Alsace wrote..

Bez....those starving the monkeys vids were FANTASTIC....thanks

Tom Baugh is da bomb -- the only nominally public persona I know who has each and every single piece of the big puzzle put together correctly.

Every single person in the world needs to see those.

I advise those who found Baugh's Liberty Forum presentation enlightening to read many of his essays found on various sites on the web. I've collected them in this thread:

A Nation without a Country Parts 1 - 6
http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?post=134....

I also posted a review of his book in that thread. I had come to similar conclusions myself before I read the book. His writings confirmed my view.

Thanks for this thread, Bezzle. I'll be watching the Tom Baugh vids tonight.

The Tom Baugh "Starving the Monkeys" vids absolutely rocked!

I'm a new lawyer and have been wracking my brain lately trying to figure out how to focus my career on work that truly provides value to others. So much of what lawyers do boils down to nothing more than regulation surfing, which bothers me, so I'm glad that Baugh mentioned that part and gave me a succinct phrase to put words to the feelings of discomfort I've had lately.

Bezzle -

Thanks for putting all of this together, and for being patient with folks as we un-educate ourselves.

In the first post, the discoverthenetworks.org link is broken - the referenced org (#6967) maybe no longer exists?

I've got more reading to do now...

(Fixed. Thanks.)

(Reprinted from a non-pinned thread. Thanks, Tesla.)

http://tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-w....

....from an email from Whiskey and Gunpowder -

Gary’s Note: Jim Davies has some very bad news; the Constitution was never your friend.

Whiskey & Gunpowder
By Jim Davies
May 12, 2010
New Hampshire, U.S.A.

Further:

Jim Davies comes to the conclusion:

We have here reached the ultimate, fatal flaw in the pleasant fiction that governments are entities capable of being limited.

Ever since 1803, America’s government has pretended to operate a limited, democratic republic but has actually been an oligopoly of lawyers. And since Article Three was crafted (and left blank) with all deliberate intent, I suggest that’s the way the founders always planned it. The 1789 Judiciary Act was a kind of delayed-action poison pill, a really cunning plot, planned and executed by those honored even today as the founders of a free society. And this is perfectly logical; I ran Jim Davies’ article today partly in answer to letters like this...

Quote:

You guys are so intent on the conservative agenda with its misleading steering committees. Citizens pay taxes and expect that money to support and create a better America. These programs are called entitlements. This is not a bad word!!

Instead, you guys want to run the US government like an S-Corp where any surplus is split amongst the wealthy, ad hoc-President George W. Bush’s depletion of the treasury and given to the wealthy upon his election. I don’t need to run the details by you again, but you damn well know what happened. Now you want the democrats to replenish the treasury so you can do it again.

You have a great venue here, why don’t you use it for constructive efforts...

The Great Con of 1789

It’s often said that America was once a free country, but that its freedom has been heavily damaged by a relentless growth in government. Some (like Aaron Russo in his documentary America: From Freedom to Fascism) date the decline from 1913, when the Federal Reserve was chartered and the Income Tax enacted; but I no longer think it began that late. The “Pristine State” advocates suppose that there was once in our history a kind of Eden from which we have fallen, and so that all we need now is somehow to get back there — to “constitutional rule.” There wasn’t, and we don’t. I think our troubles began no later than 1789.

The drafting was done in 1787, and the needed nine States had ratified it by June 21st, 1788, so the Constitution became supreme law on that day. Then on March 3rd 1789 Congress opened its doors and the following month George Washington presided. It’s very interesting to notice what the new Congress did, in its first session, from March through September of that year.

It committed six acts, before going home for the winter in September. See if any of them give you warm, fuzzy feelings; and in a moment I’ll focus on the sixth, because of its huge importance.

First came some administration; deciding on how oaths of office were to be taken. Not too much there to bother us.

Second was the “Hamilton Tariff,” under which revenue was to be raised. So the second-ever Act of the US Congress was to arrange for the confiscation of property. Sure, it was Constitutional — it was a set of tariffs, imposed on certain imports; some must have recalled that it was a tariff on tea that had sparked the Revolution in the first place, so may have wondered whether anything had changed except the geographic location of the thieves. The import duties favored Northern manufacturers by making foreign goods seem more expensive — it was protectionist — and hurt Southerners by making them pay more. From Day One, a division was being fashioned that led after seventy years to open warfare. So the first substantive thing Congress did was to start to set the scene for internal conflict.

