tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42005702885039263442024-03-05T17:30:29.713-08:00Jake Witmer's Blog"If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law."
-Henry David ThoreauJake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.comBlogger160125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-67241483567452879082016-08-15T09:48:00.001-07:002016-08-15T09:48:33.886-07:00Hacking Society - Jury Independence Palm Cards <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2TPN4B0oH0C_kaf8vUgOol0vGPtzUd3zC_Vy7FI7ciJaK5SYkq5iKK8rFV5AISwUhA4KoRKJjq7Q2i6Dx8rqPQuAJ_L3Lt5Ewaj5D6-gXoRimaMoLLt7x3YoyqpMLwkLhokrs-V748fwN/s1600/Screenshot+from+2016-08-13+17%253A16%253A05a.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2TPN4B0oH0C_kaf8vUgOol0vGPtzUd3zC_Vy7FI7ciJaK5SYkq5iKK8rFV5AISwUhA4KoRKJjq7Q2i6Dx8rqPQuAJ_L3Lt5Ewaj5D6-gXoRimaMoLLt7x3YoyqpMLwkLhokrs-V748fwN/s320/Screenshot+from+2016-08-13+17%253A16%253A05a.png" width="320" height="263" /></a>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKYqdPskeCsYCp7PXejImgtiJRMnLXHJcexh565HO9LFROHS0SH2dzfUiLNH1ga1z75788ffYRB3pjLOzf8hQALxGRJsP9xYV-anfI8p6N6MQGRXytJ2yhfyydLptMsz7_uDKtN3SKAuCV/s1600/Screenshot+from+2016-08-13+20%253A20%253A31x.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKYqdPskeCsYCp7PXejImgtiJRMnLXHJcexh565HO9LFROHS0SH2dzfUiLNH1ga1z75788ffYRB3pjLOzf8hQALxGRJsP9xYV-anfI8p6N6MQGRXytJ2yhfyydLptMsz7_uDKtN3SKAuCV/s320/Screenshot+from+2016-08-13+20%253A20%253A31x.png" width="320" height="176" /></a>Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-472134237020597192015-03-10T03:49:00.001-07:002016-08-15T05:30:09.392-07:00Do Libertarians Really Want Freedom?Chris is largely correct <a href="http://christophercantwell.com/2015/03/08/i-rejoined-the-libertarian-party/">here</a>.
Let me state before I begin how I use percentages in this essay. I use them the way Bryan Caplan uses them in his famous essay discussing global totalitarianism as an existential risk. It's online free, <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Feconfaculty.gmu.edu%2Fbcaplan%2Ftotal4.doc&ei=cDv-VPijGtj_yQSrpYGQBw&usg=AFQjCNEzNCwIPZQv4r4Fr5IbGWva03peGg&sig2=aq1UR9popEA3DttcI3pWWg&bvm=bv.87611401,d.aWw">here, as a Word Document</a>. Here's what Caplan writes, in the prior essay "The Totalitarian Threat", on "personal assignments of probability" or "p of X":
<blockquote>I am an economist, and economists like to make people assign quantitative probabilities to risks. "What's your p
of X?" we often ask, meaning "What probability do you assign to X
happening?" The point is not that anyone has the definitive
numbers. The point, rather, is that explicit probabilities clarify
debate, and impose discipline on how beliefs should change as new evidence emerges. (Tetlock 2005) If a person says that two risks are both "serious," it is unclear which one he sees as the
greater threat; but we can stop guessing once he assigns a
probability of 2% to one and .1% to another. Similarly, if a person
says that the probability of an event is 2%, and relevant new
information arrives, consistency requires him to revise his
probability. </blockquote>
I've worked as a ballot access activist for the Libertarian Party, on and off, for 15 years. I helped place Badnarik on the ballot in 11 States, including Texas, which has not had to petition since. (For my best work, however, I've been "shown the door" or "fired." These were the 9000 voter registrations that I did in AZ and AK, two States that are worth the FBI or others controlling, or are inhabited by ~100% philosophical and ~0% strategic "Libertarians." The reason I was "fired" by the AZ LP is that I worked a university, gathering "soft registrations" for one day. My mercenary replacement exclusively works universities. Then the reason I was fired became that I suggested that a man whose wife was dying of cancer preserve her brain at Alcor.org. ...But that didn't hold up to any scrutiny, so they just slandered me behind my back. The registrations I gathered in Coconino County stayed on the books for years, instead of "falling off the books" and I was anonymously thanked at their state convention in 2010 for the work I had done in 2005 --all while being "blacklisted from further employment.")
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Every long-time Libertarian activist has a similar story (a brief period where you're gainfully employed and "sized up," then ties are severed and your work history is wasted, and you're shown the door, and replaced with people who can't spell the word "libertarian." In short, the same way the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postal_killings#United_States">U.S. Postal Service</a> was managed for years: politically, for short-term gain, with no thought as to possible consequences.). The National LP keeps internal hiring records not available to its workers, or the membership, or the public. This would be fine if it was a political organization that actually had libertarian intentions (the intention to take political power away from sociopaths who are determined to keep it). But the way it works now, it's simply too easy to infiltrate and destroy, as it has been, for well over 20 years.
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Now, because most Libertarians lack a gene for "strategy," but have two copies of the gene for "philosophy," let me simplify the prior statements. If the LP didn't repeatedly insert a pistol into its mouth and pull the trigger after every election cycle(high failure rates which cause high turnover), it would find itself totally owned and controlled by a few FBI agents who have worked on major party campaigns, and fully understand political strategy. This is 100% the fault of the individual small and big-L "Libertarians" themselves. One former LP member in WY said this was a problem of "doers vs. dreamers." He's got a point.
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A simple but useful heuristic test for libertarians is designed to "check and see" if they are consequentialists. Consequentialists judge events by their outcomes or "consequences." If libertarianism, in practice, results in theocratic tyranny, then to a consequentialist, that (form/instantiation of) "libertarianism" is a bad thing. If libertarianism, in practice, results in expanded individual freedom, and a free and wealthy society where everyone is free to innovate and keep the results of their labor, then that form of libertarianism is a good thing.
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Libertarianism in the USA has had wretched results, results worse than if it simply didn't exist at all, for over 40 years. So we have to ask ourselves, "Why is that?" My past 15 years have showed me that:
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<b>1) Libertarians have superficially "good intentions" but zero comprehension of political science, political strategy, and the nature of serious battle.</b> The dilettante do-nothings who run the LP don't intend to be dilettantes, and they're great people to have a drink with. ...But they don't take seriously the lessons revealed to the Libertarian movement by Morton Blackwell, in "<a href="https://www.leadershipinstitute.org/resources/files/THE%20REAL%20NATURE%20OF%20POLITICS.pdf">The Real Nature of Politics</a>".<br>
<b>2) Those who are capable of strategy are "run out" of the LP.</b> (ie: The few capable/competent people who are employed by the LP are simply not rehired, and when they see the rewards of their hard work being redirected to incompetent simpletons, they usually just walk away "for good." Keep in mind that those who have sought employment in a field have done so often because they have insight, drive, and specialized knowledge. People often get their "choice of career" correct. Markets, in all their optimality, depend on this fact of reality.) The LP leadership are all "heads up their ass" philosophers who wouldn't last a day in any party where they actually were forced to elect someone. A good test of this is heuristic: Ask those running for office how many votes the incumbent received, to win. (If they don't know the exact number, that's ominous.) Ask those running for office how many the "next-closest loser" received. (If they don't know the exact number, that's ominous.) Ask those running for office if they know how many people ran in the prior election, and whether the margin of victory was won by any minor players (If they don't know the exact number, that's ominous.) Ask those running for office, (in private, and off the record!), what they think their prospects are of winning. (If they are highly confident, but don't know anything about the numbers they're dealing with, they're delusional in this regard.) Ask those running for office how they expect to win, in the face of overwhelming conformity to the mainstream. (If they say they're going to "campaign hard" then find out what they mean by this. Are they raising money? Did they start way earlier than the major party candidates? Are they walking their district and measuring support levels from #1-#5? Or, do they think they can "put the message out on a website" and have victory fall into their hand like a ripe fruit?) Bad answers to any of these heuristic guides indicate a fatal level of delusion that is so common in Libertarian "campaigns" that they are the rule, not the exception.<br>
<b>3) Libertarians, taken as a whole, <i>without question</i>
don't want liberty as much as sociopaths want to steal from us.</b> If they have to enslave us to steal from us, they are not bothered by that fact, even slightly. Will Groves got it right, virtually all prosecutors, cops, and politicians are sociopaths (or, more precisely, they are obedient conformists in the model of Milgram's "Obedience to Authority" experiments, who are "de facto" on the sociopathic spectrum and are pushed to sociopathic action by clinical sociopaths who are higher in the hierarchy than they are). See: <a href="http://strike-the-root.com/91/groves/groves1.html">http://strike-the-root.com/91/groves/groves1.html</a> In short, freedom does not mean as much to libertarians as the capacity for tyranny means to our sociopathic power-seeking enemies. For them, it's a career, a paycheck, and a lifestyle. Libertarians such as myself who are overly-concerned with the career, pay-check, and lifestyle's OUTCOME that we've signed onto suddenly find ourselves cast out by dilettante strategically-incompetent do-nothings who run the LP.<br>
<b>4) Libertarians don't understand, use, or value feedback-oriented strategies.</b> They don't demand realistic (benchmark-measurable, winnable) benevolent outcomes from their plans. We're not going to be winning the presidency or a governor's race without first having won a single State Legislative race or sheriff's race. (This is especially true of philosophically-and-strategically-clueless races that lack even the passion or capacity to "catch fire" by appealing to the electorate in the way Jesse Ventura did, due to his televized debate appearance.) If you can't see this, you're a "50% and 0%" time-waster, you're part of the problem, and you have no strategic knowledge. You can correct this in a few ways: 4a) You can go door-to-door, shaking hands, and talking with the general public, assigning realistic support levels to those you talk with. 4b) You can admit that you have no "people skills" for dealing with people face-to-face, and you can pay people like me to do so. The prior activities only matter when done in service of a candidate who will appear on an election ballot (if this isn't the case, the public ignores your message, because they are almost 100% of the belief that "elections are the only political activity that make a difference"). Ideally, you will do this in the ballot access petitioning window, so you can see how you stack up next to other signature gatherers. Did you have problems getting 15 signatures per hour for more than 4 hours? If so, you probably don't have the right temperament for the work. Did you assign a lot of "#1s" (see: <a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/040719/19point.1_9.htm">http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/040719/19point.1_9.htm</a> ) who later clearly did not vote for the candidate, based on precinct-level election results? (You can only calculate this if you don't "wash out," and you actually walk to over 1,000 houses, and the campaign actually records their election performance.) Did you "wash out" before speaking to enough houses to influence the election in any measurable way? If you're not willing to interface with the public in a "feedback and correction" style, then you're ignoring the fundamental laws of <a href="http://www.pangaro.com/definition-cybernetics.html">cybernetics</a> that govern elections. Although cybernetics is a technical discipline at its highest level, you need not have the math skills of a Norbert Weiner, Ray Kurzweil, or W. Ross Ashby to engage in "feedback and correction." ...You simply need to take five to seven meaningful measurements, and then judge the election results honestly (and your own honesty level) based on the real-world numbers. This is usually a real eye-opener, the first time it happens. People are both more and less successful than they thought they'd be, based on their initial thinking. Usually, they are far less successful(if they were delusionally optimistic), and far more successful(if they thought that "face-to-face" doesn't matter, because elections are won due to media coverage). You need to make falsifiable predictions about the election, and then use the election results (and other measurable results) to determine if you've trained yourself well. For example: Every time a person is called to check support levels in a poll, if you're not the one doing the calling, that provides at least a partially-unbiased level of "real feedback." If you notice that the precincts where your workers have gone door-to-door are all polling with higher support levels (as is very common!) then you now have your work cut out for you! (On the other hand, if some areas where your workers have been are not similarly-supportive, you have a problem with the workers, or the workers' identity. If only the candidate's direct outreach raises support, then you're dealing with entrenched political support for the incumbent state, and only seeing the actual alternative face-to-face changes people's minds.) Personally going door-to-door, is the best way to purge oneself of delusion about the pace of progress that is possible in a given area. Doing door-to-door campaigning eliminates delusion from a campaign, records useful information; it trains individuals to understand <i>what level of peaceful progress is achievable, in a given area, in a given amount of time</i>.
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There are a few college textbooks with the title "Winning Elections," one by Dick Simpson, and one by Ronald Faucheux. These are good books that provide insight into, well, winning elections. Most libertarians have not read them. They also haven't read anything remotely like them, even if they've read everything Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises ever wrote. In fact, when you start to talk about getting Libertarians elected, most Libertarians' eyes glaze over. They fidget, they quit paying attention. The exact reverse phenomenon can be seen in most non-libertarians who have found some narrow area of specialization: they are focused on the strategic question, "Can this person win an election?" However, when you discuss philosophy with them, you notice that all the portions of the brain that describe our emergent social system exist "at the non-existent top of a truncated hierarchical structure." The average American has 5% of the knowledge they need to possess regarding History, Economics, Law, and Psychology. They need H.E.L.P. The prior "low-level" disciplines are all of the disciplines that exist to created a well-rounded philosophy in any individualist. They are the portions of "applied individualism" that allow for "basic Americanism" in politics. (Which is precisely why the government schools have stopped teaching those subjects properly.)
