Freedom to Freedumb

How America Went From Liberty to Dependency In Just Twelve Easy Generations!

by Gordon Phillips, P.C., B.P.

Looking Glass Publications Freedom to Freedumb

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gordon Phillips Freedom to Freedumb How America Went from Liberty to Dependency in Just 12 Easy Generations! Copyright 2014

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People Are Talking!

“Ban this book before it incites a mass exodus of teachers from the public schools!”

— Dewey Johns

“Every high school graduate who can read should read this book.”

— Hank Patrick

“Threatens to shock ribbon-tying collectivists right out of their Birkenstocks.”

— Robert Beagle

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to Jefferson, Liberty and Victory.

May freedom be yours one day.

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Introduction

They say that history doesn't repeat, but it certainly does rhyme.

The year was 1869 and Charles Dickens had just penned his classic novel A Tale of Two Cities, beginning with these enigmatic words:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…”

Ironically, these very words could just as easily have been written today, when the combination of increased leisure time and unfettered access to reliable information should result in one of the freest, best educated and happiest societies ever known to man. Yet almost the opposite is the case. Americans find themselves today in a deeply polarized society, divided between the “haves” and the “have nots;” between whites and blacks, Christians and Muslims, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, ad nauseam. Each day on the news we see perpetual strife, from failing schools and declining health to increasing racial violence as citizens everywhere (both legit and undocumented) seem to be leading anxiety-ridden lives of struggle and, in many cases, despair. But — and here is where we go down the rabbit hole — could these economic fault line fractures and social divisions be a normal phase within the cycles of history... or could they be manufactured? In 1809 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe famously wrote, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

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Social media repeats the frequent meme about the "dumbing down of America" and we mindlessly share and comment along. Yet most of us have no idea the extent to which this is true, the reasons why, nor how it affects us all. Whether this dumbing down is an intentional phenomenon being perpetrated by parties who would prefer to remain hidden, or is a natural phase in the repeating cycle of freedom and tyranny, is a matter of some discussion. What is not up for debate is that We the People are living a lie. We believe we are free at a time in history when we need more and more “permissions” from government than ever before. One would think that discovering the root causes behind the strife and struggle of modern life might help us turn this sinking ship around; that by becoming aware of how the downward spiral we see all around is being manufactured right under our noses, of why it is being done, and of the methods by which it is being implemented to our detriment, we could begin to take actions to better our lot, both individually and as a society. It was from Gordon Phillips, many years ago, that I first heard the phrase, "You can't unring a bell.” Once heard and understood, the concepts he shares in Freedom to Freedumb will ring a bell in the mind of the reader that can never be 'unheard' or misunderstood. By shining a bright light of knowledge, wit and wisdom into dark corners of individual and collective ignorance in this thoughtful and provocative collection of essays, Gordon rings a bell of knowledge, wit and wisdom; opening the reader's eyes to little understood phenomena behind the steady and meticulous erosion of our liberties that continue to perpetuate strife and struggle today. Yes, the book you now hold in your hands will render some readers incredulous while leaving others experiencing emotions ranging from lugubrious to angry.

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Yet only armed with this information can the reader be empowered to help America “do a 180” and retrace the journey from “freedumb” back to freedom. These are difficult and troubling subjects indeed, but Gordon's intellect, wit and ability to communicate and convey complex ideas, simply and humorously, serve to enlighten our awareness in an easy-to-understand and often entertaining manner. So set aside the football game and the six pack, settle down on the sofa, and let Gordon ring that bell of knowledge inside your head. Then share your newly found insights and understanding with those you love and care about. See you on the other side.

Ragnar Danneskjöld July 4, 2018 From the eastern shore of the republic that Benjamin Franklin warned us about keeping.

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The Author Says Hello

Hello, this is Gordon. How to introduce this book? The choices are many. Let me list just a few.

#1: I could say that this book encompasses my personal experience over six decades of watching America fall apart: at first in slow motion, now really picking up speed. But that sounds pretty negative. #2: I could say that this work represents one man's quasi-heroic effort to sound the alarm, to awaken his neighbors, to stem the tide of cultural dissolution — the little dutch boy with his finger in the dyke, and all that. But that sounds a bit dramatic and self- aggrandizing. #3. I could say that this is my best effort to educate my children to what's coming by teaching them some fairly well hidden truths about what has come before. #4. I could say that attempting to educate the educable about what a mess everything has become is a lot better than getting angry and growing a tumor. Yes, that's the best answer so far. Because education really is the only answer if you want to start a revolution (armed conflict is so messy). And we have to start educating them while they're young. Personally, and this is a man's point of view — tender mothers will tend to disagree with me — I'd say that six years old isn't too early to get started. Case in point: When my son had just turned six, we were in the kitchen together one day when he said, “Daddy, I’m hungry!” I went to the refrigerator and got some hard cheese. My son watched with delight since cheese was one of his true food passions.

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I grabbed a sharp knife and cut off a good-sized chunk. His eyes widened as he reached towards me. I held out the chunk of cheese, just to where he could almost grab it… And took a quick bite, exclaiming “There, that was for your income tax.” Here, now you can have the rest. My son's eyes widened in shock! A look of frustration crossed his face as he stammered, “Hey, cheese!” I smiled to reassure him and reached out once again with the remaining, still sizable chunk. His countenance again turned to glee. And again, at the last moment, I took another quick bite, saying, “Now that was your federal employment tax. And while I'm at it, let me take care of the Internet connectivity tax too.” And I took another, smaller bite. The little face was turning red now. The horrors! The chunk of cheese was half gone. His property disappearing before his eyes! I got down on my haunches so we were at eye level and said, “Just one more bite, OK? Because we've still got to take care of the property tax. That's always a really big bite!” And this time I chomped off fully half of what was left. Just as the youngster was about to erupt into a caterwaul of begging, his mother entered the room. I cleaned my act up immediately, promptly handing the boy the bit of cheese that was left with a big smile. His mother gave me that look that husbands educating their sons have come to dread, while asking, “What have you been doing in here?” “Why nothing, Dear. Just a little education in theft, that's all. “It's never too early to begin one's appreciation for the delights of coercive government via the forced appropriation of assets.

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“Do you think he's still too young for me to start reading him some Lysander Spooner?”

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About The Author

It was a simpler, gentler time in America — the 1950's — when Gordon was just a toddling tax deduction; when Moms baked non-GMO apple pies and no one knew they were organic. When failed haberdasher, “Dirty Harry” Truman1 was busy undermining the republic in his capacity as newly elected head of the executive branch. Public school somehow neglects to mention this, but even as Japan was negotiating desperately to surrender through backdoor diplomatic channels in order to save face, Harry Truman decided to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki anyway. The author would like you to know that it was never his plan to be born in the North. Raised in New England, Gordon remains to this day an inveterate “states rights” populist in the classical Jeffersonian tradition. Voted by his college classmates “Most Likely To Secede,” he once circulated a petition to have the Mason-Dixon Line stretched up over Concord, New Hampshire so he could qualify officially as a Southerner. Unfortunately, that didn't fly with his socialist neighbors. You see, the lower region of the Granite State is saturated with hordes of practicing progressives who make the daily commute from The People's Republic of Taxachusetts to escape global warming, avoid paying the Bay State's punitive income and sales taxes, and tie yellow ribbons around perfectly good (and no doubt embarrassed) trees.

But Gordon decided to settle in New Hampshire anyway — “deep behind Yankee lines”, as he likes to say —, since the license plate (“Live Free Or Die”) offered hope that others of like mind might be located.

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A contrarian who knows a wooden nickel when he sees one, he enjoys writing, teaching currency trading, assisting patriotic investors to rebuild portfolios trashed while in the loving care of financial planners, and striving at every opportunity to place philosophical burrs beneath collectivist saddles.

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Flashback: The Early Years

He was incorrigible. A serial offender. Constantly bothering the children around him. Endless admonitions to “settle down” did no good. He was public school's worst nightmare. He would complete a one-hour study assignment in fifteen minutes then fidget in his seat while targeting unsuspecting flies with aerodynamically optimized spitballs fired from soda straws, writing coded notes to friends complete with hidden ciphers, or drawing impolite pictures of school officials. Basically, driving his poor teachers crazy. And the system was in a pickle. The lad was getting straight A's so they couldn't kick him out.

State mandatory education laws wouldn't allow him to be sprung until the age of sixteen. School administrators couldn't drug him into drooling obedience. ADHD hadn't been invented yet. There was talk of moving him out of the “general population,” however there were no facilities for “exceptional” children in those days. Every child was considered to be a unique individual and therefore automatically exceptional. Because the No Child Left Behind Act did not yet exist, lots of kids got left behind, just like in real life. And because the National Education Act had not yet been passed to sabotage public education, there wasn't any extra federal free cheese to start some hare-brained new program that could get this difficult young offender out of class by sending him somewhere else, where other administrators could be forced deal with him.

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The local school board was sunk. They were stuck with him for five more years. Five l-o-n-g years. Then someone had a bright idea. It was the janitor, a wise old fellow and the only person in the school without a degree or a license, and therefore untainted in his ability to think independently. His “Three Step Program” would get the young offender out of the classroom so often that it would almost be as if he weren't there at all! And it would accomplish this without making him a truant or embarrassing his parents. It was simple, and best of all, counselor free. Step 1. Gordon would be allowed to start his own photography club (of which he was the sole member) by converting an unused janitorial broom closet into a photography darkroom containing enough chemicals to blow up the school.

Step 2: Gordon would be allowed to leave school during the middle of the school day to walk downtown, running spontaneous busywork errands for teachers who somehow kept running out of rubber bands and paper clips.

Local police who ordinarily would pull over upon spotting a youngster who had gone “over the wall” during school hours were advised to leave him free to walk down town and back. They'd toot the horn and wave. If it was raining, they'd give him a lift. He would be invited to sit in the front, not the back. One officer provided the young man an explanation of what the shotgun mounted to the dashboard was used for. Another let him use the microphone to speak to the dispatcher.

SIDEBAR: The reader should keep in mind that this was back in the days when America was still a free country. Police officers today often sport shaved heads and enough combat gear to invade Cuba. No one gets to sit in the front. You sit in the back,

Page 14 Freedom to Freedumb behind the bullet proof glass while being videotaped by a dash mounted camera. Where, dear friends, has Officer Friendly gone?

Step 3: Gordon would be removed from class on a moment's notice to run movie projectors throughout the school system as a one-boy Audio-Visual department. All of this in an effort to avoid driving everyone else crazy. And it worked! It was a milestone in public education. Allow a child to: 1. Progress at his own speed on his own schedule, thereby learning the principles of autonomous self-government. 2. Largely self-instruct, with occasional supervisory assistance, thereby learning the principles of academic independence and free thought. 3. Develop a passion for excellence in all areas of general education, thereby laying the groundwork for a true renaissance education. 4. Focus on self-selected areas of particular academic interest, thereby reinforcing a love of learning. Let the record show that this anonymous, unsung janitor, whose name history fails to record, personally invented home schooling.

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Memo From Dorothy: We’re Not In Kansas Anymore

Gordon: This little book is a collection of essays I have written over the years on subjects with which Americans would be well served to become thoroughly familiar. To be a good American you’ll definitely want to be up-to-speed on the many important, yet all too little-known aspects of citizenship I will cover in these pages. Let's start with this. Perform an online image search for “Bellamy Salute” and you will see American school children saying the Pledge of Allegiance with arms extended forward, raised above the head and with palms facing forwards. This was the standard salute to the flag performed in thousands of American elementary school classrooms every weekday morning in the 1930’s. By the time World War II rolled around this salute looked a little too much like the Nazi salute and was circumspectly dropped by Congress with the hand-over-the-heart thereafter replacing it. If this little piece of American history is new to you, you may find the rest of this book very interesting. On the other hand you may find it very troubling. The things you are about to learn are not taught in government public school. They weren’t taught when your author attended public school in the 1950s, and they’re still not taught today. No doubt this nagging oversight could be remedied by shoveling more money into public education. Before I continue, lest the reader should come to suspect that I hold a grudge against the land of my birth, I should mention that I grew up in small town America and have always loved my country. As I grew older and began reading a great deal of politically incorrect history (by which I mean real history and not the

Page 16 Freedom to Freedumb superficial flavor served up by establishment publishers of textbooks) I came to realize how much I love our form of government — a constitutional republic under the rule of a written law — and for all of its flaws, the best blueprint for governance that mankind has yet devised; that there is a world of difference between love of one’s country and one’s government.

The former I do love. The latter? Not so much. I guess my main problem with government is government itself — a relatively modern (about 5,000 years old) social experiment in coercive population control that hasn't worked out all that well so far. Not that we don't need some rules to live by. I'd start with the Golden Rule and work from there. In any event, it's all moot since America no longer exists. Oh sure, the buildings and the people are all still there. But America never was a place; America was always an idea. And that idea no longer exists. As if it weren't troubling enough that the freedoms for which countless thousands of our ancestors fought and died have pretty much vanished, the stultifying effects of twelve years of mass social conditioning masquerading as public education, combined with the hypnosis-inducing effects of thousands of hours spent staring into the light-emitting beam in the living room, have left the public woefully dumbed down on those very issues which are of the most critical importance to their political and economic well being.

And it's a pretty long list of critical issues. We could start with liberty and work our way down from there. Sad to say, today's average American:

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• Can't write or spell well. • Doesn't read much (if at all). • Thinks s/he lives in a democracy. • Has few to no books in their home. • Thinks the president can make law. • Is blissfully ignorant of world affairs. • Has never actually read the Constitution. • Thinks the Federal Reserve Note is a dollar. • Elects one grasping politician after another. • Doesn't know a representatives from a senator. • Knows little about real history (what actually happened). • Embraces central government as the solution to all woes. • Sends their children to die in wars fought for big business. • Can't do math without a calculator (batteries not included). • Gives hardly a passing thought to their disappearing rights. • Thinks voting from their smart phone would be a good idea. • The list goes on and on.

