Opting Out of Tyranny

[Note:  My personal experiences with individual TSA employees over the past 4 years have been uniformly positive.  Having been a passenger on roughly a dozen flights over that time period, I have never been mistreated, nor have I been subjected to the body scanner or had an enhanced pat-down.  My opposition to the TSA's current actions is rooted in the belief that their policies are totalitarian in nature and therefore anathema to the proper role of government.]

Last summer one of my children was sexually assaulted in broad daylight at a public park.  At the time of the assault there were scores of people nearby, but no one recognized that the assailant was unlawfully detaining my child while groping the child's body inappropriately.  It is particularly difficult for me that I was less than 100 feet from my child while this assault occurred.  Had I seen what was taking place I would have intervened without a second of hesitation, but it was only after my child informed me of the man's actions that the police were notified and the assailant was arrested.   He will be sentenced next month for felony sexual abuse.  To say that this incident has been stressful for my entire family is an understatement akin to suggesting that the North Pole can be a bit chilly this time of year.

I share this sad experience to illustrate a similar affront to decency that is occurring daily across this nation, in full view of scores of people, who, while clearly seeing what's happening to their children and loved ones, dare not lift a finger to stop the groping.  I refer to the so-called "enhanced pat-down" now being employed by Transportation Security Administration employees at airports around the country.  If there is a more clear example of oppressive government behavior in our day, I don't know what it could be.

If you or your family wish to fly on a commercial airliner, the TSA gives you the option (for now) of either submitting to being irradiated and having naked images taken of your body or to being thoroughly groped over every inch of your body by security officers who demand complete submission to their will.  Roll your eyes or utter the most minute protest to their actions and you are virtually guaranteed to be pulled aside, interrogated, browbeaten and threatened with missing your flight or even with arrest for failing to acknowledge their absolute authority over you.

Let me put it like this:  If you take a photograph of your child in the bathtub, you could be charged with child pornography.  If a TSA employee creates a nude image of your child electronically, he or she is simply "doing their job."  If a stranger gropes your child's body he or she could go to prison for sexual assault.  But if a stranger wearing a TSA uniform gropes your child's body, the act is sanctified by the state and you as a parent are forbidden to intercede.  

How on earth did a nation that prides itself on being the freest country on the planet come to accept the kind of surly police state behavior usually reserved for third world dictatorships?  Worse still, how did an American people whose ancestors tamed a continent and stared down some of the most tyrannical governments mankind has known become so timid that they have chosen to voluntarily geld themselves of their rights in the name of promised security?  If we are willing to silently suffer the indignity of ourselves or our loved ones being electronically strip-searched and to allow our private parts to be physically groped by strangers acting under the color of law, where exactly would we draw the line regarding government demands that we submit?

The use of nudity and humiliation as a means of breaking an individual's resistance to authority is a well-documented fact of human history.  From the way the Nazis systematically stripped the Jews of their identities and their dignity prior to their liquidation, to the way that captured U.S. pilots shot down in Vietnam were paraded naked through streets of the villages, to the treatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war, those wishing to exercise dominion over others have consistently used forced nudity as a psychological tool to subjugate individuals.

The fact that the airport security scanners are using ionizing backscatter radiation to peer beneath the clothing of airline passengers and crew doesn't make the procedure any less intrusive.  Contrary to the mild and foggy images used to sell the scanners to the public, the actual digital images are graphic enough to enable the viewer to discern if a man is circumcised or if a woman is having her period.

Furthermore, assurances that the images would never be stored or disseminated have already been proven false with the case of an Indian film star whose naked images were made available after a trip through London's Heathrow airport.  The TSA's own documents make clear that the machines possess the capability to store and transmit the images of scanned passengers.

Even the stance the traveler is required to assume while in the body scanner is reminiscent of one who is surrendering with their hands in the air.

The new enhanced and invasive pat-down being used at airports across the nation appears to be a not-so-subtle punitive measure that is being used to punish those who choose to opt out of baring themselves before the state.  Upon stating your intention to opt out of the scanner, you can expect the TSA employee to announce loudly "We have an OPT OUT!", at which point you will be directed to a screening area where the so-called enhanced pat-down will occur.  This may or may not be in full view of other passengers.  The pat-down itself has been described by a number of recipients as ranging between vigorous and rough with clear and deliberate contact with the breasts and genitals through the clothing.  Any protestation, any tears or recoiling from the screener's fondling fingers and the pat-down has to start all over again.  Make a big enough fuss and you'll be detained while law enforcement comes over to escort you out of the airport.    

Many TSA workers appear to be providing credence to the findings of the Stanford prison experiment that showed that in a situation with prisoners and guards, some of those placed in a position of authority over others will gravitate toward sadistic and abusive behavior toward those over whom they have power.  As in the Milgram Experiment in which individuals ignored their own consciences when prompted by an authority figure to inflict (what they believed was actual) harm via electrical shock upon another person, TSA employees have shown a clear tendency excuse the distress of those they're screening by claiming that they are only following policy.

With 450 body scanner machines expected to be in operation by the end of this year and another 500 expected to be installed next year, an even more disturbing thought is the prospect of such scanners being utilized for screening people at courthouses, bus & train stations or even outside sporting venues.  If we meekly submit and allow body scanners to become the norm for travel now, it's reasonable to expect that the state will find excuses for the use of them to become even more widespread in the future.  What then?

 Sheldon Richman of the Future of Freedom Foundation notes:

“Many of us grow up believing that government reflects the will of the people. But skeptics know better. Government has assumed more and more control over private life not because the people demanded it, but because power-seekers and privilege-seekers sought outlets for their ambitions. They then propagandized the public until a sufficient number of people came to believe government control was good for them."

Of course, the justification for what too many Americans meekly accept as necessary government misbehavior stems from the successful fear-mongering that predictably followed the 9/11 terror attacks.  9/11 "changed everything" we are told ad nauseam as the government scrambles to deal with the threat of terrorism by treating all of us as potential terrorists.  The folly of the TSA's current see-you-naked/feel-you-up approach to thwarting terrorism is best illustrated by the fact that the Israelis, who have a stellar record for terror-free airline flights, don't use the body scanners because they are considered nothing more than security theater.

