Tax Shackles

     I strained to come up with a clever neologism for what I’m about to address, but I failed. “Taxicles?” No, sounds too much like “popsicles.” “Shtaxles?” No, that’s too ethnic; someone would probably suggest that it be served with wiener schnitzel. Anyway, the subject is one of some gravity, so the above title will just have to do.

     If you have twenty minutes, the following video is worth your time and attention:

     Five populous states are trying to fetter their residents – give them a tax disincentive to move out. Those “exit tax” provisions won’t retard all emigration, of course, but they will cause a significant fractions of Californians, New Yorkers, et cetera to cast about for ways of averting the planned amputations of their net worth. There might be some dodges. There’s also the possibility that the federal courts will strike those exit taxes as unConstitutional on the ex post facto provision of Article I, Section 10. But for the moment, it’s a trend in motion, and likely to spread.

     It sets up an interesting tension. You want to move your income away from California’s high-income tax? Well, then the Golden State will get you on the way out. If you insist on not paying the exit tax, then California gets to keep taxing you for years more… possibly including your net worth, which the Giermeisters in Sacramento have already fixed their sights on. But which of those decisions would be favored by the California legislature? The exit tax would yield large prompt revenue, but the income tax and (contemplated) net-worth taxes would yield more over a protracted interval. And once a resident has fled, he’s gone for good.

     The voracity of governments always grows over time. That’s been demonstrated so many times that it no longer requires substantiation. However, I will remind my Gentle Readers of the debates over the proposed Sixteenth Amendment:

     When the Sixteenth Amendment was being debated on the floor of the Senate, one of its opponents rose to ask the body what it could say to reassure the American public that this tax would not rise to seize some unconscionable fraction of their earnings -- perhaps as much as ten percent! A pro-income-tax senator rose and replied that the country need never fear such a development: "The people would never allow it!"

     The American Revolution was a tax revolt, as much as an assertion of independence and the right to self-governance. Americans have been subjected to a mind-boggling array of tax measures since then, most of them falling at the state and federal levels. (If you live in an incorporated municipality, keep a hand on your wallet.) There appears to be no event free of taxation… not even death. And now, the greediest of America’s state governments, aware that their tax policies are causing their states to lose their most taxable residents to lower-tax states, are determined to chain us down so they can mulct us in perpetuity.

     Food for thought – if it’s not fuel for an actual revolution.

The Most Terrifying Prediction Of 2020

     Remnants of the covid class war will touch every domain of life for decades. Officials have suggested that social distancing will need to continue even after mandatory vaccinations. Masks have become a potent symbol of both physical purity and mutual mistrust. Our fantasy of a sanitized and deathless society has created a world where the home is a prison and friends and family are a health hazard. In this world children are told they are killing their grandparents simply by existing. Right now we are still at the beginning of sweeping changes that may include social credit, immunity passports, a rent-only economy, AI and robotics expansion, financialization of natural resources, increased mass surveillance, the Uberization of everything, and rolling lockdowns for climate change or the flu. We have a limited window of time to reclaim the things that make life worth living: family, community, cultural heritage, the social sphere, public institutions, common spaces, and free movement. That window may be closing quickly, but it is not fully closed yet.

     — Alex Gutentag —

     Please read the whole article. Believe me, it’s worth your time.

     Ponder this: The Communist tyrannies of the Twentieth Century used their subjects’ fear of one another to control them and ensure their continued power. At any time, deliberately or otherwise, your neighbor might make a remark that would bring the KGB to your doorstep. The aspiring tyrants of our time learned from those Communists. They too use our fear of one another to control us: your fear that your neighbor might...give you a bad cold!

     No wonder it’s so hard to write satire these days.

Cat Belling: The Whys Are Clear, The Hows Not So Much

     Over at Ace of Spades HQ, Buck Throckmorton makes a provocative claim. Here’s how he opens:

     Tyranny doesn’t end because citizens overwhelm the tyrant’s troops and then storm the tyrant’s fortress. It ends when the tyrant’s enforcers refuse to shoot ordinary civilians. And the reason they choose not to shoot civilians is because they’ve made a calculated decision that it is now their most prudent course of action.

     Newsom, Whitmer, de Blasio, and all the other tyrants born of Covid are drunk on the power they’ve claimed during this “emergency.” They have claimed that by winning an election – once - they may now assume dictatorial powers, ignore existing laws, and suspend the Bill of Rights. Chief among these powers is determining which businesses and lives they can destroy with a simple decree.

     Most of the police and city employees enforcing decrees that shut down businesses are just “following orders.” Although they may not identify as bad people, they are engaging in evil behavior and they must be compelled to stop doing so. And they can be compelled to stop. [Emphasis added by FWP.]

     They can? Without bloodshed? Hm. “Compulsion” usually involves at least the threat of bodily harm – and American cops do carry firearms. Buck’s prescription has a strong resemblance to the New Left’s notions about “monkey-wrenching.” Please read it there, as I don’t want to copy most of another blogger’s column. Here’s how Buck winds up:

     Peaceful people seeking to stop the tyranny will not initiate violence, but will not back down at the threat of it either. It might be a more prudent choice for the tyrant’s ground troops to just not enforce these unlawful decrees after all.

     That’s a statement of hope, not of fact. Hope is wonderful – it’s one of the three theological virtues — but as has been said many times, it’s “not a strategy.”

     Remember always that people normally pursue their chosen occupations at least as much for the inherent satisfactions those occupations provide as for the wages they pay. Cops don’t become cops mainly for the spiffy uniforms or the defined-benefit pension plan. Some are genuinely motivated by a desire to serve the public...but quite a few choose the job because it allows them to exert authority over others, and to back it up with force.

     Always be extremely cautious about assumptions concerning armed agents of the State. Some of them might be okay, but some are just looking for a reason to pull the trigger. Remember Waco and Ruby Ridge. These days, you need a program to tell who’s on the side of the angels.

Gradualism In Coercion

     This obscenity has already received a lot of attention, but every reminder helps:

     “I was talking with my UK colleagues who are saying the UK is similar to where we are now, because each of our countries have that independent spirit,” [Dr. Anthony] Fauci said during a panel with other experts in Washington, DC.

     “I can understand that, but now is the time to do what you’re told,” he said, as first reported by CNBC.

     No, “Dr.” Fauci. Now is the time for the largest, loudest scream of Go Fuck Yourself! in the history of Western Civilization. You should be proud: it is you who have blown the bugle for this rebellion.

     And I’m here to tell you why.

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     “First they nudge, then they shove, then they shoot.” – Glenn Beck

     If you haven’t yet read my essays on gradualism, it’s high time to do so. For we are now seeing the manifestation of gradualism that I hadn’t yet addressed. The time for that has come.

     I’ve written about gradualism as a seduction tactic – the wild pigs of the Okefenokee swamp learned about that one – and about gradualism as a technique for successively reducing the freedoms of a subject populace (“salami slicing”). But there’s another, as yet discussed application of the gradualist technique that’s just as important: gradualism in enforcement.

     The original approach to the whole “social distancing” method prescribed by various governments was essentially advisory. We were told that it would be best to do thus-and-such, but there would be no legal penalties for doing otherwise. That was followed in short order by the use of commercial regulatory bodies to impose, through the threat of fines, mask wearing and social distancing measures upon commercial establishments. While there are fewer businesses than there are citizens, we all must do business with them at some time. Businesses long ago gave up the fiction of free enterprise for the pervasive, anti-Constitutional regulatory regime that now oversees their operations and decisions. Regulation, entirely divorced from an fiction of enabling legislation, became a tool of indirect control for all three hundred million of us.

     Now, as any Gentle Reader who pays attention to developments will already know, mayors, county executives, and governors are using the police power in an attempt to compel ordinary Americans to adhere to wholly unConstitutional decrees to wear masks, stay out of churches and stadia, and even to limit how many people we can have at a holiday celebration. It isn’t yet occurring nationwide...but remember the central Principle of Power-Seeking:

Politicians seek power because
The acquisition and retention of power
Is their highest priority.
Indeed, it’s often their only one.

     There are many ironies here, starting with the relative harmlessness of the Wuhan virus toward anyone who’s under seventy, or is unafflicted by some serious ailment, but let that pass for now. The political elite, in collusion with the mainstream media, has succeeded in terrifying the American public. We’ve been soaked – saturated! – with fear of this almost innocuous bug. Fear is the plateau upon which all coercion must be based:

• Fear of the nominal hazard;
• Fear of the enforcers;
• Fear of the uncompliant.

