Recent comments

Also, if the planet is warming, and it is not caused by human activity, then it is natural, and trying to "fool Mother Nature" can, as we have seen all too many times, bring with it, "That Which is Not Seen". ...look to the end of an accomplished fact, and you will see that it has always produced the contrary of what was expected from it... ~ Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), July 1850 Example: In eastern North America, Multiflora Rose is now generally considered an invasive species, though it was originally introduced [with the assistance of government] from Asia as a soil conservation measure, as a natural hedge to border grazing land, and to attract wildlife. ...Some places classify Multiflora rose as a "noxious weed". ~ Wikipedia Let me put it this way, it is so "noxious" (it is nearly impossible to kill it), and aggressive, that combating it, in the mountains of the place called North Carolina, kept a roof over our heads and food on the table for over ten years! "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." ~ Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Address (c.1860) I do, sincerely, enjoy, and agree with, many things that you write, Paul. Peace.

It's not about victory. It's about money for the cronies.

First, the so-called Declaration of Independence is a document and therefor cannot "produce" anything. And, second, I am under the impression that the "charter for a new government" was designed to undo the 'damage' done by the so-called Declaration of Independence. Then I went and read The Source of Evil and found this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Followed, closely, by this: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . . ." Oops! A total non sequitur, riddled with contradictions. Frédéric Bastiat wrote (c.1848): "...nothing can be more evident than this: The law [government] is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect individuals, liberties, and properties, to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all." Is this not precisely what the so-called Declaration of Independence sought to do? From all that I have read, here at STR, you call it a non sequitur based solely on the fact that "no government had ever been created having only the delegated authority of its members[1], therefor it can never be done". It would have to be called something else if it were restricted to that one lawful function. Fine, call it something else then, but you will have the same problem restricting a "private protection agency", because an "agent" that has enough raw power to protect your un-alien-able rights, has enough raw power to take them. _____________________________________________________________ [1] "...every man has the right to defend - even by force – his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right - its reason for existing, its lawfulness - is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use [initiate] force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force - for the same reason - cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise." ~ Excerpted from The Law by Frédéric Bastiat

AGW bears all the signs of a sect of the statist religion. Its adherents claim both perfect knowledge (it's "settled science") and the ability to apply simple physics (policy input A will lead to outcome B) to a problems that are defined by complexity. To even answer the question, "is the planet warming" is exceedingly complex and, using currently available methods, probably impossible. As a belief system it is therefore impervious to reasoned argumentation, and as a foundation on which to apply the coercion of the state, pervasively pernicious.

Great stuff. My only worry is that canaries are often put into cages before they are taken into the coal mines! Hahah!

That link might be http://www.rense.com/general93/ampres.htm The EE will end only when no grunts will work for it; and that won't be many more years. See http://takelifeback.com/oto/p1.htm

Hi John, Thanks for your remarks re BS vs CITCM. All of your insights are valid. I wish I knew how to hyper-link correctly when I write these columns on Word. Since I was born in the 19th century and my mind never completely grasped 20th century tech, I often epic fail myself when confronted with the simplest tech tasks. As for my mistake re Constitution, it could be argued that our erosion of rights and freedoms failed with the Mayflower Compact. Just kidding of course, but I stand corrected. BTW, I always enjoy your works here. D

Thank you Doug, a good one. I hope you're wrong, of course. The psychopaths are certainly preparing the public for an attack on Iran, but I'm not sure the decision maker will pick that option in this election year. After two failed wars and an ongoing economic crisis, he may prefer to go to voters with "Look! I said I'd get us out of the Middle East, and I'm on track!" I agree with your choice of 1776. The Declaration of Independence is badly flawed, riddled with inside-the-box absurdities (see my http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/davies/davies6.html) which later produced the even more flawed charter for a new government.

Good points, but I was frustrated by the lack of links to the people and events you're referring to. I may be very ignorant, but the term "Black Swan Event" was not familiar to me. Here's an explanation for other ignoramuses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory Similarly, I haven't followed William Cooper, apparently a famous conspiracy theorist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_William_Cooper), or James Turk or Jim Sinclair. A link to your favorite site featuring each of these men would be appreciated. Also am a little baffled by your statement: The erosion of the Constitution began far earlier. Few can agree on an exact date. I’m tempted to say the erosion began July 4, 1776. The erosion of the Constitution began 11 years before the Constitution was written?

I'm not certain how this answered my so-called challenge, unless it is your way of saying that the "criminal", whom we shall call Big G, has put a gun to your head and FORCED you to be a TAXPAYER (a numbered member) and continues to keep a gun to your head thus FORCING you to take his benefits and privileges, (such as DRIVING LICENSE and BANK ACCOUNT), and that, in your opinion, Big G has a "just claim" to authority over you and your "stuff", because he has the "might". Is that correct?

