Nowhere To Run

The Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850 to deal with the problem of runaway slaves and the weakening of a 1793 law with the same objective. All people want to keep the fruits of their labor and when this desire is violated they seek some remedy, whether it be a change in the law or a change in location. If a slave could make it to Canada he was probably safe from the slave catchers. Some northern states had laws against black people – slave or free – moving into the state, so Canada was probably the best option. If a slave could escape to a free area he could keep all his earnings since there was no income tax at the time.

Today the state of affairs is a little different. If an American citizen wants to keep all his income there is no place to escape to. If such a person moves to Switzerland, Uganda, Haiti or Antarctica the IRS wants its “share” of his income. It doesn't matter that the person no longer lives in the US or makes any money in the US, just by virtue of citizenship, Uncle Sam wants his share.

If the plantation owner of yesteryear could somehow reap the benefits of the runaway slave's labor no matter where he was, he would have had no incentive to capture him and bring him back. What difference would it make where he was if the “owner” still had an irrevocable claim against his productivity? The slave had an advantage over the modern counterpart if he could escape the country.

In feudal times there were serfs known as serfs “regardant” and serfs “in gross.” A serf regardant was only a serf in regards to one Lord, otherwise he was free. A serf in gross was a serf always and everywhere no matter who he worked for. Americans are now what could be described as serfs in gross. No matter where they live or work, the federal vampire demands its gallon of blood even though the victim is using none of its “services.”

Every time a national holiday of some sort comes around, be it Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Veteran's Day or some other, we hear the usual script about how Americans are free and that we owe a huge debt to founders, veterans or somebody for all the freedom we enjoy. This presents an odd definition of freedom. What exactly does it mean to be free? Is it possible to be free when someone has an irrevocable, unlimited claim on everything you earn? Some will object that the income tax is not unlimited, it's “only” thirty-nine percent or whatever it happens to be, but this can be changed at any time for any reason. Serfs generally owed about twenty percent to the Lord - were they free?

Americans are so indoctrinated in the slave mentality that they will refer to someone who wants to keep the fruits of his labor as a “tax cheat.” Our Founding Fathers probably would not even have understood such a term. Weren't all of them aspiring tax cheats?

During every election politicians prattle on about reducing taxes, closing loopholes, tax reform or some other bromide to hoodwink the greatest number of voters. Almost none ever talk about abolishing the income tax and abolishing the IRS. The government loves an income tax because it allows it to pry into the financial affairs of all its citizens and it gives it a sword of Damocles to hold over any person or group that might have the wrong opinions. Many people like the income tax because they envy those more successful than themselves and like to see them punished. Marx and Engels undoubtedly realized this when they made “A heavy progressive or graduated income tax” the second plank of the Communist Manifesto. Anything short of abolition is adjusting the fit of the chains on the slaves.

Not only does the government tax income of those living outside the country, it prohibits those who “owe” back taxes from leaving the plantation country. Nobody is free who has a master that has first claim against all his earnings. Proverbs XXII:7 says that the borrower is slave to the lender, but in the land of the free, even those who haven't borrowed are slaves by virtue of citizenship, and there's nowhere to run.

The Velocity Of Truth

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."  This is the government's greatest fear. Aeschylus is supposed to have said that “In war, truth is the first casualty.” He may have been technically correct, but truth is a casualty before the war even starts. Truth is a casualty of government. Government subsists on lies. How can it be otherwise, when lying is the path to advancement in government?

Lies have always served government well because people have a tendency to trust their government for some inexplicable reason and even when lies were exposed, it was usually long after the fact and the thing lied about forgotten. There have always been a few people who point the lies out at the time, but they are almost always ignored. There were probably some people at the time who doubted the Gulf of Tonkin Incident or the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor, but they had no effective means of disseminating their views.