Now some good news.  The overbearing state, which tends to act as if the only choices are between security and terrorism, is finally experiencing serious backlash to its latest ramping up of invasive security policies.  A revolt is brewing--not among the timid passengers--but among the airline crews who are also being subjected to unreasonable demands upon their dignity.  Flight attendants have filed a grievance with their union over the enhanced pat-down procedure that they are being forced to endure just like the passengers.  And a particularly courageous airline pilot named Michael Roberts has chosen to put his career on the line by saying "enough" to TSA functionaries who sought to run him through the same gauntlet of nuclear nudity and physical groping.   These are but two examples of fighting back, but they should serve to inspire those of us who prefer independent thought and liberty over timid groupthink to seriously question how we can make a similar principled stand for the freedoms we cherish.

We still have much for which to be grateful in terms of our freedoms and opportunities in this nation, however, it is a foolish belief that any government will keep cherished freedoms perpetually secure without first being checked and balanced to define its proper role. Ignorance of this principle has produced a dangerous complacency in which far too many Americans mistake merely giving lip service to liberty for the positive action required to defend it.

For my part, I cannot stand by while strangers in uniform molest me or my family members, therefore, I will no longer patronize any airline nor will I subject my family to the demands of the security apparatus until such time as the TSA ceases treating all airline passengers as terror suspects or worse.  If enough people refuse to lend legitimacy to a system that systematically abuses them, it will have no power over them and eventually fade into obscurity.

Love of Liberty is Considered a Mental Illness

Just a few generations ago, if a person needed a credible witness to establish their personal character in a court of law, they would bring in a member of the clergy.  Today when a credible witness is needed to testify regarding another person's character, we bring in a psychiatrist.  While this may appear to be a natural consequence of the progression of modern science, medicine and law, there is a very real danger that accompanies this shift.  When psychiatry becomes an arm of the state, it enables the abusers of state power to marginalize and to get rid of unwanted people.

This is not as recent a trend as many would believe, but according to Dr. Thomas S. Szasz, since it's  development nearly 300 years ago, psychiatry has consistently served as an arm of the law and has provided a means of dealing with those deemed inconvenient by the state.  But what the state considers a nuisance isn't strictly limited to deviants, or those with true mental defects.  It also applies to those who, for a variety of reasons, refuse to submit unconditionally to the state's authority or demands.

Let that sink in for a moment.

You don't have to be schizophrenic, or anti-social or criminally insane for state experts to pronounce you mentally ill and therefore a ward of the state.  If you are a free thinker, a constitutionalist, an Oath Keeper, a non-conformist, a peaceful activist or resistor, or if you practice any degree of civil disobedience or question authority--it's official--your disorder is now listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-IV-TR Fourth Edition.

Courtesy: UWSGO.com

Modern psychiatry calls your illness Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and it's not just for kids who won't eat their broccoli.  Take a few minutes and read for yourself this 3 page excerpt from the DSM-IV-TR Fourth Edition describing ODD and its diagnostic features.

UWSGO.com highlights some of the key ideas from the excerpt that should get the attention of anyone who considers it their duty to stand for correct principles even if it requires swimming against the tide of public opinion:

The essential feature of Oppositional Defiant Disorder is a recurrent pattern of negativistic, defiant, disobedient. and hostile behavior toward authority figures that persists for at least 6 months...

Negativistic and defiant behaviors are expressed by persistent Stubbornness, resistance to directions, and unwillingness to compromise, give in, or negotiate with adults or peers. Defiance may also include deliberate or persistent testing of limits, usually by ignoring orders, arguing, and failing to accept blame for misdeeds. Hostility can be directed at adults or peers and is shown by deliberately annoying others or by verbal aggression (usually without the more serious physical aggression seen in Conduct Disorder)...  

Defiance may also include deliberate or persistent testing of limits, usually by ignoring orders, arguing, and failing to accept blame for misdeeds...

I may be oversimplifying what the psych manual is saying but it sounds a lot like if you're not willing to shut up, compromise, conform and go along with those who are exercising (state) authority over you, then you may be diagnosed as the ODD man out.  Pun intended.

Question the wisdom of being electronically strip searched and/or physically groped in order to board a commercial airline flight and you will be singled out for "special attention."  Refuse an order to confiscate lawfully owned firearms from private citizens who have committed no crime and you are a prime candidate for deep scrutiny of your mental health.  Engage in any form of civil disobedience, free thinking or non-conformity (sorry, Rosa Parks) and you will be treated as a direct threat to the authority of those in power.

When medicine and the state become bedfellows, there is a tendency for newly "discovered" diseases to have political implications.  This is especially true when it comes to the American Psychiatric Association and its tendency to vote disorders and diseases in or out of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual by a simple show of hands.  A classic example of this was the vote in 1973 by the APA to remove homosexuality as an abnormal behavior from DSM II after intense lobbying by pro-homosexual activists.  Scientific research was not the basis for this vote, it was a purely political move and it has provided a toehold for the homosexual lobby to achieve a surprising amount of political power since then.

Note how often those who refuse to call homosexual behavior normal and acceptable are "diagnosed" as homophobic by their opponents.  They are accused, using the language of psychiatry, of suffering from an irrational, clinical fear of homosexuals.  In other words, disagreement equals a mental disorder.

How many children sit in a drug-induced stupor in government schools because their teacher or school counselor, in conjunction with health officials, became annoyed at their "hyperactive" behavior and followed the psychiatric playbook of drugging them into submission?

Even gun owners are finding themselves increasingly painted into a corner where among the criteria by which the state dictates whether one may legally possess or purchase a firearm is the question of whether the individual has ever been "adjudicated as mentally defective or committed to a mental institution."  How difficult would it be to expand the definitions of what makes one "mentally defective" to include ODD?  Again, the concern here is that when government and Psychiatry team up to establish what constitutes acceptable attitudes and what is considered "anti-social", the conclusions always seem to miraculously fall in favor of desired government result.  Purely by coincidence, of course.

Under the brutal leadership of Joseph Stalin, millions of Russians found themselves in the gulag for what was ambiguously referred to as "anti-Soviet" thinking or activities.  The use of Psychiatry as a tool of oppression has been used by countless dictators whose experts eagerly labeled dissidents as mentally ill as a means of discouraging those who might be tempted to challenge the regime's authority.  There is a reason why despotic governments have favored some form of so-called re-education as a means of helping their subjects get their thinking right.  The problem with the dissidents, you see, is all in their heads.

Involuntary commitment and coerced or drugging non-conformists to solve their mental problems is a handy way to keep those who would make trouble for the regime under the state's control and effectively marginalized from society.  After all, who are you going to believe, the government and its experts, or that free-thinking lunatic in the straitjacket?