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One of the primary questions that all Libertarian Party ballot access petitioners are asked by people who had previously not heard of the LP is "So, do you libertarians have anyone elected?" Based solely on tone and body language, if you say "Yeah, we have a few water commissioners in Florida elected." Their interest dissipates, and they say "Ah, OK, I have to go." If you enthusiastically say "Yes, we've elected four state legislators in Alaska, and we have city councilmen elected all across the USA," then you'll see some interest. Many people recognize that control of a State legislature would amount to a measurable ability to produce the <i>outcome</i> of individual freedom. Again: the general public cares primarily about <i>outcomes</i> or <i>consequences</i>, while libertarians care primarily about <i>theory</i> and <i>philosophical ideas</i>(which wind up being "ungrounded abstractions" that are not "mapped to reality"). This is a problem that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-7zYBKgzfs">Alfred Korzybski</a> referred to as "the map is not the territory." (Reality exists, but humans perceive it with their nervous systems incompletely, as an abstraction. In this revelation, Korzybski was a combination of objectivist and cyberneticist.) Psychologically, this means that libertarians need to get over the fact that politics requires dishonesty in general communications to unintelligent and uninformed "generalized" networks. It does not good at all to accurately describe economic reality in a campaign, because a majority of voters do not understand Economics. Further, they do not believe that Economics must be reconciled with morality. For these reasons, brutal honesty about economic reality loses votes, and loses elections. People vote based on their emotions, so <i>all campaign communications must be mapped onto emotional content containing strong, emotionally-targeted moral statements.</i>
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This is far from an abstract description of "how things might be." This is how my own family, whom I love, relates to discussions of politics (with one or two exceptions). I have to dole out philosophical knowledge in tiny block-sized increments, checking to see if they've understood my point, to help them "build their comprehension hierarchy upward" when discussing the true structure of society. (And I do this to inform them, with no hope of altering their vote. Their vote would only be altered if they respected my success level, and wanted to be more like me. This crude heuristic is often applied to political messengers, which is why people ignore messengers with anarchy-symbol T-shirts.) In all areas except the domain of jury independence, the progress I generally make is fairly ineffectual. Why is the jury independence message more effective? (1)They know what juries are, juries are called every day, and the outcome of being called for jury duty is something that they imagine can and will <i>personally impact them</i> at some point. Therefore, it is not "theoretical abstraction" and is worth listening to. When a family member has learned about jury independence from me, they view being removed from the jury as an avoidable tragedy, and one that would be shameful to them. They would view it, and rightly so, as a missed opportunity to veto the grotesque victimless crime laws that have made a mockery of the phrase "the land of the free." Contrast that "pragmatic" or "realistic" or "strategic focus" with the philosophical dilettante focus of the mainstream libertarians Doug French, Jeffrey Tucker, and Stephan Kinsella, where they suggest grandstanding and being kicked off of juries, abandoning innocent defendants to the tyranny of sociopathic judges and prosecutors. <a href="http://lfb.org/can-jury-slaves-say-whats-true/">http://lfb.org/can-jury-slaves-say-whats-true/</a>
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Most people are pragmatists in all areas except their narrow area of specialization, where they may have some idea of "what should be." This is because they believe and act as if life is too short for them to learn much outside of this area of specialization. In fact, life may actually be too short for them to learn much outside their area of specialization. Friedrich A. Hayek took note of this with his concept of "<a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/~vlima/courses/econ200/spring01/hayek.pdf">local knowledge</a>." It is this local knowledge that allows democratic libertarianism (what Hayek called "<a href="http://www.cato.org/pubs/articles/hayek-why-i-am-not-conservative.pdf">liberal democracy</a>") to function, but only when democracy is defined as <i><b>Proper Jury Trials</b></i> (67% of the value); <i><b>Elections</b></i> (12% of the value); <i><b>Free Speech and Assembly</b></i> (11% of the value); and <i><b>Widespread, Skilled, Private Gun Ownership and Carry</b></i> (10% of the value). This ranking shows that, if the first two democratic limits on government power have not been eliminated, the threat of violence is not necessary to produce movement toward individual freedom. However, if jury trials are eliminated, the entire 67% previously dedicated to them is then divided between <i><b>Free Speech and Assembly</b></i> and <i><b>Gun Rights</b></i>, because that is an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUmKT43j4Tc">indication</a> that the State plans to suddenly move toward true totalitarianism, of the type practiced by Stalin and Hitler. (Meaning: If this happens, you have a narrow window of time in which to assemble publicly, demanding a reversal of the situation, backed by the force of arms, before you will certainly <a href="http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/survive.htm">lose all freedom</a>.)
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For this reason, I like to assign people a percentage score, up to "50" for philosophy, and a percentage score, up to "50" for strategy. Taken together, a person can score 50+50 or "100%" if they are both strategically and philosophically well-educated. If a person has 50% on philosophy (a perfect score!) and 0% on strategy, they get a failing grade. They are totally and completely uninteresting parts of the existing complete "non-solution." This describes the vast majority of the Libertarians I encounter. In fact, if someone is not an existing libertarian, but quickly understands the philosophical ideas I give to them, I assign them a likelihood of being in a position to "change the world."
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Someone like Jesse Ventura may only be 30% libertarian (out of a possible 50%), but he's got strategic knowledge superior to most libertarians, so he gets a 30% score there, too (out of a possible 50%). That gives him a "D-minus" or 60%. Jeff Tucker, Stephan Kinsella, and Doug French all get a 50% in philosophy, and a zero percent in strategy (so long as they retain their ignorant view of jury trials, and their commitment to taking a position in the false "anarchy v. minarchy" debate). So, they get a 50% score, or an "F." Imagine that Jesse Ventura moves the debate in a libertarian direction with a campaign that the general public can take seriously. That would be doing far more than "preaching to the converted." Ventura sucks on healthcare, advocating government-run healthcare. But he also says he thinks the government shouldn't wage a war on drugs, and doesn't "own your body." If he gets elected, the same black market in healthcare that exists now (cheaper foreign healthcare in India, Argentina, and other places) will exist. So, if he can abolish, or even attempt to abolish, the DEA and ONDCP, we would owe him far more than we owe dilettantes who have convinced libertarians to defeat themselves. For those "anarchists" unfamiliar with <i>practical</i> arguments for jury independence, don't take it from me, take it from the most intelligent anarchist on the planet, Doug Casey:
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Louis James: Hm. So, if you did get summoned to jury duty, would you ever consider playing the role of Joe Six Pack, to try to get on a jury and see if you could help justice triumph over law enforcement? I see that FIJA actually has a pamphlet on surviving voir dire. [ http://fija.org/docs/BR_YYYY_surviving_voir_dire.pdf -JW]
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Doug Casey: Well, I don't think you or I could ever get past the voir dire process and on to a jury, but if by some miracle someone of goodwill and interested in justice were to do so, I'd say yes. By all means, get on a jury, if you can. Striking a blow for justice is worth some inconvenience and effort.</blockquote>
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For what it's worth (a lot, actually) legendary comedian Doug Stanhope agrees with Doug Casey, here:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4fYIUuAP8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4fYIUuAP8</a>
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Single individuals have changed the world in the past. John Lilburne was one of them. His practical, highly-intelligent financiers wanted someone brave enough to hand out pamphlets to the great unwashed. Richard Overton printed Lilburne's words (and his own), but it was the charisma, intelligence, leadership and STRATEGIC ACTION that changed the English common law in the 1600s.
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Without Lilburne, there would never have been any relatively greater level of freedom in the USA. There would have been no proper jury trial for Lysander Spooner to defend, in the abolitionist movement. There would have been no Spooner to influence the strategically perfect Frederick Douglass (who, by the way, never gets enough credit from libertarians as a courageous strategic innovator).
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One person can change the world, and this is true now, more than ever. Technology has enabled our voices to become "An Arrow Against All Tyrants."
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I know precisely what needs to happen, but I have spent my life figuring this out (and working my way into poverty, like too many other libertarians who believed there actually was "a Libertarian Party"). In this regard, I'm like Lilburne and Douglass (but with less determination), by doggedly pursuing truth and freedom above all else.
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The vast multitude of libertarians I've met have not figured out any of the above. They have a superficial dedication to liberty, and zero comprehension of how it might be practically made possible. Until this changes, big-L "Libertarianism" actually functions as the enemy of freedom.
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This is especially true in states like AZ, WY, MT, ID, and AK, where progress toward liberty is actually viable. (An alternate theory is that progress toward liberty is more possible in places like Chicago IL and Houston TX, but only in black neighborhoods that have been viciously exploited by the drug war. Allocating scarce resources to "one or the other" in "all or nothing" fashion is likely a mistake.)
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One fatal move is for the "FSP" to have chosen New Hampshire as its battleground state. This is highly ignorant, as the "existing metrics" or "initial conditions" do not support liberty in New Hampshire. The lack of an initiative process alone means that it will be very difficult to incentivize liberty in NH, and without incentivized, that is, <i>paid</i>, workers, <i><b>nothing is ever accomplished</b>, because the risk is too great for the comparatively small reward</i>.
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It will be interesting to see how many people here shit on me for being a "paid shill." (And, of course, I'll be interested to see viable solutions forthcoming from each of those voices.) The tactics I'm suggesting allowed the LP to achieve its "high water mark" in 1978-1982, in Alaska. Since then, I've registered 5,000 people in Alaska, until I was told I was "no longer needed." That's the seriousness of the freedom movement: It wants to be a "big fish in a small pond" more than it wants individual freedom.
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This is the message we're sending the incumbent state with ineffectual political involvement.
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The state doesn't need to assassinate us, when they can simply misdirect us at the first sign we're doing anything right. Because most libertarians haven't ever investigated real-world liberty, or its political causes, they lack the capacity to evaluate motion toward liberty. They lack the capacity to make realistic predictions that vary with the enemy's strategy. They also lack the capacity to predict the enemy's strategy, since doing totally ineffective things is seen as just as good of a use of scarce dollars as doing highly-effective things. Printing newsletters that nobody reads, for example, is seen as just as effective as measuring support levels door-to-door.
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Because this is how stupid the Libertarian movement actually is, they have essentially reduced the value I place on elections quite a bit. However, nobody says you can't inform jurors of their rights while going door-to-door and taking territory for state legislative races. If a campaign is minimally-funded ($5-$10 per door-to-door ballot access signature is a good "rule of thumb"), and then financed beyond that point, so that far more signatures are filed than are actually necessary for ballot access, this would be a viable way to defeat the 2-party system. This would cost a few million dollars.
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It's too bad that people like Peter Thiel, the Koch brothers, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, John Mackey, T.J. Rodgers, Elon Musk, and many others who claim to value freedom do not value it as much as those who wish to take it away. I'm really not insulting these people, but that's the only way to interpret the differences in the amount of money spent and attention to detail paid towards achieving the two goals. By seeing the outcomes of every political contest, we can assume that they don't know how to elect voluntaryists like Harry Browne, or they don't care to. If they don't know how to, that's a simple matter of reading the resources this essay links to, or talking to someone like me. Bloomberg, for example, at the time the first draft of this essay was written, was spending several million dollars in Nevada alone, in an attempt to strip Nevadans of their gun rights (which are already treated as privileges, in relation to neighboring states like Arizona). A pro-gun initiative in California(which would repeal Governor Jerry Brown's restrictions on owning certain kinds of rifles) currently lacks enough money and financing to gather enough signatures to access the ballot by the September deadline. If you add up all of the states in which Bloomberg is spending millions, that would be enough to finance the capture of an entire state legislature.
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But keep in mind what this would entail: not just short term commitment, but long-term commitment. When you have a lot of money, as well as several companies and solid income, you have a lot more to lose.
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In the Englightenment era, people were willing to sacrifice money to the cause of expanding freedom. They were willing to do this even at the cost of recognizing that most of the people they were causing to "support the cause" had a half-hearted dedication to liberty, at best. Two major things have changed this:<br><br>
1) The USA and the rest of the world has received an object lesson in the methods of totalitarianism in the past 100 years. Donors to libertarian causes don't know if they will be "disappeared" or poisoned, or blackmailed (in an era of universal NSA surveillance).<br>
2) Libertarians don't know if they're risking their personal wealth by seriously battling the system. They think to themselves "They can't possibly destroy me for donating to my political party of choice, but if I was seen as the effective driver of that political party, they might target me specifically. Therefore, I'll give to the political party, but not exert influence over it to make it into a serious organization." Then, when the LP's infiltrators or idiots waste the donations, these major donors disappear. Donors demand results from their contributions.<br>
3) Donors often times don't understand that those few people who are doing effective things inside the LP have to first overcome the idiots, obstructors, and infiltrators within the LP. When you're battling what Norbert Weiner called "Manichean devils," those devils have a conscious incentive to <i>encourage</i> confusion within your ranks. In many cases, you won't be able to figure out who they are, due to <i>plausible deniability</i>. This was the problem that the Native Americans faced in the American Indian Movement (AIM), when they were infiltrated by Douglas(s) Durham of the FBI. Once Douglas Durham had won the trust of enough people in the organization to make his removal difficult, he began holding press releases, stating that everyone who is not an Indian should be deported. Surprise! The funding that the Natives had gotten from sympathetic white liberals suddenly dried up! Later on, when Durhan testified against the Indians in court, it was <i>too late</i>. http://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/flatview?cuecard=36293 This experience helped lead Russel Means to call himself a libertarian. He tragically, in my opinion, lost the LP presidential nomination by the LP Convention of 1988. (Ron Paul is a fine human being, but the counter-culture in the USA begins with those who are most oppressed by the state, because they have an actual incentive to change things. This incentive doesn't "come and go" with the libertarian impulses of financially well-off, comfortable millionaires and billionaires.)
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The FBI and CIA are both involved in US elections, as revealed by many sources. For example, former governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura states that he was questioned at length by the CIA after winning his gubernatorial election, even though their charter says they're not to be operational within US borders. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsDvLtpi8W8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsDvLtpi8W8</a>
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The protestors at the latest GOP national convention were recently targeted by undercover goons. As have radical environmentalists, one of which was a woman who slept with a young protestor, and manipulated him into a prison sentence for a scheme that <i>she</i> cooked up. (So, our government makes its own use of entrapment with "honey traps" known, to encourage <i>prior restraint</i>.) See:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByCRuIO51u0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByCRuIO51u0</a>
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If self-proclaimed millionaires and billionaires are afraid of state retaliation, then they should simply come out and say so. Let them point out that they are afraid, because the NSA now functions like a legalized "American" KGB, having honed its resources on Muslims, Militia men, and other disorganized anti-government minorities. Let them simply state that they don't know how to participate meaningfully in elections, nor do they care to find out. That would be the honest truth. For them to claim that they care is a disservice to legitimate political engagement of the enemy, in the twilight of that being a viable option. There isn't much time left, so false friends of freedom are particularly dangerous to the existence of actual freedom. In talking to registered voters in 15 States, I can definitively say that there is hope for individual freedom in the American electorate. Many already identify with small-L libertarianism, and it's probably enough for an organized effort to win a high degree of individual freedom.
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So, whereas people like Chris Cantwell think that the LP is an "outreach effort" I'm of the mind that it should actually be used for its intended purpose: to directly expand individual freedom by taking power away from <a href="http://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/ascendence-sociopaths-us-governance">those who want it most</a>.
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Thoreau wrote:
<blockquote>"I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name -if ten honest men only, nay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man."</blockquote>Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-57524578541772010782015-03-10T03:49:00.000-07:002016-08-15T01:20:18.436-07:00Do Libertarians Really Want Freedom?Chris is largely correct <a href="http://christophercantwell.com/2015/03/08/i-rejoined-the-libertarian-party/">here</a>.
Let me state before I begin how I use percentages in this essay. I use them the way Bryan Caplan uses them in his famous essay discussing global totalitarianism as an existential risk. It's online free, <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Feconfaculty.gmu.edu%2Fbcaplan%2Ftotal4.doc&ei=cDv-VPijGtj_yQSrpYGQBw&usg=AFQjCNEzNCwIPZQv4r4Fr5IbGWva03peGg&sig2=aq1UR9popEA3DttcI3pWWg&bvm=bv.87611401,d.aWw">here, as a Word Document</a>. Here's what Caplan writes, in the prior essay "The Totalitarian Threat", on "personal assignments of probability" or "p of X":
<blockquote>I am an economist, and economists like to make people assign quantitative probabilities to risks. "What's your p
of X?" we often ask, meaning "What probability do you assign to X
happening?" The point is not that anyone has the definitive
numbers. The point, rather, is that explicit probabilities clarify
debate, and impose discipline on how beliefs should change as new evidence emerges. (Tetlock 2005) If a person says that two risks are both "serious," it is unclear which one he sees as the
greater threat; but we can stop guessing once he assigns a
probability of 2% to one and .1% to another. Similarly, if a person
says that the probability of an event is 2%, and relevant new
information arrives, consistency requires him to revise his
probability. </blockquote>
I've worked as a ballot access activist for the Libertarian Party, on and off, for 15 years. I helped place Badnarik on the ballot in 11 States, including Texas, which has not had to petition since. (For my best work, however, I've been "shown the door" or "fired." These were the 9000 voter registrations that I did in AZ and AK, two States that are worth the FBI or others controlling, or are inhabited by ~100% philosophical and ~0% strategic "Libertarians." The reason I was "fired" by the AZ LP is that I worked a university, gathering "soft registrations" for one day. My mercenary replacement exclusively works universities. Then the reason I was fired became that I suggested that a man whose wife was dying of cancer preserve her brain at Alcor.org. ...But that didn't hold up to any scrutiny, so they just slandered me behind my back. The registrations I gathered in Coconino County stayed on the books for years, instead of "falling off the books" and I was anonymously thanked at their state convention in 2010 for the work I had done in 2005 --all while being "blacklisted from further employment.")