If I didn't know better, I'd think we were in ancient Rome. It's time for those who still care about what America once was to pass our understanding on to future generations in the hope that they don't repeat our mistakes. It is my hope that this little book will make a small contribution towards that effort. Your hope will help (change costs extra).

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An Apology, With Backpedaling

The author wishes to apologize in advance lest the tone of this humble work should appear to the politically awakening reader to be a bit pessimistic. I am actually quite a cheerful fellow whose glass of water is always more than half full and who enjoys getting down on all fours and playing “horsie” with his littlest one as much as the next guy. My biggest social shortcoming is that I am an unapologetic objectivist, a personality trait that doesn't go over too well at cocktail parties and family gatherings. As a long time currency trader I have honed the art of pattern recognition and learned to see things on my charts as they actually are, not as I would like them to be. The extrapolation of this skill into the recognition of historically repeating political and socio-economic patterns has led me to study suppressed (and therefore largely hidden) history my entire adult life, the end result being that I have learned more than enough real history (not available on The History Channel) to toss my former illusions about how the world actually works into the trash can and resign myself to suffering the discomforts attendant with being a realist. Nor do I need to be falsely optimistic as so many writers are wont to do, in quasi-groveling compensation for troubling the reader with unpleasant news. Not me! I leave emotion to the emotional and hope to the hopeless. Reality is my watchword and objectivism is my shield. If this humble work should in any way disconcert you, Dear Reader, try not to allow any philosophical angst you may experience to trouble your digestion. Should dyspepsia result, you will be comforted to know that there is a cure for that: education!

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I suggest starting with the Magna Carta, then Etiene de la Boetie’s Politics of Obedience: The Discourse Of Voluntary Servitude. Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience will really get your blood flowing. I would suggest (as I did in 1981) reading every Supreme Court decision, starting with the administration of Geroge Washington.

When you’re feeling brave enough, join me in having read the entire Internal Revenue Code: 9,600 pages of tissue thin paper in an 8-point font — the most riveting piece of non-fiction you can imagine!

In there you will find bombs, bullets and bad guys. Whiskey stills and machine guns. Commies and Treasury secretaries.

And what an ending! Tom Clancy had nothing on these guys. Do Americans living and working within the (now) 50 states of the union owe the income tax? I wouldn’t dare give away the surprise ending. Read it yourself. Prepare afterwards to be restrained from hurting yourself. Reading will change your life in a way that TV and Twitter can’t compete with. Devote 30 minutes a day to reading and a few short years later you will be an entirely different person. You will know things that others do not. You will know things that you should have known all along. You will know things that you should not know at all. You will know things that, had you known them decades earlier, would probably have steered your life in an entirely different direction. You will shake your head at how previously misinformed you were. You will find yourself in stark awe of a system that is so marvelously efficient at repressing this information.

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It sure fooled you! You will find yourself bursting to engage in conversation about everything you have just learned with everyone you know and care about, only to be shunned, marginalized and outright snubbed by former friends and associates who will wonder what the heck happened to you. Once you have passed through the usual stages of loss and grief and adjusted to your new paradigm, you will begin the process of acquiring all new friends and associates. And you will discover that these enlightened souls are all around you. They were simply waiting for you to wake up and get in touch.

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Perilous Pedagogical Precipice

The reader will note a common thread running throughout this work — and it's a well-worn thread. I'm pretty tough on the American public education system, and for that I make no apologies. Let me begin by saying, however, that I have the greatest respect for America's dedicated public school teachers who, for the most part, are unaware of those Fabian policies that have quietly undermined their best efforts over the past century. Those teachers who are aware largely remain quiet for fear of losing their jobs, even as they silently deplore our nation's declining educational standards while working with one arm tied behind their back (and sometimes both). There are reasons for everything in life, even if we can't yet identify them. Scientists and philosophers ask, “Why are we here?” Your author asks, “Why have American educational standards declined so precipitously over the past century?” Certainly this could be due to the fact that public education is administered by the U.S. Department of Education and is, after all, a government project. But one dares to ask, and with more than a little trepidation: could there be more here than meets the eye? Assembly-line education in the Prussian model (see The Leipzig Connection in the Bibliography) under which children are artificially segregated by age (for the only time in their lives) and shepherded forward, year after year, to memorize and regurgitate facts and dates to the satisfaction of supervisors is not education in the organic, philosophical or experiential sense — it's thought processing.

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Some might call it brain washing. That sounds so distasteful, and conspiratorial! Let’s just call it social conditioning for future taxpayers. To wit, today's public school teachers in jeans and sneakers (teachers in your author's day wore skirts, blouses and sensible pumps and didn't address students as “you guys”) can be seen with clipboards in hand, walking up and down classroom aisles, checking off items scheduled for completion that day by educrats in the U.S. Department of Education, even as those same items are being checked off in assembly-line fashion in thousands of other public schools across America on that same day. Henry Ford could only marvel!

SIDEBAR: No doubt robots will be tasked to perform this work one day soon. Until them, non-tenured teachers fresh out of teacher college and paid as little as society can get away with will have to do.

In order to assess processing efficiency, public education is periodically suspended for a day or two while state-mandated testing is conducted to see how well proffered facts are being retained by the current crop of learners — even if memorized only long enough to be regurgitated satisfactorily . This cannot help but remind your author of periodic state- mandated emissions testing of motor vehicles. Both testing procedures, vehicular and pedagogical alike, produce attractive (and impressive!) printouts complete with graphs and bar charts to indicate whether the unit being tested is humming along nicely, or running a little rough compared to prescribed norms. How are little Johnny and Mary performing compared to their peer group? Let's stick an emissions testing probe up their little tail pipes and find out!

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Running a little rough, you say? And you public school administrators, how is your district performing compared to other districts? Bend over and let's test your tail pips too. Running a little slow? Careful... fall too far behind and federal funding could be imperiled! No problem. Science has a solution. When your car engine runs a little rough, you just pour in a little performance enhancing additive. When Mary or Johnny are running a little slow — or perhaps running a little too fast because public school is boring them to the disruptive edge of fidget control while slowly numbing their little souls — you simply pour in a little performance enhancing additive. There are pills for that in the nurse's office. A little pharmaceutical behavior modification, and the classroom will be humming right along again. Here's a great exercise you can have some fun with. Use it to run your own assessment of how well the public schools are serving society's needs. Ask the adults in your acquaintance how much they actually remember, or use in their daily lives, of what they were taught during twelve years of compulsory public schooling. Typical answer: not much! That's pretty interesting, wouldn't you agree? Given that public school is intended (and one would hope, more than just ostensibly) to prepare children for a bright and productive future by corralling them into sometimes stuffy and often overcrowded classrooms and subjecting them to vigorous, process-oriented inculcation of federally approved facts and carefully filtered history; and since this mandatory and often stultifying process is deemed a reasonable trade-off for co-

Page 24 Freedom to Freedumb opting twelve of the most vital and exploratory years of early human life, perhaps we should investigate whether pubic school represents the worthwhile investment in one's future it is touted to be. Let's do the math. Start public school in the 1st grade and exit in the 12th grade and you will have spent 12 years of your life sitting in a classroom for about 5 hours a day. With two months off each summer, that comes to 10 months of school time a year, which is 43 weeks of schooling x 5 school days per week x 5 average classroom hours per day = 1,075 hours per year of classroom time per year x 12 years = 12,900 hours of compulsory state-mandated education.

SIDEBAR: Dear Home Schoolers, I am not ignoring you. I recognize that you can complete the same studies in less than half the time since not forced to progress at the average speed of the class (leaving you enough extra free time to bone up on, and win every national spelling and geography bee), not to mention time saved by not having to participate in daily commuting, roll calls, locker inspections, in-class videos on sex education, drugs, same vs. dual sex parenting, personal hygiene, climate change and other core academic subjects.

So here, as they say, is the $64,000 question (or, if you will. Three questions @ $21,333.33 each):

A. Since the failure of adults to recollect large chunks of what was taught to them decades earlier in school is almost universal;

B. Since most adults will agree that they never ended up using the majority of what they were taught anyway;

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C. Since recollection of said large chunks would presumably be highly useful during one's adult productive years, otherwise why teach it in the first place? ...Your author is forced to ask (drum roll, please!):

WHY BOTHER SUBJECTING CHILDREN TO 12 YEARS OF MANDATORY EDUCATION AT ALL?

(sorry... the CAPS LOCK key must have gotten stuck) Ah... Grasshopper, there is an answer to that. But here we must cover our eyes and tiptoe out onto a very thin limb. Cringe along with me and imagine this possibility. Perhaps the “system” has seen fit to create thousands of federally funded day care facilities (public schools) throughout the land in order to assure the “safety” of millions of school age children so their working parents can head off each weekday morning to produce the taxes the system requires. in order to keep the debt-based dollar propped up Goodness! That certainly sounds more than a little over-the-top, even for me! But... could the automation of education actually have been a major part of the mission of those early 20th Century monopolists who were the driving engines behind the Industrial Revolution, in order to assure a steady supply of future factory workers in an age when assembly-line manufacturing processes were among the latest technological advances? Could this be why billionaire oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller almost single-handedly funded the birth of institutionalized public education (not to mention the leading publishers of textbooks) at the turn of the 1900's?

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What role did behavioral psychologists like Wilhelm Wundt play in the planning of American public education? And who funded John Dewey? The “Father of American Education” wrote in his 1899 book School And Society: "The ultimate problem of all education is to coordinate the psychological and social factors... and schools should take an active part in determining the social order of the future."

"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks... We are either trying to make liberally-educated persons out of them, or we are trying to make skillful servants of society along mechanical lines, or else we do not know what we are trying to do.." — Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, future president of the United States, explaining the purpose of educating the working class in a speech to the New York City School Teachers Association (1909) "Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the carious demands of life... it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down." — Ellwood P. Cubberley, dean of Stanford's School of Education and textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin, in the 1916 edition of Public School Administration: A Statement of the Fundamental Principles Underlying the Organization and Administration of Public Education, p. 338

Career physicists are well familiar with the backgrounds, research and discoveries of those greats in their field who came before, giants like Newton, Einstein and Hawking.

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Why do most professional educators know nothing of the giants who birthed their profession, names like Wilhelm Wundt, John Dewey, G. Stanley Hall and Edward Lee Thorndike?

"The aim [of public education]... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else." — H. L. Mencken on the subject of public education in The American Mercury, April 1924

As is usually the case when human ego is involved, those of you readers who are career public educators may well sniff and sneer and choose to remain safely on your side of the revisionist history divide.

Personally, if I were a public education professional I would want to inform myself in every area that relates to my profession, to assure myself that I'm being as effective as possible; that the passion for teaching that led me into a lifetime career in education isn't being subverted by agendas just beyond my awareness. But that's just me. So to all of you for whom teaching is not a job but a calling, who yearn to throw off the bureaucratic yoke and be free to “do your own thing” as only you know how to do, I say:

QUIT AND START YOUR OWN $!&@##! SCHOOL!

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The technology for the delivery of online content abounds. If unfamiliar with Internet-based educational modalities, start informing yourself. The quality teacher whose passion is matched only by his or her disdain for incompetent and unimaginative administrators can use the Internet to reach out to hundreds if not thousands of eager youngsters all over the world. Let your voice be heard! There is life beyond the classroom! Do what the home schoolers have done — escape! Become a home teacher!

SCHOOL SAFETY ADDENDUM: You've heard the expression “shooting fish in a barrel”? Concern for the safety of public school children can only be described as relative safety since 99% of public schools remain in federally mandated gun-free zones, thereby essentially declaring open hunting season for any nut job bent on bursting in, opening fire and turning both kiddos and teachers into convenient sitting ducks. The first step in delaying an armed intruder during a so-called “lock down” is, as you might expect, to lock the school room door. No problem there. One or two bursts from a high- powered, semi-automatic rifle and the lock is destroyed. The “active” shooter is now in the classroom. Since enlightened child safety policy further instructs the children to huddle together in tight groups, it's now all the easier for a single, high-velocity round to conveniently pass through multiple individuals, thereby saving the intruder ammunition and enabling the assault to be extended to additional classrooms. Administrative foresight of this caliber can rarely be found outside of the public sector.