Here's something to consider from Dr. Szasz on the separation of Psychiatry & the state:

If we recognize that "mental illness" is a metaphor for disapproved thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, we are compelled to recognize as well that the primary function of Psychiatry is to control thought, mood, and behavior. Hence, like Church and State, Psychiatry and the State ought to be separated by a "wall." At the same time, the State ought not to interfere with mental health practices between consenting adults. The role of psychiatrists and mental health experts with regard to law, the school system, and other organizations ought to be similar to the role of clergymen in those situations.    

 The battle for free agency is being fought on many levels.  It's critically important to know your opponent and his methods; especially those tactics that have been artfully concealed in plain sight.

Guest Commentary from Casey Anderson: Juan Williams, NPR & Free Speech

Last week, as you have undoubtedly heard in the media, Juan Williams was fired from his position as National Public Radio news analyst.  NPR claimed that it was not his proper role as a new analyst to communicate his personal opinions on air.  It is important to note that Williams is also a Fox News Contributor and it was during a Fox News Show, not an NPR broadcast, that Williams communicated his beliefs.

Blasphemer in the Temple of State

Williams stated he gets "nervous" whenever he sees someone in "Muslim garb" boarding a plane.  He went on to further communicate issues related to prejudice amongst other minorities.  Williams is a left-leaning Fox News Contributor who was making an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor news program when the comment was made.

What you are hearing in the media is mostly how it is unfair that somebody be fired for making known their conservative beliefs and being honest.  While this is a good discussion to be having.  There are two points that are missing from this national discussion.  The first discussion is whether or not the operator of a company should have the authority to fire an employee who they feel is not working under the guide of their role and responsibility or is negatively effecting the business at hand.  The second issue that is being avoiding is whether or not tax-payer dollars should be going to the National Public Radio.

National Proletariat Radio?

The choice is clear for limited government advocates: The government has no business managing the airwaves or managing a business that operates within those airwaves what-so-ever.  National Public Radio should be immediately defunded and property rights returned to citizens of this country.  It seems to this author that this should be an argument of the vast majority of citizens if you realize the underlying principle of avoiding government hindrance to the free-market.  If we have NPR functioning as a pseudo-propaganda arm of whichever socialist or fascist president happens to be in office in that term, it will surely promote an unfair playing field when comparing it to other media sources whether they be liberal or conservative.  How are radio hosts who actually have to earn their support ever going to compete with those who simply steal it through taxation?  I will also support the hard working Americans who grow their business through hard work and perseverance despite their political affiliations or ideologies.

The underlying principle is that government should not be in the business of convincing voters to support its failed policies.  Medicare and HHS recently announced a $30 million project to promote the benefits of the new Obamacare legislation in hopes of garnishing more support.  This is the biggest issue currently with Washington D.C., they feel we just are not educated enough on the issues.  So, when 70% of Americans oppose Obamacare, they pass it anyway and then spend your money (and your children's future) to convince you otherwise.  They also fire news analyst who offer contrary opinions.

However, with NPR being a largely publicly funded entity, it makes this issue more complicated.  Just as this administration has the authority to fire an employee they feel is not performing their duties appropriately, the next one will as well, and the following.  So, if Barack Obama is subsequently fired in 2012 and voters express a clear choice in the direction they want the administration and NPR to go - I expect we will not hear much bickering from the left when NPR is and rightly should be defunded.  Although I highly expect there will be rioting in the streets when the liberal left-leaning media does not have their way.

Casey Anderson-Campaign for Liberty Regional Coordinator

The Tyrant Next Door

What makes a community a great place to live?  The answer will vary from person to person but most of us would agree on qualities like cleanliness, order and low crime.  Notably missing from those terms we use to describe a livable community is the word “freedom”.  In fact, occasionally the concept of freedom is found to be somewhat at odds with what some community leaders consider the proper function of local government.  A clean, orderly community and personal freedom shouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive terms.  But there is an increasing rift between the two.    

The unnecessary arrest and jailing of Betty Perry of Orem after a local code enforcement officer confronted her about her dying lawn in 2007 made headlines throughout the state of Utah and elsewhere.  Some blamed the police officer who apparently placed more emphasis on the enforcement part of his job than on his peace officer training.  Others place the blame on the septuagenarian grandmother who refused to cooperate by signing a ticket or giving her name until she could talk to her lawyer.  Both participants share a portion of the blame, but the needless situation actually finds its genesis in the zoning ordinance that elevates bad yard keeping to criminal status.

She should have submitted more quickly, right?

Orem is one of many municipalities across the country that has zoning ordinances which were put in place to address so-called nuisance properties that may be considered an eyesore by their neighbors.  Though it may seem innocuous to some, it’s important to remember that every law and every ordinance carries a potential death sentence if one fails to submit to the authority of the state.  Thus when a widow finds herself unable to afford the extravagance of watering her lawn, the ordinance regarding neglected yards may set the stage for her to end up bleeding, face-down on the ground in handcuffs, in jail or even dead if she were to resist vigorously enough.  

Implicit in every law, ordinance, statute, and code is a mechanism for enforcement which, taken to its logical end, allows the state or municipality to use increasing amounts of coercion up to and including lethal force, if necessary, against the non-compliant.  This is worth remembering when government at any level seeks to “protect” us from nuisances that could and should be handled civilly.  Force is how government accomplishes its goals and too many people have become conditioned to believe that government force cannot be applied in an unrighteous fashion. 

Thankfully, Orem City officials recognized the officer’s overreaction and released Perry from custody with a heartfelt apology.  The officer was sent him home for the day while public safety officials reviewed the way the incident was handled.  They’ve made the best of a bad situation, but wouldn’t it have been better to have never happened?

Was it you or your freedom?

This is precisely the reason that laws and ordinances must be carefully considered before their passage, to ensure that overkill is not the result.

As has been noted on this blog previously, there are essentially two types of law.  Mala in se are laws forbidding an act that would be considered evil by its very nature such as rape, murder, arson, etc.  Mala prohibita refers to a prohibited act that is considered a crime only by statute such as not keeping one’s yard neat and tidy.  The fact that so many of our municipal ordinances are mala prohibitum shows a couple of things about our society in general.

First of all, it demonstrates an unhealthy reliance upon the state to act as the final arbiter of what is right and what is wrong.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his address to the Harvard graduating class of 1978 observed that Western societies were becoming civic cowards in that we tended to solve our conflicts by appealing to the letter of the law as the ultimate source of moral authority.   

A man who saw despotism firsthand

Solzhenitsyn noted that, “The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man's noblest impulses.”

