Jenny brought her big box of Legos to school so that she could play with them during recess. It was a rainy day so the kids stayed indoors. Jenny moved off to one corner and began to build something with her Legos.

Billy saw what she was doing. He kept glancing at her from across the room. Finally he headed toward her. He said, “Can I have some Legos?”

Jenny replied, “Sorry no. I will need all my Legos to build what I want to build. I was thinking about it all the way to school today. It’s going to be a really tall tower.”

Alternate ending A:

Billy pushed Jenny out of the way and grabbed two big handfuls of Legos. He then ran to the other corner and began to play. The teacher, seeing what happened, walked over to Billy and said, “Billy, we do not push other people and take their stuff.” She then returned Jenny’s Legos to Jenny, who proceeded to build her tower.

Billy learned that pushing people and stealing their stuff is wrong.

Alternate ending B:

Billy, seeing that he had no Legos and Jenny had a lot, went and told the teacher. The teacher came over and said, “Jenny, you have a lot of Legos and Billy has none. You should share your Legos.”

“But these are my Legos and I need all of them to build what I want to build.”

“Stop being selfish. If you do not give Billy some of your Legos I will not let you have recess the rest of the week.”

Jenny looked at the teacher. She looked at the Legos. Part of her realized she had very little power compared to the power the teacher had. She gave Billy two big handfuls. He went off to play and Jenny just spent the rest of recess thinking about what she could have built.

Billy learned that stealing is much better if you can get somebody else to do it for you.  Especially somebody in authority.

In the early hours of Gettysburg, the Union Army’s first commanders on the scene seized the geographical high ground. The Confederates spent the next three days trying to charge up hill in the face of rifle and cannon fire. Since time immemorial, defending the hill has conferred an advantage. Holding the high ground has allowed a smaller force to sometimes prevail against greater numbers. Even in Star Wars III, Anakin Skywalker learned a burning lesson about trying to take high ground held by a Jedi master. In the realm of morality and outside of warfare, we often refer to somebody who is doing the right thing as taking the high ground. Unless a society has completely gone to hell, the moral high ground can even confer an advantage in the marketplace of ideas.

Those who support liberty, self-ownership, and non-aggression as first political principles are in a seeming perpetual battle against those who believe that society owns you and has a right to initiate force against you in support of its progressive programs. And because progressivism is largely based on an appeal to emotion, those who support progressive ideas are used to reinforcing their views of their own moral goodness with their ideas. Thus, one who believes that government has no place in providing charity must be bad. One who believes that people should be left to themselves unless others decide voluntarily to assist them is downright horrible. And, if you are wont to believe that you have a fundamental right to arm yourself in defense against force from both criminals and tyrants, you are downright evil, the devil’s own spawn directly from hell itself.

Unfortunately, conservatives and libertarians and others who support the principles of liberty often fall prey to such thinking themselves. They willingly cede the moral high ground to the enemy at the beginning of the fight. They do so mostly by agreeing that their opponents are morally right but then arguing that their opponent’s ideas just do not work in practice. So the argument about socialism becomes one of the liberty-minded arguing that it doesn’t work and its supporters arguing it just hasn’t worked yet, but give us this one more chance and we will get it right. Or the liberty-minded agree that gun control sounds logical but just doesn’t work and its supporters argue that it’s not broad enough, or we haven’t taken enough guns, or (in Great Britain) maybe we need the knives too. If only people were good socialism would be a great idea and gun control would work right?

Wrong. Socialism is an evil idea. When imposed by government it is nothing but a system of extortion and slavery. When voluntarily entered into, it is an arrangement of the gullible choosing to support those who immorally want more than they are willing to produce. Gun control is fundamentally immoral because it limits an individual’s fundamental human rights to defend themselves against criminals and tyrants and places them at the mercy of both. It is not logical. It is not ideal. It is not even moral. Yes. Neither of these immoral ideas works in practice. But if you resort to arguments of utility as primary and give up on arguments of morality and natural rights then you begin by ceding the moral high ground to the enemy. You are essentially saying socialism is morally better but just doesn’t work. As soon as you make that argument you have lost.

