Neal's Soapbox

If you’ve ever watched an action movie, particularly a war movie, you may have seen/heard the actors saying, ‘pop smoke.’ For instance, if ground troops are waiting to be evacuated they may ‘pop smoke’ to identify their location for the evac team. Then people might ‘pop smoke’ to cover a retreat or hide their activities from others.

This Coronavirus, or more specifically, the fear and panic generated by it is one huge smoke screen designed to keep our attention focused elsewhere so that we do not see what is really happening. I’m not saying the virus isn’t real; that people won’t get sick, and some won’t die from it. What I’m saying is that all the constant hype over it, and the fear it generates, is preventing people from seeing what is really going on.

Are people so obtuse that they cannot see that they are being played for fools? Those in power, (and I’m not specifically saying government either), have found a formula that works every time: indentify a supposed threat or danger, hype the hell out of it in the news media to generate fear and panic so that the people will turn to the only thing they know for a solution – government; who then in turn offers a solution to the crisis; which typically entails the loss of more of your freedom.

Let me ask you a simple question. If the news media had never mentioned this Coronavirus, would you have noticed anything different in this country from any other regular flu season? Sure, people around you would have been getting sick, and some people would have been dying; but that is common when a new strain of the flu makes its way around. They say that each year, during any regular flu season, up to half a million people worldwide die from whatever strain of flu is making its way around. So what’s so different about this Coronavirus?

What’s different is the media hype about it. You can’t watch a half hour news show without them devoting at least half of their coverage to the spread of this virus. Give an enemy, or a threat, a name; identify it, focus all your media coverage on it and you’re bound to generate fear over it. Once the seed of fear is planted it spreads more rapidly than the disease itself, and becomes a self-sustaining organism.

This threat-fear-solution formula has been used time and time again; and each time the American people fall for it; and each time they lose a bit more of their rights and liberty. There is an old saying that goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

If one were to look back at history they would begin to notice that pattern I mentioned; threat-fear/panic-solution-loss of liberty. The best way to get people to do something, or agree to having something done that they wouldn’t normally agree to, is to introduce fear into the minds of those they wish to manipulate so that they are open to any and all suggestions to restore a sense of peace and tranquility. That process is the basis of the Hegelian Dialectic of thesis/antithesis/synthesis; which has been used against us repeatedly by those seeking to limit and restrict our freedom.

For instance, there was the financial panic of 1907; which was fueled primarily by large banks and investors sending the stock market into a nosedive, which then caused a ripple effect that affected a great many people in this country. These bankers then infused large sums of cash into the stock market to stabilize it, while warning that some central governing entity be established to monitor and control our money system. Enough fear and panic had been introduced that people did not, for the most part, oppose the passage of the Federal Reserve Act; which created the FED; which in turn has deflated the value of the dollar to less than 90% of the value it held in 1913. Oh, and it sure didn’t seem to be very effective; for just 16 short years later America entered the Great Depression; which then in turn gave birth to the welfare state in America.

Then of course there was 9/11 and the supposed attacks by Al Qaeda upon the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; which spawned a climate of fear that in turn led to us accepting the infringement upon most of the rights listed within the Bill of Rights. I couldn’t begin to list everything we’ve sacrificed to keep us safe from the big bad terrorists; but it’s enough to sicken the stomach of everyone who truly loves liberty.

Then of course there is my favorite, or least favorite, depending upon how you look at it; gun control laws in response to mass shootings. The news media absolutely loves mass shootings; although they report on them with the requisite level of seriousness, as they give them a chance to report on tragedy; they give them a chance to interview first hand witnesses, (who, if you ask me, are often paid crisis actors), and they give them the chance to tug on the heart strings of Americans by interviewing the family members of those who died in them. Mass shootings are a win-win for the news media; and they play them for all they’re worth – which in turn breeds a climate of fear and distrust towards the millions of law abiding gun owners in America; as well as is the impetus for an increasing litany of restrictive laws that restrict our right to keep and bear arms.

I swear, I think if they could create enough fear in the minds of the general public, they’d throw their firstborn daughters into an active volcano if they were told it would keep them safe from whatever supposed crisis they were facing. It’s almost as if logic and critical thinking have been bred out of people; with them reacting instinctively, and emotionally based, to every crisis that confronts them.

Is there a virus? Yes, there is. Is this virus killing people? Yes, it is. Is the fear of this virus a responsible and logical response to the threat it poses? Hell no; it’s as if someone fired a gun into a herd of buffalo and it began stampeding without knowing who, or what they were running from! My God people, this isn’t the Spanish Flu that ravaged the world in 1918; sickening 40% of the world’s population and killing 50 million – it’s just a bad flu; we’ll survive it. But from the way the news is reporting on it, if we don’t take drastic measures, and accept all kinds of restrictions upon our liberty, the world, as we know it, will come to an end.

While everyone is focused on the spread of this virus, the powers that be are busy doing things that, after the flu passes, will have long reaching consequences for you and your freedom; what’s left of it that is.

For instance, the DOJ, (Department of Justice), is asking for authority to suspend Habeas Corpus; meaning they can arrest you, throw you in a cell, and never charge you with a crime. They have already proven that they can issue decrees and directives shutting down businesses; many of which are the only source of livelihood for a great many working men and women. And, as is the case in any crisis, those who refuse to obey these directives are labeled threats to society; as were those who did not fall lock step behind the war against terror. If you will recall, back then George W. Bush said, “You are either with us, or with the terrorists.”

No one wants to be ostracized; have a spotlight shone upon them for standing up for their liberty. Rather, people have this inner need to fit in, to not rock the boat or make waves. So they comply; even though deep inside they may have this nagging feeling that something is dreadfully wrong with what they are complying with.

It takes courage to stand up for your rights and liberty. It takes courage to think for yourself when everyone around you is acting like a fool. It takes courage to tell others that they are wrong, and then stand their ground when they come under attack because what they say is deemed politically incorrect.