Secondly, those noblest impulses we’re ignoring include a degree of neighborly behavior that could solve many of the problems without having to resort to a legal action.  In the case of Betty Perry, how differently might things have gone had an offended neighbor approached her personally and expressed concern instead of phoning in an anonymous complaint to the authorities?  With just a bit of teamwork and a desire to seek a win-win outcome, the problem could have been corrected and the debacle of her arrest would have been avoided.

Perhaps our quest for better living could rely less on zoning ordinances and more on simply being good neighbors.  But this is only one of the potential drawbacks of vigorous code enforcement.  A more insidious problem is that of creating new classes of crimes for the dual purposes of generating revenue and exerting greater control over the citizenry at the local level.

In Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” one of the characters famously remarks, “Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone?”  Looking at the headlines lately, it appears that this concept of turning laws into revenue generators is finding favor among municipalities across the nation. 

In Las Vegas, 51 year old Delinda Epstein recently was slapped with a $3800 fine and the impoundment of her car after posting an ad on Craigslist offering to do errands and chores for a negotiated fee.  After picking up a client who had hired her to provide a ride from the airport, Delinda was arrested and charged with the crime of “providing unlicensed transportation” in her duly registered and licensed vehicle.

A new breed of criminals requires a new breed of revenue collectors

Her arrest was far less traumatic than the ones experienced by unemployed construction workers in Broward County, Florida who got the full guns-in-the-face, thrown-to-the-ground, hut-hut-hut treatment served up by Broward County deputies during their arrests.  What did these law-breakers do to merit the full tactical response?  They had responded to ads seeking workers for minor construction or repair jobs but had failed to secure the state’s permission first by paying the appropriate tribute via licensing fees.

Many folks tend to excuse such actions on the part of the state by claiming that “These measures are to protect people from predatory, unlicensed workers.”  But please note that in each of the above examples, the law was used to punish pre-emptively; where no actual harm had occurred.  Such stories are glaring examples of how preventative laws are finding favor in our society and they further illustrate how many of our laws, ordinances and statutes are being crafted and applied to further the interests of government rather than to protect the rights of the citizenry.

When cities send out swarms of code enforcement officers to ensure that our landscaping is within code, that our lawns are the right color, that any parked vehicles (inside or outside) are licensed and running and that we don’t have asphalt shingles or other dangerous items stored on our property, are they seeking to secure the interests of the property owner or the city?  When authorities prefer to threaten fines, confiscation, or the filing of liens against property owners rather than seeking to negotiate variances, conditional use permits or other civil means of remedy it appears that they are cashing in on Rand’s point that it’s impossible to “rule innocent men.”

Creating new crimes is providing states, cities and counties with a ready mechanism of collectivist control coupled with a means of generating revenue at the expense of the citizens they claim to be protecting.  Punishing people pre-emptively where no harm has taken place flies in the face of our traditions that the state exists to serve the citizens by ensuring justice and fairness through protection of individual rights.       

By contrast, protective laws are those that come into play civilly or legally only after an actual injury to person or property has occurred.  Real freedom hinges upon our ability to distinguish between preventative and protective laws.  Two excellent resources for gaining insight to this difference are The Law by 19th Century French economist Frederic Bastiat and The Proper Role of Government by former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra T. Benson.  

A citizenry that understands the correct role of government and is willing to shoulder a greater degree of personal responsibility in maintaining and governing their community will find that they can enjoy a livable community and greater freedom as well.  That’s what motivational author Steven R. Covey would describe as a win-win situation for all.  

Questions You Should Be Asking Candidates

Less than a month remains before the first Tuesday in November and the current election cycle is finally beginning to peak.  Many self-identified conservative commentators are breathlessly reminding us that "This is the most important election of our lifetimes" while they're busy helping set up the Republican Koolaid stand.

Democrats seem to be keeping a fairly low profile this year, perhaps conscious at last of the mounting frustration of an electorate that has had a bellyful of government imposition in the form of a health care law that was enacted over the protests of many Americans.  The memory of November 1994 and the house cleaning that took place in Congress that year is still causing sleepless nights for many politicians.

I'm certain that many voters, across the spectrum, are determined to make their voices heard this election, but if they allow themselves to be shepherded into the voting booth along party lines, they are playing a loser's game.  The real issue for this and for every election is determining which candidate best understands and supports the proper role of government.

The trouble is, most candidates have a tendency to become rather chameleon-like when running for office and can endlessly spout heart-warming platitudes about their love of liberty, patriotism, and the Constitution.  In other words, they're very good at telling us what we want to hear if we don't ask the right questions.

So how can we accurately determine a candidate's stand on the proper role of government without giving them a chance to showcase their tap-dancing skills?  It's all in asking the right questions.

Many years ago, I stumbled across a questionnaire created by syndicated columnist and Las Vegas Review Journal writer Vin Suprynowicz and later polished by freedom activist Alan Korwin that enables the questioner to effectively analyze a given candidate's true understanding of the proper role of government.  I've actually used these questions on numerous local, state and national candidates on my talk show and I can attest to the fact that these questions--and their follow up--allow candidates virtually no wiggle room for escape.

Try them on those lucky candidates with whom you have the opportunity to chat and watch them either shine or slink away in shame depending upon their knowledge and understanding of the Constitution  which they will swear to uphold in their oath of office.  CAUTION: This is powerful stuff; use it carefully.  

1) Can lawmakers enact legislation for any purpose "in the public interest," or are they limited to those functions for which they've been delegated specific powers? Can you name some areas where government could probably do some good, but where it has no delegated power to act? If you can't name any such areas, is it still accurate to say Americans have a "government of limited powers"? Does this matter?

2) Can you name any departments or programs not specifically authorized in the state's (or the nation's) founding documents? Should someone who has sworn an oath to protect the Constitution, but who then votes to allocate tax funds to programs or departments not authorized by that Constitution, be punished? If not, why not?

3) Can you name a current tax that you would repeal? A fee?

4) Are residents of our state free to engage in any business they choose? Is operating any local business for profit a privilege, for which a citizen should apply for a permit, paying a fee or tax? Would you favor any changes in this regard?

5) Do residents of this state have a right to buy and keep machine guns? Why or why not?

6) Do residents of this state have a right to carry handguns openly on their hips without applying for or receiving a "permit"? Why or why not? Would you change current law enforcement in this area? In what way?

7) Should judges tell jurors they have a right to decide whether the law in question is constitutional? Is it a fair trial if the judge tells the jurors they do NOT have a right to decide the constitutionality of the law? Should judges be allowed to prevent defendants from presenting any defense they choose? If not, what is the proper recourse in the case of a judge who refuses to let the defendant do so?

