A Reading List For Libertarian Activists

Essential Reading Regarding Jury Rights, Especially For Libertarian Activists:

Send In The Waco Killers
by Vin Suprynowicz

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).

Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine
by Clay Conrad

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.

Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice
by Paul Butler

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.


The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Volume II: The Methods of Nonviolent Action
by Gene Sharp

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.


Works That Explain How Libertarian Movements Can and Have Succeeded:

Freedom for Alaskans
by Dick Randolph

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.

The Triumph of Liberty: A 2,000 Year History Told Through the Lives of Freedom's Greatest Champions
by Jim Powell

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?"

Top Futurist Works on Life Extension:
Fantastic Voyage
by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman

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. "Reprogramming Our Biochemistry for Immortality" Interview with Ray Kurzweil

Ending Aging
by Aubrey de Grey

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 "Bootstrapping Our Way to an Ageless Future" (free online copy).

World Without Cancer
by G. Edward Griffin

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.

Jury Nullification is the Solution to the Problem of Tyranny

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/22/montana-jury-marijuana-mutiny_n_800074.html

Ron Paul and R. J. Harris advocate jury nullification of law, as the proper constitutional remedy for overbearing government tyranny. Keep in mind that you're under no obligation to comply with answering intellectually dishonest and unconstitutional (and thus unlawful) "voir dire" (jury selection) questions from the prosecutor when you're called as a juror. Also keep in mind you'd be stupid/servile to plea bargain with a prosecutor if a jury couldn't be seated. You're always stupid not to fight with 100% of everything you have. Never accept injustice.

Meme Programming That, Once it Reaches a Certain Threshold, Results in A Free Society:

In the middle 1600s, a generally-intelligent biological supercomputer began reproducing and serving up the jury rights programming to fellow generally-intelligent biological supercomputers known as "human brains." The supercomputer did this by speaking the programs in audible symbols, and hoping that the symbols or "words" would be translated into useful neo-cortical patterns, inside the receiving brains. The serving supercomputer's name was John Lilburne or "Freeborn John" and one of the receiving supercomputers was Richard Overton. These supercomputers called themselves "levellers" because they believed that everyone should have "level" or "equal" rights under the law.

The most powerful supercomputers on the planet are still human brains, but sometimes we forget that. Worse, we forget that what brains are programmed with are the most important software programs on the planet. They are the software programs that determine whether we will go to war, go to the gas chamber, or go to the market to purchase what we want and need, in order to live. We forget the heroic meme programming that has provided us all with the expectation of equality under the law.

This afternoon, I gathered several of my favorite book-format meme programs into my hands. It was a stack of books about six inches thick. The collective page count of the stack is 1,366 pages (308-We The Jury, 311-Jury Nullification, 213-Let's Get Free, 225-Adventures in Legal Land, 309-Nullification). I thought about the contents of each book, and how they form, taken together, both a complete political philosophy and the knowledge necessary to implement that philosophy, nationwide. It struck me that, if even 10% of the USA read and absorbed the contents of these books, the resulting USA would be totally libertarian. ...We would have our freedom.

...Even if the total number of libertarians in the USA was not increased.

This would mean that you could walk down the street carrying a .308 rifle as well as a concealed side-arm in Chicago, and have little to fear from the police. You could also advertise a restaurant with no food handling license in that same currently unfree American city (being free to suffer the negative press and lawsuits if you made anyone sick). You could put a dash of cocaine on your nail, and sniff it into your nose, or relax in a hash bar smoking a marijuana cigar, and noone could or would bother you. You could legally pay for sex, and not worry that the person you were paying would then participate in your brutalization and arrest. You could open a business without any money for lawyers to wade through the bureaucracy (although it might still be good to have their services as soon as you could afford it, to avoid aggressive lawsuits from accident or controversy). You could offer to defend anyone in a court of law, without being licensed by the BAR. When politicians came by, insinuating that 'bad things might happen to your business' if you didn't contribute to their campaigns, you could simply keep your money and tell them all to go to hell. And for the more productive citizens among us? They could make us all wealthier than Bill Gates by selling currently "unapproved" (that is, prohibited) medical treatments, without begging (currently witheld) permission from the FDA and AMA for doing so. Instead of our paper money going down in value, our gold-backed money would steadily rise in value, in direct proportion to the amount of human thought and labor, planet-wide. ...We would all be living healthy lifespans beyond age 120, in something that looks like a utopia compared to what we're now experiencing.

All of this would be the result of roughly 20% of the USA's citizens being made aware of the contents of this small stack of books, now sitting on my desk. (This assumes, in the manner of Pareto's law, that roughly 20% of those 20% ---that is, 4% of the total--- would become active supporters of organized jury rights activism in some way.) A meme can be defined as "an easily-transmissible idea" or "an easily-transmissible philosophical idea." Essentially, a meme is a software virus for the mind (bad), or a useful software program for the mind (good). Hence, the title of this post. Since there are roughly 3,143 counties and county-equivalents in the USA, and the transmission of these ideas requires 2 "meme-serving" or "memenode" activists" per county courthouse (4 or more is better), if we estimate that there is one courthouse per county, we come up with a figure of 6,286 activists needed to make this plan functional.

The government school system has implanted bad memes in people's minds. The oversimplified views most people have of juries, generally constitute a "bad meme cluster." The impression that bad results emerge from juries (without the knowledge that those juries are judicially-misdirected and controlled) is another bad meme installed by government schoolteachers (or the authority and media figures they've programmed). These bad memes defend themselves, but only weakly. A presentation of the facts of history is generally enough to dislodge these views. Ultimately, a person's agreement with jury independence tends to revolve around their core beliefs: Is man always improving and making progress? Is the free individual worth protecting? If so, then the meme of jury rights clearly trumps the tyrant meme that believes judicially-instructed juries are optimal.