Progressives advocate theft and extortion cloaked as compassion because it makes them feel good. They call people greedy because they want what they earned but they accept the mistaken idea that it is acceptable for other people to want to take what they did not earn. They believe it is perfectly acceptable to initiate force against others to pay for whatever they feel might be compassionate at the moment. They accept theft, extortion, and slavery as the fundamental foundation for the political and economic solutions they advocate. They are why there is a second amendment. They are the problem with America. Their feeling good does not trump my rights. Ever. No matter how many votes they can muster. People should not be enslaved to their flawed reasoning and emotional whims.

So, if you are liberty-minded, stand up and fight back. Start with the premise that they are morally wrong and that their ideas are evil. Then, if necessary, follow up with all the facts that show that their ideas do not work. But they do not work, not because they are good and people just aren’t good enough, but because they are bad and most people aren’t trying to be. You might be surprised at the response. Usually, they are shocked because they have so much emotional capital tied up in the notion that their ideas make them good people. Sometimes they will even run like cowards in the face of the truth because they have no answer other than their “feelings” and they certainly are not equipped to handle truth. Other times they will immediately resort to attacks on you and name calling because they are intellectually weak and incapable of separating the false ideas they hold from their own concept of self-goodness.

Do not cede the moral high ground in this most critical battle. If you do, then the battle is lost before it has been seriously joined.

Next year will be the 240th year anniversary of the siege of Fort Mifflin in the Revolutionary War. The Fort, located just down the Delaware River from Philadelphia, held out for almost 6 weeks in the Fall of 1777 against the largest naval bombardment of the Revolutionary War although badly outnumbered and outgunned. The Fort’s fewer than 500 men, ordered to hold out “to the last extremity, but wifth only ten cannon, held out against a large fleet that at its high point delivered over 1,000 cannon shots in a single hour. This brave resistance gave Washington’s army the chance to get to Valley Forge after their disastrous defeat at the Battle of Brandywine. Even one of the British officers commented on the defenders saying,

“the behavior of the enemy did them honor, nor did they quit the place ’till their defenses were ruined, and the works rendered to rubbish, setting the works in a blaze when they could defend it no longer.”

Even with all the misadventures of the Continental Army, one has to wonder if somebody in the British army or admiralty had to at some point say, what were we thinking when we tried to seize the colonists muskets, cannon, and powder in Massachusetts? Who could have thought that trying to seize the arms of a free people would result in such a firestorm of resistance and rebellion? Obviously, they did not consider this in foresight. They must have been the Progressives of their day. Because they do not seem to understand this lesson.

With the ridiculous gun laws just passed in California and the bans in other progressive states like Connecticut and New York, one must wonder where the line will be drawn. Professional politicians repeatedly claim they aren’t “coming for the guns”. But then the President repeatedly cites Australia as an example of what should be done – and that is exactly what they did in Australia. Senator Feinstein of California said of “assault weapons” (in 1995):

“If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, ‘Mr. and Mrs. America turn ‘em all in,’ I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren’t here.’”

This is all part of the traditional Progressive movement. It has been gunning for guns almost since its inception over a hundred years ago. Recently, a judge in California stated that he would like to see all guns gone, even from police and security. It is not that progressives do not understand the concept of individual rights. They just think that liberty is obsolete and that it stands in the way of “progress”. The erosion of the fundamental human right to defend oneself against both crime and tyranny will continue as both sides of the political equation in this country bring us progressive choices.

At some point, unless the trend is reversed, it may become necessary for Americans to once again resist “to the last extremity”. Hopefully this will not be the case. The fact that Connecticut gun owners have largely openly ignored the newest restrictive gun laws even to the point of showing up to protest armed with what are now “illegal” guns gives some hope. One can hope that a significant group of Californians do the same. Ultimately though, our fundamental rights are not subject to a vote. Should it come to confiscation, non-compliance and resistance will be the only moral option remaining. Don’t believe it? Neither did the British governor of Massachusetts when he initiated force to confiscate the people’s arms. I’m guessing that by Fort Mifflin’s brave defense, somebody on the British side was beginning to believe it.

Politicians always seek endorsements.  I see no reason why bloggers cannot do the same.  So I sought endorsements from two of the greatest.  James Madison and Ben Franklin themselves.  Don’t believe me?  Here they are wearing Liberty Pirate caps.

You’ll be able as well when I add my Liberty Pirate gear links to the blog!

The US should get out of the UN, and NATO for that matter. These are the very types of entangling alliances that George Washington and Jefferson so wisely warned us against.