Third came an establishment of “Foreign Affairs” — now the Department of State — by which the new government was to execute “policies” towards other nations. If the intention was to have a perfectly uniform policy towards all, that would not have been needed. By establishing one, it was clear there were to be some nations more favored, others less favored. That’s what a “foreign policy” means, and it is ultimately the cause of war and, in our own era, of the unconventional war called “terrorism”; for had there been no foreign policy favoring Israel (recall Biden’s call in March for “no space” between the policies of the US and Israel?) there would have been no 9/11, or if there had been one favoring Palestinians there would have been a “9/11” much sooner and much more devastating, executed by Mossad. So the third Act in the history of the new government was to set the scene for al l future external conflict.

Fourth was an Act to set up a Department of War — now euphemized as “Defense” — and that was very logical. You play favorites with other nations, eventually you’ll need to fight some of them. Better get ready.

Fifth came the Department of the Treasury, to take in and account for the collection and spending of the money confiscated by Act Two. It is to this Department that today’s IRS belongs, so I need say no more.

So far, it’s not too hard to detect the beginnings of all the most loathsome attributes of any government: tax, distortion, discord and warfare. This is to what our well-meaning “Constitutionalist” friends want to get us back.

The sixth action of that first session bore fruit on September 24th, 1789 and was the “Judiciary Act” — and it’s notorious and breathtaking. Here’s why.

On its face, its purpose was just to flesh out Article Three, which said there was to be a Judicial Branch in the new government. It had to do with establishing Courts — Supreme, District, Circuit — and government Attorneys, General and less general. But as well as that administrative stuff, the 1789 Judiciary Act declared that the Supreme Court had the power to hear actions for “writs of mandamus” as one of original jurisdiction, and so not to be just a court of appeal. Congress was therefore purporting to grant to its sister Branch a power which Article Three never gave it.

Oops! Right off the bat, in its very first session, Congress therefore tried to do something it was not empowered to do (if you’ll allow for the moment that, contrary to Spooner, the Constitution actually empowered anyone to do anything). In so doing, Congress demonstrated its disdain for the fences placed around it by Articles Two and Five. Very clearly, government today acknowledges no limits on its power; the 1789 Judiciary Act made it plain that Congress never did acknowledge such limits, even in its very first session.

Was this arrogation of power deliberate, or inadvertent?

Either is possible if the Act is considered in isolation, but it wasn’t isolated. While the Constitution was being drafted, Alexander Hamilton and other Federalists had wanted to specify powers for the Judicial Branch, just as the charter did for the other two Branches, and in particular to grant it the power of “Judicial Review,” i.e., to say what is, and is not, valid law. He argued that that is what high courts normally do. However in Article Three no powers were granted to it at all, so as it’s fair to presume that it was not to have zero powers (otherwise, why set it up?) consequently Article Three left them wide open — for unlike the wording of Articles I and II there are no limits or prohibitions named, either. It was a blank check, whose detail could be filled in later.

If Hamilton had had his way and the Constitution as drafted had said something like “The Supreme Court shall have power to decide what is law and what is not law” the new government would have been plainly seen as a dictatorship, and in my humble opinion it would have not had a snowball’s chance of getting ratified; even as it was, that process was no sure thing. So that’s why they left it blank — while the Federalist majority intended all along that such a power should, indeed, be owned by the Judicial Branch so that the new government could (with a little delay, and with its cooperation) do anything it wanted to do, while operating under the pretense of being strictly limited.

So Congress’ 1789 attempt to endow the Supreme Court with a new power (to hear certain cases with original jurisdiction) was not accidental, but deliberate; that particular power wasn’t very important, but it was to test the waters, establish a precedent. If they could grant it one small power then, they could later grant it bigger ones, and so eventually equip it with absolute, law-determining power. Take an inch at once, so as to take a mile later on.

Regards,
Jim Davies
LewRockwell.com

More threads worth reading:

Did the Constitution Betray the Revolution--YES! http://tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-w....

The Basis of Civilization http://tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-w....

http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php?id=P....



Why Can't You Mind Your Own Business, Berliner?

A couple of weeks ago, I was taken for a late-night drive past Mr. B's Elbow Room and Restaurant, in Gary, Indiana. We didn't have time to step in for a drink, which was disappointing. The next day, I'd said that I would have loved to hang because it's my favorite bar in Gary. My boss said, "Hey, now..." See, he thought I was making a joke out of it, which was the furthest thing from my mind.

The last -- the only -- time I was ever there, maybe six years ago now, everything in the room except the soft-porn videos and the music stopped dead, and every single head turned to look at Jid and me standing in the door. The place was utterly jammed, shoulder-to-shoulder, and we were the only white faces in the room. The pulsing heave of the dance floor stopped in a single settling pause, a bartender stopped in mid-pour, and if there was a dog in the room, then he was standing there with one hind-leg in the air and nothing happening while the look on his face said, "What the ****ing ****?"