I don’t know if this makes me courageous, but dammit America, y’all are acting like a bunch of goddamn fools over this virus! Life itself is perilous; you could get hit by lightning; you could get run over by a drunk driver; you could drop dead of an aneurism and never know what hit you. If life itself scares you so much that you are willing to sacrifice every last vestige of your freedom to avoid its perils, you are not worthy to call yourself an America; let alone a patriot.

Thomas Jefferson, the guy whose words gave birth to America, once said, “I prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery.” What the fuck happened to you people; where has the spirit gone that led Patrick Henry to cry out, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

Whether this virus is a naturally occurring thing, or whether it was created in a lab somewhere; like the one in Fort Detrick, Maryland, that just last year had a couple of breaches in their Level 3 & 4 bio-labs, (which handles the worst viruses and pathogens) is anyone’s guess. What I do know is that the people’s reaction to is has been blown way out of proportion to the threat it poses; based mostly upon the fact that the news media won’t shut up about it.

I also know that, as is the case in any crisis, the powers that be are following the creed of Rahm Emmanuel, who said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” And these things that the powers that be couldn’t do before usually entail a curtailment or restriction upon your rights and liberty.

Wake up people, pull your heads out of your asses; you’re being played for fools…once again. So shame on YOU!

Last night I just happened to pick up my copy of Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau, and start reading when I came across this, “What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.” When I read that the book fell out of my hands; it felt like I’d been sucker punched; I felt like Thoreau was standing right there pointing a condemning finger at me!

That thought must have crept into the recesses of my mind, for when I awoke this morning there was this burning desire to write about the idea that talk is cheap; actions speak louder than words. Although in today’s modern political climate of political correctness, saying the wrong thing can bring condemnation upon a person, it remains relatively true that talk is cheap; there is no punishment or sacrifice for opening one’s mouth and saying whatever inane thought crosses a person’s mind.

I can’t even count the times people have come up to me and asked something along the lines of, “What can we do to restore our rights or our liberty?” Well the first thing I would suggest is the learning of the proper use of pronouns. What’s this we shit? I think there is a huge misunderstanding in the nature of rights and liberty. Even though people may be well intentioned when asking questions like that, it shows me that they believe rights and liberty to be collective property instead of individual property. My rights are mine and yours are yours, and the moment you begin thinking that you need someone else to help you defend them you have already lost them.

Did Patrick Henry say, “Give us liberty or give us death”? No, he used the proper pronoun…ME. Henry understood that he, as one of God’s creatures, was bestowed with INDIVIDUAL liberty; meaning it was an INDIVIDUAL’S responsibility to defend it. So enough of this we shit already; your rights and liberty are yours, so stop expecting some leader to come along and help you defend them – do it yourself dammit!

I’m tired; I truly am. I’m tired of trying to talk truth and common sense into people whose minds are not capable of understanding. I’m tired of talking to people who think that the answer to our problems is to elect new, better people to a corrupt system that is, in fact, the biggest threat to our liberty and rights. Thoreau was right, men of virtue are few and far between; and so are those who can rightfully claim to be patriots.

Oh, people fly the flag outside their homes, they stand in reverent attention when the National Anthem is played, and dutifully recite the Pledge of Allegiance, but when it comes down to being patriots they say, to hell with that, the government is too big and powerful to resist. You might as well be saying you would tie your hands behind your back and let some 6 foot tall, 275 pound linebacker just punch you repeatedly in the face; after all, he is bigger and stronger than you.

Our rights, our liberty, are ours; each of us individually. It is not society’s job, or responsibility to protect and defend them, it is the duty of each individual to stand up for them all by them self. Your property is yours as well; which includes your rights in case you haven’t been paying attention to the things I’ve been saying for that past decade. It is YOUR responsibility to defend them, and when you place that responsibility upon someone else, (law enforcement), and then let lawmakers enact laws that penalize you for doing so you’ve already lost your right to defend yourself and are a slave.

I don’t need permission to be able to have the means at my disposal to defend myself, my property, my family, or my rights. I cannot be penalized when I utilize any means at my disposal to do so; not if I want to make the claim that I have freedom.

Anyone who would deny another person the right to have, and utilize, the means of defending them self and their property is a tyrant; even if it is born of ignorance of what individual rights and liberty are.

There is a legal maxim that states: Ignorantia juris non excusat. What that means is, ignorance of the law does not excuse. Just because people are ignorant as to the true nature of their rights and liberty does not excuse them from the guilt of not protecting them; or violating the rights of others.

I’m tired of trying to talk sense to people who don’t want to think; who don’t want to accept personal responsibility for their own lives, for their own liberty; all while leaving me free to do the same.

Thomas Jefferson said that our rights come from our Creator, and if you really cared about going to heaven you might want to start thinking about how you are going to explain to Him why you sat back at let your government steal them from you without lifting a finger to stop it. You don’t have to answer to me, I’m just another pissant on a planet with 7.5 billion other pissants. But you motherfuckers are going to all stand before God and account for your time on this planet, and if your rights are His gift to all mankind, you may want to start treating them with the respect they deserve; instead of supporting the system that is stealing them from you.

They say that there are 4 boxes of liberty; the voting box, the soapbox, the jury box, and the cartridge box. The voting box has proven ineffective, since no matter who gets elected our liberty continually diminishes. The jury box has, for the most part, proven ineffective because jurors are too ignorant, or timid, to defend liberty against a system designed to stifle it. The soap box has also proven ineffective, as nobody seems to listen, or even understand, the words being spoken.

What does that leave us; and they’re working day and night to take that box away from us before we wise up to them and begin using it.

I’m tired of talking to people who claim to be patriots, then, by their very actions, prove that they are not; that they are collectivist slaves to a system that is intent upon obliterating freedom and liberty.

If you say you’re a patriot, prove it; start acting like one – actions speak much louder than words, and I am about done wasting them on people whose actions prove they don’t care the least bit about preserving and defending their rights and liberty.

As Sam Adams said, “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.”

Believe me, I’ve already forgotten that y’all are my countrymen, and until you start acting like patriots, that ain’t gonna change.