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Full Mental Jacket

My complaint with most authors is that they fail to inform the reader of the philosophical worldview that molds their insights and opinions. As a school boy I was required to read novels from the great American literature such as Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, George Bernard Shaw's Arms And The Man and George Orwell's 1984 without ever being informed that all three were flaming socialists. I was instructed in the magic of modern economics without once being told that the authors of the textbooks used in my instruction were devoted Keynsians who embraced 'tax and spend' government largesse as their guiding principle. Never once did my instructors inform me that said largesse is fueled by the creation out of thin air of fiat paper money limited by nothing but the available supply of trees. Since all authors are human (so far at least; advances in robotics may negate that soon), and since every book contains biases, let me begin by telling you where your author is ‘coming from.’ I am fully in favor of free enterprise; of free markets in which consenting adults (absent fraud) are free to do business with each other as they wish; where citizens are free to barter and otherwise conduct voluntary exchanges of value, absent regulation and price fixing like a minimum wage, currency controls and other forms of statist coercion. I am in favor of doing all that you agree to do; of not encroaching upon the property of others; of respecting all natural born rights (not just those listed on official government documents); where my rights end at the tip of your nose and vice versa; and where you can do anything you please within the

Page 30 Freedom to Freedumb privacy of your own four walls so long as it does not impair or threaten my rights. I am in favor of government being kept as small and limited in the exercise of power (coercion) as possible in order to carry out those minimum functions necessary to provide for the safety and well being of the people (which I suppose makes me a minarchist), with all other functions to be provided by the private sector which due to profit motive alone can be depended upon to execute them with vastly greater efficiency than government which by its very nature is unaccountable. As for my political views, I have none. You could call me a political atheist. Democrats and Republicans are really just different shift levers on the same globalist transmission: the Democrats being the go-faster Socialists while the Republicans prefer to go a bit more slowly. Nor am I a Libertarian. I’m not schizophrenic enough. As for what I am not, I am not a Keynsian. The creation of fiat paper money, monetized into thin air through fractional reserve banking is a fraud and a Ponzi scheme that is both certain and doomed to fail, and with catastrophic consequences Neither am I a Randian or Austrian School of Economics devotee of a gold- and silver-backed currency, a true red herring if ever there was one. Why would I be in favor of allowing the government to control precious metals as backing for our currency when “He who owns the gold, makes the rules”? Nor am I a collectivist. I am not in favor of forced wealth redistribution with the government as toll taker, middle man and police enforcer. There is no authority in the federal constitution for Congress to legislate wealth redistribution. Of course, that hasn't slowed down the expanding welfare state for a minute. “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” — Frédéric Bastiat

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Socialism destroys moral, ethical and family values. It has never worked — period — and never can, simply because it violates the most basic tenets of Nature, namely that all creatures seek to move towards pleasure (gain, reward) and away from pain (risk, loss). Put out a food bowl for a pet each day and that pet will lavish you with its undying love and obedience. Put out a benefits bowl for a taxpayer in the form of a government dole that arrives like clockwork each month and you will have that citizen's undying support, loyalty and all-important vote. You will also rob them of their individuality, their motivation and even their very soul. Lest the reader think me a hard-hearted capitalist, unsympathetic to the needs of the unfortunate and the downtrodden, I am indeed sensitive to, and fully supportive of lending a helping hand voluntarily to those truly in need. Private giving and neighborly support are traditions in our family. Finally, since one’s early education so greatly shapes one’s future philosophical outlook, I should mention a thing or two about my own education. Like most Americans, my early pedagogical career began in an era that preceded the advent of home schooling by a good thirty years and therefore necessarily was spent in service to the state which mandated compulsory attendance under penalties of truancy at public school through age sixteen. There was nothing for me to do each weekday morning but walk a few miles each way to large brick buildings that more resembled factories than bright and sunny places of childhood learning, constructed from monies forcibly exacted donated under penalty of forfeiture cheerfully by the modern equivalent of feudal serfs area residents in the form of state mandated rental payments property taxes for the privilege freedom to live on their own land. So we’re off to a consensual coercive start already.

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I spent grades one through eight doing hard time (because so terribly boring) in a series of these minimum security, social conditioning day camps for future workers, overseen by the United States Department of Education, each facility variously featuring chain link fences, yellow inmate transport vehicles, ringing bells, daily roll calls, locker inspections, hall monitors and warden principals. Today you can add to that list security cameras, entry buzzers, periodic lock down drills, pill dispensaries and incessant assessment exams. Ah, yes, public school. If you want to kill creativity, stultify imagination and crank out a few million clones each year who can't think for themselves and who learn to look to the state as the Great Provider of all things throughout life, by all means send them to public school. And may God have mercy on their paradigms.

“Schools train people to be ignorant, with style. They give you the equipment that you need to be a functional ignoramus. American schools do not equip you to deal with things like logic; they don’t give you the criteria by which to judge between good and bad in any medium or format; and they prepare you to be a usable victim for a military- industrial complex that needs manpower.” — Frank Zappa

After being processed through age thirteen at a series of publicly funded social conditioning centers (our family moved several times during my youth), I began a four-year internment at one of the nation’s premiere, all-male private preparatory schools (more brick buildings but much nicer lawns) where I received a rigorous education in the classical 18th century style. Unfortunately, it was the 20th century at the time. Upon release I was remanded by my parents in the late 1960's to a big-city institution of ostensibly higher learning (lots of really big brick buildings, no lawns, lots of cement) where

Page 33 Freedom to Freedumb bearded professors in sandals (had I stumbled into an Abby Hoffman look-alike contest?) spouted so much pseudo- intellectual nonsense I could scarcely follow along. Neither, so far as I could tell, could they. The objective, so my parents told me, was to get a degree in organic chemistry and physics so I could become a medical student. No one had ever asked me whether your author actually wanted to be a medical student, so I took the best alternative course of action I could think of at the time: I immediately changed my major to exploratory coed anatomy where a young man could take a truly palpable, dare I say, hands-on approach to education, with a minor in intoxicology where I explored chemistry of various adult beverages. Once freed from my formerly prescribed course of collegiate indenture, and awakening to the realization that an inadequately educated person would remain forever a ward of the state, my adventure into autodidacticism began when I dug with great relish into literary works which had never once been suggested to me by my parents or teachers. I began by reading Lysander Spooner's No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority followed quickly by Joseph Heller's Catch 22 and was left feeling for dead certain that I had exited the mainstream through a philosophical worm hole in the socio- cultural continuum. Further deprogramming occurred with a diet of Ezra Pound, T.S. Elliot, Jack Kerouac, Henry Thoreau, The Whole Earth Catalog and other intellectually pyrotechnic materials. I had an entire fireworks display going on inside my head now. The next thing I knew I was teaching myself to play the electric bass and hitting the road to play music and save both psyche and soul.

“A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.” — Lysander Spooner

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Years of professional engagement in the music business followed, in an era when a full-time working musician typically performed four hours a night and took the other twenty hours off. This left mucho free time each day for reading which has always been one of my passions. Over the years I have made it a practice to read a minimum of 90 minutes a day (about 21,900,000 words read thus far), a good deal of it on topics of which all mention is carefully and assiduously avoided within modern culture, yet without an understanding of which it is impossible to forecast the future, let alone understand the present. Upon stepping out of Plato's Cave and adjusting to the bright glare of reality, the reader can delve into more advanced works. However, it wouldn't do to exit the Cave too suddenly, lest like the deep sea diver who rises too quickly, one should suffer mentally debilitating gas bubbles and fear repeating the experience of ever again going too deep.

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The Convention That Conned the Colonies

Ah, yes, that dusty, venerable, hand-written document of a bygone era, that former relic of American civilization, that intellectual product of a quaint agricultural time when life was simpler (no electricity, no Velcro); when presidential inaugural addresses contained words of more than two syllables. I am speaking, of course, of the Constitution for the United States of America, as inscribed by Jacob Shallus on parchment and currently on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum, ensconced behind bullet-proof glass for viewing by solemn tourists who gape as if in the presence of the Mona Lisa. No one living has met Mona and just about no one living has read the Constitution, so one can only surmise that public fascination for the two must contain equal elements of adoration from afar. Under Article VI of our nation’s supreme compact between public servants and the people whose taxes feed them, the Constitution calls itself the supreme law of the land. Here is what it actually states:

“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”

If there is a higher written law we Americans are to abide by, please be sure to inform the author immediately.

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It pleases me no end that the Constitution was not written in disappearing ink, for we have but to read it today to know what it still says (which is what it said when the ink dried). But, alas, something is rotten in Denmark. Or, I should say, the District of Columbia where the colossus of a federal government we have today is supposed to be restrained by a Constitution we were told was intended to create a “limited” government. Funny, it sure doesn't look that way. Maybe there's more here than meets the eye? So how, exactly, did our national playbook come into existence? Furtively, and on the low down, that’s how. It all began when delegates from the thirteen original colonies met at the State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on May 5, 1787 to do what? Sorry, not to draft the Constitution. That’s what you were told in school. But then again, your teachers probably attended public school too. The colonies already had a form of government: a confederacy of colonies—each still a sovereign nation in its own right—under a Continental Congress. And it already had a constitution. It was called The Articles of Confederation and it was ratified by the colonies on March 1, 1781. The first president under the Continental Congress was John Hanson of Maryland whom we see here on the right. That’s right, John Hanson was the first American president, not George Washington. The delegates were dispatched to Philadelphia by the Continental Congress with the sole authorization to “make better the articles”. And why did the delegates need to make anything better?

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Because among the various powers granted under the Articles of Confederation was the power to enact taxes. The problem was, our first Congress was powerless to collect the taxes it imposed. That’s because there was no central army. So off went the delegates to discuss how to make things better. And did they do that? Not on your life. The first thing the delegates did upon convening in Philadelphia was to shutter the windows, draw heavy drapes, meet on the second floor to prevent eavesdropping, lock the door and post a sentry. They then proceeded to take an oath amongst themselves that nothing that transpired that summer—not a single spoken or written word—was to leave that room until the last attendee had died. Did they mention this in public school? Funny, you must have missed that day. I missed it too. I have a theory that these things are taught only on the days we all miss. But let’s continue. The delegates did not spend a single minute ‘making better’ the Articles. They proceeded, in private, closeted away from the rest of the world, to create an entirely new form of government, from scratch. And, might I add, without the slightest authority from their respective state legislatures to do so. George Washington sat up front as secretary of the convention. This is the guy who made sure it all went the right way; the guy whom everyone knew would become the first president. It was in the cards. James Madison took extensive notes on everything that was said. They've since become known as Madison's Notes on the Federal Convention. All the wrestling and wrangling, argument, debate and compromise that went on throughout that long and fateful summer had been carefully written down.

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One would think (forgive me if I'm missing something here) that a bunch of honest guys who only wanted to do the right thing would have been eager to have everyone know what had transpired, and right away. Actually, no one would get to read those notes for a long time. Not until after every attendee was dead which, coincidentally, ended up being Madison himself who died in 1835—forty-eight years later. This doesn't sound like good faith disclosure to me. It sounds like secrecy. It sounds like (dare I say it?) conspiracy. By agreement, upon the close of the convention Washington took those notes home with him and squirreled them away at his estate in Virginia, knowing that no one would dare hurl accusations of skullduggery at the great General, now venerated as a near-deity for having so heroically led the colonies in conquest of the mighty British empire. After Washington had been ensconced as the first president, Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and other radical pamphlets that had ignited revolution in the minds and hearts of millions of colonists, wrote several scathing, private letters to the new president. It seems that among other things, George had taken to riding around in a lavish coach, drawn by fine white horses decked out in plumes and other finery, as if America's new president were more like, well, a monarch than the chief officer of the executive branch of a limited government. Paine was pretty upset. It seems as though he was now thinking along the lines of Patrick Henry who, upon hearing of the proposed Philadelphia convention, had refused to attend, reportedly saying, “I smell a rat!” But let’s not call the convention of oath-bound plotters a conspiracy. That sounds a bit too harsh. Let’s call it what is was:

Page 39 Freedom to Freedumb a premeditated federalist coup. Out with the old king, in with the new.

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Instant Law: Just Add Opinion and Stir!

The last attendee to the constitutional convention to die was James Madison, in 1835. His widow Dolly Madison sold his written notes, called Madison’s Notes on The Federal Convention, to Congress for a pension. Mr. Madison had taken meticulous, hand-written notes on everything that was said that hot Philadelphia summer as the Constitution was being hammered out. Surely you must have been taught this in public school. But if not, let me quickly brief you here. Delegates from the colonies debated every single point that was raised over the course of the proceedings, rising repeatedly to argue whether to include or exclude a single phrase. For example, the convention specifically ruled against allowing the three words “to emit bills” (which in their day meant to print paper money backed by nothing but debt) from being included in the Constitution. Of course, that concept has long since been run over by a multi-trillion dollar Mack truck called the Federal Reserve. With the death of Madison it became possible to read what had actually transpired a half-century earlier on the convention floor, and there can be no ambiguity about the framers' intent. “The intent of the law is the force of the law” is a principle of jurisprudence as old as the hills, and the hills are pretty old. Yet in spite of the clear intent of the framers, how is it possible that the Constitution has been ‘interpreted’ beyond all recognition? See... here's the problem. A written law is never subject to interpretation. Otherwise it would have to be held ‘void for vagueness’. A written law must mean what it says and say what it means, plain and simple. If two people of average intelligence can read the same law and come away with two different meanings, it is no law at all.

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So here's a good one to run by the next law professor you meet. Let's start with some facts. • The Constitution is explicitly clear. • It is written in plain English. • It says what it means and means what it says. • It was not written in invisible ink (or disappearing ink, either). • What it said when the ink dried is what it still says today (with the addition of 27 amendments). • Any person of average intelligence can read and understand it (not just licensed members of the American Bar Association). • The framers' intent is made explicitly clear by reading Madison's Notes. • Law is never subject to interpretation, otherwise it is void for vagueness. • The Constitution is written law; the highest law of the land. • The Constitution specifies powers delegated to Congress. • If they aren't on the list, they don't exist (isn't this easy!?) • A simple reading of James Madison’s Notes On The Federal Convention renders the original intent of the framers as clear as the nose on a lawyer's face. And yet since everything I just wrote is true (and of course, logically, it is), then why aren't 100% of Supreme Court decisions 9-0? In other words, unanimous? Why so many 5-4, 6-3 and other mixed decisions? Could it be because there's a dash of human bias being stirred into each decision? And why are rulings of the high court called 'opinions' anyway? An opinion is nothing but a viewpoint, an interpretation. But the law isn't subject to interpretation! Clearly we have a case of judges reading into the law what they want to read into the law. In truth the American republic has a raw democracy of nine law school graduates, each an imperfect human being (like the rest of us), sitting atop the entire federal judiciary. All it takes is for a single judge on that high court to flip the vote from 5-4 in one

Page 42 Freedom to Freedumb direction to 4-5 the other way and a completely different decision emerges, one that could set precedence for millions of people, including millions yet unborn. These folks and their fine opinions can turn white into black and up into down if language is twisted long enough. I would refer the reader to the chapter titled “Land of the Houyhnhnms” in Jonathan Swift's classic Gulliver's Travels for further understanding. These folks get to sit on the high court for life. Yes, they can be removed through the impeachment process, but that almost never happens. These days you'd practically have to murder your own grandmother on live TV to get removed from any federal office for anything as mild as sedition. Moving right along, let's look at a classic example of sophistry in the courts. The ‘general welfare’ clause in the Constitution never authorized anything remotely like government entitlements, doles, handouts and other federal freebies. It meant for the general welfare of all the states, as in the creation of ports, canals and so forth that would benefit all states equally. Social Security, Medicare and EBT cards qualifying as ‘general welfare’ under the original meaning of our nation’s blueprint for governance? To argue with a straight face that the framers authorized mandated wealth redistribution collected by the taxman at the point of a gun, with the government as middle man is beyond dumb, it’s hilarious. But why let a little written law or original intent stand in the way when Supreme Court judges can twist, interpret, divine and utter incantations over our nation’s clearly written rule book. But it’s all pretty much moot these days. The Constitution today has become largely a relic. As conservative commentator Joseph

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Sobran once famously stated: “The U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.” Oh sure, politicians love to mention the Constitution now and then. They might even trot it out once in a while to look something up. But practically no one these days has ever actually read it in its entirety. An actual reading of the Constitution is assiduously avoided in the public schools; it is merely referred to. Otherwise developing young minds might get certain ideas about liberty and limited government. And we certainly can’t have that. License plates in the state of Connecticut tell us that it’s the ‘Constitution State.’ But I doubt if even 1% of the residents of Connecticut have any real familiarity with the document. You could stand in a Connecticut shopping center all day long (or anywhere else in America, for that matter) with a pocket full of $1 bills. Offer a free dollar to anyone who can reasonably explain their selection of any five of the first ten amendments to the Constitution that comprise the Bill of Rights. Not quote them verbatim, mind you, just provide the basic gist of what they say, preferably in English. I’d wager that you’d go home at the end of the day not a dollar poorer. Most Americans figure there’s gotta’ be something in there somewhere about religion, free speech and maybe the right to own guns, and that’s pretty much it. On second thought, maybe that offer of ‘any five amendments’ should be reduced to just ‘any two’. Even then I’m not sure your pocket would be too much lighter.