Herein lies what I believe to be the greatest problem for government. There is a concept in economics called the velocity of money, and if I may borrow from it I would say that the internet has brought about what I call the Velocity of Truth. The theory works like this: the government puts out a lie to justify some act or contemplated action, but before it can even agree on the details, somebody exposes it as a lie. This usually necessitates another lie – sometimes called a clarification – to cover up the first one. Before you know it, the government has woven itself a tangled web in its efforts to deceive.

Truth and government are antonymous.

This is a problem for government that seems as though it can only get worse. Daniel Ellsberg was an anomaly in his time, but just in the last few years people like Julian Assange, William Binney, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, Sibel Edmonds, et alia have pullulated like chickens. Before the internet they would have been voices crying in the wilderness and could be safely ignored, but not any more because the Velocity of Truth is increasing.

Surveillance can only become a worse problem for the government as video and audio recorders get smaller and ubiquitous and data storage devices shrink and gain capacity. It is similar to an elephant fighting ants or a dog biting at fleas.

Not too long ago, the police could concoct any story to justify their actions, but now they are constantly being caught on video recording devices that contradict their account of events. If John Kennedy were assassinated today, Abraham Zapruder would only be one of thousands with a video record of it, and the modern version would also have audio. As it becomes more common for devices to upload information to a remote location, the cat will be out of the bag, vanished and had kittens. Today government goons can seize the equipment and destroy it or erase the information, but that option will soon evaporate.

The current program of fabricating a reason to attack Syria is an example of the pesky internet. The Daily Mail ran a story on January 29, 2013, titled U.S. 'backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad's regime' that mysteriously vanished, but it was archived here by web.archive.org.  Just a few years ago, it would have required digging up a copy of the original story and making copies of it to disseminate.

Most of us can't imagine the inventions that will soon be commonplace, and many of them will help increase the flow of information. Every advance in the flow of information damages the government's ability to deceive and increases the Velocity of Truth.

Civics Lesson

Back in 1973 there was a popular Paul Simon song called Kodachrome, the first few lines of which are:

"When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall"

It really is a wonder that anyone subjected to public schooling can think at all since the purpose of public indoctrination seems to be to fill the students' heads with error and carefully filtered information. It isn't so much a lack of education that hurts anyone, it's the errors that are taught as fact that do almost irremediable harm.

I don't recall learning anything useful in high school about how our system of government works. Even politically active people seem to believe the malarkey that was taught them in civics class. Some examples would be that we are a nation of laws, popular rule, a "democracy", inalienable rights, etcetera, etc.

If anyone were to publish a textbook explaining how government really works, no school system would adopt it. If it did adopt it, it would probably lose its accreditation. In the interest of assisting some would-be writer/publisher I offer the following observations on how the system works.

The first rule is that the government is not bound by the moral law. It can lie, steal, murder, blackmail, torture (as long as you don't call it torture), imprison, extort or do anything else that seems expedient for achieving its ends. It's as Rod Serling said, "... it has one iron rule: Logic is an enemy, and truth is a menace."

The importance of these principles is emphasized by the assertion of their opposites. Truth, honor, prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, respect for the individual are all fine until they get in the way of some State objective. Initially, the student is taught by means of ritual. Parades, patriotic music, military displays, the pledge of allegiance, wreath layings and so on form a sort of liturgy of the State. Later the student will be taught about how the State has made all good things possible by means of the sacrifices of our forefathers.

Lying is the first tool in the State's tool kit, but it is important to convey the idea that everything the government says is true. If the agents of the state were forced to tell the truth, the whole system would break down. Some countries, such as the Soviet Union had official news agencies to propagate their lies. Everybody everywhere knew that nothing reported by TASS or Pravda could be believed, but in the U.S. the private news organizations usually report uncritically what the government tells them in its press releases.

One of the things the government does over and over is to get some kind of measure - many times a tax - passed by claiming that it is going to be temporary. These things are temporary in the same way that the pyramids in Egypt are temporary. The income tax withholding during WW II was a temporary measure.