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this I would like to thank my friend Bart Stewart for providing the motivation/inspiration for what you are about to read. Bart runs a weekly live show on Facebook in which he delivers his opinions on a wide range of subjects, and if you’re interested in tuning in, he does them on Sundays and you can find him by doing a Facebook search for Reverend Bart. That said, let’s get to business.

I had seen and heard the stories about how stores were quickly becoming depleted of certain items; such as toilet paper and bottled water. Yesterday, however, I ventured out to do our weekly shopping and saw for myself how empty the shelves were in some areas; while they were fully stocked in other areas.

A lot of what I saw was to be expected, yet there were things I saw that didn’t make any sense to me. For instance, flour was scarce; if the stores even had any of it. Yet yeast, baking powder and baking soda were plentiful. What are people going to do with all that flour, snort it, make Paper Mache? Also, in our local Sam’s Club the frozen chicken aisle was empty aside from a couple 5 lb bags of frozen, uncooked chicken wings, yet the aisles for crackers, beef jerky, granola bars and chips were fully stocked.

Some of the things that I did not see stocked are to be expected; such as water, but a lot of the other items seemed like they were purchased without rhyme or reason; as if people saw them and thought, “Damn, I just saw somebody buy two bags of flour, so maybe I need to buy 15 of them before they run out.”

What bothers me the most about this is that those who are doing this panic hoarding are probably the very same people who, six months ago, were making fun of those the media calls Preppers, or survivalists. Who’s laughing now you unprepared mother-fuckers?

Listen, as I said in one of my recent commentaries, this Coronavirus is not the end of the world, unless it somehow mutates, or is mutated intentionally by those who created and released it upon the world; and yes, I’m also one of those conspiracy theorists and I believe this virus was produced in a lab somewhere and released upon the public.

For what purpose; who knows? Maybe it was to thin the herd out some, maybe it was a test run to see how it spread, or what affect it, fueled by round the clock media fear mongering, it would have on the stock market or the upcoming presidential election. Like I said, who knows what their reasons were; I just believe with every fiber of my being that this was not a naturally occurring virus; that it was manmade and released upon us; either by accident or intentionally.

I am not a full blown Prepper myself; although we have enough stocked up to get us by for a month or so before we have to start worrying; and even I was caught with my pants down regarding some items. So this silly virus is proving as a learning experience for me; what I need to do to better prepare should something really bad happen-and if you have half a brain, you should learn from it too.

This virus will end; it will vanish into history just like the Swine Flu and all the other strains of influenza that have made their way around. What you take out of it once things return to normal is what matters; as if normal was all that great as far as our liberty goes; but that’s another topic altogether. The important thing is that you learn from this, so that the next time something happens, you don’t get caught were your pants down around your ankles.

Like I said, there was no rhyme or reason to the shopping patterns I witnessed yesterday. Canned corn was all but gone, but there were green beans aplenty. Last week when I went to my local chain supermarket they had pallet after pallet full of canned corn; but yesterday it was all gone. Yet the frozen corn aisle was well stocked.

What are people going to do with all the corn they bought; go on a corn diet? That stuff has an expiration date, in case you weren’t aware of it. Unless you plan on eating corn every day for the next 365 days, that shit is eventually gonna go bad on you. Yet in all the stores we went to, and there were 4 of them, beef jerky was to be found in abundance in all of them.

I’m not as well versed in the intricacies of prepping as some of my friends are, but there is one thing I have learned; you don’t hoard items for emergencies only; you buy the things you eat regularly so you can rotate the old stock out with new stock. That is, unless you are into stockpiling freeze dried meals and other essentials that last for an eternity.

Usually when I got shopping the tomato sauce aisle is full, yesterday it was empty; and tomato sauce is one thing that does not last long; unless you can your own; and even then it won’t last for, at best, 18 months before they go bad.

What I witnessed yesterday reminds me of the shopping store scene in the movie World War Z, starring Brad Pitt; where people were grabbing anything and everything they could without thinking whether or not they actually needed it.

Prepping is a discipline, and it requires a little bit of thought. The first thing you must do is ask yourself what you need to survive. Food and water are essential; but what kind of food? You don’t want to stock up on shit that will expire in six months to a year; you want shit that will last so that you can gradually use it; and replace it as needed if possible. What will you cook your food on if the next event involves a loss of power, or natural gas?

I saw row after row of empty shelves that used to be stocked with paper towels and toilet paper, yet the toothpaste section was fully stocked. So what, are people planning on keeping their ass clean, but letting their teeth rot?

Like I said, I could have rode this out without worry; although I may have lost some weight in the process-but that may have been a good thing. What I’m getting at is that I have used this experience to learn from; find my deficiencies and correct them…and you should too. If you were one of those who went out and bought 8 packs of toilet paper; 12 cases of bottled water, and all the hand sanitizer you could find, you were NOT prepared. You need to change that and be prepared the next time something happens; whether it is a real world ending event, or something that is blown way out of proportion by the media; like this Coronavirus. And when I say prepared I mean not only in having enough stockpiled to keep you alive for six months to a year, I also mean having the means to defend it; for if the shit ever does hit the fan, there will be predators and starving people out there who will try to take it from you; and if you aren’t prepared to defend it, you WILL lose it.

Believe me when I say this, had this been a truly serious event and someone had asked me for a cup of sugar, a bag of flour, a roll of toilet paper, or some bottled water, I would have told them to EAT SHIT AND DIE. It has never been, nor will it ever be, my responsibility to ensure that you have all that you need to survive a crisis. If you do not prepare for what might come, then that’s on you; don’t ever come begging for help from me. This was a test, and most of America failed it. You can thank God it wasn’t more serious than it was. Learn from it, prepare for what might happen next time; and if you choose to ignore the lessons you should have learned, don’t come knocking on my door for help if/when the next crisis happens – you have been warned.