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Every long-time Libertarian activist has a similar story (a brief period where you're gainfully employed and "sized up," then ties are severed and your work history is wasted, and you're shown the door, and replaced with people who can't spell the word "libertarian." In short, the same way the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postal_killings#United_States">U.S. Postal Service</a> was managed for years: politically, for short-term gain, with no thought as to possible consequences.). The National LP keeps internal hiring records not available to its workers, or the membership, or the public. This would be fine if it was a political organization that actually had libertarian intentions (the intention to take political power away from sociopaths who are determined to keep it). But the way it works now, it's simply too easy to infiltrate and destroy, as it has been, for well over 20 years.
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Now, because most Libertarians lack a gene for "strategy," but have two copies of the gene for "philosophy," let me simplify the prior statements. If the LP didn't repeatedly insert a pistol into its mouth and pull the trigger after every election cycle(high failure rates which cause high turnover), it would find itself totally owned and controlled by a few FBI agents who have worked on major party campaigns, and fully understand political strategy. This is 100% the fault of the individual small and big-L "Libertarians" themselves. One former LP member in WY said this was a problem of "doers vs. dreamers." He's got a point.
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A simple but useful heuristic test for libertarians is designed to "check and see" if they are consequentialists. Consequentialists judge events by their outcomes or "consequences." If libertarianism, in practice, results in theocratic tyranny, then to a consequentialist, that (form/instantiation of) "libertarianism" is a bad thing. If libertarianism, in practice, results in expanded individual freedom, and a free and wealthy society where everyone is free to innovate and keep the results of their labor, then that form of libertarianism is a good thing.
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Libertarianism in the USA has had wretched results, results worse than if it simply didn't exist at all, for over 40 years. So we have to ask ourselves, "Why is that?" My past 15 years have showed me that:
<br><br>
<b>1) Libertarians have superficially "good intentions" but zero comprehension of political science, political strategy, and the nature of serious battle.</b> The dilettante do-nothings who run the LP don't intend to be dilettantes, and they're great people to have a drink with. ...But they don't take seriously the lessons revealed to the Libertarian movement by Morton Blackwell, in "<a href="https://www.leadershipinstitute.org/resources/files/THE%20REAL%20NATURE%20OF%20POLITICS.pdf">The Real Nature of Politics</a>".<br>
<b>2) Those who are capable of strategy are "run out" of the LP.</b> (ie: The few capable/competent people who are employed by the LP are simply not rehired, and when they see the rewards of their hard work being redirected to incompetent simpletons, they usually just walk away "for good." Keep in mind that those who have sought employment in a field have done so often because they have insight, drive, and specialized knowledge. People often get their "choice of career" correct. Markets, in all their optimality, depend on this fact of reality.) The LP leadership are all "heads up their ass" philosophers who wouldn't last a day in any party where they actually were forced to elect someone. A good test of this is heuristic: Ask those running for office how many votes the incumbent received, to win. (If they don't know the exact number, that's ominous.) Ask those running for office how many the "next-closest loser" received. (If they don't know the exact number, that's ominous.) Ask those running for office if they know how many people ran in the prior election, and whether the margin of victory was won by any minor players (If they don't know the exact number, that's ominous.) Ask those running for office, (in private, and off the record!), what they think their prospects are of winning. (If they are highly confident, but don't know anything about the numbers they're dealing with, they're delusional in this regard.) Ask those running for office how they expect to win, in the face of overwhelming conformity to the mainstream. (If they say they're going to "campaign hard" then find out what they mean by this. Are they raising money? Did they start way earlier than the major party candidates? Are they walking their district and measuring support levels from #1-#5? Or, do they think they can "put the message out on a website" and have victory fall into their hand like a ripe fruit?) Bad answers to any of these heuristic guides indicate a fatal level of delusion that is so common in Libertarian "campaigns" that it is the exception, rather than the rule.<br>
<b>3) Libertarians, taken as a whole, <i>without question</i>
don't want liberty as much as sociopaths want to steal from us.</b> If they have to enslave us to steal from us, they are not bothered by that fact, even slightly. Will Groves got it right, virtually all prosecutors, cops, and politicians are sociopaths (or, more precisely, they are obedient conformists in the model of Milgram's "Obedience to Authority" experiments, who are "de facto" on the sociopathic spectrum and are pushed to sociopathic action by clinical sociopaths who are higher in the hierarchy than they are). See: <a href="http://strike-the-root.com/91/groves/groves1.html">http://strike-the-root.com/91/groves/groves1.html</a> In short, freedom does not mean as much to libertarians as the capacity for tyranny means to our sociopathic power-seeking enemies. For them, it's a career, a paycheck, and a lifestyle. Libertarians such as myself who are overly-concerned with the career, pay-check, and lifestyle's OUTCOME that we've signed onto suddenly find ourselves cast out by dilettante strategically-incompetent do-nothings who run the LP.<br>
<b>4) Libertarians don't understand, use, or value feedback-oriented strategies.</b> They don't demand realistic (benchmark-measurable, winnable) benevolent outcomes from their plans. We're not going to be winning the presidency or a governor's race without first having won a single State Legislative race or sheriff's race. (This is especially true of philosophically-and-strategically-clueless races that lack even the passion or capacity to "catch fire" by appealing to the electorate in the way Jesse Ventura did, due to his televized debate appearance.) If you can't see this, you're a "50% and 0%" time-waster, you're part of the problem, and you have no strategic knowledge. You can correct this in a few ways: 4a) You can go door-to-door, shaking hands, and talking with the general public, assigning realistic support levels to those you talk with. 4b) You can admit that you have no "people skills" for dealing with people face-to-face, and you can pay people like me to do so. The prior activities only matter when done in service of a candidate who will appear on an election ballot (if this isn't the case, the public ignores your message, because they are almost 100% of the belief that "elections are the only political activity that make a difference"). Ideally, you will do this in the ballot access petitioning window, so you can see how you stack up next to other signature gatherers. Did you have problems getting 15 signatures per hour for more than 4 hours? If so, you probably don't have the right temperament for the work. Did you assign a lot of "#1s" (see: <a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/040719/19point.1_9.htm">http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/040719/19point.1_9.htm</a> ) who later clearly did not vote for the candidate, based on precinct-level election results? (You can only calculate this if you don't "wash out," and you actually walk to over 1,000 houses, and the campaign actually records their election performance.) Did you "wash out" before speaking to enough houses to influence the election in any measurable way? If you're not willing to interface with the public in a "feedback and correction" style, then you're ignoring the fundamental laws of <a href="http://www.pangaro.com/definition-cybernetics.html">cybernetics</a> that govern elections. Although cybernetics is a technical discipline at its highest level, you need not have the math skills of a Norbert Weiner, Ray Kurzweil, or W. Ross Ashby to engage in "feedback and correction." ...You simply need to take five to seven meaningful measurements, and then judge the election results honestly (and your own honesty level) based on the real-world numbers. This is usually a real eye-opener, the first time it happens. People are both more and less successful than they thought they'd be, based on their initial thinking. Usually, they are far less successful(if they were delusionally optimistic), and far more successful(if they thought that "face-to-face" doesn't matter, because elections are won due to media coverage). You need to make falsifiable predictions about the election, and then use the election results (and other measurable results) to determine if you've trained yourself well. For example: Every time a person is called to check support levels in a poll, if you're not the one doing the calling, that provides at least a partially-unbiased level of "real feedback." If you notice that the precincts where your workers have gone door-to-door are all polling with higher support levels (as is very common!) then you now have your work cut out for you! (On the other hand, if some areas where your workers have been are not similarly-supportive, you have a problem with the workers, or the workers' identity. If only the candidate's direct outreach raises support, then you're dealing with entrenched political support for the incumbent state, and only seeing the actual alternative face-to-face changes people's minds.) Personally going door-to-door, is the best way to purge oneself of delusion about the pace of progress that is possible in a given area. Doing door-to-door campaigning eliminates delusion from a campaign, records useful information; it trains individuals to understand <i>what level of peaceful progress is achievable, in a given area, in a given amount of time</i>.
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There are a few college textbooks with the title "Winning Elections," one by Dick Simpson, and one by Ronald Faucheux. These are good books that provide insight into, well, winning elections. Most libertarians have not read them. They also haven't read anything remotely like them, even if they've read everything Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises ever wrote. In fact, when you start to talk about getting Libertarians elected, most Libertarians' eyes glaze over. They fidget, they quit paying attention. The exact reverse phenomenon can be seen in most non-libertarians who have found some narrow area of specialization: they are focused on the strategic question, "Can this person win an election?" However, when you discuss philosophy with them, you notice that all the portions of the brain that describe our emergent social system exist "at the non-existent top of a truncated hierarchical structure." The average American has 5% of the knowledge they need to possess regarding History, Economics, Law, and Psychology. They need H.E.L.P. The prior "low-level" disciplines are all of the disciplines that exist to created a well-rounded philosophy in any individualist. They are the portions of "applied individualism" that allow for "basic Americanism" in politics. (Which is precisely why the government schools have stopped teaching those subjects properly.)
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One of the primary questions that all Libertarian Party ballot access petitioners are asked by people who had previously not heard of the LP is "So, do you libertarians have anyone elected?" Based solely on tone and body language, if you say "Yeah, we have a few water commissioners in Florida elected." Their interest dissipates, and they say "Ah, OK, I have to go." If you enthusiastically say "Yes, we've elected four state legislators in Alaska, and we have city councilmen elected all across the USA," then you'll see some interest. Many people recognize that control of a State legislature would amount to a measurable ability to produce the <i>outcome</i> of individual freedom. Again: the general public cares primarily about <i>outcomes</i> or <i>consequences</i>, while libertarians care primarily about <i>theory</i> and <i>philosophical ideas</i>(which wind up being "ungrounded abstractions" that are not "mapped to reality"). This is a problem that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-7zYBKgzfs">Alfred Korzybski</a> referred to as "the map is not the territory." (Reality exists, but humans perceive it with their nervous systems incompletely, as an abstraction. In this revelation, Korzybski was a combination of objectivist and cyberneticist.) Psychologically, this means that libertarians need to get over the fact that politics requires dishonesty in general communications to unintelligent and uninformed "generalized" networks. It does not good at all to accurately describe economic reality in a campaign, because a majority of voters do not understand Economics. Further, they do not believe that Economics must be reconciled with morality. For these reasons, brutal honesty about economic reality loses votes, and loses elections. People vote based on their emotions, so <i>all campaign communications must be mapped onto emotional content containing strong, emotionally-targeted moral statements.</i>
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This is far from an abstract description of "how things might be." This is how my own family, whom I love, relates to discussions of politics (with one or two exceptions). I have to dole out philosophical knowledge in tiny block-sized increments, checking to see if they've understood my point, to help them "build their comprehension hierarchy upward" when discussing the true structure of society. (And I do this to inform them, with no hope of altering their vote. Their vote would only be altered if they respected my success level, and wanted to be more like me. This crude heuristic is often applied to political messengers, which is why people ignore messengers with anarchy-symbol T-shirts.) In all areas except the domain of jury independence, the progress I generally make is fairly ineffectual. Why is the jury independence message more effective? (1)They know what juries are, juries are called every day, and the outcome of being called for jury duty is something that they imagine can and will <i>personally impact them</i> at some point. Therefore, it is not "theoretical abstraction" and is worth listening to. When a family member has learned about jury independence from me, they view being removed from the jury as an avoidable tragedy, and one that would be shameful to them. They would view it, and rightly so, as a missed opportunity to veto the grotesque victimless crime laws that have made a mockery of the phrase "the land of the free." Contrast that "pragmatic" or "realistic" or "strategic focus" with the philosophical dilettante focus of the mainstream libertarians Doug French, Jeffrey Tucker, and Stephan Kinsella, where they suggest grandstanding and being kicked off of juries, abandoning innocent defendants to the tyranny of sociopathic judges and prosecutors. <a href="http://lfb.org/can-jury-slaves-say-whats-true/">http://lfb.org/can-jury-slaves-say-whats-true/</a>
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Most people are pragmatists in all areas except their narrow area of specialization, where they may have some idea of "what should be." This is because they believe and act as if life is too short for them to learn much outside of this area of specialization. In fact, life may actually be too short for them to learn much outside their area of specialization. Friedrich A. Hayek took note of this with his concept of "<a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/~vlima/courses/econ200/spring01/hayek.pdf">local knowledge</a>." It is this local knowledge that allows democratic libertarianism (what Hayek called "<a href="http://www.cato.org/pubs/articles/hayek-why-i-am-not-conservative.pdf">liberal democracy</a>") to function, but only when democracy is defined as <i><b>Proper Jury Trials</b></i> (67% of the value); <i><b>Elections</b></i> (12% of the value); <i><b>Free Speech and Assembly</b></i> (11% of the value); and <i><b>Widespread, Skilled, Private Gun Ownership and Carry</b></i> (10% of the value). This ranking shows that, if the first two democratic limits on government power have not been eliminated, the threat of violence is not necessary to produce movement toward individual freedom. However, if jury trials are eliminated, the entire 67% previously dedicated to them is then divided between <i><b>Free Speech and Assembly</b></i> and <i><b>Gun Rights</b></i>, because that is an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUmKT43j4Tc">indication</a> that the State plans to suddenly move toward true totalitarianism, of the type practiced by Stalin and Hitler. (Meaning: If this happens, you have a narrow window of time in which to assemble publicly, demanding a reversal of the situation, backed by the force of arms, before you will certainly <a href="http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/survive.htm">lose all freedom</a>.)
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For this reason, I like to assign people a percentage score, up to "50" for philosophy, and a percentage score, up to "50" for strategy. Taken together, a person can score 50+50 or "100%" if they are both strategically and philosophically well-educated. If a person has 50% on philosophy (a perfect score!) and 0% on strategy, they get a failing grade. They are totally and completely uninteresting parts of the existing complete "non-solution." This describes the vast majority of the Libertarians I encounter. In fact, if someone is not an existing libertarian, but quickly understands the philosophical ideas I give to them, I assign them a likelihood of being in a position to "change the world."
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Someone like Jesse Ventura may only be 30% libertarian (out of a possible 50%), but he's got strategic knowledge superior to most libertarians, so he gets a 30% score there, too (out of a possible 50%). That gives him a "D-minus" or 60%. Jeff Tucker, Stephan Kinsella, and Doug French all get a 50% in philosophy, and a zero percent in strategy (so long as they retain their ignorant view of jury trials, and their commitment to taking a position in the false "anarchy v. minarchy" debate). So, they get a 50% score, or an "F." Imagine that Jesse Ventura moves the debate in a libertarian direction with a campaign that the general public can take seriously. That would be doing far more than "preaching to the converted." Ventura sucks on healthcare, advocating government-run healthcare. But he also says he thinks the government shouldn't wage a war on drugs, and doesn't "own your body." If he gets elected, the same black market in healthcare that exists now (cheaper foreign healthcare in India, Argentina, and other places) will exist. So, if he can abolish, or even attempt to abolish, the DEA and ONDCP, we would owe him far more than we owe dilettantes who have convinced libertarians to defeat themselves. For those "anarchists" unfamiliar with <i>practical</i> arguments for jury independence, don't take it from me, take it from the most intelligent anarchist on the planet, Doug Casey:
<blockquote>
Louis James: Hm. So, if you did get summoned to jury duty, would you ever consider playing the role of Joe Six Pack, to try to get on a jury and see if you could help justice triumph over law enforcement? I see that FIJA actually has a pamphlet on surviving voir dire. [ http://fija.org/docs/BR_YYYY_surviving_voir_dire.pdf -JW]
<br>
Doug Casey: Well, I don't think you or I could ever get past the voir dire process and on to a jury, but if by some miracle someone of goodwill and interested in justice were to do so, I'd say yes. By all means, get on a jury, if you can. Striking a blow for justice is worth some inconvenience and effort.</blockquote>
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For what it's worth (a lot, actually) legendary comedian Doug Stanhope agrees with Doug Casey, here:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4fYIUuAP8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4fYIUuAP8</a>
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Single individuals have changed the world in the past. John Lilburne was one of them. His practical, highly-intelligent financiers wanted someone brave enough to hand out pamphlets to the great unwashed. Richard Overton printed Lilburne's words (and his own), but it was the charisma, intelligence, leadership and STRATEGIC ACTION that changed the English common law in the 1600s.