     Those fears have been stoked to a level that has persuaded many in executive positions that they can get away with the exercise of powers never granted to them. The rest follows naturally.

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     In engineering, we have a maxim called the “1-10-100 Rule.” It’s about the difficulty involved in fixing a flaw in a product:

• If caught during design, the difficulty may be only 1X.
• If it’s designed in and gets into implementation, the difficulty rises to 10X.
• If it’s implemented, must be caught in testing, and fixed thereafter, the difficulty rises to 100X.

     Similar rules apply to the repair of social, legal, and political flaws. Had we chosen to resist during the “nudge” or “you should do this” phase, no more would be required of us today. We failed to see the dangers, in part because the mainstream media were on the side of the political elite. Had we chosen to resist when businesses were put under the yoke – the “shove” phase – the degree of courage required would have been much greater, but we would still have been spared having to defy law enforcement. (Regulatory bureaucracies are not law enforcement.) But today, millions of Americans find themselves in the “shoot” phase, such that ignoring the politicians and living normally involves a significant chance of a police raid and incarceration.

     Plainly, rebelling at the right time – i.e., at the earliest phase of an incursion against freedom – is more important than many would imagine.

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     There is no Last Graf – not because I don’t know what the remedy is, but because you already do. But it is now the case that anyone who sees the logic here probably lives among many, many other Americans who don’t, who have been successfully made to fear the Wuhan virus, and who will fear you for daring not to “do as you’re told.” All while law enforcement readies the tools with which to put you under restraint for your attachment to freedom.

     Have a nice day.

Public Service Announcements Dept.

     Shamelessly stolen from Mike Miles at Ninety Miles From Tyranny:

     Take it to heart, Gentle Reader. Off with the masks!

You Shall Not Be Released...

     ...if the Democrats and their media handmaidens have anything to say about it:

     This past weekend we dropped a direct hit on the Democrat Party, their mainstream media and their coronavirus narrative and all hell broke loose.

     We’ve never seen anything quite like this. Democrats, their fake news media and their ‘fact checker’ allies were completely outraged over our post reporting that only 9,210 Americans died from the coronavirus alone. The rest of the coronavirus victims had different serious illnesses and co-morbidities.

     The other tens of thousands of COVID-19 deaths reported by the CDC have on average 2.6 other health conditions.

     Please read the whole article. Yes, it’s fairly long, but the details are important.

     What I’ve been calling The Pan[dem]ic (alternately, “The Pandemic”) may not have started out as a political tool, but it has most certainly developed into one. The Left hopes to use its ability to inflict “public health emergency” conditions – politically imposed penury and misery – upon millions of helpless Americans to achieve electoral advantage. Anything that undercuts the baseless fear of the Chinese Coronavirus a.k.a. the Wuhan Flu a.k.a. COVID-19 weakens the willingness of private citizens to comply with their “lockdowns” and mask mandates. Neither does it help the Left when their friends in high office, such as Nancy Pelosi, are caught disregaring the “emergency” rules to suit themselves.

     So the proliferation of the CDC’s revised COVID-19 figures is something the Left must prevent at all costs. They who dare to republish them for an audience that doesn’t already haunt the CDC’s website must be punished. Discussion is forbidden!

     A related development: I made an appointment to see my nurse-practitioner for a “wellness check” this coming Friday. She’s a good person, we get along famously, and I was looking forward to chatting with her again...but apparently I shan’t be permitted to do so. I was informed yesterday evening, by robocall, that I must wear a face mask if I want to be admitted to her practice. I immediately canceled the appointment.

     The day has come when physicians are too cowed by a trivial disease – a disease much less dangerous than ordinary influenza – to see patients under normal conditions. Why? Because the state medical-licensing board would take it amiss. Their licenses to practice might be pulled.

     There’s a certain evil logic to this. If the tyrants can’t keep medical personnel “on the reservation,” their whole scheme of oppression will collapse. So they use their licensing bludgeon to make sure no one with the power to prescribe veers off into freedom, that dangerous stuff.

     I got the same treatment from the optometrist I’ve been using for twenty years. I’ve done away with her, too.

     A current of rage is swelling. The conviction that we’ve been duped becomes more widespread with each day. The consequences will not be pleasant:

     It’s time to revolt against this pseudomedical tyranny. Indeed, it was time long ago. The longer we wait, the higher the ultimate cost will be.

It’s Up To Us Now

     Many have been petitioning and pleading for government(s) to “give us back our freedom.” Whoever accepted the premise behind this – i.e., that freedom is something awarded to the subject by the State – is badly in need of remedial historical education.

Freedom is not “given;” it is taken.
By force if necessary…which it usually is.

     Consider all these recent emissions and incidents:

• KC, MO Wants Churchgoers To Register
• Di Blasio Wants To Enforce Social Distancing
• Oregon Governor Extends Lockdown Into JULY.
• Chicago Mayor Threatens “Scofflaws” With Arrest
• 33 Arrested During Sacramento Freedom Protest
• Twitter Suspends Candace Owens For Tweeting “Go To Work”

     Governments at every level are flexing their muscles. They’re testing you, probing to see how much they can do to you before you rebel. Some of them are even pre-announcing sharp tax increases, to “make up for the shortfall during the lockdown.” And of course we’ve all heard about the mass releases of convicted felons, including serial killers and pedophiles, haven’t we? The State has to make room for the anti-lockdown protesters, doesn’t it?

     Regard them well: episodes in the march of anarcho-tyranny:

     What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny. [From the essay Synthesizing Tyranny, written shortly before Francis’s death.]

     Well? Where’s the line? How much will you sit still for before you rear up on your hind legs, take back your freedom, and – in the ideal case – punish your oppressors?

     What’s that? Your gaolers are reassuring you that the fetters they’ve fastened upon you are necessary? That it’s all “for your own good?”

     Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. – William Pitt

     The real freedom of any individual can always be measured by the amount of responsibility which he must assume for his own welfare and security. – Robert Welch

     The crowning irony of all this is that the data are in: COVID-19 / Kung Flu / Lung Pao Sicken / Wuhan Virus is seriously dangerous only to the exact same cohorts endangered by common influenza: the very young and the very old. Most infectees, as has been demonstrated on naval vessels and at military installations, don’t even exhibit symptoms. The rest of us are moderately and briefly discommoded, even without treatment.

     Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube would prefer that you not know that, of course. They’ve labored like galley slaves to suppress any mention of the actual data, let alone analysis of what it means in epidemiological terms. I suppose that’s “for your own good,” too. After all, if you were exposed to that stuff, you might get ideas.

     Enough. Go back to your jobs. (Employers: reopen your offices and workplaces. Churches: resume the sacraments.) Resume your social lives. Renew your communities. Make play dates for your minor children. Return to your normal lives.

     Let’s be the America the residents of Hong Kong believe us to be.

By Permission Only

     It’s odd how often an old anecdote will echo in thunderous harmony with some contemporary crime. It’s the sort of thing that makes me happy about my frequently annoying near-eidetic memory. (Don’t look so shocked. Try waking up at 4:15 AM with an old CrackerJack commercial resounding in your head and see what you think.)

     In 1987 I attended a lecture by Nathaniel Branden, once a very close associate of Ayn Rand’s, during which he narrated the process by which he came to understand Rand’s political-philosophical convictions. As nearly as I can recall – see the “near-eidetic memory” part above – it went this way:

     Branden had read The Fountainhead and two other books Rand had recommended to him – if you really care, they were Economics in One Lesson and The God of the Machine, which I also recommend highly – and found that he still required clarification about Rand’s core precepts about capitalism. So she sat him down and asked him a simple question: “Do you believe that man has the right to exist?”

     Branden was surprised, to say the least: “Why, Miss Rand, of course he does!”

     Rand continued, “You understand that the right to exist means the right to exist for one’s own sake?”

     Once again, the question puzzled Branden: “Well, of course! If he doesn’t exist for his own sake, it would mean he was existing by permission.”

     Rand nodded and said, “The political implementation of that idea is capitalism.”

     And Branden said “Oh!”

     “From that moment forward,” Branden told the audience, “capitalism for me was filled with moral energy…It was the only system fit for human consumption.”

     Ponder that for a moment, as my second pot of coffee should be ready by now.

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     And now for the episodes and articles that caused me to remember that old lecture:

• One from New York,
• One from North Carolina,
• One from California,
• And one from Czechoslovakia.