Emotional engineering is another important technique used by the State to direct the populace to identify with its goals. Osama bin Laden was a good guy when he was on our side in fighting the Russians, but then he became a bad guy. Saddam Hussein was also both a good guy and a bad guy, but Muammar Gaddafi was a bad guy who became a good guy and then a bad guy again.

If it were decided that the U.S. needed Canadian oil fields and the Canadians wouldn't agree to our terms, we would suddenly find that they were killing babies and old people, and exporting drugs to our youth. Pretty soon there would be an  incident where they attacked one of our border checkpoints or illegally seized a U.S. fishing boat. By this means a friendly people would be transformed into "the enemy."

Blackmail is also useful to keep members of the government in line. It is a good idea to never appoint someone to a high position - such as a Supreme Court Justice - who can't be blackmailed into doing the "right thing" when the need arises. It's also useful when the government wants a private entity to do something it isn't required by law to do, such as turn over phone records. The officials of the intransigent company might find that they are being audited by the IRS or that they are being investigated for SEC violations or that their bank account is being seized for wire fraud or money laundering or any number of things.

Stealing of course is the bedrock of the State. Without the ability to steal, the state could not exist. According to our system of income taxation, the State has a prior claim on all income and it will decide how much the rightful owner is allowed to keep. If the State decides it wants your property it can seize it under its power of eminent domain and pay you the supposed fair market value of it, which obviously is less than you would have sold it for or you would have already sold it. Maybe you wouldn't have sold it for 10 times fair market value, if at all.

The State likes to invoke the name of God in support of whatever it is it's doing, but God should know his place. God cannot be allowed to countermand the dictates of the State, whether it be forcing Jews to eat pork under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, compelling Christians to sacrifice to the Emperor under Domitian, Diocletian, et al., suppressing the Church under Calles, executing dissenters like Jagerstatter under Hitler, or requiring the violation of conscience under Obama. The State is God - the only true God - and will have no strange gods before it. 

The government has made itself the interpreter and arbiter of its own powers, so it should surprise no one that it usually finds for itself. It has answered the question of  "who will guard the guards themselves?" that it will guard them. You might as well appeal to the protection racket to adjudicate a complaint you have against it.

Murder isn't mentioned much in the context of civics lessons, but it is a time-honored way of dealing with troublesome or meddlesome people. It's amazing how many annoying - to politicians - people end up killing themselves or dying in plane crashes. During the Clinton administration the term "Arkancide" briefly came into the lexicon. Most Americans think that our public officials are different from the way they have been throughout recorded history. I previously wrote about this public delusion here. As a wise man once said, "There is nothing new under the sun." and we certainly have not developed a new kind of government official. They are all concerned with the acquisition and retention of power and will do anything to realize that end.

Anyone who believed that our "representatives" actually represent the people should have been enlightened by the bailout of the banks against overwhelming popular opposition to it, or the passage of Obama's socialized medicine bill against popular opposition. Sometimes writing your Congressman or Senator just doesn't seem to do any good.

Crocodiles And Government

John "Pondoro" Taylor was an Irishman who went to Africa to become a big-game hunter and ivory poacher.
He wrote several books on his exploits. In one of them he mentions how it used to puzzle him why the natives would go down to the river after having seen a crocodile erupt from the water the previous day or hour and drag one of their fellow villagers under.

Finally, it was explained to him that the natives believed that the crocodile was an incarnate soul of someone who had been wronged by the victim- sort of an avenging angel. They reasoned that since they hadn't cheated or killed or otherwise wronged anybody they had nothing to worry about.

To most Westerners this seems like an obvious superstition, but many people entertain a similar idea about government. Any time someone expresses apprehension about some government program he can be sure that somebody will accuse him of being "paranoid." Fifteen or so years ago I coined the term (which strangely has not been adopted by the Psychology profession) "sanguinoid" to describe a mental disorder that renders the sufferer subject to delusions that everybody is out to help him. It seems that many people entertain this notion vis a vis government.