“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world” – George Washington

“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none.” – Thomas Jefferson

Below is an article that I wrote in 2003 on this subject. While some of the information could be updated (such as the Commission on Human Rights membership), it is still relevant. In fact, if anything, things have gotten worse rather than better. The recent call for the US to pay reparations for slavery, ignoring the fact that slavery existed in every country and among almost every people on the globe, is just one more in a pile of reasons why the UN has lost whatever slim margin of moral or factual credibility it might have had, for one second, at some point in its history. Also, I’m not sure at this point if I would agree with a new body, regardless of how strenuous the membership requirements. And I definitely would not agree if this body were granted any binding powers whatsoever.

As David Fromkin pointed out, “From 1789 until the Second World War, excepting only our relationship with Panama, the United States refused to enter into treaties of alliance with anyone. In the 25 years since the end of the war, however, in a dramatic reversal of national policy, we have allied ourselves with half the world.” Think about that, ONE alliance from 1789 to 1941. And that with a country that we created through one of our imperialist adventures. Since then, we have entangled ourselves with an increasingly dangerous web of alliances that commit us to making war on half the world on behalf of the other half of the world. We need to back off of this approach and begin to unravel the Gordian knot of entanglements. If we cannot untie the knot, there is a simpler solution.

Why We Should Ditch The U.N. (2003)

“Truth is not the heritage of any individual, it is absolute and universal; mankind ought to seek and profess it in common.” – John Henry Cardinal Newman

The legend of the Gordian knot tells of a knot that was tied and that could not be easily untied. An oracle announced that whoever could untie the knot would be the ruler of all of Asia. Alexander the Great came by, got off of his horse, drew his sword, and cut the knot in half. He went on to conquer what was then known of Asia. The lesson for us is that sometimes we hide behind complexity of the details and ignore the fact that the issue itself may be quite simple. The failure of the UN is just such an issue. The United States and all free countries should ditch the United Nations and replace it with a body of free nations that can truly live up to the values officially espoused by the UN.

According to the United Nations Charter, its stated purpose is to prevent war, to promote human rights, and to establish justice and social progress. The United Nations has 191 member nations all subscribing to this Charter. A 2001-2002 study by Freedom House rated the state of political and civil liberties in 192 nations. It gave only 85 a rating of Free based on the evaluation that they “maintain a high degree of political and economic freedom and respect basic civil liberties.” Another 59 were rated as Partly Free with the remaining 48 rated as Not Free. In terms of world population, these categories account for 38.9, 25.3, and 35.8 percent respectively. Of the 48 listed as not free, 13 received the survey’s lowest rating of 7 for political rights and 7 for civil liberties. These countries include Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria. Afghanistan under the Taliban was also included in the lowest 13 but presumably would have risen in the ratings with the recent regime change.

How does the United Nations go about accomplishing its Charter? Well, the current chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights is from Libya – one of the nations with Freedom House’s lowest human rights ratings. In addition, the upcoming UN Conference on Disarmament is to be co-chaired by Iraq and Iran and the irony should be obvious. But these examples are just the more ludicrous symptoms of the systemic flaws that ensure that the United Nations cannot effectively achieve its stated purposes. The UN provides a form of representation by giving each nation’s government a vote and a voice in the General Assembly. In practice, what this means is that Omar Qaddafi has one vote, Fidel Castro has one vote, until last week Saddam Hussein had one vote, and all of the people of Canada together have one vote. In fact, applying the Freedom House ratings, 25% of the member nations are not free and 35.8% of the world’s population has no voice in the United Nations at all. How can a system designed to promote human rights and peace do so when so many of its parts act contrary to these goals?

The idea of a United Nations supporting and promoting peace and human rights is good but has yet to be truly tried. The United States should dump the current organization and form a rival – a Council of Free Nations, for example. This Council would initially be open to the obviously free nations. If additional nations petitioned to join they would have to go through a rigorous multi-year vetting process that would not only observe the status of political and civil rights in the candidate nation but would also provide funding, expertise, and assistance to strengthen freedom.

The United States, as a nation, has not always acted in accordance with its ideals. This is especially true when it comes to foreign policy. The long term impact to the United States of supporting nations and regimes that do not share our principles is negative. The enemy of our enemy is not always (or even usually) our friend. Replacing the United Nations with a representative body of like-minded nations would be the first step in truly promoting human rights throughout the world.