     The tyrants of Czechoslovakia escaped the fall of the Iron Curtain with their lives. (Apparently, the writing on the wall was legible to them.) As for what will become of the tyrants of the Empire State, the Tarheel State, and the Land of Fruits and Nuts, the future has yet to speak. (If it speaks to you, keep it to yourself. Please.) But Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania could educate them about the fate that awaits the tyrant who clings over-stubbornly to his “power,” once his subjects have decided that only the most definite and permanent of answers to overweening authority will serve their needs.

     Far better, in my opinion at least, that we detect and thwart the aspiring tyrant before he rises to high office, rather than wait until it becomes necessary to drag him forcibly from his palace and dangle him by the neck from a gibbet.

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     Now and then, some wag will attempt to distinguish among the varieties of tyranny and their associated tyrants. It’s almost always a false trail that leads nowhere useful. Yet even William F. Buckley was seduced by it. I remember him straining to discriminate between the Soviet and Red Chinese systems, and thinking “What on Earth does he think he could accomplish?”

     Still, some will try. In most instances, the hairsplitting involved would enrage a bald man. Yet now and again it can tell us something of importance.

     Let’s start with the “novice” or “apprentice” tyrant. However he rises to power, he’ll be proud – and jealous – of his position and its supposed authority. But he’ll start small. He’ll solicit the advice of an inner circle of the like-minded. He’ll put a sincere effort into persuading his subjects that he knows what’s best and that it’s “for your own good.” He does these things because he still respects consensus and “the consent of the governed.” If he can’t have that consensus and consent…

     Then we get to the “intermediate” tyrant. This fellow is seldom sincere about the rationales he expresses to anyone, whether inside his circles or well beyond them. Neither does he ever doubt his own superiority in wisdom. If the moral dimension of his rule ever troubles him, he dissolves it in alcohol or sex. Needless to say, the intermediate’s jealousy over his power and status goes beyond that of his “novice” colleague, though he might take occasional pains to conceal it. Still, his critics tend to recant. His opponents have shorter than average lifespans.

     The “advanced” tyrant has moved beyond pretense. He’s also moved beyond remorse, regret, and the twinges of conscience. You don’t dare to criticize him, much less oppose him; for that he’d have your whole family murdered and you personally tortured to death for a live audience. He uses whatever forces respond to his command to make his word the absolute law of the land, and his judgments un-appealable. Photos of him are frequently retouched for “accuracy.”

     With these three grades of tyrant go three grades of tyranny, each one fitted to the developing character and individual personality of the tyrant. I’m sure I don’t need to describe them for you in detail. But despite their differences, they share a common trait: in whatever matters the tyrant has chosen to assert his will, his subjects exist only by his permission.

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     Those states in which the governor has ruled out a lifting of his “lockdown” order, whether he qualifies his decree to any extent or simply says “I said no, so sit down and shut up,” are places where the citizenry is being treated as subjects: men without rights who can move and act only by permission. Some such subjects think it easier to submit, and to hope that the tyrant’s will soon falters. Others, braver than the rest, merely go about their chosen business, essentially daring the tyrant to do his worst. Some have paid a price, though none, as far as I know, have paid the ultimate price…yet.

     But given the proclivities of “law enforcement officers” and their frequent recourse to the self-exculpation that “I’m only doing my job,” that price is always “on the menu.” Should some citizen resist with sufficient determination, some thug with a badge will pull his gun. At that point things will become terribly, unambiguously clear.

     Tyrants of all grades are alike in another thing: they never willingly surrender their power. It must be taken from them by their subjects. But of course, that act of will never receives official permission.

     Free men don’t ask for permission to do what must be done.

     Food for thought.

The Anarcho-Tyranny Chronicles

     If you’ve been a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch for a goodly while now, you’re probably familiar with the late Sam Francis’s coinage anarcho-tyranny. For those who haven’t yet made the acquaintance of this useful term, here’s the original formulation:

     What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny. [From the essay Synthesizing Tyranny, written shortly before Francis’s death.]

     The longer I live, the more I come to view anarcho-tyranny as the terminal state toward which all governments tend as they mature and degenerate.

     But that’s a subject for a later tirade. For today, let’s have a look at the most conspicuous recent outcropping: the assertion of various courts that they possess jurisdiction sufficient to block the enforcement of President Trump’s temporary ban on immigration from several chaotic, violence-ridden countries.

     Mark Levin, in whose emissions I seldom take much interest – he’s simply too shrill for my tastes – captured the matter thus:

     “We have, ladies and gentlemen, rogue federal district judges now; we have rogue courts,” Levin exclaimed. “We have judicial anarchy taking place…where judges are seizing plenary authority from the president of the United States to keep this nation safe — to control our borders and to determine the nature of our immigration in this country.”

     Strictly speaking, there is no need to submit to "judicial anarchy." The courts have no enforcement arm for this very reason. With regard to the current foofaurauw, if the Attorney-General were to prepare a finding for the president that says the courts don't have valid jurisdiction over the subject matter, the president could ignore the courts, freely and without adverse consequences. Andrew Jackson did it; why not Donald Trump?

     The reason might be that the Trump Administration fears a popular backlash: i.e., an adverse reaction from the portion of the electorate that believes the courts to possess plenipotentiary authority over everything. This actually helps to illuminate both the current contretemps and the intra-governmental relations of the courts and the other branches.

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     James Madison, often called “the father of the Constitution,” regarded the courts as “the least dangerous branch” of government. The widespread belief is that that was because the courts were allowed no enforcement arm, apart from the bailiffs allowed for keeping order during a court proceeding. However, this reverses cause and effect. The courts were allowed no enforcement arm because of the danger they would otherwise pose, as is well established by English history.

     The great majority of judges in pre-Industrial Revolution England, from which much of our legal tradition derives, were not government employees, neither elected nor appointed nor hired. They commanded deference on the basis of their personal qualities and their willingness to sit as judges; in other words, from popular respect for their wisdom and diligence. If you’ve heard the term “circuit judge” and have wondered about its provenance, it comes from the time when a judge would routinely “ride a circuit:” i.e., he would regularly travel a known route from place to place, hearing such cases as were presented to him in each place and ruling on them according to the “common law,” another American inheritance from England.

     To make this a workable living, a judge needed to be known and respected in each of the stops along his circuit. A judge’s enforcement arm was the willingness of the commoners whose cases he heard to enforce his rulings. Thus, he had to have a reputation for fairly and consistently applying both the common law and what precedents might exist for its enforcement. For a judge to become known as capricious or arbitrary – e.g., for promoting his personal views over the common law as English commoners knew it – would spell the end of his career.

     England’s problems with “star chambers” and the like came about because of courts whose authority descended from the Crown – i.e., whose enforcement arm was the force commanded by the King. Common-law judges posed no such problems, precisely because they had no enforcement power of their own. Indeed, it was often the role of a common-law judge to prevent a lynching or other variety of mob “justice:” something only a very well known, well respected jurist could do by force of character.

     Even though American judges are government employees, the essence of the English common-law judicial system – that the court have no enforcement arm of its own – was largely preserved by the Founding Fathers. The courts’ authority is essentially one of popular consensus concerning the probity and wisdom of the courts: i.e., that the courts are assessing the laws faithfully rather than whimsically or capriciously.

     But by innumerable capricious judgments: both failures to uphold the black-letter law and usurpations of jurisdiction that in no way belong to them, the courts have destroyed that consensus. Where, then, do we stand?

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     Sam Francis’s thoughts on anarcho-tyranny are nicely illuminated by contemporary developments – and not just in the federal courts. A justly famous article about “the coming middle-class anarchy” makes the point quite well, albeit in language a bit rougher than is likely to be found in any judge’s opinions:

     When the backbone of a country starts thinking that laws and rules are not worth following, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to anarchy.

     TV has given us the illusion that anarchy is people rioting in the streets, smashing car windows and looting every store in sight. But there’s also the polite, quiet, far deadlier anarchy of the core citizenry — the upright citizenry — throwing in the towel and deciding it’s just not worth it anymore.

     If a big enough proportion of the populace — not even a majority, just a largish chunk — decides that it’s just not worth following the rules anymore, then that society’s days are numbered: Not even a police-state with an armed Marine at every corner with Shoot-to-Kill orders can stop such middle-class anarchy.

     Brian and Ilsa are such anarchists — grey-haired, well-dressed, golf-loving, well-to-do, exceedingly polite anarchists: But anarchists nevertheless. They are not important, or powerful, or influential: They are average — that’s why they’re so deadly: Their numbers are millions. And they are slowly, painfully coming to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it anymore.