SIDEBAR: President Barack Obama, the nation’s first African American president, took his second oath of office with his right hand on a Bible once owned by Abraham Lincoln, the president who is said to have freed the slaves. There were a few elements of this highly symbolic ceremony that I think worth noting.

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1. The Christian Bible is often used in swearing-in ceremonies to impart a righteous seriousness to the occasion, as well as to attest to the integrity and commitment of the party to whom the oath of office is being administered.

2. Mr. Lincoln was viewed by those who knew him well in his lifetime as firmly agnostic and not in the least a practicing Christian.

3. Mr. Obama whose middle name is Hussein has never exhibited the slightest Christian leanings that anyone has ever been able to detect.

4. Mr. Lincoln never actually freed a single slave, an historical fact we'll cover a little later. Other than these minor peculiarities I'm told it was a memorable inauguration. Returning to the drafting of the Constitution, by the end of that hot, sweaty summer the federalist coup in Philadelphia was complete. These men intended to govern wisely, but they intended to govern. How heady and historic an opportunity to create your very own government, amass such power and take your seat at the table of nations. At the time of the drafting of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, an ardent anti-Federalist and advocate of states' rights, was in France as ambassador from the colonies. When Jefferson first read the Constitution, he is said to have expressed dismay that the ostensibly limited government which it promised to provide would almost certainly one day consolidate into a single, all-powerful executive as tyrannical as any king. So much for checks and balances. Jefferson feared that a single representative republic as large as he envisioned America one day becoming would never stand

Page 45 Freedom to Freedumb under its own weight; that Americans would be better served by a loose confederacy of republics like we once had, and such as Switzerland enjoys to this day with its confederated cantons. Patrick Henry boycotted the Philadelphia convention, fearing that a federalist coup was in the works and proclaiming: "I smell a rat!" Here is what the great patriot and fiery orator had to say:

"If we admit this consolidated government, it will be because we like a great splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, a navy, and a number of things: When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, Sir, was then the primary object…But now, Sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country to a powerful and mighty empire." — Patrick Henry

But the Federalist coup seized the day and the Constitution, its crown jewel, became ratified on June 21, 1788 by the ninth required signatory, New Hampshire, which repeatedly had refused to sign until a Bill of Rights had been added. Just four years earlier in 1784, New Hampshire freemen had enacted their own state constitution which contained Article 10 titled 'Right of Revolution' which states: "Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and

Page 46 Freedom to Freedumb oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind." Article 25 of the New Hampshire constitution states: "Standing armies are dangerous to liberty, and ought not to be raised, or kept up, without the consent of the legislature." Would one realistically expect ideas like these to be taught in the public schools? Has any government in history ever found it to be in its own self-interest to inculcate in its citizens the very principles of liberty that might one day cause them to rise up against it? The constitutional conventioneers managed to keep a lid on the Federalist takeover until the last one was dead. As for the Constitution itself, it isn’t quite dead yet: on life support with a feeble pulse, yes, but still breathing. And where there’s life, there’s hope. Except, maybe not... Because the required number of states have already passed resolutions calling for a constitutional convention. Our nation has had only one convention in its entire history, the one that created the Constitution in the first place. Could another convention be on the horizon? If so, you could expect every faction, party, coalition, lobby and special interest group to be there, each angling for its fair share of the federal purse. The joke goes that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. God only knows what a revised Constitution would look like when they’re done. You can pay a small fortune in college tuition and take any course in American History you like, but you’ll never learn that the Rockefellers once paid a fellow named Rexford Guy Tugwell a small fortune to revise our dusty old Constitution. Tugwell, a part of Franklin Roosevelt’s original “Brain Trust,” published a book in 1974 titled The Emerging Constitution, a section of which was A Proposed Constitution for the Newstates of America.

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Clearly the man was a serious collectivist bent on helping the little people abandon quaint notions of a free market. Here is a quote from old Rex:

“Fundamental changes of attitude, new disciplines, revised legal structures, unaccustomed limitations on activity, are all necessary if we are to plan. This amounts, in fact, to the abandonment, finally, of laissez-faire." — Rexford Tugwell

Here are just the first three sections under Article 1 of Rex’s new and improved version of the Constitution. The reader will note that all pretense of protecting the rights of the people has been scrapped when conditions prove inconvenient for central planners. The italics are my own: ARTICLE I Rights and Responsibilities

A. Rights

SECTION 1. Freedom of expression, of communication, of movement, of assembly, or of petition shall not be abridged except in declared emergency. SECTION 2. Access to information possessed by governmental agencies shall not be denied except in the interest of national security; but communications among officials necessary to decision making shall be privileged. SECTION 3. Public communicators may decline to reveal sources of information, but shall be responsible for hurtful disclosures. That’s quite a modification of the trusty original, wouldn’t you say? Sounds like these guys want to run the world. Will they pull old Rex’s version out and dust it off? We'll have to stay tuned. But if there is another convention, you’ll want a front row seat. I

Page 48 Freedom to Freedumb doubt that entertainment like this could be had anywhere else, at any price. Even the price of liberty.

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Washington, D.C. Is Not the Capital of the U.S.?

Trust me when I tell you that the following will not appear on a high school ‘American Studies’ exam any time soon. When the colonies drafted the Constitution, they granted certain enumerated powers — and only those specific powers — to the federal government under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, while retaining to the people under the 9th Amendment, and to the states under the 10th Amendment, all powers not specifically granted. To sell the idea of a limited federal government to trepidatious colonists who, having recently defeated a tyrannical British monarch, feared creating their own home-grown variety; to emphasize the ‘hands off’ nature of what ostensibly was to remain a small and constitutionally limited federal government; and to keep federal operations apart from the states, a dedicated administrative zone for government operations only was authorized by Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution, which creates a "District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States". Note that this zone was not designated the ‘capital’ of anything, but rather a district within which the ‘seat of government’ would operate. The district was named the District of Columbia and was formed in 1791 from land originally ceded by the states of Maryland and Virginia. This administrative zone never was a part of any state, it was created only after being ceded by the above states. So what does that make Washington, D.C., if not the capital of the United States? It makes it the capital city of the District of Columbia administrative zone. The United States doesn’t have a capital city from which to rule the nation in the sense that Italy

Page 50 Freedom to Freedumb is ruled from its capital city, Rome, and France is ruled from Paris. The problem is that citizens were allowed to reside and operate businesses within this supposedly exclusively administrative zone. Rather than remain the preserve of government administration, ‘D.C.’ today enjoys the same explosion of apartment complexes, bowling alleys, exotic dance clubs, pizza joints and drug dealers as any major city within the states. The progressive public invasion of this exclusively federal district serves to point out how things can deteriorate over the years when a tight rein isn’t maintained on original intent. Today’s federal government has expanded into an all-powerful juggernaut that runs the states like 50 federal taxing zones, much as ancient Rome ruled its numerous outposts. Of course, we all know what happened to those Romans…

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Thoughts On Long Distance Hole-Punchers

One of the most divisive subjects in the modern American conversation is that of firearms ownership. Conservatives typically favor gun ownership. Liberals typically do not. As for Libertarians they’re pretty much armed to the teeth, their motto being, “You’ll have to pry my gun from my cold, dead hands.” No doubt various federal agencies would like to oblige them. The movie The Patriot starring Mel Gibson depicts a scene from the early days of the American revolution in which a father passes out loaded muskets to his young boys and advises them on how to pick off British officers and soldiers who had kidnapped their older brother, telling them to “aim small, miss small.” As one would expect, the liberal media howled in unison. I guess real history is a little too real for some people. A friend of mine who is a little older than I told an interesting story. After World War II ended, millions of jeeps, tanks and other armament made its way back to America to end up in dumps (which is what we called them before they became graced as ‘land fills’ and later, ‘recycling centers’) all across America. What fun for a boy of twelve in 1946 to sit in a Sherman tank and swing the gun turret around! My friend told me of finding a bazooka with its firing mechanism removed and taking it to school. His teacher had him bring it up to the front of the class and show it to the other kids in a spontaneous ‘show and tell.’ Just imagine doing that today. What a hoot! It would be all over the news. A SWAT team would shut down the school and wrap it in yellow crime scene tape. Helicopters would hover overhead. Commentators on CNN and FOX news would blow a gasket. The president would ‘speechify’ from the Rose Garden. Mothers would tremble over the trauma their little ones had endured. The children would receive counseling.

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When I was a kid I flew on a commercial airliner on a trip to Florida with my grandfather. The year must have been about 1954. I remember him carrying a rifle (might have been a shotgun) in a hard shell case onto the plane and putting it in the overhead luggage rack. No one so much as blinked or looked twice. Opposite is a photograph from a 1956 issue of TIME magazine showing gun safety classes in public school. Guns were no big deal in those days. Just another tool. The schools might as well have held pencil sharpener safety classes. Maybe they did. In Politically Un-Correct: America's Crisis and Some Ways We Can Save Our Country, author Robert Alan offers the following from the chapter titled 'High School – 1957 vs. 2010.' Scenario: Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck's gun rack. 1957 — Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack. 2010 — School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers. So what happened over the past three generations to make Americans so silly, so sophomoric and so afraid? The answer is simply put. The introduction of television into the American home where it has become a beloved member of the family has allowed a collectivist (leftist, liberal, Communist, socialist, alien, call it whatever you like) agenda to be beamed into the living room for sixty years now, altering the paradigms of hundreds of millions of passive viewers and providing a free brainwash with each show. Never in all of human history have so many been so easily conditioned by so few. Tyrants of old would have given their eye

Page 53 Freedom to Freedumb teeth for television. It’s so much easier to ransack a nation mentally than through force of conquest. Just get the target population to ransack themselves. As for today’s liberals rejecting guns, the truth, plain and simple, is that liberals are afraid of them. If you don’t believe me, ask a liberal their feelings about guns and observe their facial expression. You’ll get reactions ranging from sucking on a lemon to sheer horror. Most liberals have never held a gun, fired a gun, even been in the same room with a gun. I think they’d rather be in the same room with a live cobra. Grow up in a liberal household where guns are talked about as one would discuss ebola and you’d probably hate guns too. I would lay odds that you could send the typical hoplophobic liberal off to a gun camp to spend a weekend immersed in the gun culture in the company of friendly, everyday Americans who happen to love guns; allow our gun-fearing liberal to hold guns, field strip guns and re-assemble them, watch training films about guns, learn all about gun safety, and have tons of fun shooting off a few hundred rounds, plinking cans and punching holes in paper targets of bad guys and you’d have yourself a converted gun lover, son. But when it comes to fearing guns—I mean really fearing guns— politicians are in a class all by themselves. There is nothing more terrifying to a pampered politician than a well-armed populace, especially military veterans trained in marksmanship by Uncle Sam himself, including the famed Marine sniper. Gunnie may have put on a few pounds (ok, more than a few) since his days in ‘Nam, but he can still put the red dot on a beer can from a quarter mile away. And you’ll never even know he was there. No worries about me, though. I can hardly figure out which end the bullet comes out.

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America’s founders ensured our right to defend ourselves against all types of crooks (and not just in government) with the inclusion of the 2nd Amendment which states: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” You can certainly understand their point of view given their recent experience with government in their time. When General Thomas Gage, commander of all British forces in North America, sent troops marching out to Lexington and Concord, they weren’t traveling as the neighborhood Welcome Wagon. This was a raiding party, en route for two specific purposes: (1) to nab, and hang, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, and (2) to confiscate colonial weapons caches. Gage couldn’t have those pesky farmers plinking away at his boys. It was time to disarm those upstart rustics. History records that this didn’t go very well. After the “shot heard ‘round the world” the militia clarion call went out as hundreds of farmers, young and old alike, abandoned their fields on the spot and swarmed in from all over to join in on the action. A point of accuracy to consider: the bullet of the day was a mini ball made of lead. Lead was neither cheap nor plentiful and you didn’t waste your shots. The average teenager could pick a garden-scavenging crow off of a tree branch from 100 yards away.3 As the rout progressed, enraged colonials began picking off Gage’s regulars from behind every tree, log and fence. It was open hunting season on the British as His Majesty’s dignified raiding party abandoned all pretense of soldierly professionalism, dropped their weapons and backpacks in the middle of the road, and ran for their very lives all the way back to Beantown.

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Of course, this only added to colonial weapons stores, thank you very much. This was a big wake-up call for the alarmed British who decided it was time to really show the colonies who was Boss. History records that that didn’t go too well either. As for gun laws, the first to appear in this country were passed by the North to prevent Negroes from owning weapons. Did you ever stop to ask yourself, if the 'Civil War' was really about slavery, why didn't Abraham Lincoln simply arm the slaves? For you readers still getting up speed on the Second Amendment (which should have been the First), here is a quick primer.

