Neal's Soapbox

I had not planned on writing anything today; in fact I had not planned on getting out of bed until the last minute before going to work – then the damned phone rang. When I picked it up and said hello, the guy said, “You’re the first person I’ve reached in 15 minutes, and I’m 6′ 6″.” I almost hung up, especially after a corny opening line like that, but I decided to hear what he had to say. I can’t recall the name of the particular organization he was calling on behalf of, but it was one of those that ask for contributions to support our law enforcement officers. He gave this long spiel about how many brave men and women we have lost in the last year and can he expect for my continued help in supporting them.

First of all, I don’t know what he was talking about regarding my ‘continued’ support, for I have never contributed to any of their calls to send donations to support our law enforcement officers. I have donated, and rather generously I might add, to the local firefighters when I see them out on the streets with their boots collecting money, but I have NEVER sent in contributions after being contacted on the phone.

Usually I just say, “Sorry, not interested” and then hang up on these type calls, but due to the fact that he woke me up, I decided to go off on him. Seeing as how I was still groggy and hadn’t had any coffee yet, I can’t recall the exact phrasing of my rant, but I said something like, “No you cannot expect my continued support. Listen, I understand that law enforcement serves a critical function, but I refuse to support law enforcement until they start defending my rights and not being just enforcers of whatever indiscriminate laws our lawmakers decide it is in our best interests to enact. The day I see cops arresting Governors, State Legislators, Congressmen and Presidents is the day you can call me and I’ll gladly contribute. But until then, leave me the hell alone!”

I’ll bet he wasn’t expecting to hear that; nevertheless it is how I feel.

Listen, I do understand that people are assholes, that they can be mean, cruel, vicious, and often care little about their fellow human beings, and that we need some policing agency to protect the lives and property of the innocent. That said, when those charged with serving and protecting the innocent become enforcers of laws that violate the rights of those they are sworn to serve and protect, that is the moment they lose my respect; no matter how much good they do.

I know that deep down many of them are good people; that they have families that they love and care for; but that does not mean that they should be allowed to get away with enforcing laws which violate my fundamental rights…should it? I could be a good loving husband and father, but if I break into your home and steal something from you I’m still a criminal. What makes cops any different?

But Neal, they do uphold the law. No, no they don’t; they uphold the penal code and there is a big difference. You see, that’s part of the overall problem in this country these days, people think that whatever laws our lawmakers enact is the ONLY law, but there are many types of law. There is criminal law, there is business law, there is international law, there is maritime law, there is common law, and there is even Natural Law; the wellspring from which all other laws are supposed to flow from. The question is; which of these forms of law are our law enforcers enforcing?

Nine times out of ten if you are arrested for a crime, the law you are supposedly guilty of violating is found in the Penal Code; which is simply the things our lawmakers have decided to make criminal offenses. But if you really were to think about it, for a crime to be committed there has to be both a perpetrator AND a victim. If I’m caught driving down the road without a seatbelt or riding down the road on a motorcycle without a helmet, I can be fined, and if I refuse to pay the fine, I can be jailed, and if I resist arrest I can be killed. But if these laws are supposed to be for my own well being, then how can killing me for resisting them be in my best interests?

Who am I hurting if I do any of the abovementioned things; who is the victim? For a law to be truly just it must protect the life, the property or the rights of others. Just because society doesn’t like something is not sufficient justification to make it a crime. Just because our almighty lawmakers decide that we’re too stupid to take care of ourselves is not sufficient reason to make stupid acts a crime. If that were the case, 50% of the drivers in California ought to be arrested RIGHT NOW; for they are simply too damned stupid to be allowed to operate a motor vehicle!

Look at prostitution; why is it a crime in many States? Sure, it might be sinful, but if the woman willingly consents to take money from a customer to provide sex for them, it is a business transaction between two consenting adults. So why is it a crime? If the law is to be intended to impose the morality of the majority, then the rights of the minority are ALWAYS in danger.

You cannot claim to be a defender of equal rights if you then turn around and deny others the right to do or say things that you disagree with based upon your moral compass. All this talk of hate speech and the tearing down of Civil War monuments because people find them offensive is merely an attempt to silence, or censor things a certain segment of society finds offensive. Well I find half the garbage on TV and on the radio offensive can I ask that it be taken off the air without violating someone’s freedom of speech? Of course not, so why should they be allowed to do the same with things they find offensive, and have their feelings backed up by the power of laws?

But Neal, think about all the good the cops do. I do think about it, and I feel for them in that they do serve some good; but that does not diminish the fact that they can quickly turn into jack-booted thugs if you even begin to question the laws they are enforcing.

After all, the British Redcoats, (who were the King’s law enforcers), served some good too. They did keep the Colonists safe from the French and the Indians; yet that didn’t stop the patriots of 1776 from opposing them when they began enforcing laws the Colonists felt violated their rights.

Isn’t that what Lexington and Concord was all about; patriots taking up arms to oppose gun control laws enacted by their government and enforced by the King’s law enforcers? Can you imagine how people would react, how the media would spin a story like that today?

BREAKING NEWS

A shootout happened today when armed citizens gathered together to face off against local law enforcement and agents of the BATF when they attempted to impose recently enacted gun control legislation. In the shootout numerous law enforcement agents were killed in the line of duty.

You see, that’s how it is always spun, these officers died in the line of duty, or they are upholding the law, or they are doing their duty. Well, what is their duty if it is not to defend our rights? If their duty is to simply enforce whatever laws our government enacts they are no better than the Stasi, the SS, the KGB, or any of the other agents who enforced the will of tyrants and despots throughout the ages.

It has been said that the average citizen commits an average of 3 felonies per day in the daily course of their lives. There are so many laws on the books governing what we can and cannot do that a person simply can’t keep up with them all; yet we can be penalized for violating them. They say that ignorance is no excuse; that we should be informed as to what the law is.
Is that so?

Well shouldn’t the same be said about all those who have the authority to enforce the law upon us? Shouldn’t they also be informed as to what the SUPREME law of the land is? Shouldn’t they be informed as to the fact that any and all gun control laws violate the 2nd Amendment and that by enforcing them THEY are the criminals? Shouldn’t they be informed that each and every one of us has the right to retreat into our homes and be free from the prying eyes and ears of the NSA?

Why can’t I dial 911 and have cops go arrest the lawmakers in Sacramento who vote in favor of laws that infringe upon my right to keep and bear arms? Why can’t I dial 911 and have cops go arrest the head of the NSA and any and all persons involved in collecting my private data and conversations?

Hmm, can you answer that for me?

Just look at what’s happening to Julian Asange right now, and what has happened to Edward Snowden. They are both treated as criminals for exposing the crimes which our government has committed. If you ask me, when exposing a crime becomes a crime, we are governed by criminals; and those who enforce the laws these criminals enact are no better than those who enact those laws.

At the conclusion of World War II there were two sets of trials held for Nazi War Criminals. Known as the Nuremberg Trials, the first set of trials were to convict those in positions of authority within the Nazi regime. But the second set of trials went after low level members of that Nazi party; the law enforcers and other personnel who were guilty of human rights violations. Of course some of them were allowed to escape punishment because their particular skill set, or knowledge was deemed valuable by the U.S. Government, so they were given immunity and brought to the U.S. Don’t believe me, Google Operation Paperclip to see if I’m lying.

During the second set of tribunals, or trials, many pleaded that they were simply following the orders of their superiors. This was held to be insufficient justification for the crimes they were accused of committing; meaning that just following orders doesn’t cut it. If the law violates the rights of a single individual, then it is the DUTY of every law enforcement officer to NOT enforce it. And if our own ignorance of the law is no excuse for us, then it is no excuse for them either.

Our entire criminal justice system, from top to bottom, is designed to make criminals of us all, and to keep us in line. Sure, they may let the violation of some laws slip simply because to enforce them would mean they would have to arrest half the population, but make no mistake about it, if you step out of line they are going to hit you with every law you have violated to make sure you pay for questioning their authority.

Our lawmakers break the law routinely by enacting laws that create or fund agencies that violate our rights. Our law enforcers, at the local, State, and federal level, break the law by enforcing those laws upon the people. Our court system is populated by judges who tell the jurors what the law is according to their own interpretation or the interpretation of past court cases; never asking whether the law violates any of our inherent and unalienable rights. And the prison system, well that’s just a money making scam that profits off the incarceration of people who have committed no real crime; for remember, if there is no victim, there is no crime.

That’s why I harp so much about becoming informed. There is simply too much ignorance in this country as to the purpose government is supposed to serve, and if the people don’t know why we have government they are highly unlikely to question the authority of whatever jack-booted thugs enforce upon the people.

Those who fought during the Revolution understood what their rights were; they understood the purpose government was supposed to serve; and they were willing to die defending their beliefs. Today all I see is a nation full of sheep who follow the orders of their shepherds…and it makes me sick.

Blind faith, blind trust, and blind obedience to our lawmakers and those who enforce these laws is not the creed of freemen, it is the creed of slaves.
As far as I’m concerned the thin blue line is there to keep law enforcement from violating my rights, and more often than not they cross it with impunity. And you want me to support them by contributing my hard earned money. Are you out of your fucking mind?

And that’s all I’m gonna say about that…

Yesterday was the deadline for filing your 1040 to the IRS and I had wanted to write about taxes in general, but the Notre Dame fire happened and it just seemed inappropriate to do so on a day when people’s minds were focused on the loss of a significant piece of World History.

I have often wondered how people would feel if they were called to serve on a jury and the case was one which involved an individual who was accused of income tax evasion; would they be more inclined to render a guilty verdict, or would they be more inclined to render an innocent verdict? I know for a fact that if I were to ever serve on a jury for a tax evasion case, the accused would NOT get a guilty verdict from THAT jury.

Did you also know that a graduated income tax is one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto? Well it is. According to the latest changes to the tax code the current tax rates begin at 10% and end at 37% for the wealthiest among us. That is exactly what is meant by a graduated, or progressive income tax, with the more you make determining how high a tax rate you pay.

Did you know that for 124 years our country existed without a tax upon the income of the people living within the United States; yet it functioned pretty well without it. Did you know that taxes almost led to the dissolution of the Union in the 1830’s, and it, along with the North’s interference in the institution of slavery, did cause 7 of the Southern States to secede from the Union in 1860? Taxes were also among the reasons why the Colonists chose to secede from the British Empire in 1776.

So, as you can see, our country has a history of having people who resisted attempts by their government to impose heavy and burdensome taxes upon them. Yet today we have been brainwashed into believing that paying our fair share is our patriotic duty.

There are many kinds of taxes you can pay, income tax, sales tax, excise tax, property tax, and capital gains tax being but a few of them. But if you dig down a bit you will find that taxes fall into one of two categories; they are either direct taxes or indirect taxes.

Without getting too complicated, a direct tax is one in which the tax is paid directly to the government by the person who the tax is levied upon; such as is the case with the income tax. An indirect tax, on the other hand, is collected by an intermediary and then paid to the government; such as is the case with a sales tax.

When the constitution was ratified in 1789 it was quite clear on the fact that all direct taxes must be apportioned; meaning that they were to be divided equally among the people of the country, or the States. So, if the federal government were to levy a $1,000 tax upon the State of Virginia, and there were only 1,000 people living in Virginia, each person would pay $1. With a graduated, or progressive tax, the lowest income earners might only pay $.25 while those earning the most might pay $2.50. The constitution, as ratified in 1789, prohibits such a tax, and the only way around that was to amend it allowing Congress to enact a graduated tax upon whatever source of revenue they could get their hands upon; hence, the income tax.

During the Civil War Congress made many attempts at imposing some sort of an income tax but they were always either rescinded or ruled unconstitutional; such as was the case when the SCOTUS ruled against them in Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan and Trust Co in 1895. Up until that point the income of the people was off limits to government tax collectors, but it was a source of revenue that was simply too tempting to keep it that way for long.

For years, most of the revenue flowing into the treasury came from tariffs, excises and duties assigned to goods purchased abroad. If you’ve ever flown to another country you will recall that some goods are sold duty free, while others you have to claim upon re-entering the U.S. so that it can be determined whether or not you are required to pay a duty upon what you bring back into the U.S.

As the government began to grow beyond its constitutional authority it needed an ever increasing supply of revenue to fund its operations. As tariffs were among the primary sources of income for the government, they began to rise; making the cost of purchasing certain goods beyond the reach of the lowest income earners. The 16th Amendment, (even though I personally believe it to have NEVER been ratified properly) promised that whatever taxes were imposed would make the rich pay their fair share while easing the burden upon the lower income earners … and for awhile it did.

But the thing about government is that once you give it a power, it ALWAYS seeks to expand that power; and this is no less true when it pertains to the power of taxation. You give government an almost unlimited power to tax and it WILL seek to tax everything under the sun.

When our government first went into effect there were two trains of thought regarding the purpose government should serve; and they formed the basis for the formation of the two political parties we have today. One camp, those who aligned with the beliefs of Thomas Jefferson, felt that government should limit itself to the specific powers found within Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution. The other camp, led by Alexander Hamilton, felt that government should be used to help grow the American economy; to create a great American empire.

To achieve their goals, the followers of the Hamiltonian way of thought had to impose high protective tariffs to protect American businesses and industries. Whether you choose to accept this or not is entirely up to you, but this was the ultimate cause of the Civil War; for when those tariffs became such a nuisance, or burden, upon the South, they chose to secede, and when Abraham Lincoln saw that the majority of the taxes flowing into his government was no longer there, he HAD to go to war to regain control over that stream of revenue.