We have created a Santa Claus government. Full of presents for the good little boys and girls. And, let’s face it, Santa isn’t that picky about what constitutes “good” and neither is the Santa Claus government. In fact, quite bad people might even get more presents by breaking various “ethics” laws and rules. But when a government is supposed to be about “blind justice” and “nobody being above the law” and “by the people, for the people, and of the people”, the use of money or influence to get these presents – in the form of contracts or selectively beneficial regulations or grants or subsidies or checks in the mail – is merely theft on a grand scale. Everybody, from left-leaning soccer moms to the most right wing politicians, professes to hate corruption and says they want to end it. Unfortunately, they also tend to be the problem.

If you create a Santa Claus government then you support corruption. If you believe it’s acceptable for government to interfere in people’s lives because somebody voted on it, then you support corruption. If you have no problem with the wholesale theft of production from this and future generations to spend on whatever you think is good for people, or compassionate, or against something you don’t like, then you support corruption. If you think people need to be regulated for their own good, then you support corruption. Without you the government would not have so exceeded its Constitutional restraints or the limits of legitimacy. Without you, there would not be trillions of dollars stolen each year to implement your wishes. You are the problem and the author of the corruption. You are the Santa Claus.

One of my favorite authors is Frank Herbert, the author of Dune and many other intelligent SciFi novels. He discussed this problem and said:

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”

He is right as far as he goes. Because the power itself is often corrupt. The use of force against people that did nothing to deserve it merely because they choose to live or produce in a manner you do not like is wrong. No amount of voting makes it right. Once you the people have created such an illegitimate power, it attracts corruption. It is a law of politics and works without fail. So long as a stint in office means you get to pay off your supporters with billions of dollars of other people’s money, this law will work its unholy magic. So if you support the use of such power, then you ARE the problem. If you bemoan the “big money” in politics but continually vote for people who are in favor of big government, then you are the corruption. So stop it already.

Because the only way to get rid of the corruption that pervades our current Santa Claus government would be to get rid of the 75% or more of the federal budget that pays for unconstitutional or illegitimate programs, or unneeded wars and false security regimes, or for promises to take care of you later. The only way to stifle the impulse to corruption is to limit the power available to the minimum possible. And when it inevitably grows again and shows no signs of being checked, then it becomes time to re-water the tree of liberty.

Periodically there is a kerfuffle over some tragedy of patriotism. Whether somebody forgot to salute somebody, their flag lapel pin was at the cleaners, a senator who had spent his life milking a failed military career is criticized, or, in the latest mishap, a crappy NFL quarterback chose not to stand and show respect for the national anthem, the usual suspects go on the warpath. You know the types: non-veteran soldier supporters, conservatives who love liberty until somebody says something they don’t like, and the gaggle of self proclaimed American Patriots found all over Facebook proclaiming their outrage from the comfort of their own keyboard.  Why are they upset? The first obvious reason is they really haven’t thought through that whole “liberty” thing. And they are like a herd of sheep.

The mutton-like behavior of the Patriots is intentional. Not by them but by the purveyors and propagandists of patriotism. The reason for most “patriotic” symbols and culture is to inspire people to sacrifice themselves for the collective.  The “nation” is a mystical and irrational idea for an entity that does not exist in reality. An accident of your birth should not automatically bond you to the land or the people in close proximity to you at birth. That is just stupid. A nation, like an individual, deserves respect to the extent it is earned by acceptance and implementation of rational ideals that uphold individual liberty.  While I do not think it is wrong to be respectful of the symbols that represent the ideals of our nation, it is important to admit and understand that many of the people who ostensibly subscribe to those ideals have failed in their implementation and that many in these United States utterly reject those ideals.  And the government that was created to ensure that liberty would not perish from this earth is largely responsible for killing Lady Liberty with every chance it gets. Without the ability to reason from the principles of liberty to recognize our current problems, patriotism is just a meaningless, mindless devotion to irrationality.  It is an act of replacing the individual with the collective.