GUNS, A TO Z • Assault is a behavior, not a device. • If guns are outlawed, can we use swords? • 911. Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer. • You don't shoot to kill, you shoot to stay alive. • If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson. • If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. • Guns only have two enemies: rust and politicians. • Gun control is not about guns - it's about control. • 64,999,987 firearm owners killed no one yesterday. • You only have the rights you are willing to fight for. • Criminals love gun control. It makes their jobs safer. • A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone. • When seconds count, the police are just minutes away. • Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface. • If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.

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Chris Gets a Colon-oscopy

Since much of America stays home from work and school each year in honor of Columbus Day, I thought it might prove instructive to revisit the basis for this annual celebration. As a boy enrolled in 6th grade public school, certified educators—to me as a young child, respected authority figures— instructed your young author to memorize that “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” I was taught that without the heroic exploration efforts of Christoforo Colon (Columbus’ real name), mankind might never have discovered America. The legendary explorer was said to be a great and honorable man, a pious Christian who faced tremendous odds to set sail across the uncharted Atlantic in the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria to discover the New World. But is this story true? Or just some of it? Are there parts that have been left out? If so, why? Let's skip right over the fact that numerous Irish, Scandinavian and other European explorers had already discovered America hundreds of years earlier (Viking runes predating Columbus by over 1,000 years have been found as far inland as Minnesota) and jump right to an epic work titled A People's History of the United State by acclaimed historian Howard Zinn who has the following to say about Christopher Columbus as he made landfall in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. “Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts.”

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What did Columbus himself think of these friendly, innocent people? The great man wrote the following in his personal log which still survives today: "They [Arawaks]... do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." Hmmm... Make fine servants? Make them do whatever we want? Where is old Chris going here? The great man continues in his log: "As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts..." Took some of the natives by force? Is this the same dashing Christian explorer we met in grade school? Professor Zinn adds: "Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town... "But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months.

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When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. "The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed. Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead." I will leave the reader to draw your own judgments about Mr. Colon, other than to add that it's time that posterity take a careful look up the posterior end of all of the history we were taught in public school. There may be other blockages. As the late Carl Sagan once observed: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge—even to ourselves—that we've been so credulous."

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Dear Census Taker: You Can Count On Us!

The following letter was seen on the Internet in early 2010, written by one “Anne Onimous” who is no doubt related to “V”. I find it an instructive exercise in citizen activism and share it here for your edification. As for myself, I wouldn’t dream of withholding vital information from the federal government. I mailed in the census form twice just to make sure they got everything they need. “Dear Census Taker, “Thank you for visiting our household pursuant to the 2010 census. Sorry we weren’t here when you walked slowly up to the front door while looking in your bag, hesitated, rang the bell three times, waited a few seconds, looked around then rang it again, knocked a little, paused again and then left a form for us inside the screen door. “It was very nice of you to think of us. We genuinely love America and are pleased to participate in the federal nose count every ten years. We look forward to being fully cooperative, within the limits of our lawful requirement to respond of course. “No doubt we're not the first household full of real Americans that you've heard this from, and do forgive us for reminding a public servant of his job description, however just for the record, the lawful requirement to conduct the census is contained within the clearly stated provisions of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution… which you may have read? “Actually, if you don’t mind, may we ask you a question? Was reading this section of the Constitution a prerequisite of your employment? Probably not. OK, forget it. We were just curious. “Anyway, since the above referenced Section of the Constitution has never been repealed or amended, and since it wasn’t

Page 60 Freedom to Freedumb written in disappearing ink, it seems to us only logical that it must still be in full force and effect today, wouldn’t you agree? “Sorry, that’s our second question. Please don’t feel that we’re trying to investigate you! “Anyway, it’s clear to us from actually reading the Constitution that it requires the taking of a decennial nose count for purposes of determining the apportionment of direct taxes to, and representatives from, the several States of the Union. “But no doubt you already knew that. You got that during your census training, right? Just curious, but do you get overtime pay for counting the same people twice? We only ask since so many dead people seem to vote in each presidential election that we thought this might be a new federal trend. “OK, here is our official response to the census. This American household is pleased to answer that five (5) citizens reside here. Two (2) are of voting age and three (3) are not. “With regard to our names, occupations, racial composition, height, weight, allergies, favorite TV shows and movies, income, social security numbers, blood type, relationship to each other, employment history, organizational affiliations, pharmaceutical prescriptions, political voting registration, number of pets, toilets, bedrooms, cars, TVs and other purely private matters (OK, so we made some of that up), you are welcome to ask these questions if you'd like since we would never wish to impede you in the performance of your duties. “However, there is no language we can find, not just within the above referenced section of the Constitution, but anywhere within that document (we even used the ‘Search’ tool in our word processor) that authorizes a full-spectrum, all-inclusive, mass 'data mining' investigation into every aspect of one's personal and private affairs. “Nor can we locate any language that requires us (or any other American, for that matter) to volunteer such information, as

Page 61 Freedom to Freedumb obviously there could not be without conflicting severely with Amendments IV, V and IX, not to mention Amendment I which protects personally held religious views, such as religious objections to enumeration. “Therefore our only possible answer to questions of a purely personal and private nature is “Thanks for asking!” “With regard to penalties which may be imposed under 13 U.S.C. § 221(a) or (b) for refusing or neglecting to answer, respectively, there is a big difference between “refusing”, “neglecting” and “not required.” We are neither refusing nor neglecting to answer in the least. Nor are we “declining” to answer. We just did! “Our lawfully required and freely given answer, once again, is that five people live here, of whom two are of voting age. Our cat doesn't count (she just thinks she does). “Additionally, with regard to penalties which may be imposed under 13 U.S.C. § 221(c) for providing false answers, our answer is true: We took our own nose count and five people really do live here. We swear to that. You should see the food bills! “Of course, no statute enacted by Congress can trump, usurp, override, contradict or otherwise violate the Constitution (the 'Supreme Law': see Article VI, Clause 2). But we thought we'd mention the statutory angle just in case it came up back at the office. “We have no doubt that your supervisors are real Americans too and do not wish to harm the rights of a free people any more than you do. After all, this is New Hampshire, not New Jersey. “In closing, thank you once again, and be sure to come back ten years from now if the government is still in operation. We'll be pleased to participate again. You can count on us! “

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Happy Co-Dependence Day

Every year when the 4th of July rolls around, America breaks out the flag, pops a cold one and fires up the barbecue in honor of the birth of our nation. I thought I’d take the occasion of this year’s celebration to offer the following in remembrance of what we’re actually celebrating. Patrick Henry's famous "liberty or death" speech is perhaps the most stirring example of the original American commitment to individual liberty. However, the story behind Henry's passionate oration is largely untold. As a young lawyer riding into Culpepper, Virginia in March of 1775, Patrick Henry had witnessed the brutal public flogging of a preacher. Tied to a whipping post in the middle of the town square, the preacher had been scourged mercilessly with a leather whip laced with metal; his back had been laid bloody and bare, with the bones of his ribs showing. What heinous crime, what foul act had this man committed to deserve such barbarous torture? He was one of twelve who were locked in jail because they had refused to take a license from the British Crown. Three days later, the martyred minister was again flogged, this time to death. This was the incident which sparked Patrick Henry to write the famous words which later ignited the Revolution: "What is it that Gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" He later made this a part of his famous speech which he delivered at Saint John's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia.

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This might be a good time to pause and ask ourselves: where, exactly, is the line drawn between the exercise of natural rights and the exercise of permissions granted by a ruling authority? Can a people dependent upon their government ever be in a condition of liberty? Did the great American experiment in republican government end when “We The People” allowed our government to become the great provider of all things? It is quite apparent to all thinking individuals that the era in which the citizens of the United States held control over their public servants has long since ended. Today’s tax-consuming public servants run the country pretty much the way they want to, while the people are left to live in the servants' quarters and beg permission to do almost everything. How did this transition happen, and when did it occur? The answer we all must face is that we subjugated ourselves, and in a manner not one in 100,000 can identify. Not only have we converted our constitutionally protected rights into privileges to be granted (or withdrawn) at the whim of government, we have done so willingly. Common sense informs us that each and every one of us enjoys, by virtue of our birth and very existence, the full exercise of our “inalienable rights.” But only up to the point where we infringe someone else's rights. Privileges, on the other hand, are horse play of a different color. Privileges are granted by ruling bodies. Privileges can be regulated and taxed, approved and denied, renewed or withdrawn at the say-so of the official whose job it is to stand over the citizen and pass down the privilege, much as a monarch of old might have tapped a bowed knight on the shoulder with his sword. The American citizen of today—while ostensibly the master of his or her own government—receives government-issued privileges on administratively bended knee, granted at the behest of the grantor of the privilege.

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Which is who? Why, the government of course. Should the citizen violate a rule that applies to those upon whom privileges are bestowed, public servants can cancel the privilege. And there may be penalties to be paid! To whom? Why, to the administrator whose family is fed and clothed from the very taxes that are paid under threat of fees, fines, and incarceration by the applicant for the privilege. This would be you. It is indeed a fascinating process by which we become the slaves of those who are to serve us. It is certainly an ironic situation. Citizens create a government to protect their rights, while volunteering to place themselves in the subservient situation of being allowed certain privileges by those whom they elected to serve them. Did I say volunteer? Absolutely. Let’s take a look. Case in point: many tens of millions of Americans identify themselves as being married. Allow me to stimulate your thinking by asking: did these couples get married, or did they marry each other? Are these not one and the same? This a fine and important point, and not merely semantic. There is a definite distinction between getting married and marrying, for the one involves the acceptance of a privilege granted by a ruling authority, while the other is the exercise of a natural right. Ask the typical married couple how it is that they came to be wed and they will say something like, "We were married in a church." Or "We were married on a party boat under Niagara Falls." But in all such cases the word "married" in not an active, but a passive verb. "We got married" means that someone else did something to them—that someone else caused them to become married. But cannot a man and a woman just marry each other? Perhaps simply by exchanging vows before witnesses?

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Or must the Governor first give his or her permission before the happy couple are permitted (licensed) to be wed? How exactly does this “getting married” process actually happen? Does the Governor send out premarital spies to detect when a wedding ceremony may be about to commence, walk up to the startled couple and hand them their permission slip? Or do the about-to-be-newlyweds obtain a license (permission voucher) of their own free will? Many states still recognize the status of common law marriage. You reside with your cohabitation partner (gender optional) for a number of years and you are presumed to be as married as anyone else. If that is true, then why bother to get a license? So you can pay a licensing application fee to the Governor? What benefit do you actually derive from being licensed? Certainly not so that your marriage will be real. Ask any man: we have no doubt that marriage is a form of reality. Hey, only kidding ladies. Just trying to keep it on the light side here. When at the end of the wedding ceremony the presiding clergy intones, "By the power vested in me by the Governor of [State], I now pronounce you man and wife," is some invisible, jurisdictional marriage dust sprinkled over the blissful couple? Is that why they are now married? If that magic phrase had not been uttered at the very last minute, would the ceremony have stalled? Would red lights have flashed and loud klaxons sounded? Does this magic marriage phrase carry that much power and authority? Apparently so. And money may be involved! You see, with the Governor inserted as oh-fisshul approver of the process, there are now not two parties to the marriage (the blissful couple), but three parties: spouse A, spouse B and (ta- da!) the state which will patiently await the eventual death of

Page 66 Freedom to Freedumb each spouse so it can reach into the pockets of the deceased and extract its fair share of estate tax. Ah, the plot thickens! Could this be the nefarious reason behind the existence of the marriage license in the first place? SIDEBAR: Please, Kind Reader, do not think of your humble author as a conspiracy theorist. Educated people know that all of recorded history involves untold millions of conspiracies on the part of various authorities, small and large. I, on the other hand, am a Coincidence Theorist. When the same thing happens, over and over again, without any other explanation, it can only be part of some vast coincidence. Let's move on. When the American west was being settled, there was typically a shortage of pastors to do the marrying. If a young couple wanted to tie the knot, what were they to do, wait months or even years for a pastor to ride into town on a jackass? Or if a Republican pastor, on a horse? Of course not. They gathered family and friends together as witnesses to the happy event, said the oath of marriage to each other, recorded it in a family Bible, and that was that. They could just as easily have walked out into an open field, just the two of them, gazed lovingly into each others' eyes and said their vows to one another in private. Problem is, since there is always the chance that they could have been hit by a meteorite on the way back to the house, no one would ever have known that they had married each other. So witnesses made good sense. Getting permission from the local ruling apparatchik was the last thing they needed. Unless he wanted to come over and help with the diapers. After the War of Northern Aggression (which some still call the Civil War), invading conquerors from the District of Columbia took over the administration of the South under so-called ‘Reconstruction’, passing laws requiring that an African Negro and a European Caucasian (using the terms of those days)

Page 67 Freedom to Freedumb needed permission from the local Governor to marry, without whose consent said miscegenation would be a crime. If blacks and whites wanted to marry, they could do so only by registering to be married, paying a registration fee, and waiting for official approval. This practice slowly became commonplace, and by the beginning of the 1900's formerly free people everywhere—blacks, whites, albinos and all other chromatically differentiated individuals—automatically assumed that they needed governmental permission in order to marry each other. It's hard to believe, I know, but this is how the camel gets its nose under the tent. Moving on to another area of common regulation, that of one's right to make a living, let's consider the privilege of being allowed to cut someone else's hair for profit. A five-year-old will inform you that all that is required is a sheet, a comb, a pair of scissors and a reputation for doing a quality job at a fair price. But no! You must first ask permission of the Governor. Without said permission (license) you can be fined or even incarcerated for "practicing without a license." The same set of licensure rules apply, not just for marrying one another or cutting hair, but for many other activities as well: from removing fish from public bodies of water, to shooting game on public land, to building a house on your own property ad nauseam. None of these activities can be engaged in without kneeling and getting that sword tap on the shoulder. And if you don't kneel, you'll get the sword somewhere else! And how does one receive said permission? Why, by requesting that the permission be granted. And how does one go about making said request? Ah, Dear Reader, here is where we jump into the rabbit hole, munch mushrooms with Alice and tunnel through The Matrix, all in one swift stroke.