Many people in totalitarian societies had no fear of the secret police because they knew they hadn't done anything wrong. They didn't worry about the submerged saurian because they were innocent of any crime, real or imagined.

Every day there are stories about some TSA outrage; cops bursting into the wrong house and killing an occupant or two;  feds raiding a farm selling raw milk, or seizing the computers of a guitar maker. Anybody who reads news stories has heard of at least a few of these, but most think that the victims "must have done something or they wouldn't be after them."

I have had someone tell me personally that he "hadn't had a problem" with the TSA even though he is aware of the agency's antics such as groping six-year-old girls or making eighty-something year-old women in wheel chairs remove their diapers. This is the American equivalent of going to the river after a croc attack.

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help"

It seems as though the average person has an infinite capacity to think that government abuses are never going to be directed at them. From drone attacks to planting drugs to detention without charges to roughing up demonstrators of various persuasions, it's never going to affect them. Besides that, "We" are the government, so there's another reason we have nothing to fear.

Japanese and Italian Americans found out just how much "We" are the government when the government concentrated them in internment camps during WW II.

Americans have forgotten - or never been taught - that government is a very dangerous tool. It is organized, monopolized force and should be kept on a short, securely anchored chain. St. Augustine wrote that the devil is a chained dog. He cannot hurt you unless you go within the radius of his operation. Government was set up to be something like that, but it keeps increasing the length of its own chain until its radius of operation encompasses all human activity.

Those who don't see the government for what it actually is are like the woman in the children's song who thought she could ride the crocodile:

She sailed away on a sunny summer day on the back of a crocodile,
"You see," said she, "he's as tame as tame can be;
I'll ride him down the Nile,"
The croc winked his eye as she bade them all goodbye, wearing a happy smile,
At the end of the ride the lady was inside, and the smile was on the crocodile!

History You Might Have Missed

The commander of the carrier group had decided to attack on Sunday morning because he knew that the officers slept late at Pearl Harbor. He had been running with no lights and in radio silence in heavy seas. Before sunup he launched 152 planes from his carriers.

About an hour later, they appeared in the sunny skies over Pearl Harbor, dropping 20 tons of bombs on the airfields and anchored ships while the fighter planes strafed the airfields destroying the planes on the ground. Not a single fighter got off the ground to defend against the attackers.

Twenty-four hours later, the carriers had still not been located by the defenders. It was a rout for the attackers. The defenders later tried to claim that they had hit 45 of the attacking planes with anti-aircraft fire, which they had not.

In typical government fashion, a report was filed on the incident stating: "...it is doubtful if air attacks can be launched against Oahu in the face of strong defensive aviation without subjecting the attacking carriers to the danger of material damage and consequent great losses in the attack air force."

Japanese agents apparently didn't agree with the navy report and forwarded a report of their own to Tokyo regarding Admiral Harry Ervin Yarnell's February 7, 1932 attack. Nine years later, the Japanese proved that an air attack could be launched against Oahu with real bombs (instead of flour sacks), real torpedoes and bullets. Yarnell had shown the way, but was ignored because the Navy was dominated by battleship admirals.

If you don't remember spending much time studying about Admiral Yarnell, don't feel left out, I don't remember any mention of him either. The first mention I ever saw of him was in a book called Pearl Harbor: The Story of The Secret War by George Morgenstern.

If you went to school recently, surely your civics or political science class would have spent quite a bit of time studying Operation Northwoods, but in case the details are a little murky here's a brief thumbnail outline.

Operation Northwoods was a plan to cook up a pretext for starting a war with Cuba. As stated on the face of the document:

Subject: Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)

1. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the attached Memorandum for the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, which responds to a request of that office for brief but precise description of pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.

Further on:

5....World opinion, and the United Nations forum should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere.