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Without Lilburne, there would never have been any relatively greater level of freedom in the USA. There would have been no proper jury trial for Lysander Spooner to defend, in the abolitionist movement. There would have been no Spooner to influence the strategically perfect Frederick Douglass (who, by the way, never gets enough credit from libertarians as a courageous strategic innovator).
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One person can change the world, and this is true now, more than ever. Technology has enabled our voices to become "An Arrow Against All Tyrants."
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I know precisely what needs to happen, but I have spent my life figuring this out (and working my way into poverty, like too many other libertarians who believed there actually was "a Libertarian Party"). In this regard, I'm like Lilburne and Douglass (but with less determination), by doggedly pursuing truth and freedom above all else.
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The vast multitude of libertarians I've met have not figured out any of the above. They have a superficial dedication to liberty, and zero comprehension of how it might be practically made possible. Until this changes, big-L "Libertarianism" actually functions as the enemy of freedom.
<br><br>
This is especially true in states like AZ, WY, MT, ID, and AK, where progress toward liberty is actually viable. (An alternate theory is that progress toward liberty is more possible in places like Chicago IL and Houston TX, but only in black neighborhoods that have been viciously exploited by the drug war. Allocating scarce resources to "one or the other" in "all or nothing" fashion is likely a mistake.)
<br><br>
One fatal move is for the "FSP" to have chosen New Hampshire as its battleground state. This is highly ignorant, as the "existing metrics" or "initial conditions" do not support liberty in New Hampshire. The lack of an initiative process alone means that it will be very difficult to incentivize liberty in NH, and without incentivized, that is, <i>paid</i>, workers, <i><b>nothing is ever accomplished</b>, because the risk is too great for the comparatively small reward</i>.
<br><br>
It will be interesting to see how many people here shit on me for being a "paid shill." (And, of course, I'll be interested to see viable solutions forthcoming from each of those voices.) The tactics I'm suggesting allowed the LP to achieve its "high water mark" in 1978-1982, in Alaska. Since then, I've registered 5,000 people in Alaska, until I was told I was "no longer needed." That's the seriousness of the freedom movement: It wants to be a "big fish in a small pond" more than it wants individual freedom.
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This is the message we're sending the incumbent state with ineffectual political involvement.
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The state doesn't need to assassinate us, when they can simply misdirect us at the first sign we're doing anything right. Because most libertarians haven't ever investigated real-world liberty, or its political causes, they lack the capacity to evaluate motion toward liberty. They lack the capacity to make realistic predictions that vary with the enemy's strategy. They also lack the capacity to predict the enemy's strategy, since doing totally ineffective things is seen as just as good of a use of scarce dollars as doing highly-effective things. Printing newsletters that nobody reads, for example, is seen as just as effective as measuring support levels door-to-door.
<br><br>
Because this is how stupid the Libertarian movement actually is, they have essentially reduced the value I place on elections quite a bit. However, nobody says you can't inform jurors of their rights while going door-to-door and taking territory for state legislative races. If a campaign is minimally-funded ($5-$10 per door-to-door ballot access signature is a good "rule of thumb"), and then financed beyond that point, so that far more signatures are filed than are actually necessary for ballot access, this would be a viable way to defeat the 2-party system. This would cost a few million dollars.
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It's too bad that people like Peter Thiel, the Koch brothers, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, John Mackey, T.J. Rodgers, Elon Musk, and many others who claim to value freedom do not value it as much as those who wish to take it away. I'm really not insulting these people, but that's the only way to interpret the differences in the amount of money spent and attention to detail paid towards achieving the two goals. By seeing the outcomes of every political contest, we can assume that they don't know how to elect voluntaryists like Harry Browne, or they don't care to. If they don't know how to, that's a simple matter of reading the resources this essay links to, or talking to someone like me. Bloomberg, for example, at the time the first draft of this essay was written, was spending several million dollars in Nevada alone, in an attempt to strip Nevadans of their gun rights (which are already treated as privileges, in relation to neighboring states like Arizona). A pro-gun initiative in California(which would repeal Governor Jerry Brown's restrictions on owning certain kinds of rifles) currently lacks enough money and financing to gather enough signatures to access the ballot by the September deadline. If you add up all of the states in which Bloomberg is spending millions, that would be enough to finance the capture of an entire state legislature.
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But keep in mind what this would entail: not just short term commitment, but long-term commitment. When you have a lot of money, as well as several companies and solid income, you have a lot more to lose.
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In the Englightenment era, people were willing to sacrifice money to the cause of expanding freedom. They were willing to do this even at the cost of recognizing that most of the people they were causing to "support the cause" had a half-hearted dedication to liberty, at best. Two major things have changed this:<br><br>
1) The USA and the rest of the world has received an object lesson in the methods of totalitarianism in the past 100 years. Donors to libertarian causes don't know if they will be "disappeared" or poisoned, or blackmailed (in an era of universal NSA surveillance).<br>
2) Libertarians don't know if they're risking their personal wealth by seriously battling the system. They think to themselves "They can't possibly destroy me for donating to my political party of choice, but if I was seen as the effective driver of that political party, they might target me specifically. Therefore, I'll give to the political party, but not exert influence over it to make it into a serious organization." Then, when the LP's infiltrators or idiots waste the donations, these major donors disappear. Donors demand results from their contributions.<br>
3) Donors often times don't understand that those few people who are doing effective things inside the LP have to first overcome the idiots, obstructors, and infiltrators within the LP. When you're battling what Norbert Weiner called "Manichean devils," those devils have a conscious incentive to <i>encourage</i> confusion within your ranks. In many cases, you won't be able to figure out who they are, due to <i>plausible deniability</i>. This was the problem that the Native Americans faced in the American Indian Movement (AIM), when they were infiltrated by Douglas(s) Durham of the FBI. Once Douglas Durham had won the trust of enough people in the organization to make his removal difficult, he began holding press releases, stating that everyone who is not an Indian should be deported. Surprise! The funding that the Natives had gotten from sympathetic white liberals suddenly dried up! Later on, when Durhan testified against the Indians in court, it was <i>too late</i>. http://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/flatview?cuecard=36293 This experience helped lead Russel Means to call himself a libertarian. He tragically, in my opinion, lost the LP presidential nomination by the LP Convention of 1988. (Ron Paul is a fine human being, but the counter-culture in the USA begins with those who are most oppressed by the state, because they have an actual incentive to change things. This incentive doesn't "come and go" with the libertarian impulses of financially well-off, comfortable millionaires and billionaires.)
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The FBI and CIA are both involved in US elections, as revealed by many sources. For example, former governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura states that he was questioned at length by the CIA after winning his gubernatorial election, even though their charter says they're not to be operational within US borders. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsDvLtpi8W8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsDvLtpi8W8</a>
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The protestors at the latest GOP national convention were recently targeted by undercover goons. As have radical environmentalists, one of which was a woman who slept with a young protestor, and manipulated him into a prison sentence for a scheme that <i>she</i> cooked up. (So, our government makes its own use of entrapment with "honey traps" known, to encourage <i>prior restraint</i>.) See:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByCRuIO51u0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByCRuIO51u0</a>
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If self-proclaimed millionaires and billionaires are afraid of state retaliation, then they should simply come out and say so. Let them point out that they are afraid, because the NSA now functions like a legalized "American" KGB, having honed its resources on Muslims, Militia men, and other disorganized anti-government minorities. Let them simply state that they don't know how to participate meaningfully in elections, nor do they care to find out. That would be the honest truth. For them to claim that they care is a disservice to legitimate political engagement of the enemy, in the twilight of that being a viable option. There isn't much time left, so false friends of freedom are particularly dangerous to the existence of actual freedom. In talking to registered voters in 15 States, I can definitively say that there is hope for individual freedom in the American electorate. Many already identify with small-L libertarianism, and it's probably enough for an organized effort to win a high degree of individual freedom.
<br><br>
So, whereas people like Chris Cantwell think that the LP is an "outreach effort" I'm of the mind that it should actually be used for its intended purpose: to directly expand individual freedom by taking power away from <a href="http://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/ascendence-sociopaths-us-governance">those who want it most</a>.
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Thoreau wrote:
<blockquote>"I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name -if ten honest men only, nay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.Note But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man."</blockquote>Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-67528795618185919682015-03-04T13:21:00.000-08:002015-03-04T13:27:28.842-08:00Thoughts Regarding the Sun Times' Coverage of Thaddeus JimenezA few thoughts regarding the Sun Times' <a href="http://chicago.suntimes.com/news-chicago/7/71/400788/even-25-million-couldnt-keep-wrongfully-convicted-chicago-man-trouble">coverage</a> of Thaddeus Jimenez (http://chicago.suntimes.com/news-chicago/7/71/400788/even-25-million-couldnt-keep-wrongfully-convicted-chicago-man-trouble), a man who served 16 years, wrongly convicted of murder, who has since been arrested for a series of petty "drug offenses." (This is in quotes for good reason, since a "drug offense" is not really an offense against anyone.)
<br><br>
Upon being released from jail, and paid $25,000,000 in damages, one would think that it might give the Chicago Police Department just a little bit of pause in aggressively prosecuting Jimenez for "victimless crime" offenses. (Let's face it, if drug use and minor anger issues are your only problem after losing 16 years of your life to police misconduct, you're probably a better-balanced person than most people would be in similar circumstances.) And let's face it: possessing plant products (which are almost all safer than alcohol) is technically a non-crime, according to the Bill of Rights. (There will be people who argue this point, so I deal with it more fully in a moment, clarifying the legalese that is designed to obfuscate the issues. How is legalese designed to obfuscate the issues? It makes us dependent on licensed lawyers for legal protection from increasingly more arbitrary laws. There is no "conspiracy," other than that licensed attorneys have shared interests: they realize that if no jury will convict anyone, and the legal language is straight-forward, defendants would have no reason not to represent themselves pro se.)
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In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, which allowed the government to regulate drug quality without intervening jury trials. The public stupidly (unwittingly self-destructively) and ignorantly (without all the facts) ignored the fact that this law was in direct violation of the property rights of all citizens. By having "gotten away with" passing the 1906 Act, congress essentially received "feedback" from the American public that they weren't paying any attention to what congress was doing. In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics act was passed, illegally, and in direct contradiction to the entire U.S. Constitution (again, they noticed that there were no crowds with pitchforks and torches assembled outside their offices; no literate people to hold them accountable for making laws that criminalized the behaviors of racial minorities and jazz musicians). Over the years, the Harrison law was strengthened by the marijuana stamp act (1937), which was also never successfully challenged. In 1971, Richard Nixon ignored the Shafer Commission's report indicating that marijuana should be legalized, and escalated the drug war via a series of (also totally unlawful) presidential edicts. Ronald Reagan, (who confusingly claimed to favor a "free market"), did the same thing, resulting in grotesque denial of even the most basic property rights (primarily by claiming allegations of drug dealing could result in the confiscation of non-drug property, without any proof or an intervening jury trial).
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Every single drug prohibition law flatly ignores the foundation of property rights that the USA was built upon, in multiple ways. (And yes, slavery also ignored that foundation, but ultimately was overturned because of it. Abolitionist Lysander Spooner's famous essay "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery" was adopted by Frederick Douglass as the core argument against slavery. This same argument popularized the Free Soil Party, resulting in bringing multiple western states into the Union as "free states.")
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Every single drug law (and presidential edict) was also initially pushed through congress as a means of legalizing bigotry (bigotry against racial minorities, jazz musicians, drug users, Native American churches, etc). This allowed racist police and public to physically assault minorities under the excuse of "looking for contraband." (A free society where all individuals are equal under the law cannot label any private property as contraband, other than human beings, and "weapons of mass destruction." A "WMD" can be defined as any weapon that cannot be targeted purely defensively.)
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So what part of the Bill of Rights technically outlaws a drug war? The same part of the Bill of Rights that outlaws prohibitions on "unmarried cohabitation." The 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments.
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The "common law" (referred to in the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution) requires that every "crime," in order to be properly considered a "malum in se" (a wrong, in and of itself; an inherent wrong) must possess two elements (as a part of "due process"). The two elements are: "injury" (to a specific, named individual or group of individuals), and "intent to injure" (the same, specific, named individual or group of named individuals). When both elements are present, there is said to be a "corpus delicti" or "body of the crime." When a "malum in se" has occurred, the prosecutor is to determine if there is adequate evidence of a valid "corpus delicti" that can be assigned to an accused. If so, the accused is charged. This is what the term "corpus" in the 4th Amendment refers to.
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When the state criminalizes non-criminal actions (actions that lack a valid "corpus delicti"), the state has created a condition of "false crime" known as a "malum prohibitum" (plural: "mala prohibita"). The creation of mala prohibita is, itself, a crime. Why? Because the creation of false laws allows police to use force against innocent people. By definition, those who are not guilty of "malum in se" are innocent.
The creation of "mala prohibita" has resulted in the creation of an American police state, where the police powers have become the "standing army" the Founders once warned against.
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The "injuria et damnum" ("injury" and "intent") requirement exists precisely to prevent the government from outlawing things that are not inherently criminal. ...Such as the drug possession and gun possession Jimenez was charged with. (No form of gun possession is even considered a crime in AK, AZ, VT, and WY, even under pseudo-law that now governs most of the USA. Further, the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Putting people in prison for gun possession is an immense infringement, as is escalating other unrelated "mala prohibita" charges.).
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By enforcing laws that criminalize non-criminal behavior, the U.S. has become the number one incarcerator in the world. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prison population. This gives us the highest per-capita prison population, by far. By most counts, there are now 2.4 million people in prison, with over 60% of them incarcerated for victimless non-crimes. The existence of these prisoners is, by many accounts, even worse than the existence of plantation slaves. (This is only meant to compare the rationality of the every day voter who votes for the two faces of "the prison party," but would never consider voting for the two faces of "the slavery party.")
<br><br>
So, America has become an unfree country. It's no longer "The Land of the Free, and The Home of the Brave." It's just another police state that imprisons arbitrarily, unequally (one in three drug offenders is black, in spite of equal drug use in the white population), and unfairly. The unfairness of the laws is largely because police officers can clearly see who is black, enabling their racism and allowing them to respond to perverse incentives favoring the enforcement of unjust laws against populations that are not large enough to defend themselves via the vote. (Former U.S. Marshal and DEA Joint Task Force Agent Matt Fogg has stated in a youtube video that he was told not to plan drug interdiction in white areas, because they'd "arrest a judge or senator's son and they'd pull the plug on this thing.")
So, why doesn't the public know this already? Simple: They are taught in government schools by tax-financed educators who have no interest in creating a nation of legally-literate tax-resistors. So, "Civics" class has been substituted with "Social Studies" and "Government" class. At no point in a child's education do they learn about the ideas inherent in the Enlightenment, nor the long battle for security in one's "persons, papers, and effects."