     Once enough of these J. Crew Anarchists decide they no longer give a fuck, it’s over for America — because they are America.

     Please read the whole article, if you haven’t done so before. While it’s not merely the courts’ fault that this attitude is gaining strength, the descent of the courts – especially federal courts – are a major component of the machine steadily reducing us to anarcho-tyranny.

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     For decades now I’ve flitted between minarchism and outright anarchism. If you’ve read my Spooner Federation books, you’re familiar with the process I consider inevitable:

• The disorder of the “state of nature” – read Thomas Hobbes – gradually gives way via natural processes to order, albeit without a recognized – i.e., a pre-indemnified – government.
• A well-ordered yet ungoverned society – i.e., the anarchist ideal – will slowly evolve into an (at first) well-ordered governed society with strong popular consensus.
• This gradually becomes an unjustly governed society owing to the dynamic of power-seeking: i.e., the men most likely to gain power are those who want it for its own sake and the benefits it can bring them personally.
• The unjustly governed society will steadily lose its order, and therefore its popular consensus: the consent of the governed. This will precipitate collapse.
• Collapse means a return to anarchy, which by dint of natural processes will slowly regain order, restarting the cycle.

     This cycle has overwhelming historical support. It suggests that there’s no way out of the cycle, which implies that for best results, one simply has to trust to luck – i.e., to be born in the right time and place – and mobility – the readiness, willingness, and ability to move from an undesirable society to a more desirable one. But where does that leave us of Twenty-First Century America?

     Why, right where we are today, of course: enmeshed in a steadily deteriorating, ever more anarcho-tyrannical context. At the moment, the only escape is to even less desirable places. That might change; developments in space flight and workable space habitats are ongoing, and it’s impossible to say if or when they’ll mature. But the cycle itself appears to be embedded in human nature. If that’s the case, then no matter where men go, the cycle will go with them.

     I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

No Supreme Law Needed?

     It appears that that’s what U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner thinks:

     Judge Richard A. Posner, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, has published an op-ed at Slate declaring that the U.S. Constitution is a waste of time.

     And on another note about academia and practical law, I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation (across the centuries—well, just a little more than two centuries, and of course less for many of the amendments). Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century. Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post–Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today. David Strauss is right: The Supreme Court treats the Constitution like it is authorizing the court to create a common law of constitutional law, based on current concerns, not what those 18th-century guys were worrying about.

     In short, let’s not let the dead bury the living.

     But the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. It is the arbiter for whether legislated laws are acceptable and possess governing force. If the Constitution is to be ignored, against what standard, then, will legislated laws be judged valid or invalid?

     A year and a day ago, I wrote:

     The Supreme Court has just written into our “Constitutional” framework that:

• The text of a law doesn’t matter;
• The text of the Constitution doesn’t matter;
• What a majority of “Justices” imagine about what those who passed the law intended are of decisive legal weight;
• There is no human practice, custom, tradition, or institution which the State cannot seize and tax, regulate, reorganize, or completely redefine to suit itself.

     The entire edifice of constitutionalism has just been ceremoniously trashed. Oh, we could see it coming from miles away. At least, I could; I’ve been watching this progression too closely and for too long to harbor any illusions about it. However, I must admit that I didn’t expect it to happen quite so rapidly or precipitously. Alvin Toffler would have something to say about that, wouldn’t he?

     We will pay for this in blood. I can only hope that the first persons to render up their due will be those selfsame “Justices.”

     Back then, my conclusions were only implicit in recent Supreme Court decisions. But now, a highly respected Court of Appeals judge, who has occasionally been mentioned as a reasonable choice for the Supreme Court, has expressed them openly. How much longer will it be before a majority of the Court signs onto a decision that explicitly nullifies the Constitution in all respects – and what will we do then?

     Keep your powder dry, Gentle Reader.

Quickies: In Your Face, Killian

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader, but I can’t let this pass:

     How inconvenient that First Amendment is for the tyrannists in government and their friends in the savage world of Islam! While you were sleeping, a federal prosecutor named Bill Killian aka Muhammad al Tyranni Killian announced criticism of the religion of murder would violate civil rights laws. We are so civilized in America these days that we will imprison our citizens who dare criticize the religion whose goal is total destruction of our country and the deaths of our citizens!

     Federal prosecutor Muhammad al Tyranni Killian said:

     “This is an educational effort with civil rights laws as they play into freedom of religion and exercising freedom of religion. This is also to inform the public what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are.”

     Yo, Killian:

Islam Sucks.
Islam Is A Totalitarian Cult.
Islam Is The Fantasy Of A Bloodthirsty Pedophile.
Islam Condones Rape And Slavery.
Islam Seeks The Death Of Unbelievers.
Muslims Are Wife-Beaters And Camel-Fuckers.
And Bill Killian Is A Shit-For-Brains Tyrant.

     Now try to do something about it, Killian. But come well armed and armored, because I’m a very good shot.

Science project or PSYOP?

My YouTube take here.

It’s not a paranoid-American’s conspiracy theory when the Muslims tell each other “Here is our plan to conquer Western Civilization from within.” Muslim teenager Ahmed Mohammed's clock stunt, the propaganda-theater in Irving, Texas this week is just one more example of how Islamists use their holy-deception or taqiyya to intimidate the host-nation.

Quickies: The State Now Dictates The Contents Of Chaplains’ Religion

     Todd Starnes has the story:

     It wasn’t so much a choice as it was a demand.

     Chaplain David Wells was told he could either sign a state-mandated document promising to never tell inmates that homosexuality is “sinful” or else the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice would revoke his credentials.

     “We could not sign that paper,” Chaplain Wells told me in a telephone call from his home in Kentucky. “It broke my heart.”

     The Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice revoked his volunteer credentials as an ordained minister – ending 13 years of ministry to underage inmates at the Warren County Regional Juvenile Detention Center.

     “We sincerely appreciate your years of service and dedication to the youth served by this facility,” wrote Superintendent Gene Wade in a letter to Wells. “However, due to your decision, based on your religious convictions, that you cannot comply with the requirements outlined in DJJ Policy 912, Section IV, Paragraph H, regarding the treatment of LGBTQI youth, I must terminate your involvement as a religious volunteer.”

     This effectively delegitimizes Christian clerics from serving the inmates of state prisons and juvenile correction centers. No priest or minister of a recognized Christian denomination could accept such limitations in good conscience. It would amount to giving government a veto power over one’s chaplaincy.

     Wonder when the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent State will get around to declaring adultery a legally protected practice that priests and ministers cannot criticize? When will our masters get around to making abortion an off-limits subject? And how about the most common form of inmate abuse in our prisons: rape? Well, maybe only as it applies to elected officials...

Harbingers Of Things to Come?

     Given Barack Hussein Obama’s propensity for ignoring the Constitution, I’ve occasionally wondered whether we can be certain that he’ll leave office peacefully on January 20, 2017. Inasmuch as it’s now established beyond even the shadow of a doubt that Obama was mentored by Communist pedophile Frank Marshall Davis, we have good reason to believe that he has no attachment of any sort to either the Constitution or other American norms.

     The esteemed CM Blake posted the following at his site just yesterday:

     Now, when such a man, having risen to the pinnacle of executive power while succeeding for several years in concealing his hatred for America and its Constitutional basis, learns that an obscure video has surfaced that “blows his cover,” he might just get...panicky. Especially when there’s a rising sentiment of resistance to his tyrannies:

     There is no need for a leader unless there is an army to lead. On this 9/11/2013 there is no leader, but the army is there – and building. The Two Million Biker ride came about in protest of the Million Muslim march, but make no mistake, it is much more than that. It is one “clan” making it crystal clear, on behalf of we, the people, that we are ready to take on any and all bent on destroying this country.

     Which makes it uncomfortably plausible that the lurid “official” story of the “biker war” in Waco, Texas might be a wee bit off-center:

     It turns out that the ATF claimed they had an anonymous tip that the dreaded Black Widow biker gang—you remember those scoundrels from the Clint Eastwood movie Every Which Way but Loose—was going to arrive looking for trouble. It’s too bad Clyde wasn’t around to throw those guys in the used French fry oil tank. The ATF was there with their Federal guidance to make sure that justice was swift and absolute.