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The answer is that we obtain permission from our benevolent overlords by (wait for it…) making application. By requesting the exercise of said privilege. In the case of paperwork (much of this is done online today), you fill out a form, enter your most personal information, then allow agents of the Governor to grab your arm and wrestle your hand down to the writing surface whereupon your signature is forcibly extracted from you under protest as you resist with all your might. No? Really? That's not what actually happens? I see. You mean to say that you actually sign the document of your own free will, thereby converting a right—for which your forefathers (and mothers) shed their precious blood—into a mere administrative privilege to be granted at the whim of a bureaucrat? No kidding? You actually consent to apply your signature, freely and voluntarily, in the hopes that his Excellency will allow you to get married, cut hair, fish on public property, even build your own home on your own property? That's amazing.

...AND YOU WANT TO CELEBRATE INDEPENDENCE DAY?

(sorry... there I go shouting again) At this point I would ordinarily try to interest you in some oceanfront property in Kansas, but we're not in Kansas anymore. A dog with its leash clipped to a rope strung between two trees may be free to move back and forth, but is not truly at Liberty. So are you at liberty, Dear Reader, or merely 'free' to operate within administratively permitted bounds? With the collapse of the economy accompanied by a visceral sense that the heavy hand of government may be turning into a fist, countless Americans today beat their breasts on YouTube and rail against the government on countless blogs for

Page 69 Freedom to Freedumb trampling their freedoms and limiting their lives in countless ways. Yet they should ask themselves, if they feel so restrained by their fetters, who forged their chains? Mr. Government did not require them to do anything. He simply invited them to apply for permission. Once they did so, and of their own free will, mind you, they demoted themselves to subservient status by placing themselves at his whim. Did you ever stop to ponder that everything you have ever signed throughout your entire life, and I do mean everything, has been an overt act of voluntary consent? Forms and applications of all kinds, bank signature cards, library cards, greeting cards from Hallmark, you name it—all done as an act of your own free will. Again, did anyone forcibly extract your signature from you? You see, the administrative process can be quite deceiving. You are told that you are “required” to do such and such, that everyone else does it because it is compulsory, mandatory, required and so forth. If you do not do as you are told, you will be fined, perhaps even convicted and thrown into a cage, fed three times a day and allowed out for an hour each day for exercise. But reality is quite different from illusion. The Administrative Procedure Express is a mighty train indeed. It rumbles down the tracks straight towards you (Whoo! Whoo!), thundering and belching smoke. It stops directly in front of you and a door opens. A Little Man steps out with a clipboard in his hand and says, "I am from the Licensing Department. I am here to help you process your application. Please sign here, and make your application fee payable to ______." You take the pen that is proffered and apply your signature, whereupon the Little Man thanks you, the door closes and, Whoo! Whoo!, the Administrative Procedure Express gets back

Page 70 Freedom to Freedumb up to speed and heads for the Emerald City where your application is processed. A short time later the government (local, county, state, national, global, soon no doubt interplanetary) approves your application, while reminding you that you now come under the rules and limitations that apply to all applicants (of course, to applicants only, but that's in the fine print). If you find those rules restrictive or in any way violative of your rights as a free man or woman, please do not complain. After all, the government is just doing its job which is to exercise control over you as any owner would over a loyal if occasionally disobedient pet. Remember, you are the one who requested permission! Did his most Honorable Excellency forcibly extract your signature? Torture you? Threaten your family? Of course not. He didn't compel you to do anything. Why would he want to anger you? After all, he needs you as a licensed participant so he can fine you when you disobey his rules. Otherwise, where would he get the funds to feed his growing bureaucracy, let alone feed the families of the thousands of other functionaries who manage and operate the entire regulatory licensure apparatus? One can only wonder whether the preacher whom Mr. Henry saw being scourged, were he alive today, would rush to apply for a 501(c)(3) "exemption" to operate his church with supervisory approval from the IRS? Or to cut hair for a few dollars on the side. When we contemplate the raw sacrifices made by so many of our nation's forebears, we are reminded that Patrick Henry did not exclaim: "Give me liberty, or give me benefits!" It is remarkable how little our nation's Founders expected from the government they forged.

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Yet, today, with hundreds of millions of adult Americans licensed and regulated in almost everything they do, I think it only fair to call the 4th of July by its proper term: "Co- Dependence Day" Below for your reading pleasure is the full transcript of the great orator's legendary speech, followed by the observations of John Roane who was present and had the great pleasure of watching Patrick Henry deliver it. If Roane's remarks don't give you a lump in your throat, perhaps you need to apply to the Ministry of Lumps for permission to develop one!

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Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death!

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775 "No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as the abilities of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the house. But different men often see the same subject in different lights, and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen, if, entertaining as I do, opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I should speak forth my sentiments freely, and without reserve. "This is no time for ceremony. The question before the house is one of awful moment to this country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. "Mister President, it is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth - and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? "For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house? "Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves

Page 73 Freedom to Freedumb how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? "Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation - the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can almost be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains, which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose them? "Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it was capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find that we have not already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. "Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned - we have remonstrated - we have supplicated - we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. "In vain, after these things, we may indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free - if we mean to preserve inviolate those

Page 74 Freedom to Freedumb inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending - if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained - we must fight! - I repeat, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us! "They tell us, sir, that we are weak - unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? "Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means the God of Nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. "The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we are base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable - and let it come! I repeat, sir, let it come! It is in vain, sir to extenuate the matter. "Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace - but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What

Page 75 Freedom to Freedumb is it the gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God - I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" Observations of John Roane who was present and witnessed the speech: "You remember, sir, the conclusion of the speech, so often declaimed in various ways by schoolboys, 'Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!' "He gave each of these words a meaning which is not conveyed by the reading or delivery of them in the ordinary way. When he said, 'Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?' he stood in the attitude of a condemned galley slave, loaded with fetters, awaiting his doom. His form was bowed; his wrists were crossed; his manacles were almost visible as he stood like an embodiment of helplessness and agony. "After a solemn pause, he raised his eyes and chained hands towards heaven, and prayed, in words and tones which thrilled every heart, 'Forbid it Almighty God!' He then turned towards the timid loyalists of the house, who were quaking with terror at the idea of the consequences of participating in proceedings which would be visited with the penalties of treason by the British crown; and he slowly bent his form yet nearer to earth, and said, 'I know not what course others may take,' and he accompanied the words with his hands still crossed, while he seemed to be weighted down with additional chains. The man appeared transformed into an oppressed, heart-broken, and hopeless felon. "After remaining in this posture of humiliation long enough to impress the imagination with the condition of the colony under the iron heel of military despotism, he arose proudly, and

Page 76 Freedom to Freedumb exclaimed, 'but as for me,' -- and the words hissed through his clenched teeth, while his body was thrown back, and every muscle and tendon was strained against the fetters which bound him, and, with his countenance distorted by agony and rage, he looked for a moment like Lacoon in a death struggle with coiling serpents; then the loud clear, triumphant notes, 'give me liberty' electrified the assembly. "It was not a prayer, but a stern demand, which would submit to no refusal or delay. The sound of his voice, as he spoke these memorable words, was like that of a Spartan paean on the Field of Plataea, and, as each syllable of the word 'liberty' echoed through the building, his fetters were shivered; his arms were hurled apart, and the links of his chains were scattered to the winds. "When he spoke the word 'liberty' with an emphasis never given it before, his hands were open, and his arms elevated and extended; his countenance was radiant; he stood erect and defiant; while the sound of his voice and the sublimity of his attitude made him appear a magnificent incarnation of Freedom, and express all that can be acquired or enjoyed by nations and individuals invincible and free. "After a momentary pause, only long enough to permit the echo of the word 'liberty' to cease, he let his left hand fall powerless to his side, and clenched his right hand firmly, as if holding a dagger with the point aimed at his breast. He stood like a Roman senator defying Caesar, while the unconquerable spirit of Cato of Utica flashed from every feature, and he closed the grand appeal with the solemn words, 'or give me death!' which sounded with the awful cadence of a hero's dirge, fearless of death, and victorious in death, and he suited the action to the word by a blow upon the left breast with the right hand, which seemed to drive the dagger to the patriot's heart."

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So Happy Co-Dependence Day, America. Eat your hot dogs, fly your flags and enjoy the fireworks. I'll leave you with a quote from Samuel Adams, father of the American Revolution: “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

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How To Tell If You’re a Collectivist

Collectivists come in all colors of the communistic spectrum (is red their favorite color?), from socialist to fascists and all the way up to oligarch. Since collectivists in all of their grasping glory have been the bane of humanity since the beginning of recorded history, it's important to know whether you are personally contributing to the next collapse. Take The Quiz: For each 'Yes' answer score ZERO. For each "No' answer, score a ONE. Then add them up.

1. Do you believe that the rights of the individual must be set aside for the good of the crowd? 2. Do you believe that the majority has the right to vote away the rights of the minority? 3. Do you applaud the use of government as a 'toll booth' to stand between producers and non-producers, extracting taxes from the former to provide subsidized meals, housing, transportation, medical care and other benefits for the latter? 4. If the government picks Peter's pocket to pay Paul, do you think it will ever have to worry about receiving support from Paul? 5. Does being an individual scare you, or make you feel lonely?

6. Do you try to think like everyone else so they will love you?

7. Are you happy donating up to 50% of your labor to the government in fees, fines, taxes and inflation (the most insidious tax of all) so they can spread it around and, hopefully, give a tiny piece of it back to you?

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OK, pencils down! Now add up your answers. [Score = 0] You are definitely an individual and should run for public office as soon as possible. Start locally. Think: Sheriff. [Score = 1 or 2] You are probably an individual and should read The Law by Frederick Bastiat for a tune-up. Try to avoid reading newspapers and definitely don't watch TV. [Score = 3 or 4] You are struggling to be individualistic but your desire to get something for nothing still feels too cozy to let go of completely. This will definitely require some work. Read The Law, then read Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, then read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, then watch “V” For Vendetta. Then move to New Hampshire and join the Free State Project. Then take the quiz again. [Score = 5, 6 or 7] You probably voted for Obama. Next time be sure to vote again as a dead person and vote a third time using a creative birth certificate. Place a sign in your front yard reading: "Unarmed Liberal: Please Do Not Rob Or Harm Me". This will assure your personal safety. Always happy to help. Psst... while you're at it, you may want to look into being a conservative. Their candidates are usually more attractive and tend not to act as goofy in public. Plus, they dress better and drive nicer cars “The trouble is that the stupid people — who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations — -do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper." — Mark Twain in "License of the Press" speech (1873)

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No Idea Left Behind

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." — Thomas Jefferson

One hundred years ago American school children studied Latin and Greek. Today's high school graduates require remedial English just to function in corporate America. Meanwhile, the United States Department of Education continues to pour billions of dollars each year into methods of more efficiently inculcating into the minds of our nation's youth a long list of very important facts. Since according to the United Nations, the U.S. now ranks 17th in the world in educational standards, increasingly stringent efforts are being made by federal educrats and their equivalents in the 50 states (or as Washington sees is, federal administrative zones) to see that these very important facts are pushed into young minds with sufficient force, frequency and velocity to make sure they stick… long enough to get good grades on assessment tests and boost the local school system’s eligibility for federal funding, anyway. As a result today's public school teachers, especially in the younger grades, can be seen patrolling their classrooms with clipboards and binders under their arms, checking off one box after another as that day's very important facts are delivered and plastered into place. Since teachers are paid in part according to their own performance in assuring that the federally mandated syllabus is

Page 81 Freedom to Freedumb adequately covered, they are highly motivated to see that each day's very important facts are sufficiently memorized and regurgitated. Periodic testing of the children, much like annual state motor vehicle inspections, is conducted to determine how well the facts are sticking and basically to ensure that the system is humming along OK. Children who fall below mandated adhesion standards sit at special tables and receive special attention in the form of a teacher's assistant. Children whose fact-sticking adhesion is exemplary receive no special attention, other than from the school nurse should pharmaceutical medications be required to manage undesirable manifestations of boredom. No matter how poorly the least adhesive children perform, no matter how inadequately they manage to grasp the concepts behind the relentless parade of very important facts, rarely will they be held back and subjected to repeated inculcation of the same very important facts at that grade level all over again. Rather they will be shuffled forward into the next highest grade level (still segregated by age, not ability or accomplishment) to make room for a fresh crop of students. The very nature of this system, being essentially an assembly line, requires that each year's bolus of students be shoved through the factory lest a bottleneck form and federal funding wane. "Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding." — Ezra Pound The very important facts that the more retentive children assimilate and promptly forget as soon as they graduate will enable them to get jobs in the lower tiers of the economic food chain. The brightest children will go into serious debt to attend colleges where more complex yet still very important facts must be learned and regurgitated.

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Your author would suggest that there is an entirely different list of very important facts and more importantly, very important ideas that exist in a very different mental universe, one in which young minds are stimulated to understand the true nature of things, not the least of which is the distinction between rights and privileges. After all, today’s young people are the leaders of tomorrow. They will enter public life making decisions that either advance human liberty or retard it, based upon their early understanding of the very nature of government itself. "How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it." — Alexandre Dumas To save you some time, I’ve compiled a short list of intriguing questions. One can only imagine what our nation would be like if these questions were discussed and debated in earnest in America’s schools. Take a minute to read them and I’ll see you on the other side. ∙ Is anyone above the law? ∙ What is law and who makes it? ∙ Can rights be taxed? What about privileges? ∙ Is it the very nature of government to be corrupt? ∙ Should anyone ever be trusted with absolute power? ∙ What parts of the Constitution is still in effect today? ∙ What is the true nature and function of government? ∙ Which is the higher authority, opinion or written law? ∙ Should lawful government fear a well-armed populace? ∙ What is the difference between a privilege and a right? ∙ Is political freedom possible without economic freedom? ∙ The government can print the money it needs, so why tax? ∙ Under what economic conditions does prosperity flourish? ∙ When did the American Republic reachits high water mark? ∙ What constitional law making power is the president given? ∙ Is limited conscience a prerequisite for corrupt government? ∙ At what point throughout history have all democracies failed?