<br><br>
The last State to resist universal "free and compulsory" government-run education model, Vermont, had been operating under government schooling for 14 years, (since 1900). Prior to that time, parents strove to educate their children according to the independent nature of a free society. As free men and women, they had every incentive to educate their children well. Clay Conrad, in his book "Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine" indicates that Giles Jacobs' "New Law Dictionary" was the most popularly read law-book in the colonies, with many thousands of copies in circulation. One way that we know that Jacob's intent was to create a society full of free people capable of defending themselves in front of a jury, if they should ever be charged with violating an arbitrary law, was the title of his next book: "Every Man His Own Lawyer."
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America has been hijacked by licensed attorneys, and a sociopathic political class. This political class (prosecutors, legislators, cops) doesn't mind putting your sons and daughters in prison for non-crimes. When you hire an attorney, their license prevents them from attacking the legitimacy of the law. They thereby legitimize a system that is totally illegitimate, by attempting, usually unsuccessfully, to dance around the fact that their client clearly broke an unjust law.
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This is what makes America unfree. Without property rights, there is no freedom, because we all live in material reality. Your body is material property; you own it. The unconstitutional, unlawful police State disagrees.
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Do you mind? Does knowing this make you mad? If you don't mind being unfree, then please, keep voting for Democrats and Republicans, and don't bother to look up the term "libertarian," or "jury nullification of law." Don't bother to find out what you need to do to survive "voir dire" (more legalese!), the unconstitutional and unlawful "jury selection process." (Voir dire was originally used as a means of kicking abolitionists off of juries, so that the Fugitive Slave Act could be enforced in the pre-Civil-War North.)
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If you do mind, then "dummy up" when you're called to serve on a jury, so you get seated. The judge will kick you off for answering any differently than "yes your honor" when asked if you can "agree to apply the laws as given to you." Once seated, render a holdout "not guilty" vote, if you serve on a victimless non-crime case, no matter whether it's a billionaire drug cartel on trial, or a teenager with $25 worth of marijuana.
<br><br>
Without a valid "corpus," there is no crime, no matter what any group of legislators has decided. In much the same way that the legislators are not allowed to build concentration camps for Jews (no matter who wins any election, and no matter what percentage of the public is bigoted against Jews), they are also not allowed to make laws that criminalize self-ownership, or private property. In a democratic republic, citizen-jurors limit the power of the government.
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We were intended to have "a republic, if we could keep it." We have lost it. Restoring it means taking responsibility for the propriety of our jury verdicts, supporting those who fight the government, and voting "not guilty" in victimless non-crime "cases."
Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-18326891199018271002013-10-01T15:29:00.001-07:002013-10-01T19:21:35.756-07:00There Is No Government Shutdown<p>A few morons within the USA are now claiming that the government has been "shut down" (because normal operations at a few state-run tourist traps have stopped).
</p>
<p>
Interestingly, if you simply attempt to enter these tourist traps, an armed government agent will tell you that you can't, and will threaten you with physical force if you decide to ignore him. That is, in fact, the normal operation of our unconstitutional, illegitimate, bloated, unsustainable, totalitarian-by-law <i>government</i>. That is <i>government as usual</i>. That is =/= to "government shutdown."
</p>
<p>
If the government operates as usual, then it is not "shut down."
</p>
<p>
When I first saw the news, I predicted that this was the case. (To do this, I simply needed to imagine that the government actually was shut down. Then, I needed to compare the past 11 years of my life ineffectually fighting the government to the government's response. The highly functional bullshit detector that I call my neo-cortex doesn't allow me to believe that all the sociopathic murdering, lying, stealing, and belligerence simply came to a halt because a few sociopaths in government are under the strain of their own reckless fiscal policies.)
</p>
<p>
Please follow along as I go through the logic of determining whether the government has "shut down."
</p>
<p>
First: Wow, that's great! I'm amazed it was so easy!
</p>
<p>
Next: So <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/photos/government-shutdown-begins-slideshow/?bcmt=comments-postbox">the government is shut down</a>?! Great! I guess that means that the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZY5oujLgxw">IRS</a> and treasury stormtroopers won't be raiding and arresting innocent people anymore! I guess they can set free political prisoners like Irwin Schiff and Bernard von Nothaus, as well as the 1.44 million people now incarcerated for first-time, victimless "malum prohibitum" crime offenses! (Mostly state-escalated traffic offenses and nonviolent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_liberalization">drug possession</a>.) I guess the book-burning stormtroopers at the <a href="http://www.drugwarrant.com/2010/12/ondcp-specifically-exempted-from-scientific-integrity-policy/">ONDCP</a> and the <a href="http://www.stevia.net/bookburning.htm">FDA</a> didn't show up to work, or were told to go home, without pay! Great! And the military has all been called back from the over-extended and <a href="http://antiwar.com/">belligerent United States empire</a>! Amazing! The ATF is all on unpaid leave, right? So there won't be any more <a href="http://ariwatch.com/PeikoffOnWacoAndMilitias.htm">churches full of women and kids getting burned alive</a> for the duration of the "shutdown." There won't be any more Idaho recluses whose nursing wives are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge">shot in their necks by FBI snipers</a>, after they <a href="http://reason.com/archives/1993/10/01/ambush-at-ruby-ridge">refuse to become informants</a>!
</p>
<p>
All of the prior would need to be true if the government, and not just a few government-run tourist traps, had actually been shut down.
</p>
<p>
Oh, no, wait, this is a fake shutdown that only temporarily interferes with tourist attractions and other noticeable "services." It's just an attempt to wreck a few vacations, as an "I told you so" to weak-willed government critics. It's just a "divide and conquer" tactic to pit the gullible ("Democrats" against democratic institutions) against the belligerent ("Republicans" against republican limits on government power).
</p>
<p>
...I THOUGHT SO.
</p>
<p>
To prove what I'm saying, libertarian entrepreneurs now have a huge opportunity: Go to the areas where the services are "shut down" and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEByACY4k9M">provide those services yourself as an unlicensed tour guide</a>. If the government prevents you from providing those services on a voluntary basis, then there is no "shut down" and the government (organized crime) is alive and well. If the government allows you to provide those services, then those services didn't and don't need to be provided on a coercive basis by the government: they can be performed on a voluntary basis by private individuals who don't threaten to throw extorted "supporters" into the American gulag for nonpayment. Lysander Spooner operated "The American Letter Mail Company," an early competitor of the U. S. Post Office, in just this manner, ...until they <a href="http://lysanderspooner.org/node/21">threatened him with prison</a>, thus "shutting him down."
</p>
<p>
Let's hope this failed constitutional republic truly "shuts down." The people can keep the courts (and morgues) open, for those murderers and thieves who truly need to be dealt with. The townspeople who want a such people off the streets can each pay a silver coin to pay the randomly-selected (no "<a href="http://fija.org/docs/BR_YYYY_surviving_voir_dire.pdf">voir dire</a>") jurors, and the unlicensed lawyers. The responsible citizens can carry their firearms, and again, the communal silver can pay a retired man who is good with firearms to act as sheriff on an "as-needed" basis.
</p>
<p>
Since all drugs, firearms, and other "contraband" will then be legal, crime (initiated aggression) will drop by over 90%, as it did when alcohol was re-legalized by the 21st Amendment. Add to this the legalization of <a href="http://www.alcor.org/problems.html">cryonics</a>, <a href="http://brainpreservation.org/content/preservation-rights">brain preservation</a>, assisted suicide, <a href="http://www.wendymcelroy.com/vern.htm">prostition</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC1MivfpT9o">"unapproved" medical treatments</a>, etc., and America could once again be the primary innovator, worldwide.
</p>
<p>
Perhaps most importantly, people will see first-hand what "the land of the free and the home of the brave" actually looks like, so they don't embarrass themselves when they sing the national anthem.
</p>
<p>
Go ahead, DC parasites, shut down the government. ...For real.
</p>Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-89713636440598780692013-03-02T15:12:00.000-08:002013-03-02T15:13:14.905-08:00Libertarian Party of Arkansas Ballot Access - 2014Please contribute to the <a href="http://lpar.org/ballot2014/">Libertarian Party of Arkansas 2014 Ballot Access Effort</a>. This will allow us to run candidates for State Legislature, the highest office yet <a href="http://www.lp.org/our-history">won</a> by Libertarian Party candidates. This will allow us to pursue a grassroots strategy of <a href="http://www.libertyclassroom.com/nullification/">State Nullification</a>. In addition, it will allow us to perform <a href="http://tyrannyfighters.com/video/">jury rights activism</a> outside of AR courthouses, encouraging <a href="http://isil.org/resources/lit/history-jury-null.html">jury nullification of law</a>. Again, the contribution link to help finance this effort is: <a href="http://lpar.org/ballot2014/">http://lpar.org/ballot2014/</a> Thank you!Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-78087530040023917922013-03-02T15:10:00.003-08:002013-03-02T15:11:23.212-08:00A Reading List For Libertarian Activists<b>Essential Reading Regarding Jury Rights, Especially For Libertarian Activists:</b>
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<br />
<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jakwitsblo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0967025907&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="float: left; height: 240px; margin-right: 12px; width: 120px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe> <b> Send In The Waco Killers </b><br />
by Vin Suprynowicz<br />
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This book will help define the problem of tyranny, for those who think that America is still a free country, with equality under the law. It's an excellent overview of the largest and most important power-grabs made by government in the past 100 years. This book is well worth reading to get everyone on the same page about what the most important problems are, as far as American liberty is concerned. The freedom movement is useless, unless it has clear solutions for those problems that can be implemented, starting now. This book contains arguments in favor of "jury nullification of law," specific examples of it, and an accurately-prioritized description of how the current legal system has been corrupted by the unconstitutional courtroom procedure of "voir dire" (prosecutorial jury-selection).
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<br />
<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jakwitsblo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0890897026&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="float: left; height: 240px; margin-right: 12px; width: 120px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><b> Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine </b><br />
by Clay Conrad<br />
<br />
This book will show you your full power as a member of the jury, and how to exercise that power. It's an excellent overview of the largest and most important power-grabs made by government in the past 100 years, with a clear and detailed insight as to how to reverse them. You hold the power as a member of the Jury, you just need to reach out and claim it.
<br />
<br />
<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jakwitsblo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1595585001&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="float: left; height: 240px; margin-right: 12px; width: 120px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><b> Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice </b><br />
by Paul Butler<br />
<br />
Historically, juries exist to answer three questions: (1)Most importantly: Is the law in question legitimate? (2)Second most importantly: If legitimate, is it being fairly applied in this case? (3)Least important: Did the accused break the law? In addition to covering different areas of the topics covered in Conrad's book, this book argues for a compelling interpretation of point number two prior. This book makes a case for "political jury nullification," when justice systems refuse to apply legitimate laws evenly, against minorities. For example: In California at the turn of the century, there was a law that made it illegal for Chinese people to testify against white people in court, due to the prejudice whites had for the large numbers of Chinese railworker immigrants. So, civil rights activists encouraged white jurors not to convict chinese people of murder, until the situation changed (which it eventually did, due to the pressure put on the courts). Butler argues (with mountains of well-researched evidence) that the current war on drugs has always been racist, and seeks a similar solution. Well worth reading.
<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=jakwitsblo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=tf_til&asins=0875580718" style="float: left; height: 240px; margin-right: 12px; width: 120px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<b> The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Volume II: The Methods of Nonviolent Action</b><br />
by Gene Sharp<br />
<br />
This book deals with eliminating the causes of tyranny by appealing to broad public opinion, using nonviolent tactics. This book will be especially useful for activists who are concerned with the problem that the freedom movement is seemingly "outgunned" by the government.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Works That Explain How Libertarian Movements Can and Have Succeeded:</b>
<br />
<br />
<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jakwitsblo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B008ZSJTL0&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="float: left; height: 240px; margin-right: 12px; width: 120px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe> <b>Freedom for Alaskans</b><br />
by Dick Randolph<br />
<br />
A book about the prospect of electing libertarians to office in Alaska, the state with possibly the most inherently-libertarian demographics in the nation. In Alaska, from 1978-1982, there were more Libertarians elected (to offices capable of significantly expanding individual freedom) than there have been anywhere else, before or since. The result of this accomplishment (and the ballot access initiative promoted by Dick Randolph) is that it is illegal for Alaska to have a State income tax. If the Libertarian Party wants to replicate this accomplishment, then why don't they learn from the successes pioneered by Randolph? I understand why Libertarians place more emphasis on philosophy than strategy, but I strongly disagree with that emphasis. Both are essential to any legitimate freedom movement, as is this book.
<br />
<br />
<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jakwitsblo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=068485967X&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="float: left; height: 240px; margin-right: 12px; width: 120px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><b>The Triumph of Liberty: A 2,000 Year History Told Through the Lives of Freedom's Greatest Champions</b><br />
by Jim Powell<br />
<br />
A book precisely described by its subtitle. This book is a broad and general high-hierarchical level overview that allows people to see many avenues toward effectively advancing individual freedom. Most chapters are no more than 5 to 10 pages, but they are information-packed pages. "Triumph" introduces the reader to the people who advanced freedom the most rapidly, and briefly explores the strategies they used. This book serves as an excellent "starting point" for those who want to get a handle on how quickly the cause of individual liberty can be advanced, and what strategies are most likely to rapidly advance the cause of liberty. Some of the movements and individuals outlined in this book served to keep the ideas of liberty alive, others organized mass movements that directly reduced state interference with people's lives. Well worth reading for those who want to understand, historically, the answers to the questions, "What has expanded individual freedom the most?" and "What tactics work best to expand liberty?"