It had been a completely innocent mistake that Jid and I had entered the place. Believe it or not, we thought that we had seen someone we knew -- yes; in Gary, Indiana -- running in the door, and since we were tired and irritated, we figured that we would go have a drink. It's a long story. Well, the person who we thought we knew wasn't there, and there we stood in this local joint where it's jumping up & down on the foundations on a Saturday night deep in a black neighborhood. As Jid later put it, "We were way white".

We kinda looked at each other, and one of us said, "Well, there's the bar..." We just sort of edged our way along toward the bar as politely as possible. God bless 'em, they let us through, and we were soon parked at the corner of the bar, having a sip and trying to be as cool as we could. I don't know how many white people they get dropping in at The Elbow Room, but they looked at us like we were zoo specimens while they were dancing. Soon enough, we must've bored everybody or something, because it was no big deal and the place was grooving like it must have been before we walked in. A couple of people said "Hi," the bartender was professionally attentive, and we all had a good time.


Comes now some dismal little potted-brain able to type this rubbish: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jake-berli....

Quote:

"Last night, on the Rachel Maddow Show (of all places for this to happen), Rand Paul said* that he wasn't necessarily comfortable with the government telling private businesses how to deal with race. Specifically, he didn't seem particularly favorable to desegregating lunch counters.

Pretty much everyone is rightfully offended by this sentiment. The question of whether or not it is an overreach of government to desegregate lunch counters is long settled."

(* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/20....)

How can this be "settled"? Who the hell settled it, and how?

I'm here to tell this creep, Berliner, that if the owner of The Elbow Room had ordered my friend and me to leave his (get it?) establishment that night, we would have had no choice but to obey instantly, because we understand and respect private property, and would never go running to the likes of him for a sanction that he had no right to presume.

No matter what you do, creep, you will never peaceably make your way around this principle. You can try all the force you want, but the elements of peoples' heart & mind character in which matters like racism abide are not available to your steel-patchouli do-goodery. You might think that you're doing "the good of society" (third paragraph) by stripping others of their right to decide on their own associations (whether you like them or not, or whether they're even rational or not), but you're not. All you're doing is feeding the hate with your obdurate refusal to grasp elemental facts of reality, to wit:

* Private property is a requisite element of human efficacy, and...
* Racism has never been destroyed by the force of law, and it never will be.

Oh, you'll destroy a lot else in the effort. I have every confidence in that. It's just that, knowing that, and seeing how dumb you really are, I only wonder whether you like the idea of all that destruction, you bloody ignorant moron.


(Link: The Liberty Papers http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2010/05/....)

May 21, 10 | 11:53 am

(Frog Stew's Fake Solutions updated to include "designated bogeymen".)

I sincerely appreciate your efforts and all the information you've provided.

I have read most of it and find it very interesting.
Forgive me if I've overlooked the answer to this question.

Can you supply me with a link or source or an example of a successful anarchist dynamic, one that can be modeled as a viable practice?

A "successful anarchist dynamic" is you, every minute of the day you're doing whatever you like without groveling for permission from da man, and keeping every nickel's worth of cash you earn without filling out bull**** in triplicate.

Read Baugh's "Starving the Monkeys".

Quote:

Read Baugh's "Starving the Monkeys".

OK, I promise I will. I read Atlas Shrugged last month and enjoyed it.

However...............

Quote:

A "successful anarchist dynamic" is you, every minute of the day you're doing whatever you like without groveling for permission from da man, and keeping every nickel's worth of cash you earn without filling out bull**** in triplicate.

Again, pardon the assumption but I believe after reading the book I'm still going to have some confusion about practical application.
I believe I understand the philosophy you're providing but it seems to me that in practice truly living it will eventually lead you at the very least in prison.....or very lonely.
And not only in this country, but in any other country as well, in all history and at present.

If you read the book you will see that if you starve the very monkeys who would throw you in jail for non-compliance you will have the opportunity for practical application.

I will read the book.
Currently I have two active dialogues with Bezzle and I plan to tie them both together, as the point I will attempt to make, in my view, is related.

I appreciate the info that has been provided here and in the Arizona thread. I will sincerely consume all the info, but I will have questions.

Maybe to clarify a bit at this time. Because there have been countless times in my life where I've been told to read a book for answers, The Bible for instance.
While the read was valuable, it didn't provide me with, "the answers" to my specific questions.

The purpose of my question pertaining to an practical example of anarchy was more of a starting point for me. And here's my angle.

At my current understanding, I believe we are slaves to our environment. That dynamic has produced the individual to be social. If for no other reason then only for a piece of ass, but mainly because it makes us happy. In essence, "slaves" to happiness.
There are other practical reasons as well. "Slaves" to practicality that forces one to conform to some type of social interaction that may compromise your philosophy in one degree or another.

I want to pause here because you may still advise me to, "read the book", or respond with other information that might dispute this. Or we may be able to dialogue further.