Are you aware that by the time Thomas Jefferson had served 4 years as president that taxes were so low that, during his Second Inaugural Address he was proud to say, “What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States?”

In researching for this article I stumbled across an article that said, “The U.S. government was capable of paying for its expenses without an income tax prior to 1913 largely because it had fewer responsibilities. Thomas Eddlem noted in The New American, that the federal government’s responsibilities were limited to basic operational matters and did not include such modern expenses as social insurance programs, welfare programs or agricultural subsidies.” (Source: https://pocketsense.com/united-states-government-funded-prior-income-tax-12769.html)

My jaw almost hit the floor when I read that; “such modern expenses as social insurance programs, welfare programs or agricultural subsidies”? Has the constitution been amended to include those ‘responsibilities’ as being among the powers given government? This is one of the most difficult concepts I’ve tried to get people to understand. I hear from people all the time that Congress enacted this law or that law, giving the government this power or that power which requires more and more taxes to fund. Well good for Congress, they passed a law. But by what authority did they pass that law?

The fact that Congress passed a law means absolutely nothing to me unless that law is in pursuance of the specifically enumerated powers found within Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution. Anything beyond that, no matter what justification they provide for it, is unconstitutional.

You see, this is the logical conclusion of following the Hamiltonian line of thought, that there are hidden or implied powers within the constitution, that the general welfare clause can be applied to everything that affects the lives of the people, and that the necessary and proper clause can mean anything the government feels is necessary and proper.

It all boiled down to what is meant by the word necessary. Jefferson took a strict position on it, meaning he felt that the Congress could only enact those laws which were absolutely necessary to serve the specific powers given Congress. Hamilton took a looser position, meaning that if it served the overall public good it wasn’t essential that it be absolutely necessary.

This battle over the meaning of the necessary and proper clause first arose in the battle for the First National Bank during the administration of George Washington. Congress, which was predominantly populated by acolytes of Alexander Hamilton, had passed a bill authorizing a central bank. Jefferson’s only hope to stop it was to convince the President not to sign it. Jefferson lost that battle when Washington signed the bank bill into law; setting the precedent for future loose interpretations of what is considered necessary and proper, or in the general welfare.

Prior to the constitution even being ratified, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Edward Carrington wherein he said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”

At the same time Jefferson wrote those words a fierce war of words was going on in the country over whether or not to adopt this new system of government that was presented to them by the delegates of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787.

A great many wise and prominent men opposed the proposed constitution; among them being George Mason, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Robert Yates, and Elbridge Gerry. These were all men who had been considered patriots during our war for independence, and yet they were now fighting to preserve the liberty they had just fought a war to obtain against what they saw as the stepping stone towards an American despotism in this new constitution.

To truly understand the constitution you cannot base your opinions upon what you currently think your government is supposed to be doing. Government has been exceeding its authority since before you were born and to base your opinions upon what you are accustomed to, or what you have been taught, as this allows you to be indoctrinated into accepting a system of government that continually seeks to expand its power and restrict your liberty.

No, to understand the constitution you have to study the period when it was ratified; the arguments for and against it, and what was said during the ratification debates of the various states. To truly understand the constitution you have to learn what the people were promised it would do, not from the perspective of one who was born into a world where their government has been exceeding its powers for over 200 years.

That’s what I’ve been doing for the past month or so, reading the papers written by those who opposed ratification of the constitution. What I have found is that they were rightfully concerned over this proposed system of government; for most, if not all of the things they warned would happen, have happened.

The other night, as I was reading through the essays written by Robert Yates under the pseudonym of Brutus, I ran across his arguments against the constitution based upon the power it gave Congress regarding taxation. Brutus No. 6 caused me to stop numerous times so that I could highlight certain passages for future use. I would now like to share a few of those passages with you. Just remember, these essays were written prior to the implementation of an income tax, so you MUST view them from that perspective for the meaning to be clear.

Brutus begins by saying, “It was observed in my last number, that the power to lay and collect duties and excises, would invest the Congress with authority to impose a duty and excise on every necessary and convenience of life. As the principal object of the government, in laying a duty or excise, will be, to raise money, it is obvious, that they will fix on such articles as are of the most general use and consumption.”

He then goes on to discuss how taxes such as excises could affect cider; which was an alcoholic beverage, not the common apple juice we consume today, “An excise on this would raise a large sum of money in the United States. How would the power, to lay and collect an excise on cider, and to pass all laws proper and necessary to carry it into execution, operate in its exercise? It might be necessary, in order to collect the excise on cider, to grant to one man, in each county, an exclusive right of building and keeping cider-mills, and oblige him to give bonds and security for payment of the excise; or, if this was not done, it might be necessary to license the mills, which are to make this liquor, and to take from them security, to account for the excise; or, if otherwise, a great number of officers must be employed, to take account of the cider made, and to collect the duties on it.”

Brutus then goes on to discuss how excises might be applied to Porter Ale and other liquors, “Porter, ale, and all kinds of malt-liquors, are articles that would probably be subject also to an excise. It would be necessary, in order to collect such an excise, to regulate the manufactory of these, that the quantity made might be ascertained or otherwise security could not be had for the payment of the excise. Every brewery must then be licensed, and officers appointed, to take account of its product, and to secure the payment of the duty, or excise, before it is sold.”

I want to stop quoting Brutus for a moment to let you in on a little bit of history. Did you know that during the earliest years of our government the President and Congress enacted that same kind of excise tax upon whiskey, and that it led to a rebellion in the State of Pennsylvania? This rebellion led George Washington, at the urging of Alexander Hamilton of course, to lead an army into Pennsylvania to suppress. Although there was virtually no fighting involved in this Whiskey Rebellion, it proved one thing; that the government could, and would use force to compel the people into the paying of whatever taxes the government declared they must pay. Need I remind you that the Civil War was another example when Lincoln used force to keep the Southern States, and the money the government could pillage from them, in the Union?

Getting back to Brutus, he then writes, “This power, exercised without limitation, will introduce itself into every comer of the city, and country — It will wait upon the ladies at their toilett, and will not leave them in any of their domestic concerns; it will accompany them to the ball, the play, and the assembly; it will go with them when they visit, and will, on all occasions, sit beside them in their carriages, nor will it desert them even at church; it will enter the house of every gentleman, watch over his cellar, wait upon his cook in the kitchen, follow the servants into the parlour, preside over the table, and note down all he eats or drinks; it will attend him to his bed-chamber, and watch him while he sleeps; it will take cognizance of the professional man in his office, or his study; it will watch the merchant in the counting-house, or in his store; it will follow the mechanic to his shop, and in his work, and will haunt him in his family, and in his bed; it will be a constant companion of the industrious farmer in all his labour, it will be with him in the house, and in the field, observe the toil of his hands, and the sweat of his brow; it will penetrate into the most obscure cottage; and finally, it will light upon the head of every person in the United States. To all these different classes of people, and in all these circumstances, in which it will attend them, the language in which it will address them, will be GIVE! GIVE!”
Read that again. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Does that not sound very similar to how we live today, with almost everything we do being taxed? That gas we put into our cars is taxed; the airwaves we use for our phones is taxed; the electricity we use to power our homes is taxed; our land is taxed; our income is taxed; our profits made from investments are taxed; and they even get us after we die when we leave our inheritance to our children with the estate tax.

All these taxes remind me of the old Beatles song Taxman, where George Harrison sings, “If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street/If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat/ If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat/If you take a walk I’ll tax your feet/ Cause I’m the taxman.”

All this is the natural outcome of applying a loose interpretation of what is meant by the general welfare and what is necessary and proper; for had we stuck to a strict interpretation of those clauses there would have been no need to tax people on everything from their income to the water they use to brew their coffee.

All this has happened because people put their faith and trust in government to do what is best for them; what best serves the general welfare, or is necessary and proper. But as Brutus tried to warn people, “The government would always say, their measures were designed and calculated to promote the public good; and there being no judge between them and the people, the rulers themselves must, and would always, judge for themselves.”

In closing I would like to take a few moments to discuss a quote from the 1819 Supreme Court Case of McCulloch v. Maryland, “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy.” It’s interesting to me that the SCOTUS would say that because what they were saying was that the power of a State to tax notes created by the First Bank of the United States could destroy that bank.

You see, that bank that I spoke about earlier that Hamilton and Jefferson had argued over, well it was responsible for issuing the currency notes, or money, that was to be used for paying for goods, services and debts. Well Maryland decided to impose a tax upon any notes that were not issued by a bank chartered in Maryland; meaning all Central Bank notes. The Supreme Court struck their tax down by exercising the supremacy clause of the constitution.

But that same quote can mean the same thing when the power of taxation is used by the government to create a nation of slaves who work and labor just to pay for a bloated and unconstitutional institution that uses that money to hire jack booted thugs to enforce laws which violate their liberty. Just look at the government we have today with all these agencies who can, and do use force against the people to enforce their laws. Doesn’t that sound exactly like what Lysander Spooner once described, “If any man’s money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists.”

And if Spooner was accurate in that assessment, there’s a high probability that he was also right when he said, “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”

We pay our taxes for one of two reasons. Either we are foolish enough to believe that it is our patriotic duty to contribute our fair share towards the funding of our government, or we fear them coming after us if we don’t. If you’re among that first category of people then all my words have just fell upon deaf ears and I’ve just wasted two hours of my time. But if you’re among the last category, then I would like to ask you something, “Why do you insist on supporting a government you fear?”

A government that is supposed to be serving the public good should not instill fear into the governed. Now I know this quote was not made by Jefferson, but it remains true nonetheless, “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

I think we should be allowed to keep our money, and I believe that even more when I see my government doing things I do not believe it has the authority to do. But I suppose each of has to pick and choose their battles, and battling the IRS is not on my list of battles I wish to engage in. Maybe if I were a single old curmudgeon I would, but I have a family to consider and if I were to tell the IRS to take a flying leap at the sun then my family would suffer the consequences of my actions, and that’s something I don’t want them to have to suffer from. So I pay my taxes while I secretly pray for the day that the American people will pull their collective heads out of their collective asses and we can abolish this system of government that tyrannizes and oppresses the people of this country. Until then, I’ll let them keep milking me like a good sheep
.

When I got home from work on Friday night I checked my Facebook feed for a moment before heading off to do a bit of reading. I stumbled across a post by my friend Bart Stewart about how Gavin Newsom was throwing a hissy fit about Trump’s proposal to take all the detained illegal immigrants and have them relocated to California’s Sanctuary Cities.

After reading that I couldn’t read, in fact I could barely get to sleep; I was so angry. I wasn’t angry at Trump, I thought his plan was absolute genius, I was mad that as a Californian I was going to have to suffer, once again, because of the stupidity of the political leaders of this state. So upon waking Saturday morning I wrote a short sarcastic letter to Governor Newsom, which closed with the line, “Well here it is, the unintended consequences of your stupidity, and I hope you choke on it.”

Ever since I sent that letter to Governor Newsom I have had the idea of consequences stuck in my head. I have found that if I don’t write about a thought when it gets stuck in my head that it will build and build until I am unable to concentrate upon anything else. Writing about a thought is kind of like flushing my mind’s toilet to get rid of all that crap that is floating around in there. So here we are, talking about consequences.

I would hope that everyone knows what consequences are, but if you aren’t familiar with the word, consequences simply mean the results of an action or condition. Newton’s 3rd Law of Physics deals with consequences: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Consequences, simply put, means that if you do something, something else is going to happen.

You cannot avoid consequences; they are going to happen. However, I think people try to avoid having to assume the responsibility for those consequences; seeking to shift the burden of dealing with them onto the shoulders of others. In fact, I think that concept permeates American society today; shifting the responsibility for the consequences of things onto the shoulders of people who had absolutely nothing to do with causing them.

People today react emotionally to situations without actually giving the situation much critical thought. A perfect example of these two things is when there is a mass shooting somewhere. What typically happens after the period of anger and sorrow? Why typically we hear the call for stricter gun control.

Why the gun; did it go out and kill all those innocent people on its own? No, it was the tool of choice for the individual who did. People always look to take away the tools being used to commit these horrific crimes without ever stopping to ask themselves WHY these crimes are happening in the first place. It doesn’t matter to people that by passing stricter gun laws you are violating the rights of hundreds of thousands of otherwise law abiding citizens; all that matters is that we DO SOMETHING to prevent future mass shootings. Well, how well has your plan for tightening up gun laws worked for you so far? I mean, have we seen a dramatic decrease in these shootings since tougher gun laws went into effect, or have we seen the exact opposite; or unintended CONSEQUENCES?

Could it be that we have failed as parents in raising our children to respect guns, and respect the lives of others? Could it be that we have placed our children’s welfare into the hands of medical practitioners, (psychiatrists), who put them on mind altering drugs that cause them to react violently? Could it be that these mass shooters are the subjects of some MK Ultra type mind control who have been programmed to commit these type crimes?

I’m just tossing ideas out there, not saying anything, or all of them are the case. I can tell you, however, that when I was growing up I played with toy guns from a very early age. I had a cap gun as a kid. I got a Mattel plastic rifle and six-shooter later on that actually fired plastic bullets when I was a bit older. I got a bb rifle before I was 15, and I shot my first firearm around the same time.