     No shots were fired by anyone inside the restaurant. No shots were fired by anyone at the police. When bikers decided to leave the restaurant and enter the parking lot, the police began shooting full-auto equipped M-16’s into the crowd. Patrons began diving under tables and screaming for their lives. Little waitresses dropped their trays and ran with terror in their eyes behind the chef’s counter. A twice decorated Viet Nam War veteran was shot in the head and neck, although he was a highly respected pacifist, was unarmed and not involved in any of the scuffle inside the Twin Peaks establishment. Eight more US citizens were gunned down in cold blood. More than 500 rounds were fired by police, hitting cars, buildings, and injuring other innocent bystanders who happened to look like bikers. Two shots took seven of the nine people assassinated in the parking lot; one in the neck and one in the head fired by expert police marksmen.

     Within an hour, the police press statement belched lies about “criminal biker gangs,” dealing drugs and other things that never happened; not once in the 18 years bikers have been meeting peacefully at the Waco Twin Peaks restaurant. The police spokesman first mentioned hundreds of weapons confiscated, including chains that connected wallets to belt loops. Then they changed it to dozens. Then, the facts showed there were fewer than ten, and one was still holstered by a licensed concealed carry American, who had undergone an extensive background check and was found to be spotless. His bond was placed at an unreasonable $1 million. Of the 170 bikers arrested for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, less than a third had any criminal record. Three of them had drafted a new piece of legislation about biker safety, and have since been awarded by the City Counsel for safety awareness. Of course, they couldn’t be there to accept the award, because they were in jail.

     To this moment, no waitresses, cooks, or patrons have been interviewed by the press. Witness intimidation is in full force making sure no one says anything about what really happened. All surveillance video has been classified and is currently being edited by law enforcement professionals to make sure no officers are charged with murder. This was clearly a premeditated, Federal assault designed to kill first, and arrest the survivors.

     I have no corroboration for the above. However, the author, Brooks Agnew, posted it under his real name and is apparently willing to stand behind it.

     LadyRaven’s conclusions, while still notional, are chilling:

     Remembering the first Million Bike Ride On DC, the reception nationwide was extremely positive. The message was beautifully clear to the government– don’t be messing with our country!

     The ride is scheduled again for this September 11th. Jade Helm 15 exercises will be full blown by that time.

     Tarnish the biker reputation now. Slap the individual biker with fear of death or million dollar bails and we might be expected to see a very low turnout and a public less trusting of the 9/11 Army....

     The number one fact that sets me on this thinking is that of the nine dead we know how seven of them died. Four had head wounds, another wound in the neck. That is some mighty fancy shooting there. So I am just saying folks, just saying.

     Don’t ask “Am I paranoid for suspecting that this might be so?” Ask rather, “Am I paranoid enough?”

---

     There have been many stories about the steady militarization of local police forces, with reports of consequent police behavior that more resembled an army of occupation than traditional American law enforcement. My Esteemed Co-Conspirator Colonel Bunny feels these incidents have been blown out of proportion – that the overwhelming majority of local police remain trustworthy servants of the public peace. He might well be correct. It’s really not an arguable point, as the evidence for either proposition is lacking. But incidents of mass violence in which law enforcement – local, state, or federal (e.g., ATF, FBI) – is conspicuously involved must be publicized, and the possibility that those incidents were premeditated must always be kept in mind.

     Given that American bikers are visibly willing to stand forward in defense of freedom, and that they’ve succeeded on more than one occasion at massing many thousands in one place for that purpose, they constitute a powerful potential source of resistance to any oppressive force. Consider this example, a blatant, defiant response to Muslim terrorism. Then consider this recent report of a reaction against it, and ask yourself on which side the “authorities” are more likely to range themselves.

     "I Will Stand With the Muslims Should the Political Winds Shift In An Ugly Direction." (source)

     Keep your powder dry, Gentle Readers. It’s looking ever more likely that you’ll need it quite soon.

Words Fail Me Dept.

     For how many years, how many decades, have we and our minor children been harangued that “the police are your friends” -- ?

     It was the baby’s fault that he was nearly burned to death in his own crib.

     Bou-Bou Phonesavanh was barely a year and a half old, just learning to walk, and unable to speak, but those limitations didn’t stop him from engaging in “deliberate, criminal conduct” that justified the 2:00 a.m. no-knock SWAT raid in which he was nearly killed.

     The act of sleeping in a room about to be breached by a SWAT team constituted “criminal” conduct on the part of the infant. At the very least, the infant was fully liable for the nearly fatal injuries inflicted on him when Habersham County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Long blindly heaved a flash-bang grenade – a “destructive device,” as described by the ATF, that when detonated burns at 2,000-3,500 degrees Fahrenheit – into the crib.

     Merely by being in that room, Bou-Bou had assumed the risk of coming under attack by a SWAT team. By impeding the trajectory of that grenade, rather than fleeing from his crib, Bou-Bou failed to “avoid the consequences” of that attack.

     In any case, Bou-Bou, along with his parents and his siblings, are fully and exclusively to blame for the injuries that nearly killed the child and left the family with more than one million dollars in medical bills. The SWAT team that invaded the home in Cornelia, Georgia on the basis of a bogus anonymous tip that a $50 drug transaction had occurred there is legally blameless.

     This is the defense presented by Haberham County Sheriff Joey Terrell and his comrades in their reply to a federal lawsuit filed last February on behalf of Bou-Bou Phonesavanh and his family.

     This sort of self-exculpating fantasy on the part of a gaggle of uniformed, armed civil servants whose nominal charter is to protect the rest of us from predation is the direct and immediate consequence of two things:

• The War on Drugs;
• The militarization of the police and the police mentality.

     ...and we let them get away with it.

---

     The outrages have been multiplying faster than I can report on them. Particularly egregious are the many instances of outright theft by law enforcers, under the guise of “civil asset forfeiture.” Here’s a recent case:

     It happened, [Joseph] Rivers said, to him on April 15 as he was traveling on Amtrak from Dearborn, Mich., near his hometown of Romulus, Mich., to Los Angeles to fulfill his dream of making a music video. Rivers, in an email, said he had saved his money for years, and his mother and other relatives scraped together the rest of the $16,000.

     Rivers said he carried his savings in cash because he has had problems in the past with taking out large sums of money from out-of-state banks.

     A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why. When Rivers replied that he was headed to LA to make a music video, the agent asked to search his bags. Rivers complied.

     Rivers was the only passenger singled out for a search by DEA agents – and the only black person on his portion of the train, Pancer said.

     In one of the bags, the agent found the cash, still in the Michigan bank envelope.

     “I even allowed him to call my mother, a military veteran and (hospital) coordinator, to corroborate my story,” Rivers said. “Even with all of this, the officers decided to take my money because he stated that he believed that the money was involved in some type of narcotic activity.”

     Rivers was left penniless, his dream deferred.

     “These officers took everything that I had worked so hard to save and even money that was given to me by family that believed in me,” Rivers said in his email. “I told (the DEA agents) I had no money and no means to survive in Los Angeles if they took my money. They informed me that it was my responsibility to figure out how I was going to do that.”

     Apparently, there are municipalities that make a practice of this sort of seizure, using threats of jail and the separation of families to coerce their targets into complying. Combine that sort of “policing” with local police departments’ steady acquisition of military-grade weaponry and the scheduling of exercises such as “Jade Helm,” and perfectly law-abiding, patriotic Americans can’t help but wonder about the real motivations of our “protectors.”

     Given Supreme Court decisions that ruled that the police have “no duty to protect,” and others that have denied the law-abiding citizen the right to resist unlawful police orders and intrusions, I no longer wonder. Indeed, I ceased to wonder quite a while ago.

---

     The edifice is rotten to the core. It has pitted us against one another, especially those of us who work for government versus those who don’t, in a multitude of ways. It cannot be saved.

     However, it cannot be replaced until it has first been demolished. How that is to be achieved, given the overwhelming preponderance of force in the hands of the State, I cannot say. More, and more ominous, there is no guarantee that the replacement would improve on its predecessor. Moralities and mentalities have changed too greatly since our Founding Era for any prediction to be sanguine –and that’s to say nothing of the hostile and alien sub-populations America has acquired these past few decades.

     Of one thing we may be sure: a man acting “under color of law,” whether he wears a uniform, bears a weapon, both, or neither, is not there to serve you. Don’t talk to him. Don’t allow him into your home or onto your property. Don’t permit any member of your family to do differently. Whatever he might do to you, he must do under visibly coercive conditions, such that the outrage will be plain to every eye. Perhaps a sufficient amount of public furor will protect you, at least a posteriori.

     When you see or hear “protect and serve,” think of the “Internal Revenue Service.” Act accordingly.

