if indeed not the entire United Kingdom. It applies not just to power stations, but to ANY source of carbon dioxide or some other greenhouse gas: such as cows (methane-generators; methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2), automobiles, motor coaches (buses to Yankees), various factories, and even the Houses of Parliament, which main product is the hot air of its Members, chock full of carbon dioxide. Yes, in that I am being rather silly, but much of the rest is now fair game for vandals - and there will no doubt be an amazing number of pyros, arsonists, and yobs who are suddenly converted to militant Greenpeace-ism if they are caught by the peelers.

It will spread, no doubt, just as the Saxons and Angles and Jutes who invaded Britannia through Kent spread to destroy the ancient Celtic-Roman civilization. And with this sort of tacit approval of the vandals, modern British civilization is doomed.

Having fun.

Well, lookee here! I just got this wonderful opportunity in my e-mail (actually, in my spam drawer). I'd ask you to share in the "booty" with me, as well, if you are really interested, but...

It looks almost real. On a whim, I googled Andy Burnham, MP, and found out, lo and behold, that he is a REAL person! And even a REAL Labor MP in the UK. Your usual Nigerian scam letter is from some wrong-side-of-the blanket by-blow of some African general or president who isn't even a real person, or some made-up ex-colonial bureaucrat going on about mysterious plane crashes and secret diamond deals from fake mines in Angola. But EPE (UK) Ltd is a real company, and they really do specialize in filtration products; they are located in northern Wales and a a subsidiary of a German firm headquartered in Ketsch, a few miles southwest of Heidelberg. Mr Burnham is 38, an up-and-coming young star in the Labour Party and really is in High Chancellor Gordon Brown's cabinet. And being a Labor MP, he is probably crooked enough to have done an under-the-table deal like that with his bent counterparts in Moscow!

Of course, like almost all Nigerian scam letters, this one doesn't quite live up to the standards necessary for a really good scam. It is easy enough (at least for the select audience I'm sending this to, but sadly NOT to the general American public, especially many under the age of 30 or so) to see that the grammar is not up to the standards of a graduate of Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge, even if he HAS been a Labourite since age 14 and a good trades union member. And while Mr. Burnham was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (though with no background in economics or finance; I don't know what he read at Cambridge), until 24 JAN 2008, he is now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, a vastly more important job which indicates that he is being groomed for bigger things in the Labour party. The letter is almost two months out of date.

Much as I would LOVE to turn this over to the local Leigh constituency branch of the British libertarian party, or even the Tory or Social Democrat-Liberal branch to use as ammo to attack the most likely corrupt "Honorable" Burnham, MP, it probably is obvious even to the average Leigh voter that this is bogus.

Now, my point. If we can see this as the fraud it is, why on EARTH do we allow politicians to constantly defraud us on similar "share-the-wealth" schemes like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, oil-company taxation, $700 billion "investment schemes" and such like? Mr. Burnham most likely is NOT the author of this pathetic little scam spam, but based on his career and his associations, he is probably party to far bigger swindles than the mere 14 million GBP supposedly involved in this; like the vast increase in NHS funding which has been so touted by both the Blair and Brown Labourite governments and which has led to longer waiting lines than ever for basic medical care in the UK.

I will bet that if I were incredibly stupid and wrote back to "Burnham" I could not get him to give me any references or testimonials as to the 1.7 million he is offering to share. But every day, I read glowing reports in the newspapers and hear much the same on radio about how wonderful single-payer health care (like Britain's NHS or Canada's) is so wonderful and needed in the USA, and how the politicians in Congress and the Legislatures and the Administration are going to solve all our problems and make us all wealthy and healthy and happy... It doesn't make what the politicians are promising today in the USA any less a scam than what "Burnham" is offering in this e-mail. Much of government today is nothing more than a more carefully crafted and more successful Nigerian scam, Ponzi scheme, or pyramid scam. And I hope we can not forget it, and help other people to see that is the case, as well.

The original scam e-mail:


Dear Friend,

I am The Rt Hon. Andy Burnham MP, (Chief Secretary to The Treasury UK) I was a member of a committee that Brokered a deal between EPE (UK) Ltd, an oil Filtration Company that executed an oil filtration contract for the Russian Government during the regime of Tony Blair who just stepped down for Gordon Brown our New Prime Minister. We the committee members had an Over invoiced amount of £14,000,000.00 which we Had kept aside for ourselves but could not share Immediately. The Change of the office of the prime Minister has presented an opportunity for us to share The money amongst ourselves hence my contacting you.

My share of the booty is (£1.750,000.00) One Million seven hundred and fifty thousand GBP. Due to my Position as an MP in UK here. I can not invest the Money here or have a foreign account hence I am Seeking a reliable person who will receive this money on my behalf for investment purposes. The money was Deposited in a non investment holding account with a Bank here in UK.

I am sincerely seeking your assistance to receive this Amount. Please if you can assist in investing this Fund in any good investment in your country or any Country of your Choice. If you agree to Help, you will be entitled to 10% of the total amount While we will agree on your commission on the Investment later. If you are willing to assist, get back to me with Your Full Name, Address and contact details.

The Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP

Taken from "The City of God" Book IV, Chapter IV:

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor."

Augustine here talks about a situation which libertarians today recognize, a principle which IS taught in Scripture: that morality is defined neither by numbers (democracy) nor by power (all the various forms of tyranny): it is defined by God. It is just as wrong, just as evil, just as sinful for ONE man to use the threat of force to steal a penny from you as it is a band or community of 100, 1000, 10,000 or 300 million. And the other way around.

What Augustine did NOT elaborate on is that there IS no justice in great nations or kingdoms, or even in lesser ones: there is pretense of justice but only God is just. Men who employ force to impose their will on others are by definition, unjust.