“When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.”
~Thomas Paine~
(1791)

Have you ever seen a human stampede before? A human stampede occurs when the mass of a large body of people begins moving in one direction and exerts pressure on those standing still; causing them to begin moving as well. Sometimes people fall and get trampled; especially if the movement is sudden and caused by panic or fear.

I was in a human stampede once and it was an interesting experience, although I wouldn’t want to do it again. It happened in Oakland at the Coliseum before a Van Halen/Black Sabbath concert. I was waiting in line for the doors to open, and when they did the crowd began surging towards them. I was at the top of a flight of stairs heading down to the entrance and I literally picked my feet up and was carried down the stairs without ever touching the ground. Being as that I had smoked a lot of hashish while waiting in line, I thought the whole thing was pretty cool; never realizing that if I fell I would most likely get trampled to death.

I think what is happening right now in America, and across the globe for that matter, due to the people’s fear over this outbreak of the Coronavirus is something similar; although it is being fueled by the media’s round the clock coverage of new cases and new deaths caused by a really bad cold. What we are witnessing now would not be even half as bad if the media weren’t throwing gas onto the fire with their constant reporting; and if fear mongering was a capital offense, those cocksuckers in the news media would be dangling from nooses by sundown.

Now I don’t know if these things are connected, but there is an interesting fact that someone brought to my attention the other day. It seems that during every election cycle there seems to be some new disease making its way around the world. For instance, in 2004 we saw SARS making its way around; in 2008 it was the Avian Flu; in 2012 it was MERS; in 2016 it was Zika, and now we’ve got this Covid 19 thing causing people to lose their minds.

Since it first began being reported on I began hearing stories of how the shelves in stores were quickly becoming emptied of things like bottled water, toilet paper, vitamin C, hand sanitizer, and cold remedies; panic shopping is what I like to call it. A friend of mine just told me that another friend of his just told him that the parking lot in a Memphis, Tennessee Sam’s Club is so full you can’t find a parking space, and that the people inside are stealing items from the shopping carts of other customers because the item has run out of stock.

I swear, it’s getting so crazy out there I’m thinking of taking all 5 weeks of my vacation and climbing up on my roof with a bottle of bourbon and a rifle, while Skynyrd is blasting from my speakers, and just watch the country implode due to fear and the overwhelming stupidity of the American people. I don’t have the slightest amount of fear over this Coronavirus; but the stupidity of the people is something that scares the living hell out of me; what they will believe and do based upon irrational fear.

The sad thing is, this whole thing has a life of its own now, and I don’t think there is any stopping it; it has too much momentum behind it. I think all we can do now is let the panic run its course and pray that when it subsides we still have a remainder of freedom left. I just wonder whether future historians will write about the Coronavirus outbreak of 2020 or if they will write about the panic outbreak of 2020.

Yesterday around noon California Governor Gavin Newsom was on the news discussing his plans for slowing the spread of this virus; calling for all large non-essential gatherings of people to be cancelled, and telling people to keep at least 6 feet between themselves and the next person. It seems that those doing all that panic shopping at WalMart didn’t get that memo! Now it seems that Donald Trump is jumping on the bandwagon, as he is scheduled to give a speech later today outlining his plans for handling this outbreak.

I wonder if people have ever heard of something called an immune system. Each of us has one, and it is our body’s defense mechanism against harmful germs and viruses. If our immune system is strong, if it has been given a chance to grow by fighting off routine germs, it should be able to deal with a virus such as Covid 19. Sure, you might get sick, but your body’s immune system should be able to fight it off without causing people to panic.

Unfortunately we have become obsessed with cleanliness and hygiene and our immune systems are not running at peak performance now; making the outbreak of real viruses much more serious than had the people’s immune systems been running at 100%. I can only imagine what people would be doing if this was an Ebola outbreak; where you insides turn to mush and your blood begins oozing out of your orifices. I mean, it’s bad enough now; you might even call it a zombie apocalypse when you think about how people are reacting to it.

In an article written for Live Science, it is said that the Covid 19 virus first made its appearance in China in 2019 and quickly spread; infecting 40,000 people and killing 900. That sounds like a lot of people getting sick, but when you consider that China has a population of over a billion people it comes out to roughly .04% of the people catching this illness, and even less than that dying from it. Yet to hear people talk, and see them panicking over this thing you would think that it was smallpox; which is highly contagious and kills roughly 1/3 of those who become infected with it. Or you could end up getting Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease; where your brain turns into a sponge; eventually killing you.

But this is a cold; one that may hit you hard, but more people die every year from the regular flu than they do from this; and yet the World Health Organization has called it a pandemic; further fanning the flames of hysteria that were already at a fever pitch. Besides, those hardest hit by this Covid 19 are the extremely young, the extremely old, and those with compromised immune systems. Yet I see and hear healthy young people panicking in fear over a cold. It’s insane I tell you; and that is the real illness; the lack of critical thinking skills; replaced by panic induced hysteria.

I mean, for all the thinking that’s going on in America right now, people may as well have become infected with Mad Cow Disease. What I find truly amazing is what people will consent to if someone can promise to keep them safe from some threat; be it to their person or their feelings for that matter. I don’t know if it was planned, or if it was by happenstance, but it seems that people are surrendering their freedom simply because the media reports that a new virus is spreading across the globe.

I can’t be certain of this, but I still believe that this virus was engineered in a lab somewhere and released into the public to gauge how it spread; to see how people reacted to it; and to possibly manipulate the world economy. All one has to do is look at the recent losses on Wall Street to see that fear can easily cause stock prices to drop dramatically; and those behind this scare are paying close attention to all of it; keeping notes for future reference in case they decide to unleash something truly horrific upon the world population.

If you don’t think that’s possible, if you don’t think your government is capable of something so evil, you need to pull your head out of your ass and do some research; for they’ve already done it to a limited extent.

We all despise the name Joseph Mengele; the Angel of Death of Nazi fame for his human experimentation. But did you know that we, here in America, have had numerous examples of people, or our government, doing things just as evil as Mengele did? Hell, in the 1840’s J. Marion Sims, who is known as the father of gynecology, performed surgeries on un-sedated African women to study their reproductive systems. One such woman died from infection after having been operated on more than 30 times.