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∙ Where does the Constitution authorize trillions in foreign aid? ∙ What power does the Constitution give to judges to make law?

Did you find these questions flummoxing? Are your children being taught to think about these things?

If not, here is my suggestion. Contact the principal of your children’s school. Meet with this person and go over these questions together. Ask why little Johnny or Mary isn’t being taught these concepts. Videotape the meeting and stream it on Youtube. It should prove both instructive and memorable! If you draw a total blank with the principal (or if the security guard is summoned), you might try the Superintendent of Schools next. Failing any meaningful response at this level, work your way all the way up and contact the Department of Education itself. Surely, someone who takes the education of America’s youth seriously must know the answers. And if all else fails, may I suggest, since property taxes fund public education, you might ask for a refund?

"All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education." — Sir Walter Scott

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Public School: The Missing Puzzle Pieces

Since I’m on a roll with public education, let me roll a little farther. The stated philosophy of American public schooling is to ensure that all Americans receive an adequate education that will prepare them for life. But does it? The act of educating (inculcation of information) is an illusion since nothing can be pushed into the mind of another, but only received by that mind. The true purpose of education therefore is to remove the educator from the process so that the student may become a free-thinking, self-regulating learner whose creativity is neither stifled by conformity nor modulated by the expectations of adult supervisors; whose intellectual independence is neither subverted by the ideologies of bureaucrats nor assimilated for the good of the group. In short, to become a free and self-actualized human being you must educate yourself. Which ultimately makes you, the learner, your own teacher. Uncountable billions of dollars continue to be poured into public education in America, only to produce a society that many feel is falling apart at the seams; morally, culturally and economically. If the purpose of public education is to prepare everyone to make a better life for themselves, then given that the quality of life experienced by the average American over recent decades has been declining, what conclusion can we arrive at, other than that public education doesn't work? If you attended public school from kindergarten through high school, then got out into the world ready to make something of yourself in the land of opportunity, yet today have the unshakable feeling that things seem backwards or upside down; that the world around you doesn't make sense; that no matter how hard you work you can't seem to get ahead; that the future

Page 85 Freedom to Freedumb doesn't look anywhere near as promising as it did for your parents; that you feel at the mercy of hidden political and economic forces that don't seem fair; that in spite of being told in school all about the land of the free and the home of the brave you feel more like a serf working for the government than a free individual working for yourself, perhaps it's not your fault. Perhaps it's because there are large and critically important pieces of your education that are missing. “The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.” — Noam Chomsky If you think of public school, grades K-12 as a television show with a 12-year run, and each school day as a new episode, then what you will learn in this little book can only be thought of as 'Missing Episodes.' Perhaps even 'Deleted Scenes'! Imagine opening a jig saw puzzle box and dumping the pieces on a table. There are hundreds of pieces so you know it's going to be a big picture. But what you don't know is that most of the pieces are missing, meaning that the picture is even larger and more complex. Of course it will be of some help that there is a completed puzzle picture on the box to guide you to completion. But what you don't know is that the picture on the box is that of an entirely different puzzle, not the one you're working on. Now, to make things even more interesting, imagine that the pieces you have to work with, including pieces that seem like they should all fit together in a certain area, won't fit together at all, no matter how you try to arrange them. Finally, imagine that you have a limited time in which to finish the puzzle. If you can't finish it in the allotted time, you'll retire

Page 86 Freedom to Freedumb broke or close to it, no matter how hard you work, no matter how many hours you put in, or how carefully you try to manage your money. Sounds like a rigged game, doesn't it? “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” — Margaret Mead There are indeed puzzle pieces missing from your education, pieces that must be present in order to complete what I'll call the Complete Picture of any person who truly wants to be economically and politically free. These are critically important pieces, without which you can't possibly complete your life's picture; pieces that once you see and understand them, allow the puzzle as to why most people never seem to get ahead, to finally be solved. When you're done gathering all of these missing pieces and assembling them inside your head, you'll have a brand new picture of the world around you: of your relationship to government, of the economy, of money, taxes, investing, retirement, of ideas like fairness, justice, property, freedom, liberty and even your social relationships. Because this missing information is well known to students of real history, and because there are some very smart people in Washington, D.C. who have been running government education all these years, can we come to any conclusion other than this: that these people do not want you to know about the missing pieces? Which is to say, is it possible that the highly pedigreed people (even lots of PhD’s) responsible for educating America's youth could inadvertently have left these pieces out, year after year, decade after decade, never so much as mentioning them, and all by accident? Here is an example of what I'm talking about, and it’s a very big missing puzzle piece. I’m speaking of the dollar bill in your

Page 87 Freedom to Freedumb wallet: a green federal coupon bearing the likeness of George Washington that advises us on the reverse to trust in God. Please note that this phrase was added after all silver and gold backing of our nations’ money was removed. Apparently we were no longer to trust in the government for the stability of the Almighty Dollar, but in the Almighty directly. One can only speculate whether insufficient prayer will lead to higher inflation! Why is the dollar perhaps the most important missing puzzle piece? Because your entire future will be measured in how many of these currency units you earn, spend and save. Your relationship with the dollar is more important than your relationship with carbon dioxide which sure has gotten a lot of attention since Al Gore whipped up the global warming scare. Your author has no doubt that you will survive minor fluctuations in CO2 over your lifetime, Dear Reader. But a major downward fluctuation in the dollar’s purchasing power could prove lethal to your finances. Where is Al when we really need him? So… did they tell you in public school that the “dollar” isn’t really a dollar at all? That a dollar is actually a unit of measurement, like a gallon or a mile? That the dollar was defined in the 1792 coinage act as 371.25 grains of silver? Did they tell you in public school that the U.S. Constitution, the highest law of the land, requires all 50 states (under Article 1, Section 10) to use only gold and silver as lawful money in America? Which means that every single one of the 50 states is in a condition of rebellion against the Constitution, the legal term for which is sedition? Did they tell you in public school that the paper dollars in your wallet are not spent into circulation by your government, but lent into circulation by the Federal Reserve, a private, for-profit corporation that is not an agency of the government, is no more

Page 88 Freedom to Freedumb federal than Federal Express, has never to this day been audited, and refuses to discuss the secret details of its meetings? Did they tell you in public school that each paper dollar is actually a unit of debt? That the interest to repay that debt doesn't even exist at the time a dollar is manufactured? Which means that more dollars will have to be borrowed just to pay off the interest on the dollars that came before? Did your teachers tell you that this mechanism, called fractional reserve banking, absolutely guarantees that the dollar will fail one day? That it's the largest Ponzi scheme in human history that has never been prosecuted? Did your teachers mention that every paper money that has ever issued in all of world history, including the paper money that existed in the colonies before America became a nation (the Continental Dollar), has failed, disappeared or outright collapsed? And that the U.S. dollar will prove to be no exception when public confidence in the dollar evaporates one day, causing economic devastation for Americans? How do you suppose America's youths would feel upon graduating from high school, ready to go out into the world and establish their place in society, knowing that the very financial system they live under is based on the creation of debt, not real money?; that the earning power of much of the money they earn throughout their lives will be destroyed by inflation? But that inflation only exists because of the manner in which our money is created? Inflation exists because elected representatives in Congress allow a private corporation to lend us our money supply and regulate its quantity, when Congress itself could easily create the money we all need, without any debt to be paid off by future generations, and without creating a single dollar more than the

Page 89 Freedom to Freedumb economy actually needs, which would eliminate inflation completely! The educational system prides itself in preparing you to go out into the world and make a living. But a living paid to you in what? Why, in dollars. And therein lies the rub. The government collects your taxes in what? Dollars. The government says it will give you back some of your own money one day as Social Security, and in what? Dollars. And if you hope to retire comfortably, you'll need to save up enough of what? Dollars. But what if from the time you graduate from public school until you’re ready to retire the dollar has lost most of its original purchasing power? What if by the time you're in your peak earning years and trying to save as much as you can towards retirement, the dollar has lost yet another large portion of its purchasing power? Finally, what if by the time you're ready to retire and the government starts sending you back your own money in the form of Social Security payments, the dollar is worth practically nothing compared to what it's worth today? What if you learned in public school that by saving real money, like gold and silver, not paper money that shrinks in purchasing power with each passing year, you could be incredibly wealthy by retirement age, with no need to worry about the failed economic policies of government officials whose integrity is constantly called into question? Compared to everything else they made sure to teach you in public school, would this kind of information—these missing puzzle pieces—have been less important to learn, or vastly more important?

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Just think of all those endless hours spent in a blur of classrooms, memorizing countless facts and dates long enough to be regurgitated on exams, yet never so much as a mention of the hidden nature of the one element—those green paper coupons in your wallet—that more than any other, will determine your future success or lack of it. This is pretty powerful stuff, wouldn't you agree? So why is it never mentioned in public school? Because it's not important? Or because it's a little too important and might raise too many inconvenient questions in inquiring young minds? Could it be that the people in Washington, D.C. who are responsible for educating America's youth aren't as smart as they appear to be? Or could it be that they're a lot smarter than we imagined? "I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think." — Anne Sullivan

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Freedom to Freedumb

Thomas Jefferson once wrote: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Mr. Jefferson also stated: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, (A)nd if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." Noah Webster rang in with this: "Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country." We must necessarily ask whether today's child in America is acquainted with his own country; whether today's American can, in fact, expect to be free and in a state of civilization; whether our discretion is indeed informed. Most Americans have seen episodes of The Tonight Show in which host and comedian Jay Leno perambulates the streets with a microphone, asking various questions of passersby and demonstrating that the average American knows next to nothing about geography, astronomy or American history among other subjects. So just how ignorant is today's average American? According to surveys conducted for the National Science Foundation, over two-thirds of Americans are unable to identify DNA as the basis for heredity, while one in five adult Americans believes that the sun revolves around the earth. I think that matter was settled a few hundred years ago with Copernicus and Galileo?

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A study conducted by the University of Texas found that 25% of public school biology teachers — fully one in four — believe that dinosaurs and humans once inhabited the earth at the same time, a phenomenon seen only in early Racquel Welch movies. The National Commission on Excellence in Education recently warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” I would say so! Mark Dice is an independent journalist with his own YouTube channel. Mr Dice can be seen taking to the streets of California, mobile microphone in hand, interviewing and videotaping the responses of a wide assortment of passersby to whom he poses questions like, "What country did we separate from in celebrating Independence Day?" Answers like “Canada” and “Germany” are both amusing and depressing. Many interviewees could not name the author of a single book. More than a few of Dice's respondents volunteered that:

• The Sears Tower was attacked on September 11, 2001 by 'Decepticons' • President John F. Kennedy had died that very morning in a car accident • Al Qaeda is building a base on the Moon In one video, at a time when an ounce of gold was going for about $1,800, Mr. Dice attempted to sell a gold coin to passersby for $50. No takers. In other interviews, Mr. Dice succeeds in having passersby sign various petitions to:

• Abolish their rights • Support an Orwellian police state in America • Repeal the 2nd Amendment and imprison gun owners The National Assessment of Educational Progress recently revealed that fewer than one-third of eighth-grade students are

Page 93 Freedom to Freedumb proficient in math, science and reading, while a 2010 report by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center reveals that the national high-school graduation rate remains just below 70 percent (a grade of C minus). The World Economic Forum currently ranks the U.S. 48th in math and science education, while The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranks the U.S. near the bottom of its 34 members on international math tests. In 2011 Newsweek Magazine gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. Citizenship test that is required of immigrants who wish to apply for American citizenship. The test contains 100 questions in five categories ranging from our system of government, to rights and responsibilities to basic American history. Typical questions are "What happened at the Constitutional Convention?" and "Who did the United States fight in World War II?" Remarkably, 70% didn't know what the Constitution is. Not what it says or contains, mind you, but what it is. Six percent could not circle Independence Day on a calendar. Thirty-eight percent of all participants passed the test, about four out of ten. But what is even more astonishing is that the test should be a breeze considering that all that is required is a passing grade of 60% which would get you a D minus in public school. SIDEBAR: Make note, Dear Reader — this is the level of proficiency (60%) that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services demands of those who would join you as fellow citizens! The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) has been around for as long as most of us can remember. Created in 1926 and adapted from a U.S. Army intelligence test administered to new recruits into the military, the SAT has

Page 94 Freedom to Freedumb become the gold standard in determining benchmarks for application to American colleges and universities. It probably comes as no surprise that today's SAT reading scores are the lowest in 40 years. In 1972 critical reading scores came in at 530. Today they stand at 514. And don't think for a minute that the SAT you took many decades ago bears any resemblance to the SAT being administered today. The SAT has undergone numerous modifications over the years, no doubt to boost declining performance standards while maintaining steady collegiate cash flow in the face of skyrocketing tuition. In 1994 the SAT permitted calculators to be used and removed antonym questions. Those of us who remember taking the exam will recall that antonyms were among the more difficult aspects. Not any more! Let us now turn to that nerdy component of the American public who belong to weird, underground religious cults; who fail to socialize their children; who actually study the Constitution along with America's other founding documents (gasp!) and rarely appear in public except to hang out with other nerds. I am, of course, speaking of the home schooled. The Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) recently funded a study titled Homeschooling Grows Up which answers the questions of whether home schoolers can "make it in the real world." The study must have come as a devastating blow to D.C. Educrats for it showed that homeschoolers tend to be more involved in community affairs than their publicly schooled peers. So much for inadequate socialization. Maybe those public schoolers should get out more often. The study also revealed that 74% of home schoolers went on to take college-level courses, compared with just 46 % of the publicly schooled population. It must really pay to be a nerd!