Guns were everywhere when I was growing up; in both my home and in the homes of most of my friends; and they weren’t locked away in gun safes or lying around with trigger locks in them. Yet we didn’t have these mass shootings like we do now. Something changed, and it certainly isn’t the guns. Guns have, and always will be, designed for one purpose; to shoot something or someone. What has changed is how we teach our children to respect those guns, how to handle them safely, and how to respect the lives of others.

We deny our kids the training to safely handle and respect guns, then we allow them to play video games where the entire goal of the game is to go out and shoot as many aliens, bad guys, monsters, or whatever as possible to rack up the highest score. We also flood their movies and the music they listen to with violence and mayhem to further reinforce the idea that guns solve all your problems. Then we pump our kids full of drugs that chemically alter their brains, and we wonder why they act the way they do? C’mon, we can’t be that stupid, can we?

The whole time this is happening the news media plays along by their round the clock reporting on these tragedies; further reinforcing our fear of guns, and weakening or resolve to protect our right to keep and bear them.

Now I don’t want to make this an anti gun control rant; I’m just using gun control as an example of the consequences of not thinking about the root causes of a problem. The thing about consequences is that, if you don’t think about what caused them, they have a way of snowballing. If you do something stupid that causes a harmful consequence, and then you react stupidly then the consequences are going to increasingly become more harmful to you.

Ignorance in and of itself can bring about unintended consequences. If you open your mouth about a subject that you know very little about, then there is always the chance that someone who knows a great deal about that subject will correct you; making you look like an utter fool – deservedly so I might add. But in today’s society that type action is cause for labeling the one with the truth a perpetrator of hate speech; simply because they dare speak the truth.

I know this to be a fact because I have been accused of hate speech for sharing the truth with those whose minds are closed off to it. A perfect example of this is when you try to share the truth about the so-called Civil War with people who insist it was fought to end slavery. The more facts one provides to counter that belief the louder the cries of racist become, until you either give up trying to argue with fools, or you are turned in for hate speech; as I have been turned in on numerous occasions.

The philosopher Plato once said, “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs it to be ruled by evil men.” Now if you were to swap out price and indifference with consequence and ignorance, the quote would read, “The consequence good men pay for ignorance to public affairs it to be ruled by evil men.” Now does it begin to make sense to you?

People may believe themselves to be politically astute, paying close attention to the various ‘issues’ but are these same people as astute when it comes to knowing why their system of government was created and what purpose those who actually ratified it were promised it would serve. You see, the consequence for ignorance is that you are led to believe that your government is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing, while the reverse is actually true.

But oh, I cannot expect that people actually turn off their TV’s, put down their iPhones or game controllers and pick up a dusty old book on the history of how our constitution came into existence; that’s just too much to ask of people. Hey, make your choice people; knowledge and the freedom that comes with it, or ignorance and the slavery that comes with that choice. As Jefferson said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

I don’t expect that my words are going to have any great impact on how people think and act, it is more a matter of it being therapeutic for me to get these ideas out of my head and onto paper, so to speak. I think people are going to keep on doing whatever it is they have been doing in the past until the consequences of their actions become unavoidable. I think people are gonna keep believing that the Democrats or the Republicans have the answer, and that they will keep voting accordingly until the whole system falls apart from the corruption within it.

To quote from Jefferson again, “Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.”

You see, I don’t actually blame people today for the current state of our government, we inherited the consequences of past generations ignorance and apathy. BUT, we are just perpetuating the corruption by participating in choosing who will sit in the seats of power within this government.

I see all these Trump supporters who voted for him based upon all those campaign promises, like how he intended to drain the swamp. What a crock of shit! The swamp is the government itself, and to drain it you would have to tear it down, sanitize it, and rebuild it based upon the principles that those who established it in 1789 held in regards to the purpose that government should serve. Firing a few players here and there is akin to offering up a ritual sacrifice to appease the masses; a charade while the swamp goes on running things.

I want you to read something my friend Michael Gaddy wrote, “There are three major political parties in America; the Republican Party, the Democrat Party and the Permanent Party.

The Permanent party consists of the bureaucrats who control the various alphabet agencies within the federal government. Instead of the government telling them what to do, these agencies direct the actions of government.

The members of the Permanent Party are not elected and many serve in those positions for several decades, many times rotating in and out of government service and the military/industrial/ banking/media complex. They control the government and are known as the Shadow Government and/or the Deep State.”
Our government was not established to be our nanny or babysitter to help us avoid the consequences of our own choices in life.

Our government was not established to be our nanny or babysitter to help us avoid the consequences of our own choices in life. Yet if we move to an area where tornado’s are prevalent, and then one hits your neighborhood, do you seek to rebuild on your own, or do you go crying for FEMA disaster relief? If you do not apply yourself in school and therefore find it impossible to find a decent paying job, do you expect society to shoulder the burden of caring for your needs?

In a free society each individual should shoulder the consequences of their own choices in life; not shift those consequences onto the shoulders of society or government. As Teddy Roosevelt once wrote, “If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.”

Consequences people; either we accept them or we transfer them onto the shoulders of those who had no part of causing them.

We did not create this mess we live in today, but if we don’t change the way of thinking that got us into this mess we certainly aren’t going to make this country a better place for future generations. By voting, by supporting this party or that party, you are perpetuating a system that is so broken that it cannot be repaired; in essence you are kicking the can down the road for future generations to deal with and thereby shifting the consequences for your own ignorance/apathy/cowardice onto the shoulders of those yet to come.

Is that how you want historians to view you, as a generation who could have turned the tide and started making America truly great again, or as a generation who kicked the can down the road; played the game and just let tyranny grow stronger with a corresponding loss of the liberty your government was established to secure?

We could retake our freedom if just enough of us began telling Uncle Sam to fuck off; we aren’t gonna obey your laws anymore or pay your taxes. I can’t do it by myself, and we couldn’t do it if only 10, or 100 of us decided to do so. It would take millions of people telling government that they no longer consent to being governed by tyrants, and I just don’t see that happening.

Yet that is exactly how America became a free and independent country; because enough men had the courage to tell King George to fuck off; well not exactly those words, but you get the drift.

In 1787 Jefferson wrote a letter to the wife of John Adams, saying, “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.”

Where is that spirit today? I certainly don’t see it in any great abundance. All I see is a people who trust in the idea of a centralized all powerful government, with the only difference being who gets to sit in the seats of power within it. All I see is a people ignorant of why governments are supposed to exist, (to secure our rights if you had read the Declaration of Independence). And due to their ignorance, the whole country is paying the prices for that ignorance; in other words, we’re suffering the consequences for your ignorance.

Just know this, you may be able to shift the consequences of your ignorance onto the shoulders of others living among you now, but you cannot avoid them entirely. There will come a time when you will be called upon to answer for your ignorance; either in this life or the one that follows. For as Jefferson said, “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

I would much rather die here on Earth fighting to defend God’s gift of liberty to me, than face an eternity suffering condemnation because I chose the bliss that ignorance provides. Like I’ve been saying, there are consequences for your choices in life, but sometimes they aren’t felt until it’s too late to do anything about it.

So make your choice America, keep supporting the engine that enslaves you, or begin educating yourselves and defending the liberty government was instituted to secure for you. Just keep in the back of your head that there will be consequences for whatever choice you make; so choose well.

“…if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization,
it expects what never was & never will be.”
~Thomas Jefferson~
(January 6, 1816)

I often hear people, including family members, say that the government needs to pass a law to do something about this, or something about that. This is how I feel like responding to people who say that.

It would truly be interesting to learn how many people in this country, percentage wise, have ever sat down and actually read the constitution which outlines the shape of, and powers delegated to, our system of government. I’m guessing that the percentage would be in the single digits somewhere. Yet if you were to tell those that haven’t that they would not be allowed to vote until they had, I’m also guessing that they would cry that their rights were being violated.

Do you know how stupid that sounds to me? That almost sounds like you would trust your life to a surgeon who had never attended a single day of medical training. It just seems like common sense that if you are going to allow people to vote then you should first ensure that they have a thorough understanding of how their system of government was supposed to operate.

Maybe that’s the problem, there is no common sense left in America. Or maybe it’s the fact that those in charge of establishing the course curriculums in our schools do not want us to learn how our system of government was supposed to work; for if we did we’d learn that they were all a bunch of liars and crooks.

When I went through high school I was required to take a yearlong civics course, and I have since found that what I was taught was either incomplete or misleading. Three decades later my son went through high school and his civics course was only a single semester, and it was broken down into two sections; one on the government and another on microeconomics.

I remember vividly a conversation I had with his Civics Teacher during the high school’s Open House. I grilled the teacher, asking him if he was going to discuss the various checks and balances built into the Constitution; if he was going to have his students read any of the Federalist Papers; and if he was going to discuss the writing and ratification of the Constitution itself. He answered by saying that those things were not in the course curriculum, but he then said that it sounds like I should be teaching the class because I obviously knew more about the subject than he did.

That was 10 years ago, and I remember being floored by that statement. I can only imagine how that conversation would go if it were to happen today; seeing as how my knowledge has increased almost a hundredfold since then. Nevertheless we have teachers instructing our children on a subject that they aren’t even fully knowledgeable about. Now I’m not entirely blaming them, I’m blaming the system that allows teachers who don’t know the subject matter to instruct our children based upon a course curriculum established by a bunch of bureaucrats who may, or may not, have the agenda of producing mindless drones who do not know the first thing about how their system of government is supposed to work.

Maybe George Carlin was right when he said, “…they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that . . . that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. … You know what they want? They want obedient workers . . . Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork.”

If that truly is the case, if you have been intentionally lied to and have had certain facts intentionally withheld from you, than those guilty of doing that ought to be charged with criminal negligence and the willful indoctrination of entire generations of our youth.

But Carlin was right, they don’t want people who can think critically; who can study facts and evidence and then come to the realization that their government is their enemy. If the people were capable of doing that then we would pose a serious threat to their power over us; for if our government rests on the premise of consent of the governed, what would happen if an overwhelming majority of the people in this country simply revoked their consent?

Their power and authority over us can only exist by two modes; either we willfully consent to it, or it can be imposed upon us through the use of force and coercion. In the first instance if the powers being exercised by the government serve the purpose of expanding and protecting the individual liberty of the governed, then government is just and serving good. If, on the other hand, government exercises power that limits that liberty, and has to use the threat of force, or penalties for disobedience, then that government cannot be anything but tyrannical.

Those in charge of establishing the curriculum by which our youth are taught do not want a fully informed public capable of critical thought who question the things their government is doing. They want an obedient worker class who believe in the system, but who are free to debate amongst each other over the issues and differing political ideologies, such as conservative versus liberal.

I think even the liberals, or Democrats, will admit that they seek to use the power of government to enact their version of social justice. Social Justice, in simple terms, is justice in the form of equality of wealth, opportunities and privileges in a society. They believe that it is the duty of those who have to have a portion of their wealth taken from them so that it can be given to those who have not. In essence they want to play Robin Hood; steal from the rich and give to the poor. The fact that someone may have worked hard all their life to acquire that wealth is of no concern to them; the only thing that matters is that they have wealth and it is a source of revenue they can tap into and give to their constituents.

For the liberal ideology to work they must have a working class that they can pillage to provide the funding for the myriad programs they enact to benefit those who support them. The higher the number of groups who feel that it is the duty of government to ensure social justice the stronger the liberal base grows. But there comes a time when those who consume outnumber those who produce and the entire belief system crumbles; either there simply aren’t enough producers anymore or the producers get tired of having their money stolen from them and they revolt. I can almost hear the thoughts of some who might be saying, “Yes, Neal understands the Republican viewpoint; how Democrats are evil and he will now begin supporting our party.”

Well not so damned fast; I’m not finished yet.

Do you really think your precious Republicans are any better? The Republicans are no better than the Democrats when it comes to taxing the people to fund things that government was not supposed to be doing. The only real difference between the two parties is who is in the receiving end of the wealth that is stolen from the taxpayers. The Republicans have those who benefit when they are in office and the Democrats have those who benefit when they are in control. That is why they fight so hard to gain power; not to preserve liberty or make America great again; they only want control of the taxing and spending power so that their supporters can benefit from government.

If the Republicans truly were conservative they would seek to revoke, or repeal the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, the law establishing the DEA, the BATF, Homeland Security, the TSA, the NSA, and the CIA…just to name a few.

But they don’t, so the debt continues to climb while your freedom diminishes no matter which political party has control over the government. That should tell you something about the entire system; that it is easily corrupted by partisan influences and is incapable of restraining government to its few specifically enumerated powers, while at the same time securing the liberty our ancestors fought for in the American Revolution.

How do you think the people of 1788 would have reacted had those presenting this new constitution for the consideration told them, “Hey, were gonna create a system of government that provides you with no means of controlling it once it is established. This government is going to have the power to tax you at will for whatever purposes it pleases, and at the same time it will seek to deprive you of your rights while it tells you that it’s in your own best interest that you willingly surrender them to it.”

Of course they couldn’t say that, had they told the truth about their precious constitution it would never had been ratified. So they lied, they promised it would not threaten the sovereignty of the States, nor would it threaten the liberty of the people. But there were many wise and prominent men who saw through the lies and deception of the Federalists, and they wrote numerous essays expounding upon the dangers of adopting the system of government presented to them by the Convention of 1787.