Over 60 years ago an aunt, long deceased now, gave me a silver dollar. I still have that 1921 Morgan in a special purse to keep it from wearing out. I carry it every day. In the early 50's in Texas I could buy around 10 gallons of gasoline with a silver dollar. In fact the very first "self-service" gas station I remember was a Momma/Poppa station on Old Hwy 90 (long before Interstate 10) outside San Antonio -- Pop repaired and serviced cars & trucks, Mom exchanged paper "money" (still "silver certificates" before predators of state ended that) for silver dollars. Drop a silver dollar into the pump, you got around 10 gallons of gas. Today spot silver is a little over 35 government notes of debt ("frn"), you can still get almost 10 gallons (some days more, some days less) for the value of a silver dollar. Sam

Too bad my car don't run on gold.

A perfectly reasonable article Paul and well written! Thank you!

I doubt anyone would like your plan, not even government, because it exposes what is really going on. Government needs to obfuscate everything otherwise it would cease to exist. Yeah, I get it, your proposal was tongue-in-cheek.

reading the comments on this is so irritating lol

mhstahl, I planned on sticking to whatever I wish, but thank you for your blessings. And, I realize that you don't know me, so for the record, I have read more than those marvelous quotes I posted. I don't know if anyone else here reads all the material on this subject, which I make available via embedded links, but I most certainly do; including Thomas Paine.

@ Chris Dates, "KenK did not jump in to defend Paul," yes, I did. And further "he [KenK] jumped in to be rude." No, I didn't. Clearly you're not much of a mind reader and so I suggest you quit making a fool of yourself jumping to conclusions that rely on such a talent.

Double posted. My bad.

Nice work indeed, Glen. A comment, if I may, on your "Without love, anarchy won't work." At first that seemed to me to set the bar too high. All that's strictly needed for a zero government society to work would be that everyone _respect_ each others' right each to own and operate his own life; to leave him alone, as in _laissez faire_. You name "respect" as one definition of love, but emphasize that "this is an issue involving the deeper and more primal levels of consciousness: feeling and emotion." Is that also prerequisite? Perhaps it is, though I'm not sure how much is needed, nor how it can be measured. Fortunately, there's no need to worry. Love or compassion seems to be part of the human makeup; everybody has some. Without it in parents, babies would not survive (and possibly, not even be conceived.) The same sentiment pities the needy, even strangers like earthquake and famine victims thousands of miles away and even when, as today, charity is trampled on by governments. Whether compassion is prerequisite for liberty or not, there will be no shortage.

"So we can sit around here and fight over words and phrases and definitions and ideas all we want. But it would probably be advisable to learn to enjoy what we have today and set good examples as we travel along." I'd say that's sound advice, Sam.

It sounds like that old fart, Lysander Spooner, agrees with your assessment, Darkcrusade. "...if...there be in nature no such principle as justice, no such principle as honesty, no such principle as men's natural rights of person or property, then all such words as justice and injustice, honesty and dishonesty, all such words as mine and thine, all words that signify that one thing is one man's property and that another thing is another man's property, all words that are used to describe men's natural rights of person or property, all such words as are used to describe injuries and crimes, should be struck out of all human languages as having no meanings; and it should be declared, at once and forever, that the greatest force and the greatest frauds, for the time being, are the supreme and only laws for governing the relations of men with each other; and that, from henceforth, all persons and combinations of persons --- those that call themselves governments, as well as all others --- are to be left free to practice upon each other all the force, and all the fraud, of which they are capable." ~ Excerpted from The Natural Law or The Science of Justice - A Treatise on Natural Law, Natural Justice, Natural Rights, Natural Liberty, and Natural Society; Showing That All Legislation Whatsoever Is An Absurdity, a Usurpation, and a Crime, by Lysander Spooner

"All are dust and to dust we shall return" I heard that somewhere. It appears to be true. J. E. Bush, uncle and great uncle to the former grand wizards of the klan, once said, "...the only thing you can buy, sell or trade on is energy -- man's physical and his mental energy..." Everything that you think has value came out of the earth and will, in time, return to the earth. Put differently, the only things you can buy or sell are transportation and transformation. Call it what you want: property is as good a word as any. You won't have it all that long. And neither will your children -- or their children. So we can sit around here and fight over words and phrases and definitions and ideas all we want. But it would probably be advisable to learn to enjoy what we have today and set good examples as we travel along. You've done just that, Paul. Thanks for the essay and the insights. Sam.

″Power rests on nothing other than people's consent to submit, and each person who refuses to submit to tyranny reduces it by one two-hundred-and-fifty-millionth, whereas each who compromises only increases it.″ ~ Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky As my friend, tzo, so eloquently put it... All governments must have citizens in order to exist. ...so, we (my natural law wife and I) thought we would do our "[two] two-hundred-and-fifty-millionth" worth. We ask no one to join us, and, "[w]e ask not your counsels or your arms". And, for the record, the only persons I "throw" it at, as you put it, are the one's who falsely accuse me of being a member and/or taking member-only benefits/privileges. I do, however, suggest, quite frequently, that membership in the political community is at the "root" of most of the problems men and women have with the government, but it's not very popular, and is therefor almost always ignored, for obvious reasons. p.s. I appreciate, very much, that you jumped to Paul's defense. I like many of the things Paul writes.