Word To The State: NO SALE!

The Lost Horizons News – by Pete Hendrickson

 would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

-Thomas Jefferson

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I AM NO LONGER BUYING what the state is selling. Having given the matter considerable thought, I have decided that the goods delivered are not worth the cost.  

Here’s the thing: the state does what it does on the premise that those of us for whom it theoretically works have asked it to do so. It is further presumed (or pretended, anyway) that where relevant, we have consented to the state’s actions, as in, “Every one of us has agreed to be searched and surveilled and subjected to this or that in order to ensure that the bad among us are caught out.”

After all, there can be no lawful doctrine by which merely my neighbors’ anxieties about their own security can authorize a violation of my rights. Nor can my neighbors’ anxieties authorize the state (whether through the pretense of a “judicial ruling” or otherwise) to creatively construe, for instance, a search of my effects without sworn and skeptically-considered grounds as somehow NOT amounting to a violation of my rights.

In short, I must be being presumed to be on board with the state’s programs– at least those that impact my individual rights. But the fact is, I’m not. Any such presumption is hereby rebutted, and any continued violation of my rights will constitute outright despotism.

HERE’S A NOT-COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF SPECIFICS that should help put this declaration in focus:

I’d rather take my chances with terrorism than live in a “Total Awareness” society. It’s better to risk having my rights violated by “al-Quaeda” occasionally than to have them assuredly violated 24/7 by the state; further, I prefer a social and political environment in which elections, dissent, whistleblowing, journalism, judicial rulings and other important proceedings and decisions are not at minimum rendered suspect by the possibility of compromise through blackmail.

I’d rather have drugs freely used by whoever wants to use them than have all the pathological consequences on society and the law that are inflicted on us by the “War on Drugs”. Sporadic street crimes are less harm to me than the corrosive social and legal effects of “no-knock”, shoot-the-dog-and-terrorize-the-children raids, “civil forfeiture” laws and the assaults on logic by which they are rationalized, and the maintenance of high drug prices and outlaw character and behavior of those attracted by them that result from criminalization of these products, among much else.

I’d rather have crooks laundering money than government scrutiny of everyone’s financial activity. You know what? I’m a bright guy, and fairly well-educated in these matters, and I’ve yet to figure out how I have ever been harmed by “money laundering”… If the state has reason to believe someone is “laundering money” to conceal ill-gotten gains, let it demonstrate why under oath and get a warrant in order to pursue the matter, rather than trying to force every financial institution to act as spies and informants against its customers.

I’d rather take my chances with the risk of flying to which I was accustomed up until 2001 than put up with the exercise in degradation and Orwellian insanity that is the TSA and its programs– especially since to the degree there is any chance at all of “terrorism” involving American air travel, it will surely be by way of a satchel charge tossed into a security queue in which a few hundred people are crowded together for easy victimization without the least danger to the perp, rather than by doing something involving a plane in flight. (Further, endless tests have shown that the TSA doesn’t stop dangerous stuff from getting onboard aircraft anyway. Thus, TSA programs are ineffective and also proven unnecessary in light of the fact that no attacks have happened despite the agency’s inability to prevent them…).

I’d rather take my chances dealing with the rest of world by cultivating friendly relations with all nations and entangling alliances with none than doing so with a wide-ranging US military and the propping-up of foreign puppet-regimes with “aid” payments. I am confident that our setting a true example of the benefits of real liberty and the rule of law here in America will effectively undermine and overwhelm any contrary, potentially hostile alternative political structure long before its adherents could nurture it into a meaningful threat to our well-being (fortified by the fact that thanks to the Second Amendment, anyone crazy enough to invade America would confront a rifle behind every blade of grass, and would promptly be sent home in dog-food cans).

I’d rather take my chances providing for my health-care and -insurance needs in the “free” market than providing for them with any government “help”– even in a marketplace already horribly skewed by a massive government presences. My view on this will be echoed by many other Americans, and in time this will cause costs for everyone to plummet; in any event, the choices involved in this area can only properly be made by me alone.

I’d rather rely on myself, my family, my neighbors, my county sheriff and my state government– in that order– to provide for my ongoing, routine domestic safety than have a massive, expensive and intrusive and way-outside-of-my-control-or-influence “Department of Homeland Security” supposedly taking care of it. In fact, I’d rather not hear the word “homeland” used ever again as a reference to America. That kind of expression worked for the Nazis, but it’s alien and ugly to American ears.

I’d rather have my internet unthreatened by government assertion of “kill-switch” authority; my currency undiluted by “quantitative easing”; my toilet un-downsized by government decree; my light-bulb choices dictated by the prices arising in a free market; my knowledge of what my expensive public-servants are up to uncensored under the endlessly-deployed pretense of “national security” implications; my nutritional and medication choices unhindered by bureaucrats; my choices concerning my children’s education recognized as nobody’s business but mine and my wife’s; my… Well, I could go on and on.

THE SUM OF IT ALL IS, NO SALE!! I don’t agree to the state’s programs on any of these issues.

In fact, to get to a properly-broad “bottom line” here, let me say this: I particularly don’t agree to the presumption that an American’s relationship with the federal state is on an “opt-out (if you can figure out how) basis” in the first place.

My read of the United States Constitution tells me that an American’s dealings with the federal government– if any– are entirely “opt-in” unless I choose to live within federal municipal jurisdiction– itself an entirely “opt-in” affair. In any event, it is only on that basis that my consent for the existence of the state can be had.

How about YOU? Are YOU good with the state operating on the presumption that you have agreed to all that it does? Or that even if you DON’T agree, it’s up to you to figure out some way to “opt-out”?

Give it some thought.

http://losthorizons.com/Newsletter.htm#PageOne

Word To The State: NO SALE!