<br />
<br />
<b>Top Futurist Works on Life Extension:</b><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jakwitsblo00-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B000HT2OXA&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="float: left; height: 240px; margin-right: 12px; width: 120px;"></iframe><b> Fantastic Voyage</b><br />
by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman<br />
<br />
Perhaps the best book on extending healthspan that currently exists. Contains the best up-to-date health information available, as well as information about how one can stay on top of emerging life-extension technology. This is the information and cellular-reprogramming approach to diet and health, par excellence. Contains a lot of information that is immediately useful, as well as a look at what is likely to come in both the short and long term. "<a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0648.html">Reprogramming Our Biochemistry for Immortality</a>" Interview with Ray Kurzweil<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jakwitsblo00-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0312367074&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="float: left; height: 240px; margin-right: 12px; width: 120px;"></iframe><b> Ending Aging </b><br />
by Aubrey de Grey<br />
<br />
The book "Ending Aging" deals with eliminating the causes of aging, beyond heart attack, cancer, and stroke (the big 3). Going far beyond extending healthspan, de Grey's book focuses on eliminating the buildup of cellular garbage that contributes to age-related decline in biological functioning. If you want to know whether this book contains information of interest to you, you should read de Grey's "<a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0709.html">Bootstrapping Our Way to an Ageless Future</a>" (free online copy).<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jakwitsblo00-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0912986190&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="float: left; height: 240px; margin-right: 12px; width: 120px;"></iframe><b> World Without Cancer </b><br />
by G. Edward Griffin<br />
<br />
In the age of Obama, we all need to individualize our personal approach to medicine, or allow the socialized government medical cartels to pump us full of patented pills. This phenomenal book explains how individuals can best prevent and possibly defeat cancer, using a simple, natural preventative diet, commonly found. The second half of the book is a fascinating look into how the private sector of chemical processing industry merged with government allowing legal monopolies to defeat medical freedom in the USA, in the early 1900s.Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-1665311537427520582013-03-02T14:50:00.000-08:002013-03-02T15:06:16.955-08:00Please contribute to the <a href="http://lpar.org/ballot2014/">Libertarian Party of Arkansas 2014 Ballot Access Effort</a>. This will allow us to run candidates for State Legislature, the highest office yet <a href="http://www.lp.org/our-history">won</a> by Libertarian Party candidates. This will allow us to pursue a grassroots strategy of <a href="http://www.libertyclassroom.com/nullification/">State Nullification</a>. In addition, it will allow us to perform <a href="http://tyrannyfighters.com/video/">jury rights activism</a> outside of AR courthouses, encouraging <a href="http://isil.org/resources/lit/history-jury-null.html">jury nullification of law</a>. Again, the contribution link to help finance this effort is: <a href="http://lpar.org/ballot2014/">http://lpar.org/ballot2014/</a> Thank you!Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-48438395980179722962012-09-27T02:50:00.000-07:002012-09-27T02:50:16.975-07:00Stolen Money is the Root of All Evil; Earned Money is the Root of All GoodIn thinking about the term "moochandise" (below) to describe election campaign schwag (prompted by the "O" logo used by the Obama campaign), I reread a few quotes from <a href="http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=index" target="_blank">Ayn Rand</a> about "moochers" and "looters." I came across the following brilliant quote: <br />
<div class="quotebox" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; border: 1px solid #aaa; clear: right; float: center; font-size: 88%; margin: 0.5em 0 0.8em 1.4em; padding: 6px; width: 90%;">
<div style="position: relative; text-align: left;">
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"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Atlas_Shrugged.2C_p._410-413_30-0"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#cite_note-Atlas_Shrugged.2C_p._410-413-30">Atlas Shrugged, page 410-413</a></sup></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
— Francisco d'Anconia, <i>Atlas Shrugged </i></div>
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As great as the quote is, it and others like it have confused generations of dim-witted U.S. voters, even those who have read "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged" target="_blank">Atlas Shrugged</a>." I have a better, clearer, more obvious formulation of the quote, with the addition of a few essential words. Here it is: "Run for your life from any man who tells you that <i>earned</i> money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."<br />
<br />
There are people who consider themselves liberals who are essentially liberals in the tradition of Hayek. Such people, at the rare higher intelligence levels, often note that they don't have a problem with money and trade, that they have a problem with <i>stolen</i> money and <i>unfree</i> trade that is <i>protected</i> by force from competition. These are not problems with earned money. ...They are problems with central bank war profiteers who <i>print money from nothing</i>, and use coercive legal tender laws to <i>force</i> individuals to accept it. That isn't <i>earning </i>money, it's <i>stealing</i> it.<br />
<br />
Stolen money is the root of all evil. The theft of money allows for the product of theft to be accepted as a representation of labor. The use of money to represent labor (voluntary manual labor or voluntary intellectual labor) is almost universally accepted. However, when money is stolen, it allows value to be claimed by the valueless. Something that is normally acceptable to all (money earned by free trade, and free trade itself: the exchange of labor for a representation of labor) is then often reinvested in the marketplace of theft, the political marketplace.<br />
<br />
Most people only see the evil of that reinvestment (lobbying, campaign contributions that go to the biggest looter and wealth redistributor, payment of political favors, payment to coercive government institutions, payment to social engineering government programs, payment to world-government projects of the central bankers, payment to set up schemes that loot the productive --such as carbon credit trading). This gives rise to narrow-minded socialist liberals rejecting the concept of money, when what they should be doing is pointing out the massiveness of the theft involved in <i>fiat</i> money. <br />
<br />
Rand never fully opposed fiat currency. She viewed it as less immoral and wrong than outright obvious government coercion, or as a "stopgap measure." Her institute eventually took <a href="http://arc-tv.com/alan-greenspan-betrayed-ayn-rand-and-ruined-the-economy-says-ayn-rand-institute-president/" target="_blank">a strong stance against fiat currency manipulators</a>. Prior to that, the greatest opponents to fiat currency were more mainstream libertarian philosophers such as <a href="http://mises.org/document/3430/The-Case-Against-the-Fed" target="_blank">Murray N. Rothbard</a>, <a href="http://www.realityzone.com/creature.html" target="_blank">G. Edward Griffin</a>, and <a href="http://www.harrybrowne.org/" target="_blank">Harry Browne</a>. Of course, Ron Paul has been consistently against the <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2008/11/04/60-fed-chairmen-ive-known-and-opposed/" target="_blank">immoral manipulation of the currency supply</a> by the powerful few.<br />
<br />
In a way, fiat currency is the laundering of labor. Imagine that the central bank prints a billion dollars and uses that freshly printed money to pay armed DEA stormtroopers to raid an apartment full of hippies who were growing marijuana in their apartment. The marijuana was a good and the sale of that marijuana was a service. That good and that service are taken off the market, by force. The lives of the marijuana growers are then violated, as are all their freedoms under the now defunct and legally non-existent "Bill of Rights." The apartment is now vacant, and perhaps months of rent is not paid. Nobody wins from this naked aggression.<br />
<br />
But when the agents who were paid for the raid are paid, they receive something that falsely appears to be a "representation of labor."<br />
<br />
There would be very few people saying "money is the root of all evil," if there was a free market in money.<br />
<br />
So, how is there not a free market in money? Can't an individual still buy gold and silver coins?<br />
<br />
Well, yes and no. The government doesn't like it when you're very successful at buying gold and silver coins, which is why they created the "legal tender laws." If your gold and silver coins become very popular, you will be raided by government stormtroopers, and they will confiscate your belongings. They will confiscate your computers, your gold and silver, your customer records, and your entire physical plant, including the real-estate your business occupies. That is precisely what happened to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_von_NotHaus" target="_blank">Bernard von Nothaus</a>, the originator of the Liberty Dollar.<br />
<br />
The federal tax code, as enforced by the IRS and U.S. Treasury, is unconstitutional and "null and void" and only enforceable via criminal action by a criminal government (<span class="st">"All laws which are repugnant to the <i>Constitution</i>, are <i>null and void</i>." Chief Justice Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 5, U.S. (Cranch) 137, 174,176.</span>). you will be targeted for arrest and put in prison, like <a href="http://www.paynoincometax.com/irwinschiff.htm" target="_blank">Irwin Schiff</a> was. Irwin's crime was speech, which makes him a political prisoner whose only crime was civil disobedience to illegitimate and unconstitutional "laws."<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.opencurrency.com/" target="_blank">AOCS</a> (American Open Currency Standard) has not yet been raided, but they are not yet as large and successful as the Liberty Dollar was. Since the AOCS also represent a means of U.S. citizens escaping the loss of their life-savings via inflation, it is likely they too will eventually be targeted by government aggression, once they have enough money to make it worth stealing. By this coercion and theft, the government generates stolen money, not earned money. It is "stolen" because it is an inferior product, competitors are not allowed to compete with it, and all people in the U.S. and world economy are forced to transact business with it. U.S. citizens (more properly termed "submitizens" since a citizen has a say in the form of law and government he lives within, whereas a "submitizen" lives under the laws of the central bank --as all residents of the USA currently do) are forced to use the U.S. dollar as a representation of their labor.<br />
<br />
By forcing someone to represent their labor with low-cost pieces of paper that only one small group of people (central bankers) has control over, everyone is stolen from to the extent that the bankers mint excess currency, and divert it to programs that are not voluntarily purchased on the free market. I didn't voluntarily pay stormtroopers to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Schiff" target="_blank">raid and imprison</a> Irwin Schiff --the treasury printed money to do that. I didn't pay stormtroopers to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/26/obama-still-unclear-on-medical-marijuana/" target="_blank">raid peaceful marijuana growers</a>, forcing the trade of marijuana into <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqh3do6RBXo&feature=related" target="_blank">a violent black market</a>, --the treasury printed money to do that. I didn't pay stormtroopers to raid Bernard von Nothaus's "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar" target="_blank">Liberty Dollar</a>," or federal prosecutors to overstep their bounds, persecute, and imprison him with a prosecution-rigged jury --the treasury printed money to do that. So, the people who print the money can use that money to redirect labor, even though their act of printing the money via a government-enforced monopoly is actually subtractive to the representation of labor. This is true both because government enforcement interferes with all other forms of labor, and because the act of printing the money inflates the currency (at zero labor cost to the printer).<br />
<br />
So what about all the constructive goods and services the dollar pays for?<br />
<br />
...I did buy groceries with money that the treasury also printed, (because I was afraid of being raided by government stormtroopers for "violating the legal tender laws" if I used an alternate currency). So, if I said to the grocery store owner, "Money is the root of all evil" he would rightfully look at me as if I was, myself, evil (unless he fully comprehends the nature of fiat currency, and its full propensity for government manipulation. At which point, he still would not know how I was interpreting the term. Possibly, I have a stupid socialist conception of money, or possibly I have a high-level comprehension of money, or a mix of both. In short, language doesn't serve to make us political allies in this situation. ...Simply qualifying the statement as "Stolen money is the root of all evil" quickly clears up this source of frequent and great misunderstanding.). After all, the money I gave to him paid for the producers of tomatoes, canned beans, foreign luxuries like dark chocolate, etc... That money also paid him to feed, clothe, house, and school his family. So, when the money is used to represent labor such as that, as well as my labor which paid for the groceries, it is the root of all good. It is the root of "finding ways in which we can voluntarily interact with each other," as well as voluntarily distribute goods and services. Earned money is the mechanism that allows pricing to work.<br />
<br />
When central bankers print money, they are not <i>earning </i>it. They are using positions of privilege to extort the ability to create "money" out of thin air. After the money (representation of labor) is stolen this way, it then goes into the economy and is earned, but at a lower economic hierarchical level than the purpose it was printed for. So, the greatest masses of money (previously possessed only by the <i>most productive </i>members of society,, before the Federal Reserve Act and later, when there was a perception that the dollar was at least marginally-related to gold) are now <i>increasingly</i> possessed by the <i>least productive</i>, <i>most-thieving</i> members of society. As the Federal Reserve tries to bail out failing institutions, their immense but unearned responsibility (irresponsibility) for stabilizing the market via harsh decisions will more obviously fail.<br />
<br />
Since the general public doesn't understand this, and <a href="http://www.theawl.com/2011/04/when-alan-met-ayn-atlas-shrugged-and-our-tanked-economy" target="_blank">incorrectly blames the central planners (laughably) for "creating laissez-faire economic policies</a>," let's go back to the individual's perspective:<br />
<br />
Without the legal tender laws, I would have traded a gold or silver coin to the grocer, because that currency would be in common circulation, since it always outperforms the dollar, long-term. The value of that coin would have fluctuated in terms of foreign fiat currencies, or even the government's own quasi-governmental fiat currency. But it would be easy for the same computerized apparatus that lists price changes in terms of dollars in the grocery store to list price fluctuations in terms of weights of gold, silver, and copper. (A one ounce silver coin is now worth approximately $30 in Federal Reserve Notes, and pre-1965 U.S. quarters and dimes are approximately 71% silver, and can easily be used as silver money.) One gram pieces of gold are already sold in foreign airports, bonded to plastic cards from which they can be easily collected at a later date, if need be. Therefore, as a representation of labor, gold and silver are very good, because they can never lose their core values, as scarce industrial metals or jewelry metals.<br />
<br />
The great hope of the future is in the use of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin" target="_blank">bitcoins</a>, or an even more advanced future form of digital currency, whose value is measured in terms of network connectivity or computer power (perhaps calculations-per-second), or via evolving <a href="http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/in-praise-of-parallel-institutions/" target="_blank">parallel institutions</a> that make the enforcement of the legal tender laws impossible. The discussion of "countereconomics" in Samuel Konkin III's "<a href="http://agorism.info/docs/NewLibertarianManifesto.pdf" target="_blank">The New Libertarian Manifesto</a>," explores options for increasing individual liberty that do not involve electoral participation (he was morally opposed to voting). The following books also reveal further options for increasing individual freedom, (typically without Konkin's opposition to effective pro-freedom electoral participation, and sometimes exploiting synergy with it): Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, We, The Jury, Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine, <a href="http://www.lysanderspooner.org/node/35" target="_blank">An Essay on the Trial By Jury</a>, <a href="http://www.paladin-press.com/product/The_Freedom_Outlaws_Handbook/Personal_Freedom" target="_blank">The Freedom Outlaw's Handbook</a>. <br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.singinst.org/" target="_blank">singularity</a> or economic catastrophe will ultimately kill the enslaving institution of central banking, if it hasn't already been killed by those who love individual freedom. Hopefully, us human-level intelligences will get to enjoy some time free from fiat currency for some simple mammalian pleasures. A positive first step would be to demand passage of Ron Paul's <a href="https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/honest-money/" target="_blank">Free Competition in Currency Act</a>. If this act is not passed, you will continue to be looted, and your life savings redirected to socialist boondoggles and active violence against the innocent.Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-49454725679354209242012-09-26T15:22:00.002-07:002012-09-26T15:22:22.523-07:00"Moochandise"To give credit where it's due, the USA Today article by Greg Korte, "<a href="http://www.wbir.com/news/article/235978/193/Obama-has-edge-in-political-merchandise" target="_blank">Obama has edge in political merchandise</a>," that prompted me to coint the term "moochandise."Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-56397127779543892282012-09-26T15:17:00.000-07:002012-09-27T02:51:18.873-07:00<h3 class="r g0">
<span style="padding-bottom: 14px; padding-right: 15px;"><i>mooch·an·dise</i></span><span style="font: smaller 'Doulos SIL','Gentum','TITUS Cyberbit Basic','Junicode','Aborigonal Serif','Arial Unicode MS','Lucida Sans Unicode','Chrysanthi Unicode'; padding-bottom: 7px;">/ˈmo͞oCHənˌdīz/</span></h3>
<table class="ts"><tbody>
<tr><td style="color: #666666; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 5px;" valign="top" width="80px">Noun:</td><td style="padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 5px;" valign="top"><table class="ts"><tbody>
<tr><td>Campaign merchandise (t-shirts, drink holders, other novelty items) bearing the Obama or Romney logos, or some other form of socialist collectivism, to be bought and sold.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ddd" height="1px"><td colspan="2" height="1px"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td style="color: #666666; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 5px;" valign="top" width="80px">Verb:</td><td style="padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 5px;" valign="top"><table class="ts"><tbody>
<tr><td>Promoting the philosophy of mooching, esp. by the presentation of collectivist election goods for sale in public venues.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ddd" height="1px"><td colspan="2" height="1px"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td style="color: #666666; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 5px;" valign="top" width="80px">Synonyms:</td><td style="padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 5px;" valign="top"><div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>noun</i>. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666;">campaign goods, campaign materials, election schwag</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>verb</i>. suckering, schmoozing (when used to refer to selling campaign goods) </span></div>
<div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.wbir.com/images/640/360/2/assetpool/images/120924062108_merchandise.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://www.wbir.com/images/640/360/2/assetpool/images/120924062108_merchandise.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
--At the Democratic National Convention, the Obama campaign raises money
from official political merchandise [moochandise]: T-shirts, buttons, hats - you name
it.