One of these essayists, Robert Yates, writing under the pseudonym of Brutus, stated, “It is true this government is limited to certain objects, or to speak more properly, some small degree of power is still left to the states, but a little attention to the powers vested in the general government, will convince every candid man, that if it is capable of being executed, all that is reserved for the individual states must very soon be annihilated, except so far as they are barely necessary to the organization of the general government.”

Now that sounds like a harsh claim leveled against the constitution, yet in April of 1787 James Madison wrote something very similar in a letter to George Washington, “Conceiving that an individual independence of the States is utterly irreconcileable with their aggregate sovereignty; and that a consolidation of the whole into one simple republic would be as inexpedient as it is unattainable, I have sought for some middle ground, which may at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and not exclude the local authorities wherever they can be subordinately useful.” (My emphasis)

There have been times I have asked people why they thought the convention of 1787 felt it was necessary to abolish the Articles of Confederation and replace them with a new Constitution. It is not very often that I can get anyone to answer that question with any degree of certainty; only that they believe it must have been necessary to do so otherwise they wouldn’t have done it.

Most don’t give it much thought but they already had a system of government in place, and all they needed to do was to amend the Articles of Confederation to expand the powers of Congress so that it could more effectively raise revenue and regulate trade. Why didn’t they do that, why did they just abandon the existing system of government, only to be replaced with a much stronger government that has led to the subjugation of the States under the authority of the government they created?

The Federalists tried to ensure the people that this would not happen, that the authority of the States would be secure under this new system of government. Madison’s Federalist 45 is a prime example of the arguments they used to calm the fears of those who felt that State sovereignty would be threatened, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

Yet Yates saw through the lies of the Federalists, stating, “The first question that presents itself on the subject is, whether a confederated government be the best for the United States or not? Or in other words, whether the thirteen United States should be reduced to one great republic, governed by one legislature, and under the direction of one executive and judicial; or whether they should continue thirteen confederated republics, under the direction and controul of a supreme federal head for certain defined national purposes only?

This enquiry is important, because, although the government reported by the convention does not go to a perfect and entire consolidation, yet it approaches so near to it, that it must, if executed, certainly and infallibly terminate in it.”

They had to do away with the Confederation because under the Articles of Confederation there were two items that stood in the way of their obtaining absolute and total control over the States and the people. The first of these hindrances is found in Article II where it states, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

By including the word expressly the Articles of Confederation were saying, “The only powers granted Congress by the Articles of Confederation are those specifically mentioned. There can be no power exercised by assumption, implication, or usurpation.” That was a chain that bound the Congress to the few powers delegated to it by the people. Yet all they had to do was to loosen that chain a bit, add a few more links, giving Congress a few more powers so that it could raise revenue and regulate taxes. So why didn’t they?

Well they didn’t because of the other hindrance in the Articles of Confederation, Article XIII, where it says, “And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.”

For something to become law under the Articles of Confederation each State would have to agree to it. While to some that may seem like an unnecessary burden to get something passed into law, I see it as a blessing. I’d rather the government be rendered incapable of passing any law than it be given a blank check to pass all manner of laws; especially when those laws limit or restrict my liberty.

They needed a government that would give them the power to enact law based upon a simple majority vote, a system that was subject to being influenced by local prejudices and sympathies, a system that could tyrannize and oppress one segment of the country to benefit another. To get that system of government they HAD to trash the Articles of Confederation and replace them with the Constitution; that was their only option if they wanted to dramatically increase their power and authority over the States and the people.

The Anti-Federalist tried to warn people about the dangers of the proposed system of government, but the people ultimately accepted it because of fear over what would happen if they didn’t, and the promise of the great and mighty American empire that would be established if they did.

In a lengthy speech given to the Virginia Ratifying Assembly, Patrick Henry told them to ignore the promise of an American Empire, saying, “You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your Government.”

Moments later Mr. Henry added, “Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings-give us that precious jewel, and you may take every thing else: But I am fearful I have lived long enough to become an fellow: Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man, may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old fashioned: If so, I am contented to be so: I say, the time has been when every pore of my heart beat for American liberty, and which, I believe, had a counterpart in the breast of every true American.”

I can almost feel the sorrow in his voice, thinking how quickly his fellow countrymen forgot the principles they fought for in the revolution.

Robert Yates, Patrick Henry, Samuel Bryan, Melancton Smith, and host of others tried to warn the people what would happen if they adopted this new system of government; but the people didn’t heed their warnings. Yet had you taken the time to study what they said, or more importantly, been taught what they predicted in school, you would NOT support this government in any way, shape, or form.

And that is why they don’t teach these things in school; so that they can control your thoughts and decision making process by teaching you that we have a democracy, that we have a two party system, that government has no real limits on its authority because almost anything can be done if it serves the general welfare of the people.

It is only because of sheer stubbornness that I don’t say, Screw it all, I give up. For one thing, the price for surrender is too great, and secondly, I am just too pig-headed and stubborn to know when I’m fighting a losing battle.

But I am not so blind that I cannot see that most people fall into one of three categories; those who do not speak the truth, those who do not hear the truth, and those who do not see the truth. The only question is, which category do you fit into?

The U.S. Census Bureau offers an interactive website that shows you, not only how many people are currently living in the United States, but also how often children are born or how often people die in this country. For instance, there is one birth every 8 seconds while someone dies every 11 seconds; meaning we have a net gain to the population of 1 person every 17 seconds.

This website also shows the States with the highest populations, and the regions where the population is the most densely packed together. As an example, there are 11,490 people per square mile in our nation’s capital, the District of Columbia; while in Florida there are only 397 per square mile. But if you break it down by county, New York County is more populous than the District of Columbia, with 73,452 people per square mile.

None of that information is going to make a difference as to the price of gas or a pound of ground beef in Poughkeepsie or Cedar Falls, but it is still interesting to know how many people there are in this country, and where they are most densely packed together.

The only reason I stumbled across this information is because I was looking for the most current and up to date data on how many people live in the United States; which as it stands right now is 328,688,525; and I’m sure by the time I finish writing this that the number will have gone up by about 100.

While that 328 some odd million people includes all the people, including those under the age of 18, it still is a pretty impressive number; with the U.S. ranking third in the world as to its population; with only China and India ahead of us, with over a billion people living in each of those countries.

One of the more interesting graphics on this webpage shows the percentage of total population each age group’s comprises. There are two distinct bulges in population; one of them being the people who are under the age of 30 and the other being those between 50 to 60 yrs of age. After 60 yrs of age the total number of people of that age group rapidly begins to diminish as more and more of them begin dying off.

That statistic is striking in that it tells me that soon the people of my generation will begin dying off at a very fast rate, while at the same time those currently under the age of 30 will grow up and assume control of this country. This begs the question of what kind of a country will we leave to them, and what kind of a country will they turn America into once they assume control?

What got me to thinking about this was a post I put onto Facebook yesterday morning. Well, it wasn’t the post itself, it was the fact that a friend, Jamie Bell, asked if it was a work in progress; meaning the premise for an upcoming article. I had not intended to write anything based upon what I posted to Facebook, but Jamie Bell’s comment got the gears turning and this is what became of it.

My original post was rather simple, containing but three sentences: A wise man seeks knowledge while a fool is content to wallow in ignorance. A wise man embraces the truth like it was a lover while a fool scorns and rejects it. A wise man questions everything while a fool believes everything they are told.

Applying those guidelines to myself I would have to say that for nearly 40 years of my life I was a fool. I was content to wallow in my own ignorance and the truth, well the truth was only important when it conformed to whatever beliefs I had formed in my formative years. I did, however, have a rebel streak in me; I always questioned authority and it often got me into trouble. I think it was that rebel streak that caused me to begin seeking out knowledge and the truth; but I can’t be absolutely sure about that.

In any case the quest for the absolute truth about both the history and our system of government has become an all consuming passion; something that takes up a great deal of my free time. At first it was hard, very hard in fact, to accept some of the truths I uncovered. But once I accepted those truths it became easier and easier to accept other truths; having once opened my mind to the fact that I had been lied to about certain events in the history of this country.

It has been my experience that if you try to engage the average person in an intelligent, fact based debate on an issue, you may as well be speaking to them in Latin or Greek, for they are incapable of speaking from a position based upon fact rather than emotion. You could bring an entire fleet of semi trucks packed with facts to support your position, but if you cannot get those you are debating to think, then you’ve already lost the debate.

That is why I fear for the future of this country. If you cannot get people to think about what those who established this country as a free and independent nation felt about certain things like liberty, and the purpose government should serve, then government can serve whatever purpose the majority thinks it should serve and we are no longer a Republic with the rule of law to govern us; we are an elective democracy where the irrational and emotional will of the people dictate what government can and cannot do.

After all, who cares about what a bunch of old dead guys thought when we have people like Obama or Trump to tell us what to think? It’s totally irrelevant to the average American that the things people like them say are diametrically opposed to the things those who established America felt about the powers given government, or the security of my rights and liberty. They are dead and it doesn’t matter that they had more knowledge about history and systems of government in their pinkie toes than Trump or Obama have in their entire bodies…who cares, they are dead…right?

If it weren’t so sad and pathetic I would have to burst out into fits of laughter when I hear people discuss politics in this country. All I hear is a repetition of talking points and party platforms that have been spoon fed to them in an effort to shape and manipulate their opinions on the issues. Rarely do I hear any intelligent discussion over the legality of what their government does, or how it has been fundamentally altered from a federal to a national form of government over the course of its 200 odd years of existence; as if people could even explain the difference between the two forms of government.

I often wonder how many people of voting age have ever read the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Of those who have, how many have ever read the Federalist Papers? Of those who have, how many have read the anti-Federalist Papers; including the writings of Cato, Brutus, Federal Farmer, Centinel, and Patrick Henry’s speeches before the Virginia Ratifying Assembly?

If you don’t know how our constitution came into existence, [by fraud], then how are you to know that those who wrote it had in mind the goal of consolidating the individual States into a single political entity under a strong centralized system of government? They knew that to try that flat out would doom their plans to failure, so they created a system that provided the means for accomplishing their goal, while at the same time sounding like it protected State sovereignty so as to ensure it would be adopted if the people could but be fooled into accepting it.

It took the Colonies four years to adopt the Articles of Confederation; and only after much debate by the individual Colonies. The Constitution was ratified in under a year; with the effort to stifle opposition to it being exerted by supporters of this grand new plan of governance.

It has been my experience that the only time one seeks to stifle debate on an issue is when they have something to hide; some flaw or weakness in their position that, if exploited, would doom their plan to failure. One has to wonder if James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and all the other so-called Federalists knew that if the people carefully examined and dissected their constitution, clause by clause, they would discover the inherent weakness of their plan and the threat it posed to State sovereignty and to the liberty of the people.

But what’s done is done and it can’t be undone. We have a system of government that was created and ordained by the voice of the people. Yet we can choose to learn what powers that system of government was supposed to be exercising on our behalf, and we can ensure that we do not vote for any candidate who does not convince us that they will remain true to the powers those who ratified this document were promised the government would exercise.

But that means putting aside your partisan leanings, your liberal and conservative ideologies and learning what those who ratified the constitution were promised the government they were implementing would do. It means researching and studying the writings of those dead guys, and tying to make sense of their words; a near impossibility thanks in large part to the inadequacies of our public educational system.

One thing knowledge will prove to you is that no matter who wins an election; which party is in control of your government, the government itself never really changes much. It is a corrupt entity that seeks to deprive us of the fruits of our labor to benefit those who supported them in their bid for election, while at the same time limiting and restricting your freedom. THAT never changes, no matter who is in charge. If you can’t see that, then you are a fool

So go ahead, keep voting and let me know how well that works out for you. You tell me I can’t complain because I don’t vote. I say you can’t complain because no matter who you vote for nothing ever changes. If you don’t vote for principle, then what exactly are you voting for at all? Why cast your vote for someone who, with even the most rudimentary examination, would be shown to be campaigning upon issues it is not within the purview of the federal government to act upon?

Go ahead; prove me wrong, I’ll wait.

Believe me, I’ve had this argument with friends and family members and they all say, “Well this law or that law gives government the power to do this or that.” But that’s not what I’m asking I’m saying that if the Constitution is, in fact, the Supreme Law of the land, and if it governs the actions of our government, where in the Constitution does it authorize the people you elect to do each and every thing they promise to do?

Again, I’ll wait while you research that.

If the Constitution does not authorize the government to do all these things, then who loses the right to complain; those who choose not to vote for criminals, or those whose votes put those criminals into office? Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for these criminals, you did!

For some reason the people in this country have this irrational fear of the government shutting down permanently; as if their lives depended upon the continued existence of government. Me, I’d throw a party or dance a naked jig if government ever shut down for good. If your sanity depends upon the fact that government stays in control over your lives, then there is something wrong with you. Seriously, if the thought that government might shut down terrifies you, then you are mentally unstable.

The only thing government does for me is steal from me. It steals my income to pay for things I disbelieve in and it steals my freedom in the form of laws designed to keep me safe and secure. I don’t need government for a damned thing, and if it suddenly sunk to the bottom of the Earth like the lost continent of Atlantis, I would be the happiest man on the planet. If only the same thing would happen simultaneously to those idiots in Sacramento I think I would burst forth in song…and I can’t sing worth a damn!