(Three follows five because the numbering sequence changes between pages. See PDF at link above)

3. This plan, incorporating projects selected from the attached suggestions, or from other sources, should be developed to focus all efforts on a specific ultimate objective which would provide adequate justification for US military intervention. Such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well as the United States....this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.

The plan goes on to describe several scenarios in the government's bag of tricks, such as having friendly Cubans in uniform stage an attack on Guantanamo, start rumors using clandestine radio, capture Cuban saboteurs (friendly) inside the base, start riots near base main gate (friendly Cubans), sabotage ship in harbor, sink ship near harbor entrance and conduct funerals for mock victims.

One that I really like because it harkens back to another war is:

3. A "Remember the Maine" incident could be arranged in several forms:

a. We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba

b. We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in Cuban waters. . . . .The US would follow up with an air/sea operation covered by US fighters to "evacuate" remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.

The ever imaginative public servants thought of several more provocations such as sinking a boatload of Cubans (real or imagined) enroute to Florida and shooting Cuban refugees in Florida. Another one that the Dominicans probably wouldn't like was burning the cane crops in the Dominican Republic with Soviet Bloc incendiaries from planes made to look like Cuban aircraft and "intercepting" arms shipments to Communists in the Dominican Republic.

Probably the most ambitious plan was blowing up a passenger plane (drone) loaded with "students" and recovering debris off Cuba. The plane would send mayday signals before being blown up to make it seem more legitimate.

If you were in school prior to 1998, you wouldn't have studied this since it was classified until November 1997, but I'm sure they spend several hours going over this in government-run day prisons today. The next time you hear that some rogue nation is picking on poor little Uncle Sam, print out a copy of Operation Northwoods and read it. Keep it handy as a refresher course in government marketing of its programs.

Operation Northwoods was never implemented because John Kennedy apparently would not approve it, but how many similar plans have been approved and implemented?

If a 1960s version of Daniel Ellsberg or Bradley Manning had exposed Operation Northwoods to the public, would he have been a hero or a villain?

Confessions Of An Inept Murderer

I was hired recently by a criminal organization to kill a man that has been a nuisance to it for many years.
It was widely believed that my target had been dead for quite a few years since he was known to be in poor health and in need of dialysis treatment Nevertheless, I took the job since I needed the money and the guy had supposedly been located in a hideaway he had constructed.

In order to make good my claim that I had in fact killed the designated victim, I rigged up a video transmitting arrangement so that my client could see in real time that I had accomplished the mission. Everything was going along swimmingly as I approached the target, but dang it, wouldn't you know that just as I closed in for the kill, something went wrong with the video and they didn't get to see the hit.

I went in and found the target unarmed and shot him in the head. While I was there I loaded up several van loads of booty - computers, videos, memory sticks, records of all sorts - which took me several minutes to accomplish. I also loaded up the body, took a few pictures and hightailed it out of there.

As I was fleeing the scene, it occurred to me that the decedent was a strict Albigensian and I needed to bury him in accordance with Albigensian practices so I flew out over the ocean and dumped his body in the sea, but not before harvesting some DNA as proof that I had actually pulled off the hit.

When I went to collect my money, the customer wanted proof that I had actually succeeded in locating and killing the victim. I told them that I had DNA that matched his sister, but they claimed that I could have gotten the DNA from him without killing him or that he might have been dead for a long time and been in cold storage - they wanted proof, not evidence, that I had a claim on the money.

I told them that I had pictures of the dead man, but that they were too gruesome to show them and that I was not going to spike the football. They asked why I didn't bring them the body since I had removed it from the crime scene, but I explained my commitment to honoring the victim's religion. They told me that one of his hands or his head would have been sufficient, but I would not have lowered myself to such depths.

Happily, a few days later a message posted by the decedent's organization appeared on a website confirming his death and threatening revenge for the killing. I thought that surely they would see this as conclusive proof of my success and pay me what I was owed. I went back to the client in triumph and pointed out the web posting confirming the death, but they still refused; claiming that I could have concocted the thing myself.