Evan Eile, USA TODAY</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-86718356747570045042012-09-23T01:56:00.001-07:002012-09-23T02:37:07.852-07:00Stephen King Can Pay My "Fair Share" of Civic Duty. (And by "Civic Duty" I mean Warmongering, Property Theft and Destruction, Prohibition, Mass Murder, Civil Liberties Violation, and Economic Destruction...)Stephen King claims that because he's rich, he should be taxed more. So, politically and economically, he's uneducated. Here's the link: <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/30/stephen-king-tax-me-for-f-s-sake.html">http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/30/stephen-king-tax-me-for-f-s-sake.html</a><br />
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King, I bought and read most of your books when I was in 6th grade, and I enjoyed them. ...But you don't know dick about politics, the Federal Reserve, or the way what's left of "America" really works. Have some respect for Henry David Thoreau, Lysander Spooner, Frederick Douglass, and the long tradition of political nonaggression that came before you. Crack a book, read some Hayek, read some Harry Browne. Re-read Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government." The opening paragraph could just as well be about the Mexican DRUG War, as the Mexican War Thoreau was discussing.<br />
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When it comes to government, you don't get to decide how your tax dollars are spent.<br />
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When it comes to the private sector, you can always "opt out."<br />
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You acknowledge that the last 4 administrations have been "anti-business." Then, you bitch about there not being enough "regulation." LOL! Regulation sidesteps that core foundation of American jurisprudence, THE JURY. We, the jury, to be precise. We, the randomly-selected (in rare instances when a proper jury is called and seated, without prosecutorial stacking in "voir dire") people, who comprise the 4th branch of government.<br />
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So, what does the government do for me, that the private sector cannot? NOTHING. I am poor, and I don't want to give one red cent to the government. It is insulting to you to assume that because you're so dumb you think you're getting a great deal from the government that someone who is less well off can't be better-informed about the value they're getting from their dollar in government services. If you want to pay more, YOU CAN.<br />
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And what will your tax dollar buy? It will firstly,. buy things you cannot choose NOT to buy. The government is not Burger King, and you don't get to pick and choose what you want. My tax dollar will go to put my friends in jail, for victimless crimes. It will go to enforce the drug and gun laws on a horribly racist and classist basis. It will go for foreign wars of aggression that do nothing to keep me safe, and everything to piss off insane theocrats on the other side of the globe. It will go to crappy government schools that do a far worse job of educating our young than WIKIpedia does --to the extent that not one person in 1,000 can tell me how the Federal Reserve functions, or how jury trials are supposed to function. My tax dollars will deny gays equal marriage rights, and will put sex stores out of business. My tax dollars will harass comic book artists like Mike Diana, and musicians like the Dead Kennedys, in the name of christian theocratic values that directly contradic the First Amendment to the US Constitution. My tax dollars will be pissed away on pork-barrel projects in every state, all of which are less efficient than any private-sector provision of services that comes with a price tag, and the option of voiding contract for nonproduction. In short, because government is coercion, and this nation walked away from the idea of "a government by consent" when it passed the Federal Reserve Act into law, government services do not need to be competitive in any way with private sector services.<br />
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So what did I miss? Oh yeah, the FDA claims the right to actively deny me life-saving treatments, so innocent people can die young and in terrible pain while moronic fucks like you complain that you --and everyone else-- are not being forcible deprived of enough of their income. Watch a youtube video where Stephen Badylak shows that his lab can regrow every human organ, and replace it surgically with adult stem cells, then listen to him talk about how the life-saving procedures are being held up by the FDA, which may or may not give us slaves PERMISSION to save our own lives with his procedures. ...Since when did a free people need permission to engage in risking their own lives in order to save them? Since when were manufacturers not allowed --by the First Amendment-- to print "sweetened with stevia" on food products? (1986, when Donald Rumsfeld's "Searle & Associates" successfully lobbied the FDA to destroy natural competitors to Nutrasweet, that's when! Result: 150,000 type II diabetics per year dead from bad diet and a scientifically incorrect food pyramid taught to them in gradeschool.) Since when did the FDA get the right to hold up AIDS research and development for years while Big Pharma milked the gay and African communities for their patented "slow death" drugs? They never had any right to do any of this.<br />
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If you pay one dollar extra in taxes, not only will I not commend you for your "civic duty," I'll spit on your good name for being a naive, willing dupe of powerful, sociopathic prohibitionists.<br />
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America is a nation where the collective isn't supposed to steal from the individual, nor bar the individualist from following his dreams. But that's what the U.S. government does. Then, it tries, in a half-assed manner to undo some small amount of the damage it itself caused, and its lapdog liberal "popular intellectuals" come to its defense like whipped dogs.<br />
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Go back to writing books about rabid dogs that just want to be obedient, it seems you know a lot more about that than what it means to hold an American ideology.<br />
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And while you're at it, don't bother taking out your checkbook to end the drug war, or the foreign wars, or to pay an insignificant amount of the $16T Federal Debt (not including untenable outstanding liabilities of over $58T). You're right: that won't solve the problem --just like even taxing 100% of your income wouldn't solve the problem. The only thing that would solve the problem would be you coming to your senses, and being one more voice of truth, telling the young to drop out of the system, withold their support, and begin building the parallel institutions that will leave the American Police State in the dustbin of history, where it belongs.<br />
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Until then, ...we ask not your counsel, nor your arms.Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-14878638637184603842012-08-11T20:47:00.000-07:002012-08-11T20:52:36.882-07:00Nerf Libertarians - Fairweather Friends of FreedomIn every case where the Libertarian Party (allegedly Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's political preference) fails to achieve ballot access, it was because the state raised the cost of communicating with the general public to a level the LP could not afford. Certain variables increase or decrease this cost associated with ballot access petitioning. (Number of signatures required, time limit for gathering signatures, availability of public places with the high foot traffic necessary to circulate petitions, weather, etc...) One such deleterious variable is the absence of businesses that have high foot traffic, and which simultaneously tolerate free interpersonal communication with their customers. Whole Foods, even where they exist, does not tolerate speech on their property. (I just confirmed this with the manager of the store nearest Birmingham, Alabama. He stated that Whole Foods would not tolerate petitioners' presence in Alabama, where the LP is currently gathering petition signatures, under a tight deadline.) ..Such speech is not even tolerated in Whole Foods' parking lots, or with the normal "common sense" stipulation that such speech be out of the way of the doors, etc.
Now, it's true, no business should be forced to allow such communication on their own property: but that Whole Foods does not allow such communication, even as the Libertarian Party is deprived of ballot access (in OK, PA, and elsewhere) and pays scarce campaign resources to ballot access petitioners, is unconscienable. The hippocratic oath is a good philosophical reminder, here: "First, do no harm." If Mackey wants Libertarian candidates to be on the ballot, why does he allow his stores' security to remove the petitioners who place them on the ballot from his storefronts? Secondly, a quote from Gandhi applies: "Be the change you wish to see."
Would it really be that difficult for Mackey to convince his coporate board to tolerate speech? I doubt it. Omar Gaye is apparently the guy who refuses to tolerate such speech in the region encompassing Alabama. Is he personally so averse to choices being on the ballot that he's willing to veto John Mackey's insistent urgings to the contrary? I doubt it.
In front of "Giant" Food Store in New England (even in states like MD, where the courts have ruled that stores need not tolerate speech), petitioners are allowed. The CEO of Giant Foods respects free speech, and understands that if certain of their customers were not allowed to ask other customers to sign a nominating petition, then there would be absolutely no choice on the ballot in Maryland. In effect, Maryland's system of government would become undemocratic. Undemocratic systems have no incentive to avoid falling towards totalitarianism, (demonstrated by Professor R. J. Rummel's research at the University of Hawaii, which is freely available online).
I find it surprising that John Mackey defends the concept of libertarian corporate responsibility (in his Reason Magazine debate with T. J. Rodgers), and then abnegates his responsibility in the one area where he has larger-than-normal influence. He claims that it would be tyrannical of him to suggest that he override his corporate board's decision to disallow speech. (Funny, this excludes the idea that he could exercise influence with them in any other way than "overriding" them. How about just _asking_them_ to allow speech?)
In contrast with Whole Foods, CEO T. J. Rodgers (of Cypress Semiconductor) claims that corporations have a duty only to their shareholders --but he believes in the Hayekian concept of free expression so much that he spent a great deal of his personal time infiltrating the board of directors at Dartmouth University, and forcing them to repeal their limitations --in the form of a "free speech zone"-- on public speech on campus. His case was that "all of America is a free speech zone!" Just like John Mackey, the board opposed his position --until he insisted on doing what was right.
It's now a lot easier for the LP to get on the ballot in New Hampshire: petitions can be circulated at Dartmouth. Likewise, Libertarian petitioners just finished petitioning for ballot access at Giant Foodstores in Maryland, resulting in ballot access for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.
I wish John Mackey felt the same as TJ Rodgers. Or even K-Mart, or Giant Foods, or the few other corporations that either tolerate speech, or allow their managers to "look the other way." The biggest improvement would be for him to adopt Giant Foods' policy of allowing all store managers to decide for themselves whether a certain form of free speech interferes with customer purchases or not, and to err on the side of speech. Giant solidly errs on the side of tolerating free speech --meaning that even when their few totalitarian customers (or perversely-incentivized state employees) complain about the speech, they tolerate it, because they comprehend that a few fascists should not be able to deprive the larger community of a choice at the ballot box. (Even better, Giant does not try to claim that they allow free speech, while bureaucratically obstructing it: they do not require weeks of advance notice, or other undue bureaucratic hurdles and permissions.)
Hopefully, one day, John Mackey will come around to that level of respect for free speech. Until then, I'll shop there only grudgingly, when they are the sole supplier of a product I desire. Too bad Cypress Semiconductor doesn't sell healthfood.
In the past, John Mackey has responded to my criticisms of his store's policy by claiming that petitioners have a right to be on the sidewalk nearby his stores. (I suppose so they can watch people exiting their cars and entering the store from a distance.) Oddly, this is the same thing that the Bush and Obama administrations both claim when their Departments of Justice further restricted public expression in public venues: you can speak --so long as you're doing so in a location with too few people to hear what you're saying.
With friends like these, it's no wonder the Libertarian Party no longer has even a single elected State legislator. They spend all their time jumping through hoops which could easily be made dramatically less costly with John Mackey's help. ...Too bad he can't be bothered.
That's all for now.
--Jake Witmer
PS: There is some discrepancy as to whether Mackey makes the decision, or his regional corporate boards make the decisions. The number given out for Omar Gaye was sent to a voicemail for Mike Howard (678-638-5885), so perhaps that name needs to be substituted for Omar's name above.
PPS: Nothing would make me happier than being wrong in my criticism of John Mackey. If his company reverses course on its current opposition to free interpersonal speech, and the circulation of nominating petitions in front of his stores, then I'll be happy to reverse my public criticism of his intellectual position.Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-53253423219051468262012-05-24T23:58:00.001-07:002012-05-24T23:58:19.215-07:00<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wWWOJGYZYpk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-52738614486381037572012-03-13T03:03:00.001-07:002012-03-13T03:04:05.488-07:00R J Harris, Libertarian for President<!-- START Profile Badge --><br /><iframe src="http://www.americanselect.org/candidate/widget/376893" width="300" height="250" scrolling="no"></iframe><br /><!-- END Profile Badge -->Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-61196177047514186592012-03-12T22:55:00.003-07:002012-03-12T22:59:11.022-07:00America The Cowardly, Stupid, and Anti-Libertarian --Allowed This:<iframe width="280" height="158" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Tkx8Grgo0_s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-56284190373987696282012-01-27T05:04:00.000-08:002012-01-27T05:06:37.594-08:00Rogan Brings The Truth About Ron Paul<iframe width="315" height="237" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PO3CJhedBqA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-38900563610070509402012-01-27T04:34:00.000-08:002012-01-27T04:47:38.355-08:00Doug Miller: Alabama Delegate For Ron Paul Sets The Record Straight About The Delegate Nomination Process:<iframe width="420" height="237" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/y5RKleqMjuE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />A <a href="http://www.alabamaforronpaul.com/count.xls">spreadsheet</a> that breaks down the delegate count, and what it means for Ron Paul's candidacy.Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-24946939622919628692012-01-24T23:11:00.000-08:002012-01-24T23:13:44.074-08:00A Great Quote For LibertariansBeing right in the sense of being correct is not sufficient to win. Political technology determines political success. Learn how to organize and how to communicate. Most political technology is philosophically neutral. You owe it to your philosophy to study how to win.<br /><br /><strong>-Morton Blackwell</strong>Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-73771276969811694292012-01-22T10:24:00.000-08:002012-01-22T20:44:47.431-08:00Ben Swann Explains The Current Republican Delegate Count<iframe width="420" height="237" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xZsFzf-Fnkc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />The South Carolina Congressional Districts that Ben Swann talked about in the above video:<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SC-districts-108.JPG">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SC-districts-108.JPG</a><br />For each of the above South Carolina congressional districts that Paul won, he gets 2 delegates. It doesn't appear that he won any of them, but if his votes were all concentrated in one or two districts, then he could leave SC with a few delegates. Why wasn't this known in advance? If it was known in advance, then why weren't badass communicators on Paul's team dispersed to South Carolina, weeks ago? (Granted, I understand that a few of them remained in Iowa, and that they did great work there. I also understand that Pennsylvania is a state with tons of delegates, and tons of Ron Paul support to be snapped up, or lost.)<br /><br />Right now, Ron Paul has 10 (out of a possible 62) delegates who are pledged to vote for him. Romney has between 7 and 21 (I don't know how many Romney got in SC, but they are hard delegates, it's 2 per congressional district he won). Newt has the most "hard (bonehead) delegates" right now, at 11 "hard" and a possibility of 25.<br /><br />Here's the breakdown:<br />Iowa (only "soft" unpledged delegates): Paul - 7 soft, Romney/Santorum 18 soft (25 soft total)<br /><br />New Hampshire (usually has 24 "hard" delegates, this year demoted to 12 for breaking GOP scheduling rules): 7-Romney, 3-Paul, 2-Hunstman(go to establishment, against Paul now that Huntsman is out).<br /><br />South Carolina (usually has 50 delegates, this year demoted to 25 for breaking GOP scheduling rules. Therefore all the media hooplah about "No GOP president has ever won without winning South Carolina" is nonsense. This is usually the case, because South Carolina is usually TWICE as powerful in terms of delegate count.): 11-Newt(hard), 14-undetermined by this blog, but somebody knows who they go to, since it's based on known SC congressional district results. Paul apparently didn't pick up any delegates here. Too bad. If he'd have had more resources (or they were better allocated) he could have had people on the ground in Abbeville County, and the surrounding counties, and maybe won the 2 delegates from <a href="http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results?gclid=CLqt2vXV5K0CFYe8Kgod91iAJA">Congressional District 3</a>. Paul got 22% in Abbeville County, the largest percentage of any county in South Carolina.