8) Should judges exclude prospective jurors after questioning them and determining they do not favor the law which the prosecution seeks to enforce? If so, why do we still call them "random juries"? Does that mean the John Peter Zenger jury should have been stacked with crown sympathizers? Should juries have been stacked in the 1850s to guarantee convictions under the Fugitive Slave Act? Should judges be punished for thus excluding jurors based on "voir dire" questioning? Alfred the Great summarily executed judges who replaced jurors who refused to convict. Would this be a good solution for us to adopt, today? Why not?

9) Should it be legal for police to search automobiles without a warrant? Is it OK for police to tell drivers they have to consent to such a search? If a police officer searches a car without a warrant, should the police officer be arrested and put on trial? If not, why not?

10) If a police officer stops a car in which the driver is carrying a legal pistol, with a permit, should the officer disarm the driver before proceeding to write a ticket? Why or why not?

11) If police serve a search warrant which does not list any firearms, but they find firearms in the house being searched, is it OK for them to seize the firearms anyway? Why or why not? Would you favor a law to alter current practice in this regard? If so, specify.

12) Do we need more "gun control" (victim disarmament) laws? If so, name one new "gun control" law you would favor. If not, can you name a current "gun control" law you would repeal?

13) Can a tax rate be so high that it's not acceptable? If so, name a tax rate so high that citizens would be under no moral obligation to pay it. If you can't name such a rate, are you saying the government has a right to take 100 percent of what we earn and what we own?

14) Is the war on drugs succeeding? Can it succeed? Should all drugs be legalized? If not, why not? Should recreational drug users be committed for psychiatric treatment?

15) Whose powers are limited by the 10th Amendment? Can you think of any ways to improve enforcement of the 10th Amendment? No, you can't look it up.

A Likely Reaction

Not many candidates can endure more than a couple of these questions before suddenly remembering an overdue appointment or excusing themselves to visit with someone who's more interested in what pork they can provide for the electorate.  But this isn't just a sophomoric game of Gotcha for those voters who are serious about moving the cause of liberty.  It's an opportunity to exercise the kind of stewardship we should be exercising every day of every year as we participate in governing ourselves.

Asking these types of questions requires a sweet boldness, a dose of diplomacy and a willingness to suffer the slings and arrows of those who are unaccustomed to being held to account.  You won't make many friends among the political class, but then again, you've probably already recognized that their interests and your interests aren't exactly the same thing, haven't you?

And should you decide to step up and run for office yourself, you'll already know what someone who stands for liberty and the proper role of government must understand.

RIP: Joseph Sobran

My decision 13 years ago to sit down in front of a keyboard and to pay the price to become a writer was greatly influenced by a number of key mentors who paved the way before me.  Some of those mentors, like my dear departed friend Jerry Askeroth, I knew personally and others exercised a profound influence upon me through their writings.  Joseph Sobran was one of those influential writers to whom I owe a tremendous debt for his inspiration.  His passing yesterday at age 64 due to complications of diabetes marks the end of an extraordinary and principled life spent in defense of the cause of liberty.

Joseph Sobran

Joe Sobran was a brilliant writer and thinker, but the thing that most exemplified his personal character was his willingness to remain true to his principles even if it came at the price of great personal sacrifice.  His promising career at National Review was cut short when he refused to endorse the neoconservative agenda of the U.S. warfare state that has brought so much (ahem) good to the world in recent decades.  

For this act of defiance, Sobran endured numerous unjust smears accusing him of anti-Semitism without returning railing for railing.  His defense of God, family, and country--in that order--was a ray of guiding light in an increasingly darkening culture that worships self, power and dominion over others.

His essay How Tyranny Came to America should be considered required reading for anyone who wishes to better understand how our nation came off its Constitutional rails.  Much more needs to be said about this man but for now I'd like to share some of my favorite Sobran quotes as examples of his willingness to stand for truths that some consider unpopular.  Be warned; there are a lot of quotes here, but they offer a great deal of insight into many of the hot-button issues of our time.

Why should a government that increasingly limits the sphere of freedom, privacy, and choice in every other area show such consistent favor to sexual libertarianism alone? Because the traditional code is designed to support the family as the basic unit of society, and the family, like religion and private property, is one of the foundations of liberty and resistance to monolithic state power. 

Without religion, the state faces no rival moral authority. Without property, freedom has no material basis, and everyone becomes dependent on the state for support. And without the family, the individual belongs almost wholly to the state, with no stable competing loyalty. 

The sexual revolution is really an attack on the cellular structure of society. Under communism, “free love,” including abortion, was the only freedom left, because it’s the only freedom the total state finds congenial. Citizenship ceases to be just one aspect of identity and becomes your only identity. In short order, citizenship is reduced to total subjection to the state. 

“Sexual freedom” is what we used to have: the freedom to choose one’s mate and to build a family. But the term has been redefined to mean sexual anomie and irresponsibility. 

There is no real paradox here. The state continually releases us from our duties to our families as it increases our obligations to itself. You can leave your spouse, abort your children, abandon your parents. But you can’t divorce the state. 

The state gives you two options. If you won’t be its dependent, you must pay taxes to support those who are. Living off others’ taxes is legitimate; refusing to pay those taxes is criminal. 

It’s a tangled situation, the sort of mess that results when civil rights comes to mean not freedom of association, but the reverse: compulsory association. When we hear the term civil rights nowadays, we instantly know we are in for more, not less, government power over our private lives. Civil rights has become shorthand for state coercion.

Homosexuals are rapidly being added to the roster of victim categories who may use state power to force others to accept them. “Civil rights,” in this baneful sense, trumps all religious, moral, and other personal reservations. And militant homosexuals have targeted the Boy Scouts for punishment because the Scouts’ code of behavior upholds traditional Christian sexual morality.

There has never been a humane communist regime. Marxism is inherently totalitarian. It recognizes no moral limits on the state. It’s the most convenient ideology for aspiring tyrants; it also retains its appeal for intellectuals, who have proved equally skillful at rationalizing abuses of power and at exculpating themselves. 

If the tyrants had really “betrayed” Marx, you’d expect the true-blue Marxists to be nervously vigilant against pseudo-Marxist despots. But they never are. They are always willing to trust every new ruler who acts in the holy name of Marxism. 

The most successful ideology of the 20th century denied any divine element in man or the universe warranting modesty in the state. That meant the end of privacy. People were punished for their thoughts — even thoughts they hadn’t had yet, but which the Marxist rulers could predict they would have because of their class membership. (“Scientific” socialism didn’t have to wait until they had really committed crimes, not even thought-crimes.)