I pointed out that three U.S. Senators said they had seen the pictures and the guy was dead. Being the obstinate people that they are, they said that the pictures turned out to be fakes and that I might have posted them through a "leak" to see if the fraud could be detected before releasing "my" pictures. This was such a preposterous charge that I wouldn't even dignify it with a response. I sensed that they were just trying to get me to show them the "real" pictures and I'm not going to stoop to that. What if they got posted on the internet? The risk was just too great.

I fear I'm going to have to sue to get my money because they keep nit-picking about my not having the body.
It seems that nobody wants to do business honestly anymore.

Violence And The State

Every time some kook shoots somebody or blows up a building for political reasons we are admonished to avoid violence at all costs, avoid divisive speech and in general just be nice. We hear all sorts of talk about violence is never the answer or nothing can be achieved by violence, etc. But is this really true?

The United States would not be an independent country unless it had used violence to secede from England.
Most countries that declare their independence end up having to secure it by means of violence or its threat.
Violence is the system of nature. Lions, sharks, bees, cobras, bulls, hawks, ants, crocodiles, bears, tigers, ad infinitum, protect themselves and enforce their will by violence. Non-violence is a human invention or discovery.

Most of the condemnation of violence always seems to come from those for which violence is their primary tool. The ones who are always wanting to help people by the agency of government - the planners or do-gooders - rely on violence to accomplish their ends. It is private violence that they object to, not violence in principle. Private violence is bad - or maybe even morally wrong - because it obstructs or thwarts their benevolent intentions.

Every time there is an instance of private, i.e. "unauthorized" violence, such as the Arizona Massacre, the left swings into action to try to disarm or restrict the citizen's access to firearms. There is never a similar effort to disarm the police when they kill an innocent person. Government is the greatest practitioner of violence in history, but its actions are explained away by those who wish to justify or support its objectives.

The left needs a violent component to enforce its programs that cannot be implemented by persuasion. Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein or Barack Obama would probably never dream of personally robbing or threatening somebody to support their programs, but they don't mind using the agency of government to do it for them.
A person who thinks this way can coerce the populace to comply with his whim and still pat himself on the back about all that "he's done for the people." It's inconsistent to denounce violence when you routinely employ it to achieve your ends. A man running a protection racket might admire himself for the service he provides his customers - with extorted money - in the same way that a politician admires himself for the health insurance he has forced his constituents to purchase - for their own good. Both of these men are engaged in criminal activity even if the second instance happens to be legal, and both rely on violence to achieve their ends.

The recent trouble in Egypt illustrates how many in the U.S., on both sides of the political spectrum favored using violence against the protesters because Mubarak was "our man" even though the will of the people seemed to favor his removal.

No politician would ever seek the endorsement of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue even though he makes all the politician's benevolent programs possible. Having the Commissioner's endorsement would make it obvious that the programs spring not from an eleemosynary entity, but an extortion racket.

In Book IV of The City of God, St. Augustine asks the question; "Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?" He goes on to explain that when a robber band becomes sufficiently large to hold territory and and take on all the attributes of a kingdom, its nature is not changed, but to its covetousness is added impunity - this is the nature of government.

 Lord Acton's statement that power tends to corrupt is undoubtedly true, but it is probably the case that power tends to attract those who are already corrupt. Politicians don't become liars and thieves in office, they were mostly liars and thieves before seeking office and their skill at deception facilitates their election. Stealing and lying go together since the thief has to lie to conceal his crime, and stealing is lying in a material form. When you habitually lie and steal, it's handy to have violence as an option, should lies not be sufficient suppress outrage.

The essence of the state is violence, but it is best if this fact can be concealed from the citizens. Occasionally the state bares its teeth and breaks out the fire hoses and police dogs, shoots a few college students or burns down a compound of religious misfits, but it's best if the people continue to believe that government is their servant and they are the masters; not the other way around.