Then there was the Tuskegee Experiments were infected black men were told they were being treated for syphilis, but were in reality given placebos so that the doctors could study the progression of syphilis in the human body; which is also not a pleasant way to die.

Then in 1940, the U.S. Army, in conjunction with the State Department and the University of Chicago, inmates at the Stateville Penitentiary were infected with malaria to study how it affected them. In 1950 the U.S. Navy sprayed an atomized pathogen over the city of San Francisco to see how it affected the people. Beginning in the 50’s and lasting until 1972, children attending Willowbrook State School in New York were intentionally infected with hepatitus without their parents consent; saying it was a routine vaccine.

Let us not forget that throughout its history the U.S. military has used its fighting men and women as human guinea pigs to monitor how people reacted to thing such as radiation and biological weapons.

So, if you think that your government, or some other government for that matter, is not capable of infecting the people with this Covid 19 virus, you don’t know the first thing about what kind of evil government is capable of. Hell, all one has to do is undertake a serious study of the events of 9/11 to see what government is capable of; and if you believe the official story about that, there is no hope for you.

Just look at what happened after 9/11; I think some people would have been willing to sell their daughters into a lifetime of prostitution if it would have defended America against those ‘evil’ terrorists. As it is they accepted the governments implementation of agencies, policies, laws and programs that decimated the Bill of Rights. Then when someone like Edward Snowden comes along and tries to expose the extend of your government’s crimes, you say TRAITOR, TRAITOR. It reminds me of when Patrick Henry said, “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third—” whereupon someone in the crowd cried TREASON; to which Henry responded, “If this be treason make the most of it.”

Yet thanks to the media and their round the clock coverage; repeatedly showing the collapse of the Twin Towers, and the political pundits repeating the ‘official’ story line, the people fell for the lie and accepted the surrendering of their freedom to protect them from those bad terrorists. Now all they have to do is report on a foiled terrorist attack and the people willingly surrender a bit more of that freedom. Just look at what happened after the shoe bomber and that guy who tried to smuggle the liquid components for an explosive device onto a plane. Now you have to remove your shoes before boarding a plane and no unopened bottles can be carried onto one.

Then of course there is my own personal story of what happened when I returned from vacation in the Philippines. My brother in law had made me a fine hand crafted belt buckle with a miniature replica of a .357 Magnum revolver; complete with rotating chamber and 5 bullets. It was no bigger than a can of Copenhagen dipping snuff, and I had passed through 5 X-Ray checkpoints without any problems.

Then I get to the final checkpoint, manned by a TSA Agent. He X-rayed my bag and told me to open it. I did, and he removed the belt buckle, saying I could not carry any image or replica of a firearm onto an international flight. I tried explaining that I’d already checked in my other bag and couldn’t transfer it, and that I’d already passed through 5 other checkpoints without anyone finding anything wrong with it. I asked him, “What, am I gonna hijack a plane with a belt buckle?” He said rules are rules; and that’s when I lost my cool. I pulled up my shirtsleeve, exposing a tattoo with crossed muskets on it, and said, “So are you gonna cut my fucking arm off too you idiot?”

That’s when he went over and got the Homeland Security guy, and I had to fill out a stack of forms detailing what was confiscated, my full name, address, phone number, etc, etc. So, as Arlo Guthrie sang in his classic song Alice’s Restaurant, there is a folder somewhere in Washington D.C. with my name on it; labeling me a trouble maker. Hell, I’m sure the NSA is monitoring each keystroke I make right now. Hiya fellows, hope you’re having a good chuckle over this as you add to my folder…Fucking tyrants!

And the people of this country; my God how can they be so damned stupid to fall for this shit that the news is telling them. Yes, there is a disease, and it is making its way around. But the flu makes its way around every year, and so do cases of pneumonia; which by the way both have a higher fatality rate than this blasted Coronavirus. Yet the panic this thing has caused leaves me wondering if there is any common sense left in people; it’s absolutely ridiculous how much they are willing to give up just so they don’t get sick.

All it took was one little virus and suddenly sporting events, concerts, jobs, colleges, medical facilities, and even whether you are allowed to leave your home can be regulated and controlled. Food supplies are diminishing and travel restrictions have been imposed.

Now once this virus finishes its rounds, and becomes a thing of the past much of these restrictions will be lifted and things will return to relative normalcy. But that is not the point; the point is that this was a test by the powers that be to see what the people will accept for the promise of keeping them safe; how much freedom they would be willing to surrender…and the American people gave them all the info they needed to assure them that, when the time comes, the people will bend over and take full blown tyranny right up their asses without a whimper of protest; all you gotta do is spread a little fear first as a bit of lubrication.

Hell, Henry Kissinger predicted this very scenario back in 1992 at a conference in France, where he said, “Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government.”

Ben Franklin is quoted as saying, “Those who would give up essential liberty for the promise of comfort and security will deserve neither, and lose both.” Thomas Jefferson also said, “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.” From what I’ve seen from people today, their motto may as well be, “Give me the chains mother fucker; just keep me safe!”

People today, that is assuming they even pay attention to what’s going on around them, see the world with a serious case of tunnel vision. If they do pay attention, their attention is limited to fighting amongst each other along the lines of the two party paradigm; Democrats vs. Republicans. They don’t take a step, or a half dozen steps back so that they can see the bigger picture; that government is evil, it is tyrannical, and it is intent upon taking away our freedom and our ability to resist its authority.

Why do you think they constantly come after our right to keep and bear arms? Is it to keep you safe? If that truly were the case they’d hire more cops and post armed guards at locations vulnerable to mass shootings; not take away the people’s right/ability to defend them self.