But it all boils down to an almost epidemic scale of ignorance and apathy; people simply don’t know, or care about the truth; they are content to go on believing the lies they have been taught or to totally ignore what’s happening in this country to their freedom. Football, video games and Reality TV is of much greater importance than knowledge and the truth. And unless that changes nothing else will; we will remain slaves to an ungrateful master.

Knowledge will tell us that we are slaves, but it is courage that will free us. One without the other is useless; they must be combined together to halt the progression towards absolute despotism in America.

But as Franklin wrote upon the final day of deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, “…I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”

Well, we have become corrupted, corrupted in principles and in our actions. And you think that by continuing with more of the same we’re gonna make America great again? You must be delusional.

Oh, if you’re interested, here is the URL for that Census Bureau website I spoke of: Census Clock

In 1994 California lawmakers enacted the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act. Under the California Penal Code, Section 32310, a ban was imposed upon firearms magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Under this law it was illegal to manufacture, sell, give away, store, or own what they call, a high capacity magazine.

In March U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez issued an injunction against the enforcement of the ban on high capacity magazines. What this means is that it then became legal to purchase and own magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds.

Cheers arose from 2nd Amendment supporters as they called this a victory for gun rights. But hold on a second, the story doesn’t end here. The, misnamed I might add, California Department of Justice quickly went to work to prepare an appeal to Judge Benitez’s decision.

The Dept. of Justice sent Judge Benitez a motion asking/telling him to issue a stay upon his own injunction; which basically means changing his position on it. On April 4, 2019 Judge Benitez issued a stay upon his own injunction, stating, “THEREFORE, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Judgment is stayed in part pending final resolution of the appeal from the Judgment. The permanent injunction enjoining enforcement of California Penal Code §32310(a) and (b) is hereby stayed, effective 5:00 p.m., Friday, April 5, 2019.

IT IS HEREBY FURTHER ORDERED that the preliminary injunction issued on June 29, 2017, enjoining enforcement of California Penal Code §32310 (c) and (d) shall remain in effect.”

This stay went into effect on 5 p.m. on Friday April 5th; which was yesterday. So now it is once again illegal to own or purchase high capacity magazines in California.

But again, the story doesn’t end here. What has happened is that California lawmakers enacted a law banning these type magazines, then a judge declared that law to be null and void, then the department of justice told him to temporarily rescind his decision while they form an appeal which can then be heard by a higher court. So most likely this will be bumped up to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals; which probably means, since the 9th Circuit is decidedly left leaning, that the law will stay on the books.

It could stop there, or it could get bumped up even higher; meaning the Supreme Court might hear the case and render a final decision on it. That all depends upon whether those opposing the ban wish to push the issue, and it also depends upon whether the SCOTUS chooses to hear the case. They could very well let the 9th Circuit’s ruling stand and choose not to go anywhere near this emotional issue.

But, for the time being, (and I need to make this absolutely clear), IT IS ILLEGAL TO PURCHASE OR OWN HIGH CAPACITY MAGAZINES IN CALIFORNIA. So, if you had been planning on making a trip to Cabelas in Reno to grab as many high capacity magazines as you can afford, know that if you do buy them and cross back into California, YOU WILL BE GUILTY OF COMMITTING A CRIME.

Right now the outcome of this case is out of our hands entirely; being in the hands of judges and lawyers, with case briefs being prepared and motions being issued until it reaches its final conclusion and we learn whether or not we will be able to purchase and own these type magazines.

I began researching this today when I woke up because last night at work I overheard people saying they were planning on making a trip to Reno, or having someone go there for them, for the sole purpose of purchasing high capacity magazines for their rifles. I had mentioned that as far as I knew the ban on them had been repealed by a judge, but after researching it I found that the same judge who issued that injunction against the enforcement of that ban had reversed his opinion; and I wanted to make people aware of the current status of that law.

But this does lead me to another issue; that being the power of judges to decide what the law shall be, or more specifically, what the law means. The role of a judge is to uphold order in their court and who explains to the jurors the meaning and intent of the law they are about to decide the innocence or guilt of a defendant upon. One of the key characteristics of a judge is that they be impartial; meaning they should not take political sides or be biased by popular public sentiments.

Chief Justice Warren Burger said pretty much the same thing in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor back in 1987, “Judges … rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times.”

If that be the case, and if the law remains unchanged, then why is it that people fear a left or right leaning Supreme Court in cases like Roe v. Wade; where a right leaning SCOTUS might overturn the decision handed down by a previous SCOTUS?

If the law remains unchanged, and if it means now what it means when it was enacted, then how can one set of Justices overturn a decision handed down by a previous set of Justices? That implies that one set of Justices were wrong in their understanding of the law; the question is; which set of Justices are we to believe was wrong? Were the Justices who handed down the original decision wrong, or are the Justices who overturn that decision wrong?

Are you aware that the SCOTUS has overturned its own rulings more than 200 times; 236 to be exact. What that means is that in 236 cases, one set of Justices got it wrong; the question is, which set of Justices does that statement apply to? More importantly, why would one set of Justices overturn a decision handed down by a previous session of the SCOTUS unless it was because the beliefs and ideologies of the individual Justices are biased and subject to the pressures of whatever is considered politically correct?

If the law is the law, if it remains unchanging throughout time, then the SCOTUS should have no reason to overturn any decision handed down by a previous session of the Court. So why have they done it 236 times?

I don’t know about you, but that sure doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me as to their understanding of the law; especially when the laws they are deciding cases upon pertain to my ability to fully exercise my rights.

Years ago I wrote a lengthy article explaining how and why I felt that any gun law was a violation of my right to keep and bear arms. I made dozens of copies; sending them to each member of the SCOTUS, to the President, my elected representatives in Congress, to the then Governor of California, to the State Attorney General. Each of those letters contained a plea for them to provide their justification for upholding and enforcing these laws that restrict my right to keep and bear arms.

Out of all those letters I got but one response; from Justice Stephen Breyer. To paraphrase his words he said something along the lines of, “I read your interesting letter, and here are the current Court decisions on the 2nd Amendment.” Basically he was telling me that they were god, and that I should not consider myself to be qualified to question their decisions on such complicated issues like my right to keep and bear arms. In other words, he was saying, “Fuck off you peon! Let the judges handle these important issues.”

Gee, I wonder, would Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams have just let some judge tell them to fuck off, let the judges handle the important decision of how much liberty they would be allowed to enjoy?

What they did was quite the opposite, they told those in power to fuck off, that they alone were capable of understanding and determining how much liberty they should enjoy; and they had the courage to, as the old saying goes, put their money where their mouths were.
This idea that some clowns dressed in black robes should have the ultimate authority to determine the meaning and legality of the law itself was something Thomas Jefferson feared in our system of government.

In a letter to the wife of John Adams, Jefferson wrote, “BUT THE OPINION which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive also, in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch.”

Then, in a letter to Judge Spencer Roane, Jefferson wrote, “If [as the Federalists say] “the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government,” … , then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de so. … The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they may please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass.”

I don’t need a judge to explain the law to me thank you very much. I am fully capable of reading the law, of comparing that law with the Bill of Rights or the specific powers granted government by the Constitution, and determining for myself whether that law serves justice of if it denies justice.

That is the sole reason why Jefferson also felt so strongly about the right to trial by jury; for it provides a moral check against the usurpation of unlawful powers and any infringement upon our liberties. All it takes is one well-informed juror to prevent injustice by voting not guilty when the juror feels that the law itself is unjust, or a violation of a person’s individual rights.

I don’t need a judge or a gaggle of lawyers to decide what the 2nd Amendment means; it means that my right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. No judge, no lawmaker can tell me what kinds of guns the 2nd Amendment applies to, the capacity of the magazine, or if I should be required to obtain a permit or pay a fee to carry one on my person for my own personal defense.

That’s what the 2nd Amendment means to me, and I’ m growing increasingly angry over both my lawmaker’s, and the public in general, for trying to limit or restrict that right.

People ask me all the time how many guns I own, as if my answer will determine whether or not they should be my friend, or afraid of me. You want to know how I answer; I say, “Not enough.” That’s my standard answer and when I’m asked to expound upon it, especially when it is a woman asking, I ask her how many purses or pairs of shoes she has. If she says, what’s that got to do with how many guns you own, I say, EVERYTHING, for if you have the right to own more than one pair of shoes, or one purse, then I have a right to own as many guns as I want, and it’s none of your damned business how many I own!

That sentiment applies just as equally to the government, it’s none of their damned business how many guns I own, or what type guns I own. If they fear me having guns then it must mean that they are doing something they shouldn’t be doing; for if they were doing the job they were established to do they wouldn’t have anything to fear from people like me.

You gun grabbing nutcases have absolutely no idea how dangerous the idea is of disarming the entire public; as if that were even remotely possible. The only thing preventing our government from going full blown tyranny on your ass is the fact that there are a lot, and I mean A LOT of guns out here that would quickly be pointed at their heads if they did.

Like it or not, we are the watchdogs for your liberty just as much as we are for our own liberty, and if we have our teeth pulled, then who will be there to protect and defend your rights; the cops? If you believe that, you deserve to have your rights taken from you. The cops are gonna follow orders like they always do; they will enforce whatever laws they are told to enforce, and if you don’t believe that you’re more naive than I thought you were.

As much as I despise Joseph Story for aligning himself with the proponents of a strong central government and a loose interpretation of the restrictions imposed upon it, he did get one thing right. In his Commentaries on the Constitution Story writes, “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”

And if that isn’t perfectly clear as to its meaning, then I give you this from Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Smith, “And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms….The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

You people need to stop bowing down to tyrants, while at the same time begging for those tyrants to take away your only means of defending your liberty. If we’re not already there, we’re awful close to what Patrick Henry warned would happen if they adopted the system of government outlined by the Constitution, “The Honorable Gentleman who presides, told us, that to prevent abuses in our Government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. Oh, Sir, we should have fine times indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people. Your arms wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical; no longer democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? ”

I’m sorry if my patriotic leanings make you uncomfortable, but at the same time I don’t really care if they do. I refuse to bow down to tyrants, and I damn sure won’t support any measure that limits or restricts my ability to defend my person, my property, and my liberty; and that’s what all these ridiculous gun control laws do.

If you want to bow down and live as slaves, so be it; you have my blessing. Just don’t ask me to join you, and don’t ask me to come rescue your ass when the chains of servitude become unbearable; you made your cake, NOW EAT IT AND SHUT THE HELL UP!

Who controls the past controls the future. Who
controls the present controls the past.
~George Orwell~
(1984)

I wonder how many of you reading this grasp the significance of the quote at the top of the page from Orwell’s book 1984. I could probably try to explain that, but I’d more than likely mangle it, or make you even more confused. Instead I’ll just offer up another quote, this time from the New Liberty dvd, Warriors of Honor, “A nation that is ignorant of its past is a nation that is ripe for deception and manipulation. Therefore, it is not what happened, but what people believe happened that determines the present actions of a nation.”

So, is Orwell’s quote beginning to make sense now? If you don’t know the past, or if all you know is what you have been taught/told, then every decision you make, every belief you hold, may be based upon incomplete or factually inaccurate teachings. The reason that is important is because the decisions you make today affect tomorrow; or in other words, the future. And who decides what you are taught/told about the past if it isn’t those living in the present? Hence, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

History is supposed to be the record of past events; those who participated in certain events; the reason those events transpired; and the consequences of the final outcome of those events. Therefore, historians, as journalists recording events for future study, should attempt to be as unbiased as they possibly can. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen – in fact, it is rare that you find a fact based history of any event unless you go directly to the source documents from the time frame that event occurred. But the moment you open a book written by someone other than the participants of an event you are opening yourself up to the personal biases and prejudices of the author; and I’m no exception as far as that goes.

I have never asked, in fact I earnestly hope that people will not trust me at my word; that they will verify that the information I provide them with is accurate and truthful. It is only through a careful study of the source documents from whence I derive my quotes that one can hope to truly understand the context and meaning of them.

If you’ll permit me to provide an example of how historians can, and do, manipulate the truth to fit their own personal biases, I think you’ll more fully understand why a study of history is so vitally important.

The years between around 1765 to 1783 were known as the Revolutionary War period; the time when the Colonists began resisting the authority of the British Government, and culminating in their achieving independence. For the most part, people today view those who participated in those events as patriots and American heroes. Yet I’d be willing to bet that if I asked you to name 5 of the men who were on the side of the patriot cause, you probably could not do it. If I upped that number up to 10 the number of people who could provide me with a list of names would drop dramatically. Yet were I to ask you to name 10 actors, or the quarterbacks of 10 professional football teams you would probably be able to do so without having to give it much thought at all.

Why is that? Why is the remembering of people whose actions are of little to no consequence in the grand scheme of things so much easier than the learning of the names of those who established America as an independent nation? I can almost hear your thoughts now, “But Neal, those guys died a long time ago, why should I bother remembering their names?” True, they have been dead for a very long time, but the things they fought for, the principles they believed in are what this country was founded upon, and if you don’t know what those principles are then how are you to be effective in carrying on their legacy?

That being said, I am guessing that most people in this country view the Patriots who fought for independence in a favorable light. Events such as the Boston Tea Party and the standoff at Lexington and Concord are discussed with an almost awed sense of reverence and respect for those who participated in them. Yet how many would be able to tell me WHY the patriots of that era did what they did? Why did they resist the authority of their government and risk being jailed, or killed?