We are indebted to Marx for the general assumption that everything is the state’s business, and that even privacy is something that can exist only by the grace of the state’s rather suspicious permission. 

An idea has really triumphed when people are no longer aware that there is any alternative to it.

Cultural liberals are scornful of “old taboos,” but they’re always eager to establish and enforce new taboos. Disapproval of homosexuality is rapidly becoming one of the new ones. If you say it’s a perversion, you will be accused of “hate,” as if you were targeting people rather than evaluating practices. Liberals never acknowledge their own hatred of Western traditions; they merely ascribe their hostility to their “idealism,” a motive their self-congratulation won’t allow them to ascribe to conservatives. (They also claim to be on the side of science, while holding that science is “value-free.”) 

So, as usual when liberals control the discussion, the debate quickly turns into a test of motives. If your motives are generous, you will approve of same-sex marriage; if you withhold approval, your motives must be nasty, and the difference between you and the Ku Klux Klan is only a matter of degree. 

This isn’t debate; it’s accusation and intimidation. You can’t have a real debate when one side is stigmatized in advance as bigoted and, heaven help us, “homophobic” — a suitably perverse coinage, which basically means “not sufficiently progressive.” 

In the case of same-sex marriage, conservatives are also under special inhibitions. They believe in public reticence about sex and excretion, so they are accordingly reluctant to discuss rather obvious clinical distinctions — reproductive, sanitary, and olfactory — between orifices. The best comment I have heard on same-sex marriage can’t be printed in a family newspaper (and I guess I wouldn’t want it to be). 

A few years ago liberalism’s bulletin-board orthodoxy (it changes weekly) held, under the sway of feminism, that marriage was an evil, outmoded, patriarchal institution. Besides, what did a “piece of paper” have to do with love? 

Now, it seems, marriage is such a vital institution that it’s cruel to exclude anyone from its joys. And you exclude people merely by declining to redefine this ancient institution to suit their tastes. The “right” to marry means the right to overturn not only tradition, but common sense. 

This position is not just wrong; it’s also — and this is what makes it somewhat awkward to argue with — stunningly whimsical. You hardly know whether to refute it or just wait it out, hoping it will blow over, giving place to the next morally imperative fad.

I’ve noticed that the more you evolve, the further left you seem to go. That’s why I try to resist the evolutionary process. By its logic, the most highly evolved being of recent times was Mao Zedong. To my way of thinking, it behooves one to keep in touch with one’s cave-man roots. 

[Peter] Jennings shares with the president a view of the American people as a sort of gigantic kindergarten class waiting for their tutelage. Their notion of enlightenment is to have the whole class chanting in unison, “Diversity is good! Diversity is good!” 

After all, as the president reminded us, “diversity” is our greatest strength. That must be why he wants the federal government to make sure all children get the same kind and degree of education. 

G.K. Chesterton said that the purpose of an open mind, like that of an open mouth, is to close on something. If you still doubt O.J. Simpson’s guilt, for example, are you really open-minded in any commendable sense? Or is your mind simply closed against the evidence? 

In fact it’s nonsense to say flatly that a mind should be “open” or “closed.” The real question is when, not whether, to close it. Of course it’s wrong to close it prematurely. But at some point you have to make a commitment about the truth of things.

The very idea of abolishing slavery is a modern one, which arose in Christian civilization. The pagan world never produced an abolitionist movement, though individual slaves often gained their liberty

Can it be an accident that back when people were more judgmental, they didn’t shoot each other quite so often? It may seem paradoxical, but it’s quite natural. Simple, even. When you have commonly accepted moral standards, you don’t usually need to resort to force. But when moral rebuke no longer exerts its restraining influence, there is a human temptation to blow the offending party away, as it were. 

I realize that to say that things keep getting worse is highly judgmental. So maybe I should say that they keep getting worse from a judgmental point of view. From a nonjudgmental perspective, of course, everything is fine.

It would be a healthy exercise for every politician to look in the mirror every morning and remind himself that he holds office only because, in a two-man race against another mediocrity, a modest majority of those half-informed people who imagined that their votes mattered reckoned that he was the lesser evil. And they weren’t too sure about that. 

Too often today, the high and holy cause of unbelief is threatened by the smug sanctimony of the atheists. 

Consider Christopher Hitchens, author of the new book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, whose title is perhaps self-explanatory. Religion poisons everything? Everything? Bach and Mozart? Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman? 

And what about atheists like Stalin? Hitchens is ready for that one, citing Orwell: “A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy.” Besides, we may note, Stalin went to a seminary, where maybe he picked some bad thinking habits, which he couldn’t shake off when he stopped believing in God. Even bad atheists, it seems, can be chalked up to religion. 

Now Hitchens himself, born English and naturalized American, is a learned and eloquent man. (I’ve debated him on politics, and I have the scars to prove it.) But when he gets on the subject of religion — any and all religion, mind you — he turns plain silly. Like so many of his breed, he seems to think he can settle an argument with a combination of British suavity and British snot. After reading him, I’m always surer I know whom he hates (or, less often, loves) than what he thinks.

Mean old nuns whacked my knuckles with a ruler, ergo God does not exist. This is less inductive reasoning than simple free association with a grudge. Religion reminds Christopher Hitchens of a lot of bad memories, even if they are historical rather than autobiographical. That is, they are bad things he’s read about, not necessarily experienced himself. Somehow I’d expected a more rigorous argument. 

If you really think belief in God or gods has always caused so much suffering (such as the Trojan War, a quagmire which I, as a Catholic, would have opposed from the start), then it seems to me that you ought to propagate atheism seriously — not just out of vanity to show how clever you are, but out of those same humanitarian motives to which you say religion is repugnant, and by which you claim to be driven. No need to humiliate the poor believers, is there? 

What it comes to is that your conception of human nature may be not merely wrong, but impolite. If you think God or nature had a purpose in making two sexes, so that sodomy isn’t quite on a par with making babies, please — keep it to yourself! 

In Washington, sodomy isn’t disapproved; but the word sodomy is, and you can damage your career by using it in public. You are expected to let on that you’d be horrified to learn that your son smokes Camels, but proud to learn that he’s gay. Would these be the reactions of any parent you know? 

What hypocrisy! But such is sophistication. We display our refinement by pretending not to have natural feelings. In the space of a few years, the tradition of millennia is repudiated. What’s more, the repudiation is mandatory for everyone. You might think that a liberal, tolerant society would leave a little room for what, until recently, everyone assumed, but no! — no trace of the old attitude is permitted. 