What’s Yours...Isn’t

     I suppose it’s time to head back to the salt mine. After all, the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch might find their moods improving and their blood pressure de-escalating otherwise, right? Right?

---

     I don’t read Zero Hedge nearly as often as I should:

     Imagine going to the bank to withdraw some cash.

     Having some cash on hand is always a prudent strategy, and especially today when more and more bank deposits are creeping into negative territory, meaning that you have to pay the banks for the privilege that they gamble with your money.

     You tell the teller that you’d like to withdraw $5,000 from your account. She hesitates nervously and wants to know why.

     You try to politely let her know that that’s none of the bank’s business as it’s your money.

     The teller disappears for a few minutes, leaving you waiting.

     When she returns she tells you that you can collect your money in a few days as they don’t have it on hand at the moment.

     Slightly irritated because of the inconvenience, you head home.

     But as you pull into your driveway later there’s an unexpected surprise waiting for you: two police officers would like to have a word with you about your intended withdrawal earlier…

     It might not be local cops, either. We’re talking about federal action here. So they might be Justice Department agents. Possibly even FBI types. And all you need to do to land in prison is say something to a fed that some federal prosecutor can construe as an attempt to deceive him – a federal crime under the United States Code. Ask Martha Stewart and Lewis “Scooter” Libby about their experiences in that regard.

     With the costs of everything under the Sun rising steadily as the Federal Reserve weakens the dollar, Americans are becoming frantic about finding ways to save a few bucks. One way to do so is to hold cash and inquire discreetly into whether the vendor or artisan with whom you’re transacting would offer a cash discount. Many will do so upon request. But the price of the item or service involved must be substantial: typically four or more digits to the left of the decimal point.

     Thinking of buying new windows or vinyl siding? Perhaps a new driveway or a backyard fence? What about having central air conditioning or a generator put in?

     Even if you’re not in the market for some “consumer durable,” you might be thinking of going to the precious metals to retard the deterioration of your dollars. Many Americans have done so in recent years. But such transactions are almost always conducted in cash, whether as a wire transfer or by counting out actual greenbacks. And the federal government is very interested in knowing who’s making such purchases.

     Scared yet?

---

     Privacy as a reliable fact of life is gone.

     It’s been some time since the intrusions escalated from relative nuisances, such as the requirement for a permit to add a deck to the back of your home, to genuine threats to freedom such as the “suspicious activity report.” As with so many other aspects of the loss of our liberty, the key to the process was gradualism: taking thin slices of the freedom salami, spaced some time apart, so as not to alarm ordinary folks into going for their pitchforks. We’re near the terminus of the process today. If we judge by the old definition of property as the right to exclude others from access or appropriation, there’s essentially no private property left in these United States.

     Maybe that spring-assisted folding knife in your hip pocket qualifies as entirely and only yours...but don’t be seen fiddling with it when a “law enforcement officer” is nearby. They frown on such things, don’t y’know. You’d probably go home without it.

     Say, weren’t street predators – rapists, muggers, and the like – a lot rarer back when no gentleman would be seen in public without his sword? But I digress.

     As the prices of goods and services escalate, there will be more, not less, federal intrusion into what we once regarded as our routine transactions with one another. Indeed, one of the reasons the feds are not unhappy about the deterioration of the dollar is that it justifies precisely such intrusions. The War on Drugs has been immensely useful to the statists for that reason, though it’s done nothing to reduce the consumption of illegal narcotics, cocaine, Ecstasy, and the like.

     If you pay attention to the news, you’ve surely read an article or two about “policing for profit:” the use of the War on Drugs to justify arbitrary seizures, whether of “suspicious” cash or of real estate where a drug transaction might have once taken place, from wholly innocent Americans. In that particular case, local “law enforcement” has led the pack. However, the feds are right behind them in their exploitation of the highly convenient “asset forfeiture” laws.

     What’s that you say? Asset forfeiture is an important tool for fighting “drug crime?” Sorry, both the practice and the results speak otherwise. It’s more about “deficit reduction”...but not the sort of deficit of which a naive sort would be thinking.

---

     For all the odium I and other commentators heap upon the Obamunists, we can’t lay this entirely upon them. It started a long time ago, under Richard Nixon. The legal theory upon which it was justified is that an inanimate object can be guilty of breaking the law, and so can be detained, indicted, and tried as if it were a living man. Think about that for a moment.

     Gives a whole new meaning to those jokes about “guns running amok,” doesn’t it? But that is indeed the legal theory behind asset forfeiture, whether the asset is a physical item such as your home or a more abstract one such as your life savings.

     Now about those IRAs and 401(k) accounts...

     Oh, never mind. All stand for the Pledge. And have a happy Saturday.

Politically Insoluble Part 2

There’s a firestorm on the Right: an exchange of words, sometimes bitter, between the generally like-minded. It flows from the pervasive sense of betrayal by Congressional Republicans:

According to an article in the left-wing outlet Politico and reported by Breitbart, Republican House Speaker John Boehner held secret negotiations with Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, leading up to his decision to flip-flop and fund Obama's executive amnesty; including a pre-hashed out deal to use the hoopla around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's March 3, 2015 address to Congress over Iran's nuclear ambitions as political cover to sneak in the extraordinarily controversial vote.

As part of this effort, the former chiefs of staff to House Speaker John Boehner and Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, through a group called the American Action Network, spent $400,000 for advertisements aimed at pressuring House conservatives to support Obama's executive amnesty and fund it in its entirety through the end of the fiscal year.

On the same day as Netanyahu's speech, the Republican-led House of Representatives caved to the demands of Democrats and passed a "clean" Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill by 257-167 with a majority of Democratic votes. Seventy-five Republicans voted to pass the clean bill, 167 voted against passage. The measure provides full funding of the DHS through September 30th, the end of the federal fiscal year, leaving Obama's executive amnesty untouched. In essence, the seventy-five Republicans, who joined all House Democrats to fund Obama's executive amnesty, aided and abetted the shredding of the Constitution by giving Obama the funding and future permission to rewrite federal law as he sees fit.

Rewarding his cooperation, the Democrats have vowed to protect Boehner from any challenges to his leadership by conservative elements of the Republican Party.

Parts of the above are unconfirmed by objective evidence...but none of it is implausible.

I’ve given you my assessment of where that leaves us politically. Add to it my colleague Dystopic’s poignant yet penetrating analysis:

America is an Empire. It crossed the Rubicon to Imperialism, not in the manner of the “colonialist oppressor” Social Justice Warriors are so fond of repeating as a mantra, but in the manner of centralized Executive Power. We have a Julius Caesar in office, though mind you without any of that man’s martial talent or wisdom. He is a tyrant, but an ineffective one, which is all the more infuriating....

America is the most laughable Empire to have ever borne the title. Her armies are in retreat all across the globe, leaving organizations like ISIS, far worse than garden-variety dictators like Saddam Hussein, in their wake. Militant Islam has never been stronger, ideologically, than it is today, excepting perhaps the days in which it overran the dying Roman Empire in the 600s. Competent military men have been removed from their posts, and feminist equality given a priority greater than that of combat readiness. The greatest military machine to have ever existed is repeatedly dealt terrible blows, not from the enemy, but from purported friends....

Imperial America is dying. Her education system is rife with Progressives and historical social justice revisionism. Her universities are staffed by lunatics, priced to the point of debt-slavery, and set as the prerequisite for getting any job that doesn’t involve retail or flipping burgers (and, even then, sometimes the sheepskin is needed). Enslave yourself to make a living doing nothing at all. Meanwhile mass Media spouts lies by the boatload and politicians don’t even bother to hide their disgust for the hoi polloi any longer. There is no reasoning with them, no middle-ground possible, no compromise with those who do not want us to exist.

Take a moment to digest that. Can you see any way to refute it? I can’t. Neither can any of those who remain optimistic that political methods – “ballots, not bullets” – can restore our Constitutional health. The best they can do is to say that “we shouldn’t give up hope.”

Nor can I refute Dystopic’s prediction for what follows from here:

Imperial America will die. Regardless of whether or not we wish it, human nature demands it, and nothing can stand in the way of that. The only question is what shall rise from her ashes.

A great way to start the morning, eh?