The book I am now in the process of writing adds strategic information to the material found in these books. It suggests a plan for getting the most useful information from those books into enough minds to result in exponentially-expanding jury nullification (to an appropriate level). (As jury nullification happens more and more frequently, it may become less necessary, because prosecutors may attempt to prosecute fewer victimless crime cases. Thus, the number of cases nullified always needs to be correlated to attempted victimless crime cases filed against defendants, in order to contain the most meaning, and be "spin proof.") This strategy will produce increases in liberty directly in proportion to activist effort. Until my book comes out, however, the following sources are the absolute most useful sources one can read.

So, if you wish to have a much greater degree of individual freedom, please seek out, purchase, and familiarize yourself with the following links:

Jury Rights Internet Links:

http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/history-jury-null.html
--An essay that condenses the history of our lost jury rights
to something that fits on a single-page tri-fold pamphlet. This pamphlet should be handed out, outside of courthouses.

http://www.fija.org
--The Fully Informed Jury Association (Comprehensive Jury Rights Information)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA4GKG__B-s
1/3 Ron Paul presents "Power to the Jury" At Issue (NEFL)
(Congressman Ron Paul explains the power of individual members of the jury in this video. This video should be sent to anyone you know who will not read the books and online sources cited in this recommended reading list.)

http://www.jurorsforjustice.com
--Dr. Paul Butler's Jury Rights Activism website, "Jurors for Justice".
(A useful website that reveals the racism that always results from "mala prohibita," as well as a plan for its elimination.)

http://lysanderspooner.org/node/35
--Abolitionist Lysander Spooner's "An Essay On the Trial by Jury"
(The abolitionist movement was the first pro-freedom movement in the USA to take advantage of jury rights activism. This brought on the Civil War, which then freed the slaves. Although the US government could have freed the slaves peacefully, by buying and then releasing them, the presence of informed Northern abolitionist juries made enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law impossible. Northern juries refused to punish free slaves, and thereby made slavery impossible to enforce, without walls and prisons capable of preventing slaves from running away, or being smuggled away.)

http://www.strike-the-root.com/91/groves/groves1.html
--A groundbreaking essay that talks about how politicians are self-selected for sociopathy. This relates to jury rights because the jury is NOT self-selected for sociopathy --proper juries are RANDOM, and contain a random assortment of morally-normal or normally-conscienced people. This explains why juries trend toward benevolence, and politicians trend toward democide and injustice.

http://fija.org/download/40/
--"Surviving Voir Dire" by Clay Conrad (How to get seated on the jury, if you understand the importance of doing so, and don't want to be removed during the unconstitutional "voir dire" or "jury selection.")

reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras
"The War On Cameras" --Radley Balko
(This groundbreaking article records the loss of freedom of the press in the USA. A free press [including the freedom to record video in public] is essential to the nonviolent spread of jury rights information. The state never gives up its right to record us in public, so if we don't have the equal right to record their agents, we lose the ability to prove ourselves innocent with exculpatory evidence of our own conduct. We also lose the ability to hold them accountable for incriminating evidence of their misconduct. While handing out jury rights information in front of local courthouses, it is therefore absolutely essential that you videotape what you are doing, and upload it to the net, and to interested media outlets. This amplifies your message, allowing it to reach places you cannot even imagine, online. When the police respond to you with force and threats, if they do so, they will look terrible, and lend sympathy to your cause. Since you get a free impression of credibility for dressing well while you are doing this, please wear a business suit [or nice dress if you are female] while handing out jury rights pamphlets. By presenting yourself well, in person and on video, you make the receivers of your message much more likely to engage in jury nullification, and that's the goal you are optimizing for. The more jury nullification, the more the establishment is forced to take your message seriously, and the less time they will wish to risk trying to prosecute innocent people.)

Essential Books:

The Triumph of Liberty --Jim Powell
(This book briefly covers the Lilburnian origin of English Jury Trials, and covers the major incremental advances in individual freedom through the prior 2,000 years. If you don't know history, you are doomed to repeat it.)

Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine (1988) --Clay Conrad
(This book examines, in detail, the doctrine of jury nullification of law, also known as "jury veto." Highly recommended.)

We, The Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy (1994) --Jeffrey Abramson
(This book examines, in detail, the doctrine of jury nullification of law, also known as "jury veto." There is significant overlap with the prior book on the same subject, but it also covers a great deal of new ground.)

Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice --Dr. Paul Butler
(Covers new ground, in terms of jury nullification and jury rights outreach and activism. Definitely worth reading for the self-educated juror. Goes further into jury veto as a tool to be used against institutionalized racism than the other books do.)

Adventures in Legal Land --Marc Stevens
(A detailed explanation of the legal theory that is compatible with jury nullification, including a step-by-step explanation of a proper legal response to aggression from the courts. ie: Directions regarding what a pro se defendant should say, if he wants to increase his chances beyond throwing himself on the mercy of the jury. Absolutely essential for people who will risk arrest by performing organized and coordinated jury rights activism.)

Nullification: How To Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century --Tom Woods
(Extending the defense of individual liberty into the political structure. In short, in stead of getting individuals to refuse to punish other individuals, this book shows how States can refuse to punish their citizens by rejecting federal law. This is the political extension of a libertarian society that has already embraced jury nullification of law.)