The one thing liberalism has “zero tolerance” for is the past. We live in a pluralistic society now, where everyone must think and talk alike, in keeping with the latest federal diversity guidelines.

But atheists are also typically indignant that some people believe in God rather than Darwin, even though belief in God, however irrational, may deter some people from killing others. Granted, from an atheistic point of view this is often a disappointing universe, but if a bit of superstition makes it marginally more bearable at times, why complain? Out in the jungle, the lower animals, as we used to call them before Darwin abolished the distinction between “higher” and “lower,” kill each other all the time, with a refreshing lack of moral outrage. Why should man take it so hard? Isn’t what we call morality, in the end, a mere matter of taste? 

But people who don’t believe in damnation have an odd way of believing in diagnosis. If they can’t say you belong in hell, they usually say you belong in a loony bin. It’s as if they hate God for not existing, and for consequently failing to damn people who need damning. At the same time, they think the whole idea of hell shows how cruel religion is. Go figure. 

Because we need nutrition, we feel hunger. What does it tell us that all men have spiritual hungers? Only that they are all deluded? Or is it that they all crave the “poison” of religion? If the spiritual is a mere delusion, of which our animal nature has no real need, how odd that it should be a universal delusion, rather than a local cultural eccentricity. 

Even a Darwinian materialist, after all, might concede that piety can have its bright side, just as the love of truth or beauty does. For that matter, how does belief in evolution itself conduce to survival? If it’s necessary, why did it take mankind so long to think of it? If it’s not necessary, what purpose is really served by advocating it?

According to liberals, if you think marriage makes sense only as an objective relation between people of opposite sexes — for the practical purpose of establishing and regulating paternity — you must hate gay people. And hate, after all, is the essence, if anything is, of what it means to be right-wing. It goes hand in hand with logic and defining things, and is but a short step from outright popery. (Let us not forget that the Catholic Church has always persecuted science.) A liberal God, if such existed, would want everyone to have the right to marry, even — or especially — gay people. He would also accept gay and lesbian bishops.

Consider homosexuality. Everyone knows it’s a serious disorder; nobody wishes it on anyone he loves; a parent who tried to turn a child homosexual would be considered monstrous. But the new hypocrisy requires us to pretend that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality except “society’s attitude” toward it, which of course we are supposed to correct. 

In fact the new hypocrisy is a necessary aspect of the “new morality.” There is no “new” morality. There is only the systematic pretense that sexual vice is not vice. 

Under the new rules, you can be called a hypocrite for upholding old standards of virtue that you don’t exemplify perfectly; but you can’t be called a hypocrite for sinking into utter moral squalor, as long as you profess to believe there’s nothing wrong with it. So the defender of traditional morality is kept constantly on the defensive, since only he can be accused of hypocrisy. 

It’s quite a clever system, because it works entirely to the advantage of one side, while the other side has been slow to figure it out. But it boils down to something simple and obvious. 

If you set high standards, there is the danger that you’ll create an embarrassing gap between what you believe and what you do. The actual may fall short of the ideal; in fact it’s almost certain to do so, and you may look hypocritical when you’re only human. 

But if you profess low standards, there’s no danger of such a gap. Your behavior is all too likely to meet your standards. If you openly advocate pedophilia, then the one thing you can’t be accused of when you’re caught in bed with a little child is hypocrisy.

To hear the gay version, you’d think that marriage was created to endow heterosexuals with special “rights” that were denied to homosexuals — a total, and lugubrious, misconception. The institution is prior to the rights attached to it. 

Nearly every society has some version of marriage, simply because the institution is necessary for the care of women and children and for the orderly distribution of property. This social necessity isn’t a matter of creating rights, but of defining pretty basic obligations. The people on whom these obligations must be imposed are, obviously, those who are capable of having children. 

The people most apt to want the pleasures of marriage without the obligations are, as you may have observed, young men. Men complain about marriage. Women don’t complain about marriage; they complain about men. 

The relation between marriage and “rights” is much more complicated than the gay version suggests. In most societies marriage is less a right than a duty, and the failure or refusal to marry can bring shame and other penalties on the unmarried. In many societies parents choose spouses for their children or, even more commonly, reserve the power to veto their children’s choices. The notion that marriage is merely the natural and proper conclusion of romantic love is a recent and dubious Western idea. 

[T]he conception of marriage as an individual “right” is by no means the only view of the matter. At any rate marriage didn’t originate with the idea of the individual’s pursuit of happiness — an idea that, in fact, has proved subversive of the institution and its obligations. 

The simplest refutation of the gay version is that some societies have been very tolerant of homosexuality and pederasty, like ancient Greece and Rome, without feeling any need to institute same-sex marriage. In fact, it apparently never occurred to Greco-Roman homosexuals and pederasts to demand such a thing. They seem to have been content with their informal arrangements, since procreation wasn’t involved. 

Institutions have their own purposes and inner logic. That is what makes them institutions. Their definitions make them more or less exclusive; a Baptist can hardly complain if he is rejected by a Catholic seminary. To say that Baptists ought to be accepted is really to say that Catholic seminaries shouldn’t exist. You can argue that they shouldn’t exist in the first place; but you can’t argue that if they accept non-Catholics they remain Catholic. 

Marriage means a permanent union between people of opposite sexes. That’s the whole idea. The advocates of same-sex marriage aren’t really complaining about discrimination; they’re complaining about marriage. 

We ought to think of our great writers as a perpetually endangered species. Preservation isn’t passive; like maintaining an old house, it demands a lot of work and, sometimes, hard choices. We can’t save everything; we have to know what is worth saving. Surely that includes the core vocabulary of classical English. 

If that language goes to waste, the aesthetic loss alone is tremendous. But there is a further danger. Modern tyranny has made a specialty of perverting language, reducing it to an instrument of propaganda and control. It thrives on a populace without long memories and traditions, which provide anchorage and the ability to measure the present against the past. 

One of the masterstrokes of Chinese communism has been to replace the ancient Chinese ideogram with a modern phonetic alphabet, thereby reducing the entire population to pseudoliteracy. The people are taught to read, but forbidden to remember. The whole Chinese past has been erased. 

The current vocabulary of hypocrisy includes such words as gay, lifestyle, and the ludicrous homophobia, which systematically deny the obvious. We’re talking about an ugly and unsanitary perversion as well as an immoral way of living, the sadness of which should excite our pity as well as our censure. 