Oh but Neal, that’s easy; they did it for independence. Did they? So you’re telling me that, on December 16, 1773, those who rowed out to the ships containing all that tea were thinking, “If we dump all those crates of tea into the water we’re helping America gain her independence.” Funny, the Colonies weren’t yet united on the idea of severing all ties to Great Britain, and wouldn’t unite on that for another 3 years. In fact, even after the Declaration of Independence was voted upon and signed there were those who actively opposed the rebels and fought alongside the British so that the Crown could maintain its control over the Colonies. So to say that the Colonies were united in their opposition to the authority of King George and Parliament is a huge leap; a stretch of the imagination, a distortion of the truth.

So again, getting back to my question, why would those who participated in those events risk their necks, both literally and figuratively, to resist the authority of their government? The answer should come to you quite readily, and if it doesn’t it speaks volumes about your understanding of the entire period known as the American Revolution – they did so to preserve their liberty.

Those who participated in those events; those who wrote all those pamphlets and flyers, knew that if do not resist the first instance of your governments attempt to restrict or limit the exercise of any of your rights, you open the doorway for government to enact laws that restrict ALL OF YOUR RIGHTS.

Maybe now the following words will make a bit more sense, “It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties–we hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.” (Source: A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, James Madison, 1785)

That is why they did what they did; they knew that if they just sat back and hoped that their government would come to its senses and restore their liberty, then they would only suffer more violations of it. Sure, they petitioned their government, begging the King to respect their rights; but they also took matters into their own hands by acts of civil disobedience; acts we would condemn as crimes against society and authority in 2019. Yet they are heroes and those who commit the same type acts today are called criminals. Explain that to me if you can.

My thoughts and beliefs regarding the American Revolution may differ from yours, but I believe the American Revolution can be summed up as follows: The American Revolution took place because a segment of the people, who both knew what liberty was, and who cherished it above all else, realized that they would obtain no justice from their government; therefore they rose up and shook off the shackles of a government that had proven it had no respect for their rights as freemen.

It wasn’t about taxation, at least not per se; it was about the idea that they could be taxed without their consent. It was about the unjust exercise of power and authority to limit and restrict their ability to govern themselves as they saw fit. Hell, they would have fought equally hard for independence had King George issued a decree that they paint the entire city of Boston pink; it was the principle that mattered, not the substance of the laws which restricted their liberty.

Now fast forward almost a century later and we find the exact same situation in which a government is enacting laws and taxes which restrict the liberty and plunder the wealth of one segment of a country to benefit the needs and beliefs of another. Once again it was not the laws or the taxes which upset the imposed upon segment of America; it was the idea that government was an agent that sought to oppress and subjugate them that mattered.

For years, nearly 30 to be exact, they had worked within the system to put an end to this oppression, only to see their efforts fail to provide relief from this oppression. Therefore, as political entities who had given their consent to the document which created their system of government, they felt, (and rightfully so), that it was their right to revoke their consent to being governed by tyrants and resume their status as free and independent States. And once again, those who sought dominion over them, as did King George, used force to compel their obedience and loyalty to its authority.

And yes, I’m talking about the misnamed Civil War; misnamed because it was, in fact, America’s Second War for Independence. However, this time the tyrants won the conflict, and history is almost always written by the victors.

In 1864 Major General Patrick Cleburne, of the Confederate Army, wrote on that very subject, “Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision… It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”

If you even mention the Civil War, BOOM, the first thing that pops into people’s minds is slavery. Yes, slavery was an issue, but it was not the cause of the war anymore than the taxes on sugar or tea were the cause of the American Revolution. The cause of the Civil War was the same cause the patriots of 1776 fought for, to free themselves from a government that sought to limit their liberty and oppress them. On the one side you had those fighting for liberty and on the other side you had those fighting to preserve a government’s control over them. That’s all the Civil War was about; not slavery, not tariffs, not anything else – it was about liberty versus bondage and servitude to a system of government.

Liberty was born in America during the period leading up to the American Revolution; it was mortally wounded when those who had obtained that liberty chose to adopt the proposed Constitution, and if breathed its last dying gasp when Lee surrendered at Appomattox in 1865. America may still exist as a nation, but as a nation based upon the principle of liberty for all it is but an empty shell; a ghost of its former self.

People today don’t know what liberty is, they don’t care what it is, and they damned sure don’t have the courage or inclination to fight a government that has destroyed it. I hear people all the time talk about how the Bill of Rights protects this right or that right. How exactly does a piece of parchment with words written upon it protect anything; let alone your most sacred rights?

What protects those rights is your willingness to resist any efforts to limit or restrict them; and I haven’t seen a whole lot of resistance on the part of the American people. In fact, I often see people applauding and supporting measures that do the opposite, further deprive them of their liberty.

In 1944 Judge Billings Learned Hand delivered a speech in which he said, “What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.”

Does liberty lie in your heart, or does obedience to authority, no matter how unjust it is, rest there? If you love liberty as much as I do, why the hell do you support candidates who actively seek to restrict it? If you love liberty as much as I do why do you continue to support a system of government whose sole purpose appears to be the complete and utter destruction of that liberty?

Do you honestly believe that voting is going to restore the liberty you have lost? If that were true, then why haven’t those you have voted for abolished the NSA, the DEA, the BATF, the Bureau of Land Management, the EPA, and all the other agencies who serve to enforce laws that restrict that liberty?

The government we have today serves but three purposes. First it seeks to take from one segment of society and give to others; the only difference being who is on the receiving end of the goods stolen from the oppressed. The next purpose is power and control over the populace with the only difference being who gets to wield that power play god over us peasants. The final purpose of government is to preserve its own existence. As Lysander Spooner said, “A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.” Or, as von Goethe said, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

We tell ourselves that our brave soldiers are off in foreign lands fighting for our freedoms, when at home the government they serve enacts law after law that deny us the freedom they are supposedly fighting to defend. Honestly, if our soldiers were truly defending freedom they would be taking the battle to the halls of Congress, the Oval Office, and all the alphabet soup agencies that impose this tyranny upon us.

The first step in restoring liberty in America must be recognizing that it no longer exists. It is not hoping that we can return to a constitutional form of government, for it is my sincere belief that the constitution was intentionally written in such a manner as to ensure that we would end up with the very government we have today; a elective aristocracy which rules over the peasant class who work to support them.

Those who truly love liberty pose a threat to those who seek to maintain the charade that liberty is alive in well in America. They will use any tactic to prevent the light from being shined upon their lies, their deception, their corruption. Those who speak the loudest about liberty are called radicals and extremists; often going so far as to call their words treason or sedition. Yet, as Patrick Henry said, “If this be treason…make the most of it.” He was not afraid of what others thought of him, his only concern was for securing and maintaining liberty in America.

Writing as the Anti-Federalist Centinel, Samuel Bryan states, “All who are friends to liberty are friends to reason, the champion of liberty, and none are foes to liberty but those who have truth and reason for their foes. He who has dark purposes to serve, must use dark means: light would discover him, and reason expose him: he must endeavor to shut out both, and make them look frightful by giving them ill names.

Liberty only flourishes where reason and knowledge are encouraged; and wherever the latter are stifled, the former is extinguished.”

That is why open and honest political debate is stifled in America; instead political arguments are the norm; based upon whatever emotionally based positions the participants hold. A person with a truckload of facts supporting their position will be ineffective in swaying the minds of people who are unwilling to deal solely in facts and evidence. A person trying to convince people such as that may as well be bringing water balloons to a gunfight for the effectiveness they will have.

And where will you find these facts, this evidence if not through a careful study of the past. You damned sure aren’t going to get the truth from those who seek to keep you enslaved; nor from their lackeys in the news media whose job is to keep us fighting or partisan issues rather than providing us with the truth.

If you want the truth then you’re going to have to start researching it on your own, just as I did. I can help guide you, but YOU have to take the first step; to use the analogy of the Matrix, you must choose either the red or the blue pill.

I can almost forgive those whose beliefs are based upon the lies and deception they were subjected to in the public indoctrination centers known as public schools…ALMOST. What I cannot forgive is a people who care more about being entertained than they do the things their government is doing to make slaves of them. How anyone can think that being entertained is more important than being free is beyond my ability to comprehend.

But then again the Romans were given bread and circuses to keep their minds focused on entertainment rather than the pitiful state of their existence; so nothing is new in that regard. It is just that people fall for it time and time again that upsets me.

Knowledge and truth are the cornerstones of liberty, and since most of the people I encounter on a daily basis seem to have no desire for either, I have decided that I am going to take a hiatus from writing these commentaries to further my own pursuit for knowledge. I have a ton of bookmarked websites with tons of source documents that are just waiting for me to download them and save them as Word files. So, for the time being, I intend to focus my attention to where it is most productive, after all, it would take a fleet of bulldozers to pull most people’s heads out of the sand; and I have lost both the will and desire to fight that battle at this point in time.

So without further ado, I bid thee farewell…at least until someone says or does something so utterly stupid that I am forced to respond….

I love the process of writing; I truly do. I love sitting down in front of a blank computer screen and taking seemingly unconnected ideas and weaving them together in a manner that seems both logical, and easy to read. I’m not sure how successful I am in my efforts, unless I get a lot of positive feedback, but I do enjoy the effort.

But sometimes I sit here and wonder, why me? What I mean by that is why was I chosen to bear this awful responsibility to see beyond the lies and deceptions, and then share that knowledge with a people who, quite honestly, could care less about what I have to say? Why me?

I’m just an average guy, no better and no worse than anyone else, so why did God give me the ability to see through the lies, the propaganda, the utter bullshit that spews from the lips of so many, and both see, and have the courage to accept, the truth. Did I win a raffle up in heaven or something, or was this my destiny all along; to be one who was chosen to spread the truth to an ungrateful and unappreciative people?

I often feel as Moses must have when the Lord chose him to lead His people out of bondage; when Moses cried about his own inadequacy. Or possibly it is more like the prophet Isaiah who was chosen to spread the Lords word, but then told that the people would be unreceptive; that he wasn’t speaking to everyone, only a remnant; and that he might never know whom his words touched.

Now in no way am I comparing myself to those men who did the Lord’s work, I’m only saying I somehow relate to how they must have felt when they were given that awesome responsibility.

What confounds me beyond my ability to describe is how so few people in this country care about the fact that their liberty is slowly, but surely, being stripped away from them by the very entity their ancestors established to safeguard and protect that liberty – their government. It seems that all people care about is what that government can do to make their lives safer, more comfortable, and more secure than they do the animating contest for liberty.

I think we ought to rename the two political parties; calling them the Gimme Party, and the Gimme More Than The Other Guy Party; for candidates from both parties offer up promises to do things for them; everything except the one thing they are supposed to do – defend and protect the liberty of those they represent.

I truly fear for my country and what is in store for it if the people do not see that their blind obedience and acceptance of government, no matter what that government does, is the law, and that they must obey it.

Our country was established as an independent nation of 13 distinct sovereign and independent States by men who were far more intelligent, and for the most part, God-fearing than any this country has produced in the past 150 years. We, as Americans, have forsaken the very principles this country was founded upon and our own personal greed and slothfulness has led us to become dependent upon government for all manner of things at the cost of our own personal freedom.

Our Founders would be both saddened and disgusted with us.

In 1785 James Madison wrote of the character of those who resisted the tyranny of King George III, saying, “The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.”

How much usurpation of undelegated power are we going to tolerate before we exhibit even the slightest amount of disdain and concern? How much of our freedom are we going to allow government to deprive us of before we decide it’s time for a little civil disobedience?

Patrick Henry, at least in my honest opinion, was the absolute loudest voice in defense of liberty this country has ever seen. Sure, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson have their rightful places as proponents of liberty, but in my mind they fall short of the steadfast devotion to liberty exhibited by Patrick Henry.

Most people are totally unaware that Patrick Henry vehemently opposed the proposed Constitution presented by the delegates of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. On June 5, 1788 Mr. Henry arose and delivered an all day long speech, all from his heart, listing but some of his complaints against this proposed system of government. One of my favorite passages from that speech goes as follows, “Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings-give us that precious jewel, and you may take every thing else: But I am fearful I have lived long enough to become an fellow: Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man, may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old fashioned: If so, I am contented to be so: I say, the time has been when every pore of my heart beat for American liberty, and which, I believe, had a counterpart in the breast of every true American.”

I relate to that because I too feel that I am sometimes alone in caring that my government has stolen the precious jewel of liberty from me; often with the support and applause of the people of this country. While I know that I am not alone in my concern, it sometimes feels like it seeing as how I’m stuck behind enemy lines in California where ignorance, apathy, and the preponderance for socialism run rampant.

Few people, at least few that I know, have the desire or inclination to spend a few minutes, let alone hours, every day reading the writings of those who fought for America’s independence, or those who argued both for and against the ratification of our constitution. God forbid I ask that they turn off their TV’s, their iPhones, their personal computers and pick up a book that might teach them something; that’s simply too much to ask of people these enlightened days. No, the people want their news and information spoon fed to them in easily digestible 30 second sound bites and bullet statements; they don’t have the time, nor the education, to make heads or tails out of the lengthy writings of Jefferson and Locke; not to hundreds of pages of the debates of the various State Ratifying Assemblies.