You might say they aren’t coming after your guns Neal, but I believe differently; I think they are, or at least they will…sooner or later. You might say that they only want to implement common sense gun control so that society can be safe. Well, how many common sense gun laws will it take to achieve that goal; 5…10….20….100? After all, murder is already a crime; yet that hasn’t stopped people from killing one another; and your answer is to take away my right to defend myself against monsters; both the lowlife scum kind and those elected by the consent of the people? I don’t think so…

But they say they aren’t gonna take your guns Neal; they promised. Oh yeah? Well Dianne Feinstein has repeatedly stated that taking away my guns is her goal. And, in case you weren’t paying attention, after Hurricane Katrina the government went door to door and took away people’s guns; people who were doing nothing wrong except having the means to defend themselves against looters and thieves that is.

Now I may sound like some raving madman, some nutcase conspiracy theorist, but I think all of this, all these crises from mass shootings to 9/11, to these viruses we are exposed to, are all part of a global test run to see whether the people are ready to accept total world government where they have no liberty at all; only those things which their government allows them to do.

You might accept it; and seeing as how people have reacted to this silly virus, that is a distinct possibility. However, I won’t. I will go down fighting if they try to take my freedom; for it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

So go right ahead America, keep buying into the nonsense, the panic, and keep surrendering your rights and liberty for every concocted problem that only Uncle Sam can find the answer to. One day you’ll wake up having to explain to your kids or grandkids why they don’t have any freedom. And after you’re done doing that, would you please go put some flowers on the graves of those who sought to protect and defend your liberty while you sat glued to your TV’s watching bullshit and swallowing lies?

I’m no economist, but I’m not stupid either. I have two eyes, and I have a brain and I use them both; and they tell me that something is going on right now in regards to our economy; particularly the dramatic drops in the closing numbers of the NYSE, or New York Stock Exchange.

The following are just my observations and thoughts on the current state of affairs in America. Take them for what they are, my opinions. However, disregard them at your own peril; for they may prove to be true.

I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but the Dow Jones has been taking multiple, large scale hits; with the numbers plummeting. At the opening bell of trading today the DOW immediately took a hit of over 7%, triggering a Level 1 Circuit Breaker to trip; causing a 15 minute shutdown for the panic to subside. There are three levels of Circuit Breakers on Wall Street, a Level 1 which causes a 15 minute shutdown; a Level 2, which occurs at a 13% drop and causes another 15 minute shutdown, and a Level 3, which happens after a 20% drop in market value; and this causes trading to be suspended for the remainder of the day; such as what happened on Black Monday in 1987.

I don’t play the stock market, it is too volatile for me; the only money I have in it is what is held by the trustees of my pension plan; which means that if the DOW continues to plummet, I won’t get any retirement when my body finally gives out and I’m no longer able to work.

The NYSE, or Dow Jones Industrial Average, is used as sort of a barometer to measure the health of our economy; if the numbers are up, the economy is good; and vice versa. I’ve never really understood the complexities of the stock market, and still don’t, but over the past week or so I’ve been doing a bit of research to try and get a workingman’s understanding of how it functions.

Basically what a stock is, is a slice of ownership of a company that it sells to investors looking to profit from owning a slice of the pie that is the company’s overall wealth/health. For instance, if a company decides to sell 10,000 shares of stock in their company, and you purchase 1,000 of them, you own 10% of that company. It’s a little bit more complicated than that; but that’s the basics of it.

If the company/s that you own stocks in are doing good; profits are up and they are hiring new workers to meet demands, you see the value of your stock increase as more and more people want to share in the wealth. In that regard it is simple supply and demand economics; as there are only so many stocks available per company, if everyone wants to own stock in that company, the value of the stock goes up. However, if the company begins trending downward, people start selling off their stocks and their value begins to plummet.

Many things can trigger a selloff of stocks; fears over world events or a company’s performance being but two of them. For instance, if Chevy announces that they are losing sales to Ford and Toyota, and that they will begin laying off workers and shutting down plants, that would cause people to begin selling off their stock in the company; causing stock value to drop dramatically.

However, that is an isolated instance of stock prices going down; based upon the individual performance of a company. World events, however, often trigger a market wide sell off as people begin dumping their stocks to have access to cash over fears of what might happen next. For instance, when Donald Trump was elected the market took a pretty big hit when investors began fearing what would happen once Trump took office. Then, of course, there is this Coronavirus and the news media’s campaign of fear that we are being told is behind the current downtrend in the stock market.

I don’t buy that as being the cause for what’s happening on Wall Street; not for an instance. Sure, people may be selling off a few stocks, but with the drastic hits that the stock market has been taking day after day, I think there is something else going on; it’s just what exactly that is that I’m not sure of.

As I said, I’m no economics whiz, but from what I understand there could be one of three things happening. First, we could be witnessing a correction in the stock market. When Black Monday hit in 1987 the Dow Jones Industrial Average was around 2,400, and with a drop of 22.6%, or 508 points, it triggered a shutdown of trading on Wall Street for the panic to subside. Now, even with all the hits it’s taken, the DOW sits at 21,000; nearly ten times what it was in 1987.

I think that growth was artificially created to cause a feeding frenzy of investors looking to cash in on all that economic growth. Eventually the trend had to end; but when and how high would it go before that happened is the question. I thought it was absolutely insane when the DOW hit 8,000; I truly did; even though I didn’t know much about the stock market when that happened. When it hit 10,000 I thought, “This is fucking crazy; something is going on here.” Now it’s at over 21,000; someone has to be playing games; pulling the strings.

Now think about that, and let’s do a little math. In 1987 when the DOW dropped 22%, the drop in the actual numbers was only 508 points when the DOW was at around 2400. Up until recently the DOW was sitting as high as 25,000, so a 20% drop would be 5,000 points. So, while the numbers may seem dramatic, percentage wise they are not as severe as what we witnessed in 1987; and may merely be the stock market seeking to restore a level of sanity to the record high numbers it has been seeing; in other words, a correction.

That’s one possibility. The next is it could be the beginning of an eventual market crash; which would affect all of us regardless of whether people pay attention to the stock market, or current affairs. You see, besides being a means for people to buy and sell shared in a company, and make money doing so, stocks are a means for companies to raise money. So, if people stop buying, and start selling off their stocks, that company loses a portion of its revenue stream and it has to curtail production, lay off workers, or even worse, shut down altogether.