There are producers and non-producers (monkeys). The producers use the free market to provide value to others as well as themselves. The monkey's want to take what you produce while exchanging nothing of value in return. A community of producers is ultimately successful because all its members provide some value. Its the regulation of those exchanges of value that have no intrinsic value.
You are in a community of producers ultimately...not regulators and takers (monkeys) like we have now.

I just finished 'Starving the Monkeys' over the weekend and I have to say I'm disappointed. I think everything worthwhile in the book is covered just as well in the lecture Bezzle posted. The book has a lot of fluff, and the first half of the book is mostly a narrative about cavemen and how their ideal society became perverted over time. Quite frankly, I found the entire thing over-simplified to the point of near meaninglessness.

I also found myself skipping or skimming over long sections, particularly when he pulls out data-less charts and figures. To his credit, he even admits as much when he introduces the first one. The entire book just feels insubstantial despite its length(around 300 pages with narrow margins and small print). I wish he had more hard data and less anecdotes. His ideas are good but the book doesn't serve them justice.

Lastly, he comes across as self-aggrandizing throughout. This isn't bad, per se, but not knowing the man I often found myself wondering if he was being honest with me or was instead embellishing his own achievements. This in turn makes me skeptical of his other claims. This is something I could, in theory, verify but I don't care enough. However, I would, had the book been stronger.

I hope he writes another, more focused book. He definitely has it in him.

If you're looking for a short book of all philosophy (note: principles are not amenable to "charts" or "complexity" -- complex charts are something economists produce for bureaucrats divining the best way to "efficiently" fleece the public, and/or lie to them about how they're spending the loot):

http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?post=141....

That looks interesting. I'll read it when I can find some time.

Read it and impressed. But it needs editing badly. There are probably 150 or so really good pages in there, but, unfortunately there are about that many that need to be edited down or out.

In all, some very, very good ideas.

A Nation of Peasants: http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?post=167....

http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php?id=P....

Notes On A Desperate Futility

I was quoted, and then asked...

"We will not be voting our way out of this, ladies and gentlemen. This November doesn't matter."

Quote:

Would you condense your argument for this proposition into a post on here? I would like to understand your reasoning. I don't necessarily disagree - not as far along this trail as you - but I know you have explained this in a number of places.

Principally, it's an ethical issue, with several components.

In his book, "The Machinery of Freedom", David Friedman tells the tale of two economists, standing in front of the window at the Maserati dealership and drooling over some hot convertible. The first economist gasps, "I really want one of those."

The second economist looks him up & down, observes him not doing anything about it and says, "Obviously not."


"Values" are things (material or conceptual, bear in mind) for which we act in order to gain or keep. Here's my own variation on the point of David's joke: I often hear people tell me that they would like to play the guitar. That never impresses me. What impresses me is someone who sits down with his axe at least an hour every day and sometimes four or six hours. That person is taking the value of playing seriously enough to act for it.

Freedom doesn't even have a place in the prevailing intellectual framework of this country right now, so it's not terribly surprising that it's not a value, either. Most people don't even know what it is, much less how to act for it.

The problem is compounded in the fact that more and more people in this country are in fact voting for a living. They would no more act for freedom than cut their own throats. (This is the vanishing American conscience to which to appeal with principled civil disobedience: that window is closing.)

This is a decadent democracy, which must be the route of all democracies. Elsewhere, I have been informed that the importance of this November is in things like preventing cap & trade, repealing the medical commissariat, etc. None of that will be good enough: it addresses none of the endemic rot that has brought us to these straits. (e.g. -- the destruction of medicine in this country has been in {cough} "progress" for at least a half-century, and the consequences of all that are things like HMO's and older people working for nothing but health-care; all the conditions driving the hue & cry for more government action.) The Department of Education keeps turning out morons, etc.

In brief; the problems that must be solved before this culture is driven inexorably to its knees -- and beyond -- are the products of democracy. Their increasing prominence into crisis cannot be halted by the long process of democratic and legislative accretion that got us here. This is a trap, in the same way that a spelunker can very nicely get himself down into a crack that he cannot get up and out of.

Reagan didn't matter. (We had that moron Francis Fukuyama screeching his completely ridiculous bull****, after that.)

Newt Gingrich and his clowns didn't matter in 1994.

This November is not going to stop any of this.

Quote:

"All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even [/i]voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority."

(Henry David Thoreau -- "Civil Disobedience", emphases original)

None of this will stop unless and until enough people in this country stop committing their productivity to it. As long as what we produce is taken from us and disposed as the looters wish, it will go on.

It's about the principles, Randell, and they're all wrong.

It's that simple. Elections do not address any of that. This one, won't, either.

Oct 12, 10 - 12:54 pm Billy Beck