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGjWIwuc9uajpU-mi8wQj1GslWuFg_9Hn8ElW6qTexA0-CiR5a6iUPeq0bvwrbSUwXCZHt9l4wSg4caSRW2jsTWslHTbaICFh_WkNPBD1S2LMOrTMN3FS1A_QVjrEhoOe4cPix15DFTP3U/s1600/ron_paul_votes_per_South_Carolina_congressional_district2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGjWIwuc9uajpU-mi8wQj1GslWuFg_9Hn8ElW6qTexA0-CiR5a6iUPeq0bvwrbSUwXCZHt9l4wSg4caSRW2jsTWslHTbaICFh_WkNPBD1S2LMOrTMN3FS1A_QVjrEhoOe4cPix15DFTP3U/s320/ron_paul_votes_per_South_Carolina_congressional_district2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5700683705860060306" /></a><br /><br />In any State that does winner-takes-congressional-districts, it would really benefit the Paul camp to allocate a lot of resources to rural congressional districts, and give rousing pro-gun, anti-tax speeches. The gun rights issue attracts single-issue voters, more than any other issue, other than taxation, which is universally applicable. If Paul did this, he could really optimize his race based on delegate count, and stay competitive for a lot longer than he's likely to, right now. (I'm hoping for the best, but realistically, Super Tuesday in 2008 was a flood of zombies from liberal states, where conservatives wrongly thought they were being conservative by voting against individual personal freedoms.)<br /><br />Based on the following <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/21/map-south-carolina-primary-2012-results_n_1221160.html">map</a>, it looks like virtually all South Carolina's delegates go to Newt Gingrich, the "Russian Roulette" candidate (you never know when a scandal caused by his egomania and sociopathy will erupt). Since Newt is (by track record) an unelectable sociopath (who pays lip service to free market ideas while <a href="http://www.alternet.org/drugs/153414/newt_gingrich_proposed_the_death_penalty_for_pot__--_even_though_he_admitted_to_smoking_it/">self-contradictorily advocating that people get the death sentence for marijuana possession</a>), it's anyone's call how his former delegates get divided up, in Tampa. Maybe they'll all do the sub-optimal but most honorable thing, and committ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku">seppuku</a>, en masse. Or, if there's a benevolent God, perhaps they'll do the optimal thing, and send their votes to Ron Paul, the only <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism_in_the_United_States">republican </a>in the race. <br /><br />Now, some people might think that my suggestion of voluntary Seppuku for pseudo-republican traitors to the USA is a little harsh, but think about it: Not only are they betraying their country, by voting in favor of social intolerance and financial servitude (and therefore against enlightenment values), they are doing so on the eve of a looming <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/casey/casey11.html">U. S. financial collapse</a>. So, there's a real likelihood we could see the collapse of western civilization, based on their vote. Opposition to enlightenment values is basically serving Al-qaeda, or some other form of theocratic tribalism. Moreover, they are willfully ignoring the <a href="http://peikoff.com/lr/home.htm">historical decay of the Weimar Republic</a> in the pig-headed defiance of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-still-the-land-of-the-free/2012/01/04/gIQAvcD1wP_story.html">the rule of law, jury trials, and a free market</a>.<br /><br />So, an overview of the delegate situation, as it stands on January 21, 2012:<br /><br />"Hard delegates" pledged = 37.<br />Of that 37: <br />7-9 are for Romney.<br />3 are for Paul.<br />11-25 are for Newt.<br />2 are for Huntsman.<br /><br />Including the "soft delegates" (the delegates that remain unpledged until the GOP convention in Tampa), we can assume that the breakdown is between Ron Paul (republican principles) and the banking establishment (anti-republican socialist "establishment" principles). Including the soft delegates who have indicated they will vote one way or another (7 Iowa delegates indicated they were voting for Ron Paul), the picture tilts a little in Paul's favor:<br /><br />7-9(+18 soft establishment) are potentially for Romney (total of 27 right now).<br />3(+7 soft) are for Paul (total of 10 right now).<br />11-25(+18 soft establishment) are potentially for Newt (total of 25 right now).<br />2 are for Huntsman. (These two get added to Romney or Gingrich)<br /><br />(I believe "hard delegates" can be reassigned at the convention, if their candidate does not win on the first ballot, or does not have a chance of winning on the first ballot. So, these get added to Newt or Romney's "establishment" vote totals, as "establishment" votes, unless Paul is close, in which case they go to him as "power-worship" or "favor-seeking" votes. The latter case is highly unlikely, given the desire for control that the sociopathic banking establishment has.)<br /><br />So, right now, the establishment is divided against itself, Romney has approximately 27 delegates, Gingrich has approximately 25 and Paul has 10. If you count Gingrich and Romney as "the establishment," then it's 52 establishment (Romney-Gingrich) and 10 freedom (Paul) votes. Not good for individual liberty, but not a death-knell either. If Paul is knocked out of this presidential race, then I'm supporting <a href="http://www.rjharris2012.com">R. J. Harris</a> for the <a href="http://www.lp.org">Libertarian Party</a> nomination.Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-67114762217820058122012-01-21T10:45:00.000-08:002012-01-21T10:46:40.667-08:00Ron Paul Explains What's Wrong With the NDAA<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tg69QM1yXQQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-52706183394702440862012-01-20T12:57:00.000-08:002012-01-20T12:59:37.052-08:00Joe Rogan Talks About National Defense Authorization Act w/Duncan Trussell<iframe width="420" height="237" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zb_f5Sn3EFk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-37201253527199554482012-01-20T10:33:00.000-08:002012-01-20T10:43:54.707-08:00Undercutting the Racist EstablishmentRon Paul is heroic. I'm a middle aged person who would NEVER vote for any of the other mainstream false republicans. Incidentally, Ron Paul is right about getting his delegates on the ballot. If he does that, he's still a contender, because it can come down to him and Mitt "obviously unelectable" Romney, Newt "even less electable, death sentence for marijuana" Gingrich, or Rick "google santorum" Santorum. As soon as it's just 2 candidates, the other candidate will LOSE because distractions and lies don't work as well, when it's "mano e mano." Notice how Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich all favor the Federal Reserve system, the drug war, some form of individual tax on labor or consumption. Materially, they favor <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212">UNACCOUNTABLE SYSTEMS OF CONTROL</a>.<br /><br />Ron Paul is the only candidate who favors clear accountability, and clear limits on government. <br /><br />That said, if Paul somehow doesn't get the nomination, I'm voting for and contributing to R. J. Harris at <a href="http://www.rjharris2012.com">http://www.rjharris2012.com</a> R. J. Harris is a principled Ron Paul supporter who fully understands a decentralized strategy of promoting liberty based on jury rights activism: bringing the power of freedom directly to the individual, without even winning a single election. Check out Ron Paul's "Power to the Jury" speech on youtube for more information about how this is accomplished, or visit <a href="http://www.jurorsforjustice.com ">http://www.jurorsforjustice.com </a>or <a href="http://www.fija.org ">http://www.fija.org </a><br /><br />One thing that Ron Paul could do to beat Romney and Obama would be to say that he'd consider <a href="http://www.letsgetfreethebook.com/aboutpaulbutler.html">Dr. Paul Butler </a>(a Nationwide defender of jury nullification of law) to be his running mate. This would do several things:<br /><br />1) It would force people to look up Dr. Paul Butler's website, and learn more about jury nullification of law, and how <a href="http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/">the drug war is racist</a>. If people did this, there would be an instant debate over institutionalized racism.<br /><br />2) It would make the establishment crap its pants in fear, because it would totally defeat arguments in favor of voting for Obama, if Obama did not instantly reverse course and follow through on his forgotten 2008 campaign promises on civil liberties. (Ending the CA and CO marijuana raids, etc..)<br /><br />3) It would make Paul the ONLY viable contender against Obama from the Republican field. It would set Paul Butler up to whisper in Paul's ear on every issue where injustice is institutionalized, from an INSIDER's perspective. (Dr. Butler was a federal prosecutor, before he realized that moral people could not be prosecutors, having the integrity to then quit his job.)<br /><br />4) It would definitively prove that Paul is not a racist, to those who won't let go of the newsletters made by infiltrators to his operation in the early 1990s.<br /><br />5) It would make any criticism of Paul impossible, from those who know anything about anything, meaning, only the totally ignorant in society would be criticizing Paul. This is ALMOST the case right now, but it would increase this variable dramatically.<br /><br />6) Some people have said that Jesse Ventura would be an insurance policy against assassination, because he's more radical than Paul. Well, Dr Paul Butler would be an even bigger "insurance policy" and it would be an insurance policy with a message: "No more victimless crime enforcement. No more institutionalized racism. Pardons for all victims of the unconstitutional, false-justice system. A black man who truly understands the issues black america faces today, who will do more than give lip service to issues of institutionalized racism in policing."<br /><br />7) Obama would not be able to criticize one single move Paul made, from a position of legitimacy. This would set Dr. Butler free to pressure the whitehouse to do the right thing, or get booted from the whitehouse in November. That way, even if Paul lost against Obama, the changes would have already been made.<br /><br />Again, Paul Butler's page is <a href="http://www.jurorsforjustice.com">http://www.jurorsforjustice.com</a> <br /><br />I like these strategic ideas, because they ensure a large measure of victory, no matter the outcome of the elections (primary or general). Plus, they bring in giant new growth coalitions, that penetrate into society far, far, far deeper than the Republican primary alone can possibly reach. They also set Paul up to optimize a shift to the Libertarian Party, if he so desires.<br /><br />Moreover, Dr. Paul Butler brings in civil libertarian Democrats by the score, by finally reaching those millions of Democrats for whom social tolerance is more important than socialist welfare projects.<br /><br />Obviously, a conversation would need to be had between Paul and Dr. Butler, but it would be an unbelievably powerful coalition, with Dr. Butler making the rounds on the media. ...And even if it resulted in lost elections, it would result in dramatically more individual freedom, because it would result in a focus on the jury nullification of law message.<br /><br />Now, I know it's not likely, given Dr. Butler's past (somewhat passive) support of social welfare programs, and given the likelihood of a Paul-Judge Andrew Napolitano run, if Paul got the GOP nomination. But it's still intriguing to me, because of the instant benefit it would confer to both parties, and to the message of liberty.<br /><br />Feel free to copy and repost this post. This post has no copyright, but you can give me credit if you like. I want it to travel across the internet as a meme. "Undercutting the Establishment" Thanks, --Jake Witmer.Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-42422270463914375862012-01-13T15:12:00.000-08:002012-01-13T15:17:01.039-08:00The Most Important Court Case in the USA<a href="http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/activist-appeals-felony-ruling-for.html">http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/activist-appeals-felony-ruling-for.html</a><br />If this court case is lost, then free political speech no longer exists in the USA. Watch the videos, pay close attention. If Mark Schmidter loses his case, we're all going to wake up the next day with no Bill of Rights. If you've ever wondered how the Weimar Republic caved in to nazism, it probably looked a lot like this.Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4200570288503926344.post-62179571892917712412012-01-04T03:04:00.000-08:002012-01-04T07:09:48.944-08:00Ron Paul Wins!...100% of the educated vote, in the Iowa caucuses!<br /><br />Thesis: Whenever you hear someone describing libertarian foreign policy views as "isolationist" they are misleading you, in the belief that you are too stupid to know the immense difference between the terms "military non-interventionist" and "isolationist." Alternate phrasing: "Will you blathering idiot pundits please stop calling Ron Paul an 'Isolationist'?" Alternate phrasing: Nonintervention =/= isolation. <br /><br />Please, ...remember that. Your future may depend on it.<br /><br />Why am I so angry about this right now? In short, the TV political blather show "FOX and Friends."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/personalities/stuart-varney/bio/#s=r-z">Stuart Varney</a> just made the idiotic statement on "FOX and Friends" that Wall Street isn't supporting Ron Paul because he's an "isolationist." <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/personalities/steve-doocy/bio/#s=a-d">Steve Doocy </a>then idiotically states that "...and that's because you can't be an isolationist in a global economy." These idiots are apparently incapable of comprehending the <a href="https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=military+non-interventionism+isolationism&pbx=1&oq=military+non-interventionism+isolationism&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1594l11875l0l12578l41l25l0l2l2l1l1859l10109l0.3.6.4.3.1.2.0.2l23l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=890a274ff6b690bf&biw=1024&bih=587">difference</a> between "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-interventionism">military non-interventionism</a>" and "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolationism">isolationism</a>."<br /><br />Ron Paul supports a foreign policy that Thomas Jefferson described as: "<a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance17.html">Free trade with all, entangling alliances with none</a>." That's <strong><em>military noninterventionism</em></strong>, and historically, it prevents war and conflict. Stated another way: "<a href="http://www.fee.org/from-the-archives/if-goods-dont-cross-borders/">When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will.</a>" "Isolationism" --a completely different thing-- is a backwards politicial philosophy that encourages the reduction and isolation of trade to favor "American business," as well as military and political disengagement, often with populist or nationalist overtones. Pat Buchanan is an "isolationist." F. A. Hayek, Harry Browne, and Ron Paul are "military noninterventionists." There's an immense difference, as any kindergartener of median intelligence can understand.<br /><br />But I guess that Stuart Varney and Steve Doocy aren't quite that bright. ...Or, they're willing to sell out America on orders from their corporate overlords.<br /><br />Sadly, the Ron Paul-supporting intellectuals in Iowa were not numerous enough to keep our grandkids out of "indefinite detention" in tomorrow's prison camps. (Let's hope there are enough people who comprehend the basic concept of America for Paul to win NH and SC.) If not, it's bye bye, America, ...fun while it lasted! <br /><br />"FOX and friends" further reveals its ignorant media bias by their wording of their push poll: "Given expectations going into Iowa, the biggest loser from Tuesday night was: Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Ron Paul" THEY LEFT MITT ROMNEY'S NAME OUT! <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ZoMOcLc1duEv9hoXtnr2nuwNcqGteBBrhFQp5zd7oH34vC61CcPDX-RKS8MMc1dHgtv5jfLQozECMhxGWc-0U-GsereBuMcLJ6eIjERP-74DmCU7BFFwyxlY_Os1Bfz4QPhwhlkN9Hko/s1600/2012_01_04_FOX_media_bias.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 208px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ZoMOcLc1duEv9hoXtnr2nuwNcqGteBBrhFQp5zd7oH34vC61CcPDX-RKS8MMc1dHgtv5jfLQozECMhxGWc-0U-GsereBuMcLJ6eIjERP-74DmCU7BFFwyxlY_Os1Bfz4QPhwhlkN9Hko/s320/2012_01_04_FOX_media_bias.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693792158460615634" /></a><br /><br />...He got fewer votes than he got in 2008, even though the Republican establishment has been supporting him from the beginning! He came 8 votes from being beaten by the ridiculous socialist and bigot, Rick Santorum (who benefitted from an enormous herd of sheeple who mindlessly listened to their pastors and to santorum's words, without bothering to check his record out)! This weak showing is amazing, when put in the context that the media establishment has been working for free for Romney for months!<br /><br />Even all that money and free support couldn't take the stink out of Romney enough to give him a landslide victory! Plastic Mitt is just too transparently <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VT0rizSxsE">a tool of the Federal Reserve bankers</a>! FOX clearly wants their unthinking low-brow conformist viewers, to view Romney as a "winner." ...Ridiculous!<br /><br />Don't worry, tyrants, your strategy of bringing education under the control of government has paid off. With voters in Iowa calling themselves <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/hayek1.html">conservatives</a>, and working for their own enslavement, it's apparent that depriving highschoolers of proper history, philosophy, and economics lessons has accomplished its goal: a servile American population of willing "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P772Eb63qIY">free range" serfs</a>. A serf owns nothing, not even his own body: as this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWLrfNJICeM">video</a> (and the existence of the AMA, FDA, and DEA) clearly shows. So, congratulations on doing a very thorough job. The general public is completely unaware that America had the highest standard of literacy in the world, prior to the advent of public education.<br /><br />"<a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/hayek1.html">Conservative</a>" is now a word with completely no meaning. It is a suitcase word that means anything from the legitimate "limited government" to the illegitimate "institutionalized bigotry on behalf of a fearful majority."<br /><br />If you're a part of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIB4Bar_DBw&feature=related">uneducated majority</a>, I strongly recommend these four works of nonfiction:<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Liberty-Jim-Powell/dp/078612296X">The Triumph of Liberty</a>, <br />by Jim Powell<br />http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Liberty-Jim-Powell/dp/078612296X<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212">The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve</a>,<br />by G. Edward Griffin<br />http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212<br /><br /><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173#">America: From Freedom to Fascism</a>,<br />by Aaron Russo<br />free video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173#<br /><br /><a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/hayek1.html">Why I am Not A Conservative</a>,<br />by F. A. Hayek<br />free online: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/hayek1.html<br /><br />Well, I need to go and watch the Fox News media fascists argue about the differences between 99% support for unlimited government, and 99% support for unlimited government allocated to slightly different subject areas. ...It's been fun.Jake Witmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com0