---

If we were to leap to the conclusion that open insurrection is the way forward, we would face the following questions:

1. “Who bells the cat?” Who would undertake to organize and lead an insurrection against the federal government?
2. The regime still commands the most powerful military on Earth and would surely use it in its own defense...assuming, of course, that America’s men at arms would be willing to fire on American citizens. While it’s pretty to imagine that the military would side with the insurrectionists, that development is not guaranteed by any means.
3. How would other nations react to an insurrection in the United States? The nation does have external as well as internal enemies. Civil disorder here would embolden some of them to take steps we would not approve of.
4. What chance of prevailing would the pro-Constitutional forces have? Few would willingly enlist in such an uprising were the outlook less than favorable. “Victor’s justice” is seldom merciful toward the victor’s enemies.

Many a totalitarian regime has come and gone over the millennia, but few have been replaced by a better, more freedom-oriented regime after a violent insurrection. Rather, as Bertrand Russell wrote:

Those who have seized power, even for the noblest of motives, soon persuade themselves that there are good reasons for not relinquishing it. This is particularly likely to happen if they believe themselves to represent some immensely important cause. They will feel that their opponents are ignorant and perverse; before long they will come to hate them...The important thing is to keep their power, not to use it as a means to an eventual paradise. And so what were means become ends, and the original ends are forgotten except on Sundays.

This makes it plain that we ought to spend some time contemplating alternative courses.

---

It seems inevitable that a collectivity – in this case, a State – must be opposed by an opposite collectivity – e.g., a rebel army. Yet this need not necessarily be so. Indeed, it might well be that locking ourselves into a force-on-force mindset, wherein two organized armies would meet in open warfare, would predetermine our defeat.

Not long ago, I wrote:

The political class and its hangers-on fear exactly the same things as the victimists: being ignored. Were they to become aware that no one is paying any attention to their enactments and decrees, they would soon slink away. Some might even enter productive trades, perhaps as cheap prostitutes.

They haven’t done any such thing because we continue to pay attention to them, and for no other reason. They do have their tools: the media, the many interest groups they support and encourage, political favors to the amoral and weak-minded, and of course a considerable amount of potential force. But none of these things are irresistible. Indeed, they pale in comparison to the force available to the citizenry.

He who yearns for a return to freedom cannot repose his hopes in the State, in politics, or in any imaginable “movement.” He must simply say to himself, “I am free; I shall do as I please,” and sincerely resolve to endure the consequences. There is no other avenue; all other roads are “roads to Mishnory.” While we remain on it, we’re inexorably fated, not to “go through all these things twice,” but to go through them over and over ad infinitam.

This is not a brief for political anarchism, as intellectually attractive as that is. It’s an exhortation to applied practical anarchism, perhaps alternately phrased as individualist anarchism: your personal refusal to grant the State unmerited attention or respect. That includes ignoring statist dictates that have no moral basis. (You might already be doing exactly that on subjects near and dear to your heart.)

This strikes me as the most promising approach.

A nation the size of the United States cannot be policed comprehensively or effectively from a central seat of power. The enforcement power required for that undertaking does not exist. That’s a great part of the reason Washington has strained to seduce state and local law enforcement organizations with military equipment: the mandarins of the federal government know they can’t impose their will on all of us without cooperation from coercive forces in every state, county, city, village, and hamlet.

Consider as an example the states whose governments have passed oppressive firearms laws. Those governments have become aware that they lack the power required to enforce those laws. No, they haven’t backed away from them yet, but the day will surely come. Even power-worshippers are aware that unless 98% or more of a populace agrees with a law and conforms to it voluntarily, the law is unenforceable. Should some myrmidon try to enforce such a law, he could find himself staring down the barrels of his target’s neighbors’ “prohibited” firearms.

Faced with that sort of resistance that resists openly only when poked, the Washington regime would be impotent. Unless it were willing to threaten to use weapons of mass destruction internally, it would have no counter to such defiance of its wishes.

However, it falls to us to produce that sort of locally organized, self-defending resistance. Though there are pockets in which it already exists, the mindset required is far from being universal.

The first step is waking Americans from the dream of salvation by politics.

More anon.

The Lawlessness Continues

If you’ve been following the national news:

1. You poor soul;
2. You know how bad things are getting.

Obama is now planning to raise taxes by executive order. He’s already spent federal funds without Congressional authorization. It’s odds-on that he’ll refuse to abide by a federal court ruling that his amnesty for illegal immigrants is unconstitutional. Given all that, should the Supreme Court strike down ObamaCare, what would you expect him to do? Meekly comply?

For that matter, what do you expect Congress – now full of Republicans – to do about Obama’s noncompliance with the explicit terms of the Constitution? Will it fight for its prerogatives and the rule of law, or will it content itself with approximately what it’s done so far – i.e., nothing at all?

The Obama Administration has arrogated all power to itself. It recognizes no requirement to secure legislative authorization for its actions. It deems the courts’ rulings to be no better than advisories. Indeed, it concedes no constraints of any sort.

How do you like living in a dictatorship, Gentle Reader?

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At this point, there is no way to predict how things will progress with any degree of assurance. The mechanisms that are supposed to check the concentration of power in the executive branch aren’t being employed; the Republicans are too spineless to hold firm against Obama’s seizures of ever more anti-Constitutional power, much less to impeach the bastard. I’m not prepared to say that Obama will attempt to remain in the Oval Office beyond the end of his second term...but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.

Only the forcible removal of Obama from the White House – and I do mean forcible – has any chance of putting an end to his lawlessness. But of course, unless Biden and the rest of his ilk are removed along with him, the remedy is not guaranteed to cure the disease. Nor would I place much hope in a resurgence of Constitutional governance under any arbitrary gaggle of Republicans; they’re up to their necks in the venality that’s brought us to this pass. The current crop of officeholders cannot be trusted, and cleansing the GOP’s leadership has proved impossible.

There are only two imaginable paths out of this descent into totalitarianism: a rebellion by the states, or a “grass-roots” rebellion too large and too widespread to be suppressed by Washington’s domestic forces. Both would involve large-scale violence. Both would be immensely destructive of American society and the American economy. But unless the Republicans “get religion” and move to curb the Tyrant Obama by Constitutional means, there are no other upward paths.

So when do we take the musket down from the mantel? Indeed, are there any imaginable conditions under which we’d be willing to do so?

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If you’re any sort of “prepper,” you’ve already worked to buttress yourself against some possible shocks. However, it’s inherently beyond any man’s powers to prepare adequately for every possibility. Should violence erupt – and the threat of a violent upheaval, given the current state of our economy and the restiveness of far too many social sectors, is high and rising – there will be no way to guarantee its confinement, geographically or demographically. We will all be at risk.

Being on the best possible terms with your neighbors is paramount. Don’t imagine that you can become entirely self-sufficient. Murphy’s Law states that only after the rioting starts will we realize what essentials to survival we’ve neglected to secure. Your best hope of enduring the chaos will be that while you might have provided for X but forgotten Y, your neighbor Jones did the opposite...and you two are well disposed toward one another.

Right now I’m looking at my oil tank and wondering whether to replace it with a larger unit.

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Does the above read like the counsel of despair? It isn’t, not really. I’ve ceased to hope for a political solution, but that doesn’t mean that no solution exists. In that connection, recall this line from Star Wars: A New Hope: “The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip though your fingers.” A rigid totalitarian authority is inherently incapable of enforcing its will uniformly; it could only do so by enlisting the overwhelming majority of its subjects as its agents and utterly squashing all internal corruption. Consider as an example any prison, the best micro-model of a totalitarian society available; they’re overrun with illegal drugs, their wardens know it, and they can do nothing about it.

So while we might cease to be free de jure – i.e., politically – we can still hope for a lot of latitude de facto, owing to the State’s inability to be everywhere at once. It won’t be a laugh riot. Indeed, it will involve a lot of risk, an attitude of distrust that comes hard to Americans, and the willingness to conceal many an activity that’s noncontroversial today. Still, it should be possible to survive, to flourish, and to raise children who will understand what has been done and what must be done.

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A number of my Gentle Readers, alarmed by my recent writings, have written to exhort me to keep fighting...mainly, to keep writing, since in my advanced state of decrepitude I’m not good for much else. I’ve been asking myself whether it’s worthwhile – i.e., whether the gains from it are worth the risks I incur by doing so.

To rant as I’ve done here and elsewhere is to paint a target on one’s back. If there isn’t yet one on mine, the probability of it will rise as matters worsen.

No, I’m not going to stop just now. I’ll do my best to keep the tirades coming, if only in the hope that it will lift my readers’ spirits. But I can’t predict what I’ll need to do, or to stop doing, for my own well-being.

For the present, I hope you’ll continue to stop by. I’ll try to make it worth your while.