Yet people have the unmitigated gall, the audacity to say that they are informed voters, that they know and understand their system of government, and are making wise choices when going to the polls to cast their votes. I have been studying these subjects for nearly 20 years now and I’ve barely scratched the surface; I continue to find new things that I was completely unaware of. Yet you, who cannot even explain to me what each article of the constitution says, think you’re informed. Give me a break, would you?

In 1823 Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William Johnson, wrote, “On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”

We, as Americans living in 2019, have strayed so far from the spirit of those debates that, for one to even mention how those participating in them felt, is as if we are speaking in a foreign language; the people are simply incapable of wrapping their heads around complicated thoughts such as the difference between a federal and a national system of government, or how the constitution consolidated the States under a supreme federal head; thereby laying the groundwork for their eventual dissolution as sovereign political entities.

I’m not going to lie, it took me a very long time for me to be able to wrap my head around the things I was reading; but I stuck it out by reading, re-reading, and re-reading those things until they began to make sense to me. Something inside drove me to do this; it was as if my mind was being controlled by a higher power and I was unable to resist its influence. I would much rather have gone fishing, or glued my butt to a couch and watched mindless drivel on the TV, but something told me this is more important; the preservation of your liberty is more important than being entertained.

That is why I truly believe that I was chosen for this task; that it is my calling and my purpose here on Earth. Now that I’ve been doing it for two decades I find that I enjoy it; but it sure took me a long time to reach that point. I enjoy finding little snippets of information that change how I felt about a subject, or prove that something I was taught in school was a lie. It makes my day when I learn something new; it gives my life meaning and purpose to seek out the truth.

Now whether or not I’m effective in sharing what I have learned with others is another story altogether. I never know who reads my rants unless I get an e-mail or a comment on Facebook about them. All I know is that I feel that I MUST keep writing whether I’m read by one, or read by millions of people.

Deep down I know that the true problem in this country is not a problem with government or political parties, it is a spiritual and moral problem; we have forsaken what it means to be God-fearing people and we are suffering the consequences for our inequities.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

The Bible gives us the solution, if we would just listen, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

But we have kicked God out of our lives, out of our schools and out of our hearts. Many profess to be God-fearing, but then they support measures that violate the right to life itself; abortion, or deprive others of God’s gift of liberty to all men.

Our pastors and priests tell us that we must obey the laws our government enacts, but the pastors of America in 1776 often delivered fiery sermons calling upon the congregation to oppose the actions of the government of Great Britain; I can provide you with a few of them if you don’t believe me. Known as the Black Robed Brigade, these men of God spoke about liberty and our duty to resist it with all our being. Quite unlike the pastors who preach today and teach their congregation to submit to government; just to protect their precious tax exempt status.

I have been told that I often tread on dangerous ground, that the things I write and say might be considered sedition, or treason even. Gee whiz, I wonder what Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry would say about such cowardice; about how people are so afraid that their government might not like what they were saying about their crimes against the people they are supposed to be representing?

Had our Founders exhibited such cowardice they would have turned in their guns on April 19, 1775 instead of standing there armed to the teeth ready to resist their governments attempts to confiscate those arms. Had our Founders exhibited the cowardice and submissive attitude most people today call patriotism, we would still be eating fish n chips and singing God Save the Queen.

I’m sorry if this comes across as sounding angry and hostile, but the fact is that I am angry. No, I’m downright pissed off that people refuse to accept the truth when there are mounds of evidence backing it up. I’m pissed off because people accept that it is okay to violate my rights if the public good is somehow served by it. I’m pissed off that upwards of 40% of my earnings are stolen from me, to be spent upon things I know are unconstitutional. I’m pissed off that probably 99% of the people don’t care; that they would rather sit in the comfort of their homes playing video games, watching mindless drivel on their TV’s while their government runs rampant over their freedom.

You’re damned right I’m angry, and I’m gonna stay angry until people start pulling their heads out of their ass in record numbers and stop supporting tyrants, criminals and political prostitutes who sell their souls to corporate and special interests at the cost of my freedom.

You say, that’s not very Christian of you Neal. Well, I suppose maybe you may be right. But then again Christ Himself became a little bit upset, overturning the tables of the money changers, when He saw how they had polluted His Father’s house. So I think I’m entitled to a bit of anger; after all I’m only human.

But I do have to tell you, the load often feels too much of a burden for a mere mortal such as myself. I do believe that there is a higher power directing and guiding me; for far too often when I am confounded, lacking in inspiration, or simply feeling overwhelmed, out of the blue someone will say something that lifts my spirits or inspires me to try harder.

I don’t believe this is consequence, I believe it is providence. And since I was feeling somewhat down today, I find it uplifting that someone else posted something, the words of which hit me in what can only be described as a physical blow.

I will close by sharing what my friend Michaele Walker posted on Facebook this morning:

I drop my sword and cry for just awhile. Cause deep inside this armour the warrior is just a child.

I too find myself crying, not externally, but internally. I cry for just a little bit of common sense, I cry for a little bit of love for liberty, and a little bit of courage to come back into the hearts and minds of the people of this country. I weep inside when I see what is happening, and how people simply don’t seem to care. But I know that is part of the burden I have been saddled with. I also know that if I remain true to the cause I will be rewarded; either in this life or the one thereafter.

For as Thomas Paine said, “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

I think the measure of how free you believe yourself to be is directly proportional to the degree you feel you must support and defend the ‘need’ for government. Those who feel we MUST have government, and allow it to pass all these laws to keep us safe from each other, and our own stupidity, are among the most un-free people on the planet. On the other hand, those who would rather that government just step back and stay the hell out of their lives, and their wallets, are, at least, in spirit the freest people you’ll find in America.

I can’t recall where exactly I saw this, I’m thinking it was in the original Robocop film, but there was a scene in a movie where the bad guy was talking to someone and he said something along the lines of this: That’s genius. First you create a need for something, then you ensure that you’re the only one who can satisfy that need; thereby ensuring a perpetual demand for the services you provide. That, my friends, is the modus operandi of government; that right there.

I hear people talk about freedom from time to time and the things they say during their conversations leave me shaking my head in utter disbelief. For instance, people will say that they should be free to own whatever type guns they want, then they turn around and support laws telling people they cannot put this substance or that substance into their own bodies. So you think you can own a fully automatic rifle, but I can’t smoke a naturally occurring plant, or eat a naturally occurring mushroom like psilocybin.

I guess their idea of freedom is that they can do whatever they want, but when someone else does something they don’t like, then it is time for good old Uncle Sam to step in and criminalize that action; it makes perfect sense to me. (And that was sarcasm by the way)

Freedom; and I mean real freedom can be summed up in one simple concept: You don’t try to tell me how to live my life and I won’t tell you how you must live yours. So long as you don’t harm me, or take from me what is rightfully mine, you are free to do whatever the hell you want. But if you try to take from me something that isn’t yours to take, then you have violated my freedom and we’re gonna have issues. But people fear that which they don’t understand; and they don’t understand what real freedom is…so it scares the hell out of them when they see it.

I had started writing this a week or so ago and shelved it for lack of inspiration. Then this morning as I checked my updates on Facebook I ran across a scene from the film Easy Rider my friend Danielle Mottale posted about this exact subject. Known as the campfire scene, the transcript is as follows; and forgive any misquotes on my part:

George: You know, this used to be a hell of a good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it.

Billy: Man, everybody got chicken, that’s what happened here. We can’t even get into like a second rate hotel, I mean a second rate motel…you dig? They think we’re gonna cut their throat or something; they’re scared man.

George: Oh they’re not scared of you; they scared of what you represent to them.

Billy: Hey man, all we represent to them is somebody who needs haircuts.

George: No, what you represent to them is freedom.

Billy: What the hell’s wrong with freedom; that’s what it’s all about?

George: Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s what it’s all about. But talking about it and being it, that’s two different things. I mean it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold on the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, cause then they’ll get real busy killing and maiming to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they gonna talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual and it’s gonna scare em.

Billy: Well it don’t make them running scared.

George: No, it makes them dangerous.

I was young when I first saw Easy Rider, so the scene didn’t particularly affect me in any way. I do think, however, that it planted a seed in the back of my mind that has since grown into a fuller understanding of what the actors were trying to say; that real freedom scares the bejeezus out of people; and that they will work tireless to subjugate and subdue anyone who exhibits it.

Which leads me to another scene from another movie; this time it is the film The Matrix when Morpheus is trying to explain to Neo the nature of the Matrix. Morpheus tells Neo, “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

Why do you think, and this is directed at both liberals and conservatives, that you support a system which denies you your most basic human rights? Why do you continue to vote when the facts prove that the system itself keeps getting bigger, stronger, and your rights continue to diminish? How well has voting returned to you the rights that you have lost?

Those are questions you simply cannot get the average person to even consider; let alone act upon. For, if a person was to give those questions any thought the answers would shake their entire belief system to its core; and that also scares the hell out of people. But as John Adams said in his defense of the British soldiers accused or murder in the Boston Massacre, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

People today fear the truth; they fear being offended or having to question their beliefs; they fear being free; for being free means that they alone are responsible for every aspect of their lives. When you allow government to capitalize on that fear you create a nation of people who rely upon government; thereby turning once free men into slaves dependent upon government for a wide range of services that government was NEVER supposed to serve.

In America today the people live in an almost perpetual state of fear that is thinly hidden behind the veil of their day to day activities. Hell, we’re so scared were afraid of being scared; which I think is the clinical explanation for phobophobia; the fear of fear itself.

Our government knows this; it thrives and grows on it like fat cells grow in response to an overabundance of sugar in your diet. It needs your fear to pass all these Draconian laws which violate your rights and restrict your freedom. The media works hand in hand with government by fanning the flames of your fears; which makes you more easily pliable and willing to accept laws you would never otherwise accept.

I think Rahm Emmanuel explained that best when he said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you could not do before.” You see, sometimes these rulers of ours part the curtain, so to speak, and give us a glimpse into the tactics they are using to enslave us; but we’re either too blind or too stupid to see the truths they have exposed.

If we weren’t so damned afraid of things our government wouldn’t have anything to do. Really! So our government needs the people to remain in a constant state of fear; fear of becoming a victim or losing our homes or jobs, just so they can justify their own existence. And when there are no naturally occurring threats they manufacture them. Oh yeah, I’m absolutely certain that many of these so-called incidents, such as mass shootings, are orchestrated and carried out by people within our government just to instill more fear into the minds of the people so that they keep asking for good ole Uncle Sam to step in and make them safe again.

Why is it that so many people freak out whenever there is a government shutdown? Hmm, have you ever asked yourself that? What is it that they fear if it isn’t the loss of some vital privilege or service that they depend upon? Me, I could care less if government were to sink into the Earth like the lost continent of Atlantis; it wouldn’t bother me one bit. In fact, if it happened I might go out into my front yard buck assed naked and dance a jig in celebration.

I don’t need government, and I damn sure don’t appreciate the fact that others are using it, and its coercive power, to tell me how I must live; while at the same time taking upwards of 40% of my earnings to enforce its policies and ensure that I obey its commands.

That’ to me, is the exact opposite of freedom – yet people still flock to the polls in droves; voting to satisfy their own addiction to the idea of government. And what do they vote for it isn’t the promises being made by these candidates to DO MORE THINGS for those who vote for them. Well I don’t want government to do anything for me. To take the lyrics of Charlie Daniels, “I ain’t asking nobody for nothing if I can’t get it on my own.” That’s freedom, that right there; to be totally and completely self-sufficient and self-reliant.

Eleanor Roosevelt was spot on when she said, “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”

Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, by marriage, Theodore once wrote, “If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.” Now I’m not a huge fan of Teddy Roosevelt; at least not what he did while serving as president, but he sure as hell got that one right.

How many people in this country, whenever they face a personal crisis, (often of their own creation), seek government assistance or handouts until they can get back on their feet again. Often people become addicted to those handouts; refusing to seek out or accept work because it does not pay as well as living off the government dole.

We are told that we’re cruel and heartless because we expect people to work, to provide for their own needs. The Bible tells us, “…that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” I truly think that some people work harder avoiding work than they would if they would just find a job and do it to the best of their abilities. Yet tell these same people that they haven’t EARNED what they are being paid and they become mighty upset and hostile towards you.

You see, we have changed in America; we have become fat, lazy, compliant and addicted to others to provide for us the things it is our responsibility to provide for ourselves. Then, when someone talks about taking those services away they become angry and threatened by those saying these things. Yet the idea that we should be free; meaning free to make our own choices in life, while suffering the consequences of poor choices, is what made America such a great place.

If you are never forced to suffer the consequences of your mistakes; to learn from them, you will never grow and you will become dependent upon those who provide the safety net that ensure you never go without what others have worked for. So instead of forcing you to work to provide for your own needs you think it’s better that you just tax the hell out of others and then turn around and hand it out to those in need. Brilliant; until the number of those on the receiving end outnumber those who are having the fruit of their labors stolen from then. When that tipping point happens the entire charade falls apart and the system collapses. And when that happens government ALWAYS assumes total control of both production and distribution of all goods and services. Once that happens, to question government becomes akin to committing suicide; for if you bite the hand that feeds you, you might as well just kill yourself; for if you don’t, government will.

And that is the path that America is on now because people refuse to be free; because they rely upon government for far too much; because they cannot see that government, not the democrats or the Republicans, but government itself is their enemy. They think that if they could just get enough of ‘their’ people into office things would change for the better. Well how well has that strategy worked out for you so far?