The stock market crash of 1929 played a large role in kicking off the Great Depression; and it’s possible, not certain, but still possible that we may be witnessing the beginning of another depression of epic proportions. Although people may not pay any attention to the stock market, it affects almost anyone who has some sort of retirement plan in place. If you have a pension plan where you work there is a good chance that, unless your portfolio is based upon precious metals, you have a vested interest in the health of the stock market. If you pay into a 401k or an IRA account, you have a vested interest in the health of the stock market; for if the market crashes; your retirement money disappears. Well, that’s not exactly true, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

Finally, we could be witnessing a market manipulation. A market manipulation is when major banks or shareholders initiate a change in the market by either buying massive quantities of stocks, or selling them off, to cause a change either up or down in the market. This is usually done to benefit them; at the cost of the wealth of those who invest in the market as a means to generate wealth, or provide a nest egg for their retirement.

Now this might seem like conspiracy theory, but I’ve read a lot about how the FED, (The Federal Reserve) was created. A lot of what I’ve read states that the bankers who wrote the Federal Reserve Act, which was later passed by Congress, initiated a panic in the market by secretly selling off holdings in certain stocks; causing a market wide panic. Then these same bankers, JP Morgan to be exact, come to the rescue by infusing large amounts of cash into the market to stabilize it. This was supposedly done so that they could generate support for a central banking entity, (The FED), who could effectively manage our money supply by raising and lowering interest rates to minimize market fluctuations. Well gee, the FED was established in 1913 and the Great Depression began in 1929; so they sure got off to a good start, didn’t they?

I don’t think people realize what money is; they equate having lots of it to wealth. Money is not wealth, it is a tool by which people can engage in commerce; buying and selling goods or services. Wealth, true wealth, comes from the possession of real estate, or real property. If I owned, lock, stock and barrel, the entire State of California, but didn’t have a penny to my name, I’d be one of the richest men in the United States; if not THE richest.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Josiah Stamp but he was head of the Bank of England for awhile years and years ago. Well Stamp once said, “Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. Then bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again.”

That stuff you carry around in your wallet or purse, unless all you use is a debit card, isn’t money; that’s just paper and clothe that you accept as being a form of currency. The only thing that gives that currency any value is your faith that you can use it to buy goods or services with it. Hell, I could open a game of Monopoly and tell you that the paper in it is ‘real’ money; and as long as people accept that it is, it holds as much value as that shit that you carry around in your wallet or purse.

Where did that ‘money’ come from; for it has to have some place of origin; it didn’t grow on a tree. It came into existence because someone, somewhere, printed it out on a printing press. The amount of money circulating in an economy determines the value of that money; not the number printed on its face, or whose image adorns it.

Regardless of what kind of legal tender laws, or fixed exchange rates exist between paper money and gold and silver, the real value of paper money is determined by the amount of it circulating in an economy; the less of it there is, the more it is worth, and the more of it there is, the less it is worth. That is what’s known as deflation and inflation; and it affects each and every one of us regardless of how little attention we pay to it.

Living in California I’ve heard a lot of people complain about not being able to earn a living wage; hence the push for the California Legislature to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Did you know that, since the inception of the FED, the dollar has lost 96% of its value due to inflation? Did you know that, due to inflation, in comparison to the value of a dollar in 1913, it would take 26 of them to equal its value; meaning that if you earn $15 per hour, you would have been making $390 per hour in 1913.

That’s what inflation does, it makes your money worth less; taking more and more of those little pieces of paper to buy the same goods and services it used to take one or two of them to buy; which is why people are finding it increasingly difficult to get by in life. People go to the store and see that the cost for a tube of toothpaste or a gallon of milk has gone up by a couple of dollars. They see a prince increase, but that’s not really what’s happening. What is happening is the price is staying relatively the same; it’s just that it takes more of that worthless currency in your wallet to exchange for that commodity. That’s inflation; and it is killing us.

What’s causing this inflation? Well, for one thing, Uncle Sam is causing it. Have you noticed what our national debt is lately? Right now it sits at over $23 trillion. What that means is, above and beyond the money Uncle Sam steals from you through the income tax, it has also borrowed $23 trillion to keep paying for all the things it does.

It’s a complex process by which money is created in America, and a lot of our national debt is held by foreign investors. The bare bones of it though is that the money Uncle Sam borrows ends up circulating in our economy; causing inflation. Uncle Sam borrows money to pay the wages of all those working for him; it borrows money to pay our soldiers and for the weapons they use in this endless war on terror; it borrows money so that it can fund all these programs which people take advantage of. For whatever reason Uncle Sam borrows that money, it ultimately ends up in circulation in our economy; in your wallet or mine – causing inflation.

Do you know what a promissory note is? A promissory note is a document that states that the person holding it is entitled to a stated sum upon presenting that note to the person who handed it out. Our money used to be promissory notes; meaning that the bearer of them could go into any Federal Reserve bank and exchange them for their face value in gold or silver – real money.

America used to be on something known as the Gold Standard; which means that for every dollar in circulation there had to be $1 worth of gold backing it up. When the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 it gave the government the means to borrow money, but government was hamstringed by the fact that for every dollar in circulation there had to be a dollar’s worth of gold backing it up; limiting how much government could borrow. Well in the 70’s Richard Nixon took America off the gold standard; opening the floodgates, with the only limit as to how much they could borrow is what the people would allow them, or their own wild imaginations.

All this so-called wealth floating around; be it your home, your car, or the number of stocks you hold, it is all based upon the dollar; dollars purchased those things you call wealth, and dollars are nothing but debt currency; they were created out of thin air, on the promise that they will be repaid at a later date; with interest.