Why should we pretend otherwise? Only because of new taboos — social pressures against candor — that are as perverse as sodomy itself. We are to make believe that “marriage” can mean something it has never meant before, that the rectum is as suitable a receptacle for the male seed as the womb, that a filthy and fruitless union is equal in dignity to one that produces human life? And all this with a straight face? 

Oh, Lord. Victorian hypocrisy had nothing on the liberal kind, which insists that all the generations before us were wrong. Overnight we must repudiate what everyone always knew and still knows. We have seen the same obligatory amnesia with fornication and abortion; evils have suddenly become “rights.” 

And this is what our children grow up being taught in state schools and the mass media. Democratic values, you know. Equality. Tolerance. Constitutional rights. Raising public awareness. 

But the lies, being lies, don’t work too well. For some reason, kids still love real love — the fruitful mutual love of men and women. They refuse to accept gay as something positive; they use it as a term of abuse and ridicule. They recognize it as a joke, no matter what their elders try to tell them. Reality is insistent. Humor remains, as ever, the final revenge of the normal on the official. 

The enormous official effort to normalize the abnormal is doomed. Note the root word norm: G.K. Chesterton long ago observed “the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.” 

Contrary to a popular impression, conservatism isn’t passive. It can actually be a frantic activity, like rescuing possessions from a burning house. In this world of flux, most things are always perishing, and you have to decide what’s worth saving.

-Joseph Sobran 1946-2010 

 

The Pro-Freedom Conspiracy

When a friend offered to lend me his copy of Claire Wolfe’s book The Freedom Outlaw’s Handbook, I eagerly accepted.  I had long read her articles in Backwoods Home magazine and on World Net Daily and I enjoyed her no-holds-barred approach to remaining free in an increasingly unfree world.  Wolfe is likely best known for making the eyebrow raising observation that, “America is at that awkward stage.  It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”  

Her sentiment is a bit strong for some folks, but it carries a definite ring of truth to those who are determined to maintain their freedom in the face of ever expanding governmental efforts to rein it in.

Wolfe openly admits that the ideas portrayed in her book are not for everyone, even among the freedom movement.  But she provides some powerful food for thought regarding the erosion of freedom and simple effective steps that we as individuals can undertake to shore up our personal liberties.  

Two of her better suggestions are:

1. Don’t give in to the fear.  2. Don’t assume an expert is an expert.

For the first one Wolfe writes that, “Fear is the most potent of the power-mongers.  They spook us with some threat—which may be real or illusory.  Then they promise to save us from it—as long as we give up just a few more billion dollars, a few rights, a little of our privacy, a lot of our independence, and ultimately all of our freedom.”  An occasional fast from the fear-hyping media works wonders in recalibrating our senses to the world around us.  After just a few days without our poisonous dread supplement, the world starts to look pretty normal.

On the second suggestion, Wolfe addresses a leading source of confusion in our society today; the reflexive deference to anyone cloaked in supposed “authority”.  She cautions against the conditioned response that most of us have been programmed to give since we were schoolchildren.  

Wolfe wisely counsels:

 “Never presume anyone is right—or has more rights than you do—just because he or she is standing in front of a classroom, wearing a uniform, talking legalese, shouting from a pulpit, appearing in the media, or carrying a government badge.”  

This is a tough habit to shake, but a person who is truly determined to live freely will never blindly defer to someone merely because of the position they hold.  Far too many experts are simply functionaries of the bureaucracies they serve and their allegiance is not to the public at large, but to the system they represent.  When those “experts” are defending the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, seatbelt checkpoints, gun control, warrant-less wiretaps or anything else that diminishes our freedoms and expands the power of the state over us, it’s in their interest that we offer our silent obeisance.  Thinking people, on the other hand, know better than to hand over their cherished freedoms without so much as asking why.  

Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau, who literally wrote the book On Civil Disobedience, puts it this way:

“The state is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength.  I was not born to be forced.  I will breathe air after my own fashion.  Let us see who is the strongest.”

Tyranny thrives on cooperation and many of us have unwittingly cooperated our way into what may well become a full-fledged police state.  Claire Wolfe’s Freedom Outlaw’s Handbook offers down-to-earth, practical and often humorous suggestions for those freedom lovers who see the wisdom in maintaining one’s privacy, self-reliance and freedom.

Being part of the pro-freedom conspiracy has never been an easy endeavor.  If it were, far more people would be willing to actively seek their own freedom instead of simply following the herd.  Freedom appears to be on the ropes worldwide thanks to the seemingly untiring efforts of power-hungry bureaucrats and politically correct kommissars seeking to control the public’s thoughts and actions. Even the prospect of abandoning society’s population centers to seek a more peaceful life with simple values is no guarantee of achieving a measure of political freedom.

Those pro-freedom conspirators who are feeling the weight of the challenge before them would do well to read a timely pep talk from Claire Wolfe titled “Finding your own freedom” published in Backwoods Home Magazine some years ago.  In her essay Wolfe makes a powerful case that the personal freedom we seek will not arrive like an ambulance to save us nor will it be delivered by a UPS truck or found by renting a moving van.  Personal freedom, like self-sufficiency, is a do-it-yourself proposition that requires the same kind of daily tireless effort exhibited by those trying to separate us from our freedom.

She points out that a person who is incapable of acting and thinking like a free person will be unable to find freedom no matter where they live.  Wolfe notes that someone who thinks and acts like a free person can still find a degree of personal empowerment, even in a jail cell-- a concept explored by concentration camp survivor Dr. Victor Frankel in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”.  

Personal freedom requires those who seek it to figure out what we want most in life and then actively pursue it.  It requires a willingness to expect obstacles and to either find away around them or to change course if necessary instead of waiting for a bailout.  Freedom-seekers must also be cautious not to stubbornly sacrifice the good for the perfect when it seems that our goal is always just out of reach.  Being truly grateful for the freedoms we have is not always an easy thing to do but as Wolfe puts it, “If you must have total freedom or nothing…you’ll end up with nothing.”

In charting a course toward greater personal freedom, Wolfe recommends that we start by first establishing what we really want and then set realistic goals and deadlines within the limits of our time, money, skills and outside restrictions for accomplishing our dream.  This is followed by researching and making adjustments as necessary since we are 100% guaranteed to encounter challenges along the way.  

One of my favorite freedom-minded writers by the name of Boston T. Party once opined that to be free one must value liberty more than comfort since, “liberty and comfort are somewhat mutually exclusive.”  However, he does go on to note that “liberty possesses a comfort all its own.”  There’s never been a better time to seek greater personal freedom by becoming part of the pro-freedom conspiracy.