Einstein once defined insanity as repeating the same thing over and over again, each time expecting different results. Well if that’s true, then America has gone insane, and it’s no wonder I often feel like I’m surrounded by imbeciles and nutcases. But nonetheless freedom is too precious a gift to just give up on simply because others don’t want it. So I’ll continue to be here, rattling your cage, hoping that someday you’ll wake out of your ignorance and apathy and join the cause which lead our Founders to resist the tyranny of King George III. They did not submit to tyranny; even though it was far less oppressive in 1776 than it is in 2019. If you consider yourself a true patriot, you should do no less.

“Liberty does not come to those who bow down and obey their
government, it comes when the people have the courage to
rise up and resist the authority of their government.”
~Neal Ross~
(29 March 2019)

The Declaration of Independence says that government derives its authority from the consent of the governed. So what happens if someone does not consent to this form of government; can they simply disregard the laws it passes and refuse to pay the taxes it imposes upon them? If only it was that easy; simply issue a sworn affidavit or declaration that you revoke your consent to this government and then you get to keep ALL your pay and not obey the long list of rules and regulations the government has imposed upon you.

Unfortunately it isn’t that easy. Oh, you could try, and you might even get away with it for awhile, but eventually government would find you, and punish you for your insolent disobedience. You see, government has something we don’t – the power of coercion. Coercion is the power, or ability to persuade an unwilling person to do something against their will by using either force or threats.

If you refuse to file a 1040 the IRS can come after you and seize your assets. If you refuse to surrender them someone with a gun will come and threaten you in an attempt to force your obedience. If you resist them, they can and may shoot you and just take your property.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t call that government by consent.

In 1776 a group of 56 men, speaking on behalf of their Colonial Legislatures, issued and signed a declaration revoking their consent to being governed by the British government. Of course we all know that that resulted in America going to war against its system of government; calling it the American Revolution.

From 1860 to early 1861 a group of 11 Southern States issued formal declarations revoking their consent to being governed by the government established by the constitution in 1789. Once again, their government said that they did not have the authority to do that and this time Americans went to war against other Americans; this time with those seeking independence from a system of government they no longer consented to losing the battle.

The point I’m trying to get you to see is that governments, once established, are unlikely to simply surrender their authority back to those who created them simply because the creators revoke their consent.

In a letter to Edward Carrington, dated May 27, 1788, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” That would seem to support what Thomas Paine said in his pamphlet Common Sense, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”

I think that most people truly believe that America could not survive WITHOUT government; that if only they could get enough of the right people INTO government then things would be good again in this country. Well how well has that belief worked out for you? There have been times over the course of my life when both the Republicans and Democrats have had solid majorities in both Houses of Congress and a President in the Oval Office; yet things don’t seem to be getting any better. Sure, there may be brief periods of peace, or economic prosperity, but if I were to ask you to give me just one example of those you supported restoring any of the liberty government has taken from you, could you do it?

I know you may not want to accept it, but our government was not established to provide economic prosperity and a preponderance of jobs and benefits for the people who inhabit this country. Well it was, but that is not what those who ultimately ratified the constitution were promised would be the function it would serve. In his June 5, 1788 speech railing against the defects in the constitution Patrick Henry told the people what purpose government should serve, “You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your Government.”

Yet every election cycle we see these candidates making promises to do things for the people; make America great, or greater; but never do they mention how they are going to restore any of the liberty government has deprived the people of…and I mean NEVER!

This is not limited to the Democrats, as Republicans are just as guilty of this as they are. James Carville, working as the lead campaign strategist for Bill Clinton, coined the phrase, “It’s the economy stupid” in response to the effects of the policies of then President, George Herbert Walker Bush. Going back a few years, when the GOP darling Ronald Reagan was running against incumbent Jimmy Carter, he asked the American people, “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?”

All these catchy campaign slogans do is make people believe that if they would just vote for the one uttering them that things will miraculously improve in America; when what really happens is that government keeps on growing; keeps on amassing more debt; and keeps on restricting more of your liberty. Yet the people think that if they would just VOTE HARDER they could somehow restore America to the principles it was founded upon; or at least slow the progression from liberty to tyranny.

Well I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t work that way. Government is a cancer and the only way for America to once become a land where liberty is the way of life for all Americans is to excise that cancer and change our lifestyles and beliefs so that liberty can once again flourish. Voting won’t accomplish that, as all that does is put into power men/women who seek power and authority over us, or those who are easily corrupted by a system that corrupts almost everything it touches.

For far too many people, government has become a tool of coercion they can use to impose their beliefs upon those who do not consent to those beliefs. I don’t care if it is the liberal left who want to impose a Utopian socialist dream world upon the people of this country, or if it is the Religious Right who want government to legislate morality, the end result is the same; a tyrannical government that enforces the will of others upon another segment of society that disagrees with those beliefs.

If it is a crime for me to steal from you, or kill you, I cannot simply hire someone else to do those things for me and escape the fact that doing so is depriving you of your right to enjoy life or the full exercise of your property. If government was established to secure liberty to all the inhabitants of this country, then why do all these groups with their own agendas, seek to use the coercive power of government to FORCE others to comply with their wishes; and all the while calling America a free country? Anytime someone is forced to do something they disagree with, that person IS NOT FREE!!!

Thomas Jefferson once defined rightful liberty as, “…unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” You cannot claim to love liberty when you seek to enslave others, or force them to adhere to and accept your personal beliefs as their own. If you truly loved liberty you would fight to your last dying breath the right of others to disagree with you.

People mistakenly believe that simply because some elected legislatures hand down some law that they must obey it as if it were handed down by God Himself; even when that law violates or restricts a person’s unalienable rights. You see, Jefferson continued his comment on liberty by saying, “I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’; because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”

Now you may have skipped over that without truly giving it much thought, so let me explain something to you. We are not a democracy where the will of the majority is binding upon the minority. We were supposed to be a nation of law, with the constitution binding our government to certain specific powers; while at the same time, due to certain amendments being attached to that constitution, securing certain rights to the people.

Those rights are not subject to the will of a majority, to a vote, to their interpretation by our lawmakers – they are inherent and unalienable; meaning they are a part of our being as much as are our eyes, our ears and our nose; and we CANNOT surrender or relinquish them. Sure, they can be violated, or we can choose not to exercise them, but that does not mean those rights go away; all it means is that we lack the courage to fight to preserve them. And when we vote for candidates who either actively seek to limit or restrict them, or support the programs and policies that do restrict and limit them, we are no less tyrants than are those who actually write the laws that restrict our rights.

My right to free speech, to keep and bear the arms of my choosing, to be free from unlawful searches, seizures and monitoring of my private conversations are not subject to a vote, to public approval, or the will of a benevolent government that is promising to make America a safe place for all to live.

As the Supreme Court held in U.S. v Robel, “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of the liberties … which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.” On the same note, it is no less ironic that people believe that to make America great we must subvert the rights our Founders fought to secure for themselves and their posterity.

How many rules, regulations and laws can you count that tell you what you can and cannot do; all with the power of men with guns behind them to enforce them? We are indoctrinated to believe that since government puts something down onto a piece of paper, it is holy writ and we MUST obey or be punished. But for a crime to exist someone’s life, property, or rights MUST have been threatened or violated.

You cannot restrict a person’s freedom of speech simply because what the person is saying offends you, or makes you uncomfortable. You cannot restrict their freedom of speech simply because you are unprepared to support your position on an issue with facts and evidence. But apparently people in this country seem to believe otherwise; as freedom of speech is under attack; with people like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook imposing an ever increasing litany of things that can have people’s Facebook posts blocked and their ability to speak freely suspended. While I fully understand that it is his platform, and therefore he has the right to dictate what can and cannot be said; for him to claim that it is a free and open platform and then turn around and block people who post disagreeable content reeks of hypocrisy.

At the same time, I hear people complain that people of certain cultural backgrounds are often stereotyped and their rights are being violated because of their heritage or skin color; yet then those who cry out about these things turn around and stereotype all gun owners every time there is a mass shooting; saying we should take away the guns from ALL gun owners. Well golly gee, the next time there is a drunk driving accident which kills an innocent victim I say we look at the hair color of the offender and then pass a law saying nobody with THAT hair color can operate a motor vehicle. YES, THAT’S EXACTLY HOW STUPID YOU SOUND!!!

And then there are all the things government has made a crime about what we can and cannot put into our bodies. The list ranges from the types of treatments a person is allowed to seek for illness to the recreational use of drugs such as marijuana and LSD. Where, if I may be so bold to ask, does the constitution give the government the authority to tell me what I can and cannot put into my own body? Who am I hurting if I consume those drugs; certainly not you. So how is it a crime when there is no victim? Yet I can be charged with a crime, and my liberty denied me for doing so.

I could go on and on with specific examples of how government has restricted liberty to such an extent that it is basically non-existent anymore. Yet people still say this is the land of the free and the home of the brave; and they continue to support and defend the entity which has stolen their liberty from them. I tell you, it is insane!

And yet, should an individual decide that they no longer consent to a government that deprives them of their unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, government will tell them they do not have the right to do so; and they will use force and violence to ensure that the offending person complies.

How, if I may ask, is that freedom and government by consent?

Some people get offended when I question the legitimacy of government as an entity. It’s almost as if I am threatening their reason for existing. But government is just like Paine said, a necessary evil, and often an intolerable one because it is an entity of our own creation which seeks not to secure liberty, but to restrict it.

But what really upsets people is when I question the integrity of the document that outlines our system of government. To some, that is akin to heresy and I sometimes feel that when I question it they are going to start picking up rocks so that they can stone me to death for blasphemy.

There are many in this country, if not an overwhelming majority, who are either unable, or unwilling to think. There, I’ve said it; now prove me wrong. But if our constitution outlines our system of government and the very document that created our government does not provide sufficient means to check and restrain the growth of government into a despotic one, then is it not fair in saying that the document itself is flawed?

As an example, when you give someone a power of attorney to act on your behalf that document bestows, or delegates certain powers to the person holding it. You would not give someone unlimited power to act on your behalf would you; giving them the authority to tell you what you must wear, what you must eat, and what you can and cannot do in your free time. So why would we create a system of government with that ability? And if the document that created our system of government provides no effective means, other than voting, for removing scoundrels and other politicians who violate the limited powers delegated them, wouldn’t you say the constitution itself is weak and ineffective in serving the purposes it was supposedly established to serve?

After all, isn’t that the very argument that was used to implement the constitution; thereby replacing the government outlined by the Articles of Confederation; that the government established by the AoC were weak and ineffective? It sure seems to me that the sole reason our constitution was written was to revoke the authority and control the people and the States had over what laws their government could enact. By doing away with the requirement that for any recommendation become law it must meet the unanimous approval of each and every State Legislature they created an elective democracy where the will of a simple majority is all it takes to violate the rights of the minority. Sure, we are told that we are a nation of laws; with the constitution being the Supreme Law of the Land. Well in response to that I say, “How effective has that constitution been in restraining the government it established from exercising undelegated powers?” If you cannot say that it has been effective, then the only logical conclusion is that the constitution is flawed and unfit to serve as the outline for any system of government that was supposedly established to secure liberty and freedom.

But as I said in my opening comments, once any system of government gains control over a people it is reluctant to surrender its authority to those who created it. In fact, government can, and will use force to ensure its own survival; even at the expense of the last remaining vestiges of freedom for the people.

Just look at how many people with guns there are whose sole job is to ENFORCE the law as written by people’s current god – government. From local Law Enforcement to the myriad alphabet soup agencies of the federal government, we have enough enforcers to invade a country and topple its government. Yet what purpose do they serve if it is not to subjugate and oppress the people they are supposed to be defending and protecting.

Sure, they often do good things, but the good they do does not take away from the fact that, should the time comes, they will arrest, imprison, and shoot you should you fail to obey THE LAW; And if the law if but the tyrant’s will, then THEY ARE TYRANTS AS WELL.

One final question and then I’ll wrap this up. What gives your government the power and authority it has to tax you and make you obey the laws it passes? It is only by your consent to government that it derives its power. If enough people would simply say, “I do not consent” we could slay the beast that is destroying our liberty. But so long as people support government, believe in the necessity of having a government; even though it denies us the freedom to live our lives free of their rules and regulations that will never happen.

The only people who truly consented to this government are those who ratified the constitution in 1789. I never voted to accept this system of government; did you? However, your compliance to it passes as consent. In The Rights of Man Thomas Paine wrote, “There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the “end of time,” or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void.”

Yet try telling government that just because a bunch of men who are long dead agreed to your existence, you do not; and therefore you are free of their authority. Let me know how well that works out for you.

As for this whole idea of government by consent, I think Lysander Spooner said it best, “The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this–that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.” And if that isn’t coercion I don’t know what is. In fact, that is not liberty, it is tyranny. So why do you still, not only consent to this system, but participate in choosing which tyrant will rule over your daily lives?

If you didn’t before, I think now you will have an idea of my current mindset on politics and government in the former land of the free and the home of the brave. I hope you will ponder the things I said and ask yourself why you support a system of government that requires the use of coercion and force to compel people to obey its laws.

If I can get you to do that, then you will have taken the first baby steps towards restoring liberty to America. After all, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson were not afraid to question the authority of their government, and we consider them to be patriots and American heroes. We owe it to their memory to resist tyranny whenever and wherever possible…that is unless of course you prefer the comfort of bondage and servitude.

If that’s the case, then I leave you with this: If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.