It’s a huge bubble that is going to keep expanding until it bursts. Think about it like this: the government borrows money from a bank to fund something it wants to do. The bank says sure, but you gotta pay it back, with interest. So the government now has to pay back the bank, so it borrows MORE money to make its payments on the initial loan. It keeps repeating this cycle; increasing the supply of money in circulation; until the system collapses and that paper you carry around becomes as worthless as that paper in your bathroom you use to wipe your ass with.

The thing about it is, wealth, true wealth, never vanishes; it merely changes hands. If you have a house, multiple cars, and lots of goodies for toys, and then you suddenly lose your job; do all those things you once owned disappear, or does someone else, (the banks most likely) take possession of them? You see, that wealth never goes away; someone else just takes possession of it.

Therefore, if everything you own was bought with paper money, (money created through debt), than those goods become collateral for that debt. Eventually, if the economic system collapses, all the goods, services, and even your labor becomes the property of those who loaned that money out; making you a serf or a slave working for your banking masters.

Now when I say banks I’m not talking about the bank you go into to cash your paycheck or make a withdrawal; I’m talking about the big banking houses like Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo; as well as their European counterparts. These major banks are stockholders in almost every Fortune 500 company in the world; and if the dollar collapses and our economy crashes, they will effectively take possession of those companies.

But who owns these banks; after all, they didn’t just spring up out of the ground like a weed, did they? Finding that out is next to impossible; for those who own them like to keep their identities out of the public spotlight. People like to think Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates are the richest men on the planet. Not by a long shot; they are only the ones whose wealth is known publicly; there are far richer men, and families, than them.

Above all else The Federal Reserve is a bank; a privately owned bank at that. It has no connection to Uncle Sam other than it was granted its charter by the Federal Reserve Act, and its director is chosen from among a list given to the president by the FED. But first and foremost it is a bank; and the goal of banks is to make money for their owners by loaning out money and collecting interest.

So who owns the FED, and all the other central banks scattered across the globe? Well it is said that just 8 families comprise 80% of the ownership of the FED; those families being, the Goldman Sachs, the Rockefellers, the Lehman and Kuhn Loeb’s; all from New York. Then there are the Rothschilds of Paris, the Warburg’s of Hamburg, the Lazard’s of Paris and the Israel Moses Seif’s of Rome.

Those are the bankers; you know, the ones Josiah Stamp said own the world. Our government borrows its money from them, and in turn we, our property and our labor become collateral upon that debt. This entire system of economics in America today is based upon fraud and the plundering of wealth of the people by the few, the powerful, the already insanely rich of the world – the big banking houses and the families that own them. When it all collapses, and it will, everything will belong to them; as they are the holders of the debt; and it doesn’t matter if you’ve worked all your life to buy that nice home and fancy car; it will all be theirs; and their puppets, (the government), will obey their orders if they demand that you be relocated from your homes and moved to a labor camp somewhere.

So, is what’s happening in the stock market now a correction, the beginning of the collapse of the system, or is it something else altogether; designed to cause fear and panic, and open the people up for a global currency so the game can start all over again under a global dollar…or whatever they decide to call it? Who knows; I certainly don’t.

The only think I do know for certain is, if the people truly understood the depth and scope of their betrayal by those they had elected, the two most valuable commodities on the planet would be either rope or bullets; for the people would either lynch or shoot those son’s of bitches for what they’ve done.
Oh, and there’s one other thing I am almost positively certain of; whatever is happening with Wall Street isn’t due to the Coronavirus; that’s just the patsy the news media is telling you is to blame for the recent craziness with the Dow Jones numbers.

The sad thing is, the Coronavirus was probably engineered in a laboratory somewhere; designed to be contagious, but not a world ender like Ebola or some of the other nasty diseases that Mother Nature has come up with. I think it was released for one of two reasons; either to see how people reacted, or to instigate panic and take people’s minds off something else that is going on, or is about to happen.

Honestly, people need to just calm down about this stupid virus; you have a better chance of being hit and killed by a drunk driver than you do of catching and dying from the Coronavirus. So calm down people, it’s not the Black Death; it’s just a really nasty cold. Believe me, I’ve probably had hangovers that were worse than the Coronavirus; so just calm down; the world’s not going to end…trust me.

I’ve been told that my recent articles have been a tad long; that they contain words and concepts that some are finding hard to understand or accept. I can understand that, I truly can. So in an effort to KISS, (keep it short and simple), here are my favorite quotes; those which form the basis for my entire political belief system. Maybe if I explain it this way it will be easier for people to understand.
“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell

“TO understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.” – John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government

“But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” – John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government

“What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right—from God—to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

If every person has the right to defend—even by force—his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right—its reason for existing, its lawfulness—is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force—for the same reason—cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.”- Frederic Bastiat, The Law

“But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense. ” – Frederic Bastiat, The Law

“And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me, thereby puts himself into a state of war with me.” – John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government

“This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i.e. kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.” – John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government

“In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave.” – Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

“If the people of this country wish to maintain such a government as the Constitution describes, there is no reason in the world why they should not sign the instrument itself, and thus make known their wishes in an open, authentic manner; in such manner as the common sense and experience of mankind have shown to be reasonable and necessary in such cases; and in such manner as to make themselves (as they ought to do) individually responsible for the acts of the government.” – Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

“If any considerable number of the people believe the Constitution to be good, why do they not sign it themselves, and make laws for, and administer them upon, each other; leaving all other persons (who do not interfere with them) in peace?” – Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

“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.” – Patrick Henry, Speech to Virginia Ratifying Assembly, June 5, 1788

“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.” – Patrick Henry, Speech to Virginia Ratifying Assembly, June 5, 1788

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force: Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” – Patrick Henry, Speech to Virginia Ratifying Assembly, June 5, 1788

“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.” – Judge Billings Learned Hand, 1944, Spirit of Liberty Speech

“When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.” -Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. … . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” -Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, 1776

“Let them call me Rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. ” ~ Thomas Paine, The Crisis

“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.” -Samuel Adams

“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” Thomas Jefferson, personal motto

“Here’s to us and those like us…so damned few left.” – James Caan and James Earl Jones, Gardens of Stone, 1987