Yesterday’s Non-News

The powerful, utterly candid speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before a joint session of Congress dominates today’s headlines, and with good reason. The Israeli statesman caused many of us to wonder how long we must wait before America has a president of Netanyahu’s caliber. Reagan seems far distant in memory.

But that wasn’t all that happened yesterday. There was one other piddling item of note:

The House voted Tuesday to fund the Homeland Security Department through the end of the budget year, ending a protracted standoff that centered on objections to President Obama's controversial immigration actions.

The House voted 257-167 for the legislation, which includes no immigration provisions, and was carried over the finish line with mostly Democratic votes. In a statement late Tuesday, President Obama said he would sign the legislation as soon as it reached his desk....

The result is a victory for the Obama administration. Republicans had tried to use the DHS funding bill as the vehicle to reverse Obama's immigration executive actions. But Democrats repeatedly blocked the move, insisting they pass the spending bill with no riders attached.

House Speaker John Boehner, faced with diminishing options, earlier in the day told fellow Republican lawmakers he would drop the immigration demands.

"I am as outraged and frustrated as you at the lawless and unconstitutional actions of this president," Boehner told his caucus on Tuesday morning, according to a source.

But he said he believed the decision to vote on a "clean" bill, "considering where we are -- is the right one for this team, and the right one for this country."

Boehner's move could lead to a backlash in the party, especially since House GOP leaders repeatedly denied claims that he struck a deal with Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi last week to hold such a vote.

So Boehner is “outraged and frustrated”...but he won’t stand his ground on the issue that, more than any other, is responsible for the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. He deems Obama’s actions “lawless and unconstitutional”...but the thought of a vote on impeachment refuses to enter his head. His move alienated two-thirds of the Republican House caucus...but it’s more important that the Democrats’ petulant minorities be placated than that he help his fellow Republicans hold true to their campaign pledges.

The Department of Homeland Security is largely a collection of desk-bound bureaucrats. Its most visible manifestation is the Transportation Security Authority (TSA), responsible for groping millions of air-travel passengers each year and confiscating no end of valuable property from them. It’s one of George W. Bush’s greatest mistakes, and one that has been used more than once to bludgeon conservatives into submission to left-liberal whims.

But the Democrats won’t permit the Senate to vote on an amnesty-free funding bill. Were such a vote to take place, the bill would go to Obama’s desk. He’d have to veto it explicitly, making it plain exactly who is responsible for the latest “government shutdown.” Can’t have that. The public might become aware of the Democrats’ real priorities.

Ace has had enough:

I'm personally done with this party.

In fact, I will vote for Democrats.

An old communist friend of mine voted for Bob Dole.

Why? Because this communist was convinced, inaccurately, as it would later turn out, that he would never see his dream of a communist USA via conventional politics, and therefore his hopes were pinned on outright revolution.

And as far as revolution, there are four words to remember: The worse, the better.

It is now clear that none of us will see the America we want via any kind of politics that includes the Republican Party. Ergo, they must be erased from the pages of history as quickly as possible, so that a better party can replace them.

So I'm now a Democrat. The worse, the better.

It may be time to begin supporting things like an increase in the minimum wage, too....

So has Misha:

And the news are ever depressing. Such as the bit about Weepy Boner and Mitch McCockless, once again, striking a deal with the Democrats to give Princess Obama everything she wants because… stuff…

Remember how they used to be “oh, we can’t shut down the government by refusing to pass a budget, but the DHS funding? Oh yes, we’re going to fight, fight FIGHT on that one. To the bitter end. For America!!!” That was ages ago, of course, all of four months or so.

Now it’s back to business as usual with the Quisling Party willingly, nay eagerly handing the Prozi Party and their Precious Princess everything they asked for, based on a deal that was struck long ago. You know. The usual deal the Quisling Party always strikes with the Prozi Party on any issue: “We’ll have to promise to fight, then pretend to fight a bit to keep the prole idiots who keep voting for us happy, but then we’ll cave. As predictably as a Texas summer.”

And so they did. The Quisling Party’s rich donors wanted cheap Messican slave labor, the American workers be damned, and that’s what the Quisling Party gave them.

We find ourselves pretty much in complete agreement with Ace.

The Quisling Party’s Billionaire Sugar Daddies got the cheap slave labor they wanted, thanks to the Quisling Party’s umpteenth and utterly predictable betrayal of the principles that they swore to before the election?

Why, all of a sudden His Imperial Majesty realizes that the Prozi Party has a point when it comes to, say, minimum wages.

And, I think, so have I.

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If you missed this bit of reportage:

Before Obama’s promised “fundamental transformation” of America has been completed, this will no longer be an English-speaking nation populated mainly by people of European descent who cherish a heritage of individual liberty. It will be a Third World nation populated by people deliberately imported from the Third World in contravention of the law to displace us. Plans have been laid, and are already being executed:

Susan Payne is a contributor to WCBM, Baltimore and Co-Host of the Pat McDonough Radio Show.

Unbeknownst to the Obama officials, Ms. Payne was invited to listen in on conference calls at an immigration rally. Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and 16 members of the White House cabinet were on the first call. White House officials were on all three calls. What Ms. Payne learned needs to be immediately shared with Congress and the public.

The calls confirm that the melting pot is history. Our country is not evolving; the people running the government are methodically replacing it with a totally different country, which will be more to their liking ideologically and more suitable for authoritarian rule.

The “Task Force of New Americans” and the “Receiving Communities” are part of a plan by the Obama administration to develop a “country within a country” which will eventually form a new, and instantly fundamentally transformed United States.

The conference calls and meetings surrounding the task force made it clear Barack Obama is planning to legalize and protect 13 to 15 million illegal immigrants who will then be moved onto citizenship.

These millions are only the beginning. The more illegals are granted amnesty, the more will come. There are no serious plans to defend the border from invasion, or to enforce immigration law in a meaningful way.

When these “new Americans” come out of the shadows, the communities in which they’ve been placed will be designated as “receiving communities.”

The “new Americans” are considered “seedlings” by the White House and the “receiving communities” are the “fertile ground” to nurture them, according to comments made during the meetings. …

One member of the task force said they will be forming a “country within a country”. At the meetings, it was said that “immigrants need to be aware of benefits they are entitled to”.

The benefits they are supposedly entitled to will provide financial incentive for them to reproduce like rabbits.

As for assimilation…

The participants in the meeting also discussed the fact that these immigrants would not be interested in assimilating. They would “navigate not assimilate”.

Numbers this large would be impossible to assimilate anyway. This is invasion and colonization, not immigration.

...you might have been missing a key piece of the puzzle. I’ve written about exclaves before. You might be near enough to one to have a visceral sense for the dangers involved. Should the Obamunists proceed as the above citation predicts, they’re likely to become quite common...and politically very influential, perhaps to the extent of turning a few red states blue.

Tell me, Gentle Reader: Do you think the “amnesty” is about “compassion,” or about votes? The Democrats are so eager to facilitate this new invasion that it’s difficult to believe the motive is anything but purely partisan. More, the infrastructure – federal and state documentation, including Social Security numbers and drivers’ licenses – has been laid to allow these “new Americans” to vote, despite their not being naturalized citizens. Do you expect that the Democrats, given their opposition to voter ID laws and their Secretary of State project, will lift a finger to prevent it? Watch what they do, not what they say.

Yet the Republican leadership in Congress, though their co-partisans ran explicitly against this treason, refuses to stand firm against it. They’re more afraid of being blamed for a “government shutdown” by the media than they are of being revealed as liars and frauds. The conservative “backlash” this move will supposedly trigger troubles them not at all.

We’re about to lose the entire country.

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I don’t know what we could possibly do about this avalanche of betrayals. The aggregate amounts to a de facto nullification of the Constitution and all its constraints. They who have sworn solemn oaths to abide by that document – the Supreme Law of the Land – have cheerfully cast their vows aside.

It’s impossible that this flows from any concept of the “common defense and general welfare of the United States.” Nor would it matter if it were so. At any rate, I can’t believe it.

Time was, the patriots in Congress would have done away with the Quislings, possibly right there in the Capitol building. Today the Quislings outnumber the patriots, and the latter group is either too feeble or too cowardly to put up more than token resistance. With a wholly lawless chief executive ready to take vengeance on anyone who dares try to thwart him, it’s understandable if not laudable.

Short of the chancy business of armed revolt, I can see no way out. The Republic has fallen. The combination of the amnesty, Democrat electoral skullduggery, and Republican spinelessness will bury it.

I’m out of ideas, Gentle Reader. Got any to spare?