The people that get all emotional about disrespect to those national symbols tend to be the ones that have bought into the mysticism and reject individualism and reason.  Bizarrely enough they also tend to claim those symbols represent the military and veterans while themselves not even being veterans.   As though the “military” is some canonization of the individuals who join it.  For most of American history, the military has been used for goals contrary to our national ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and “all men created equal”.  At the very least, the Mexican American War, the Spanish American War, the Philippines Insurrection where we literally put down people trying to be independent, the Boxer Rebellion where we used US forces as hired thugs for business in China, and  the interventions in the Caribbean and central America in the first half of the 20th century, were all unjustified wars.  World War 1 is less obvious but I would still argue that if we had actually behaved neutrally while proclaiming neutrality we would not have needed to declare war on Germany.  We probably would have had to fight the Axis in WW2 eventually although it would have been later because without the S-A War, the Japanese would not have had obvious targets in the Philippines.  Post WW2 is tougher as the Communists clearly were bent on global domination.  It probably was better to fight them elsewhere but even there we went overboard and spent a lot of treasure and effort supporting petty dictators and toppling governments in Latin America and the Middle East whenever we thought it might be vaguely in our “national interest”.  Desert Shield/Storm was a waste of lives and treasure to protect a bunch of corrupt Arabs from another bunch of corrupt Arabs. And the war on terror has been one misadventure after another all with the likely result of making us less safe at a tremendous cost in terms of lives and money.

Domestically, our tyrannical government has just about bankrupted itself and continues to spend us into oblivion while infringing on our rights and creating an ever growing police state. Our politicians are for sale and the woman with the biggest for sale sign is likely to be our next president.

But hey, a football player sat on the bench during the national anthem.  Vent your anger at him. Bread and circuses anyone?

If you are a farmer growing corn and a murder of crows descends upon your field one night and eats half your crop that is a misfortune of nature. If your neighbor comes in at night and takes half your crop, that is theft.  Inflation is only possible with fiat money and, when enacted by legislature or central bank it is as much theft as the neighbor stealing your crop. When the government forces you to accept its paper as “legal tender”, it is not only robbery, it is armed robbery. In a free society, people are free to agree upon any currency they choose in which to conduct their business.

Article 1, Section 8

The Congress shall have Power… To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

Article 1, Section 10

No State shall… make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts

https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats/videos/1020879604671760/

Watch this video carefully. If you cannot or it becomes unavailable, it is a segment of the character Toby, from the show The West Wing arguing with an opponent of gun control laws. This is what the progressives and other enemies of liberty and restrained government do. Note how the character misquoted the 2nd amendment and completely changed its meaning by putting the emphasis on the preamble rather than the operative part of the law.

The 2nd Amendment actually states:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of THE PEOPLE to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” [emphasis added]

It’s THE PEOPLE, stupid.  Not the militia. The same people mentioned in the 4th amendment and the 10th amendment.  It is amazing that in the US this was almost universally interpreted in one way by the courts until the thirties when the progressive movement dedicated to destroying the constitutional republic finally gained enough steam to begin to ignore previous decisions and make up its own interpretation. Because historically there is nothing would be tyrants love less than an armed populace.

Ironically, much of the gun control legislation only does one thing.  It makes people feel better.  It calms their irrational fear with an irrational “solution”.  That is it. But that is how progressives sell their infringements on liberty.  Of course, infringement is an interesting word. Every time you just shear off the fringe of the blanket you do two things. You get a smaller blanket and a new fringe. But we will just cut it a little here.  And we won’t touch the main part of the blanket. It is a great blanket and we love it.  And the people applaud.  Snip. Snip. Snip. And they get you to strike the ultimate faustian deal by trading your liberty for a little bit of false security as they repeatedly cut the blanket of liberty down to size.

But maybe we should end the mental masturbation that convinces people that their fears or opinions get to trump other people’s fundamental human rights. Fortunately the founders understood this problem and created a republic instead of a democracy. And fortunately they were smart enough to back it up with firepower by specifically calling out and protecting the already existing fundamental and unalienable right to self defense against criminals and would be tyrants.

“You have to vote GOP (or Democrat) or the other will win.”  That’s what the fear mongers have told you in every election for your entire lifetime. They say you have to accept a horrible candidate because the other candidate is marginally worse. I don’t accept that. I will not sanction evil because the other guy is more evil. I will not vote for one set of shackles because they seem to have better padding than the other set.  The fear mongers keep telling you this but you can see the results of your compliance in the nearly continuous expansion of government power, size, and debt over the last 40 years. If you continue to comply with their program then the results are your fault. Our current mess is the fault of people like you. And people like me for as long as I bought into their false dilemma.

Because I’m liberty-minded, I tend to hear this argument from the GOP more than from the Democrats because they assume I would vote their way if there were no choice.  Like I said, the current mess is the fault of people who vote that way and that included me for as long as I bought into their fear-mongering.