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Finally, 95 % of the over 7,000 home school graduates who participated in the study stated that they were pleased to have been homeschooled and 82% plan to home school their own children. SIDEBAR: Home schooling parents please note that you will not be eligible for tenure or property tax-funded educational retirement pensions. And not a penny for your family for school supplies, either. You're on your own! According to ACT Inc. which produces the ACT college entrance exam, homeschoolers score about 10% higher than publicly schooled students. Let's revisit that last statistic again by comparing these two “teams” of teachers.

TEAM A: The Pros. Heavily Funded. Armed With Diplomas. On Teaching Team A we have hundreds of thousands of college educated, state-licensed public school teachers laboring to pay off their own student loans by administering the exact same federally approved curriculum to fresh batches of 20-30 young people all across America each year.

These are mostly under-salaried and under-appreciated individuals who get paid vastly less than their true value to society to teach in thousands of sprawling public school buildings from coast to coast that collectively consume billions of tax dollars annually for maintenance, heating, janitors, bus drivers and lest I forget, tenured administrators.

TEAM B: The Underdogs. Half Broke. No Special Qualifications.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch we have Teaching Team B which consists of millions of parents from all walks of life — realtors, truck drivers, plumbers, musicians, the list goes on and on —

Page 96 Freedom to Freedumb most of whom hold no educational certification or licensing and have no professional educational experience whatsoever; some of whom never finished high school; many of whom never graduated from college; the majority of whom are struggling in today's flat-lining economy to keep body and soul together, and NONE of whom gets paid a penny to teach their kids.

Gadzooks! What a horrendous mismatch!

How could the public school teachers possibly stand a chance?

Let's stretch the point to make a point. Take the case of 12-year old Betty Sue, a bright young girl who is otherwise average in every way and whose mother is a chain-smoking high school dropout living on welfare and food stamps in a dilapidated double-wide trailer in the hills of West Virginia. How on earth will Betty Sue ever be able to be adequately educated at home, let alone excel?

Ready? 'Better get out of the way 'cause here comes Betty Sue! Just give Betty Sue some paper and pencils, a used laptop, low- cost DSL online access to Khan Academy and a plethora of other, free distance learning informational web sites, the freedom to learn at her own speed while sitting down; lying down; hanging from a tree branch; standing up at a table; while eating an apple or chewing gum; alone or with other kids, and stand back, America! When Betty Sue has a question, she raises her hand and asks. Her street smart but less-than-well-educated mama may not know the answer, but it's for sure that someone in Bug Tussle will. The more Betty Sue learns, the more she figures out how to educate herself. The truth is that everything Betty Sue needs to know is in a book. She doesn't need an authority figure to stand in front of

Page 97 Freedom to Freedumb her in a crowded classroom and read to her from a book. She can read that book for herself just fine, thank you. Speaking of books, Betty Sue doesn't study from the books the government uses. She studies from books that tell the whole, unvarnished truth about history. And like most children, Betty Sue was born with a boatload of natural curiosity that hasn't been ground down by the drudgery of a factory style education. This leaves Betty Sue free to explore anything that interests her — like why plants grow their leaves in a Fibonacci pattern to maximize exposure to available sunlight, or why a gyroscope can balance on its side — seemingly defying gravity! Which then led her to learn about antigravitics, the electric universe and other fascinating subjects that aren't taught within a million light years of public school in any grade. As for Betty Sue's mom's qualifications as a home educator: sure, she may be a junior high school dropout. But she's got more “street smarts” and common sense than John Deere's got tractors. And she's been to some local meetings where real Americans discuss things that every educated citizen oughta' know about (...none of which is ever even mentioned on TV).

SIDEBAR: I should also point out that 12-year old Betty Sue can plant a garden, sew holes in her jeans, cook dinner, crochet her own mittens, jar pickles, look after chickens, intelligently discuss the Constitution and put a .22 round clean through a soda can at 20 yards. So when you approach that double-wide, you might want to keep your hands up where she and mama can see them. No worries about Betty Sue. She'll do just fine. Mama will see to it that her daughter enters adulthood not just well-informed (like... which side the taxpayer's bread is really buttered on), but most important of all: how to succeed in a world where sometimes you need to be smart enough to know how to act stupid enough to get along.

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The Butterfly

It was just before noon on Thursday and 12-year-old, home schooling Molly was seated at the kitchen table working on her math. Her mom was nearby preparing lunch which today would be a tasty and nutritious salad of fresh, organic vegetables and bean sprouts topped with her special dressing... when a large and beautiful butterfly flew past the kitchen window. Her mother spotted it first and called out to Molly who rushed over to look. With hardly a glance exchanged between them, mom and Molly headed out the back door and into the yard to see where the butterfly had gone. And that's when they spotted a half dozen butterflies flitting about the bushes around the house. Molly ran into the garage to get her dad's fishing net and set off chasing after butterflies. Meanwhile, up the street, another 12-year old named Brittney was sitting in a stuffy class room along with 22 other children at the Barack Hussein Obama Elementary School. It was time for science class, her third class in a row without an exercise break all morning, and today they had 55 minutes to learn all about the life cycle of the butterfly. Brittney's day had started with a 45-minute ride on a "smelly" school bus during which vulgar swear words rang out constantly from the rear where the older kids always sat. It wasn't uncommon for Brittney to have a sneaker fly over her head or land on her seat. A few had even hit her more than once, but she didn't dare complain to the bus driver or it would only get worse. The older kids called them "smell bombs" and delighted in Brittney's disgust which she tried to mask by staring straight ahead. She wanted badly to listen to music to pass the daily boredom of the bus ride but she never felt secure in doing so since it meant not hearing or knowing what was going on

Page 99 Freedom to Freedumb around her. So every day she just stared out the window to bide the time, trying to be interested in anything that looked different from the day before. Molly's mom had locked the back door and joined her daughter, running around together in silly circles in the back yard trying to catch butterflies. Molly did finally catch one, but felt so sad for the little creature that she turned the net inside out and shook it until the butterfly freed itself and flew away. It had been a week since Molly and her Mom had gone on a field trip together, although Mom always joked that life itself is a continuous field trip. Today they would take advantage of Molly's spontaneous new interest in butterflies and learn all they could about them. Math, history, geography and Molly's other subjects could wait. After all, this was home school where there were no forced study periods or ringing bells and Mom and Molly could be as flexible as they liked in crafting each day's curriculum. So off they went to the museum of natural history in the city. This would require a walk to the bus stop, then a streetcar ride down town. Brittney was now struggling to stay awake. The high carbohydrate breakfast cereal of processed grains and sugar she had gulped down just in time to meet the school bus had sent her pancreas into overdrive and her glucose levels were plummeting. It was all she could to do pay attention. Turning to page 83 as instructed, Brittney saw a large color photograph of a Monarch butterfly. Of course, it wasn't flying or even moving, just sitting there, riveted to the page for eternity. But Brittney took a moment to make it fly in her mind, imagining what it would feel like to be a butterfly. Molly and her Mom had just stepped onto the bus and it was time to pay their fare. Knowing that the fare would be 50 cents each for her mother and herself and that there would be no change, Molly handed the driver a one-dollar bill while being careful not to call it by its proper name, Federal Reserve Note,

Page 100 Freedom to Freedumb since she didn't want to make the bus driver feel awkward or uncomfortable. They took a seat near the middle of the bus and found themselves seated next to a neatly attired man who, from the look of him, must have been in his 80's. Molly smiled as she sat down. The man took the friendly look as an opportunity to ask very politely, "Going down town?" Molly glanced at her Mom whose instant smile told her that it was OK to talk to the polite old man. Molly answered that she and her Mom were heading to the Museum of Natural History to look at butterflies. "Really, exclaimed the man! That's what I did for a living. I am a retired lepidopterist. An entomologist, actually, but lepidoptery was my specialty." Molly had no idea what those words meant, although she figured they must have something to do with butterflies and made a mental note to look them up when she got home. The man explained that he had taught college biology at the local university for forty-five years and still had a huge collection of moths and butterflies in his basement, all neatly pinned to cork boards and carefully cataloged by species. He would love to have Molly and her Mom come over and see the collection sometime. Molly's mom interrupted to introduce herself and soon found herself jotting down the man's name and phone number on the back of a napkin she found in her purse. Up the street in the sprawling, nearly windowless brick building with the chain link fence and hall monitors, Brittney jerked suddenly and reddened upon discovering that her teacher was looking right at her and the other kids were too. She wasn't sure what had just happened but from the annoyed look on Ms. Krachnik's face, she could only guess that she had nodded off. The teacher broke eye contact with Brittney in a way that made her feel very small and went on to call on another student. Brittney would give anything at this moment to vanish from this overcrowded, overheated classroom and magically appear

Page 101 Freedom to Freedumb somewhere else but all she could do was stare down at that Monarch butterfly that still wasn't moving. Mollie and her Mom got to the museum and Molly presented the attendant with a five-dollar bill (the one with the picture of that dreadful tyrant, Abraham Lincoln, who was anything but honest!) for a two-hour afternoon pass. Molly dragged her Mom by the hand to the insect wing where she was astonished to see a model butterfly that was twenty feet long. Her mother laughed and said it looked like a prop from Mothra, which she explained was a cheesy science fiction movie from the 1950's that her father had watched with her when he was still alive. They spent the next two hours looking at moth eggs under microscopes and studying displays and exhibits on the life cycle of a butterfly. After returning home Molly went to Wikipedia and looked up butterflies, learning all about the cocoon, chrysalis, pupa, antennae and so much more. That evening they drove across town to the home of Mr. Johnson, the older gentleman whom they had met on the subway. To have such an enthusiastic youngster in his home -- and so polite and well-behaved! -- take such an interest in his own lifelong passion made Mr. Johnson's day. Truth be told, it made his entire year! Mr. Johnson patiently explained so much about butterflies that Molly couldn't believe it. At this point it would be fair to say that Molly knew far more about butterflies than Brittney's teacher. As for being insufficiently “socialized” (apparently the only criticism that advocates of public schooling could think of to use against home schoolers), aside from being active in a thriving local network of home educators and their families who got together several times each week for sports, to write and produce their own plays and for numerous other fun activities, over just the past few days alone Molly had interacted with a friendly bus driver, chatted for a while with a nice lady at the museum and made friends with an octogenarian, a word Molly had now added to her large and still growing vocabulary.

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It was time for lunch now. Brittney knew this instantly because the bell was ringing again, plus the voice of the school principal coming from the loudspeaker mounted high on the classroom wall next to the clock was telling them all to walk, not run to the lunchroom; that today's special was pizza from Domino's and chocolate milk, and that no food throwing or similar "rough housing" would be tolerated in the cafeteria.

Molly hated the fact that even though she was surrounded by other kids at her school all day long, she never got to spend any real time with any of them. All they did was march from room to room every time the bell rang. She didn't even get to walk home with her friends since her family lived too far away from the school for that. Brittney never did learn anything more about butterflies that day. There wasn't enough time in a 55-minute segment to spend more than a few minutes on any one topic. They would proceed to the next page in their biology textbook tomorrow, with no more mention of butterflies. She would, however, be tested tomorrow on all she had been taught this week, including butterflies, on a 50-question, multiple choice quiz that required her to correctly remember the various butterfly parts that she had seen printed in bold text in the textbook. Brittney knew that these were special words that she was expected to remember. This always made her nervous, because without at least a B grade her father was not going to allow her to upgrade her X- Box in time for the summer break. The next day Molly spent a little more time looking up “more cool stuff” about butterflies on Google, with her mom's close supervision of course. At this point she was getting tired of butterflies and wanted to work on geography for a while. Her Mom suggested that she might want to tie the two together and look up the names of rivers, mountains and other natural features in those areas of the world where certain types of butterflies were most commonly found. This fascinated Molly

Page 103 Freedom to Freedumb who dove into her geography book which she read with enthusiasm. Being a kinetic learner, Molly liked to be moving while she read; today while hanging upside down off the end of the living room sofa where she would remain until she was hungry again, or felt like working on something else. It was now bedtime for Brittney. Her father was downstairs in the living room watching a reality TV show rerun and her mother was just getting home from another “girls night out” with some friends. Brittney brushed her teeth, took her evening ADHD medication, got into bed and turned out the light. The walls in her room fell dark and she could no longer make out the butterflies and flowers within the pattern on her bedroom wallpaper. Brittney never would connect the butterflies that lived on her bedroom walls with page 83 in her school book. Butterflies weren't something that a girl who dreamed of being a teenage pop star ever thought about. Besides, at the moment she was too worried about that quiz tomorrow. Plus, she had no idea what she was going to wear to school the next day that her rich friends with their designer clothes wouldn't laugh about. Brittney knew that the girls she hung out with kept careful tabs on things like that. Thank God she wasn't like some of those geeky girls at Barack Obama Elementary who were, like, so totally fashion unconscious that you'd think they were home schooled or something. Brittney had no idea what home schooling even looked like, but she was sure that it had to be beyond uncool. And those were her last conscious thoughts before the alarm clock went off and she raced to grab an instant breakfast bar and get ready for the bus.

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Remembering Mrs. Johnson

Because of their choices of information channels through which to receive the daily ‘news’, most Americans spend their entire lives inside the intellectual equivalent of the movie The Truman Show. If you haven’t seen it, go rent it. Take the case of Mrs. Johnson, the lady who lived next door. Mrs. Johnson passed away last week at the age of 85. She loved her country and refused to believe anything she didn't hear on the evening news or read in her establishment newspaper. She had believed that nice Franklin Roosevelt when he promised that no one's son would ever go to war to fight on foreign soil for foreign interests. She had believed that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a total surprise to the government and that the A-bomb dropped on the Japan city of Hiroshima that incinerated hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians was necessary to end the war in the Pacific. The fact that the Japanese government was desperately trying to surrender through back door diplomatic channels never made it into Mrs. Johnson’s living room. Her own son, William, had died in that war, a hero who had sacrificed his life to make the world safe for democracy. She was proud of William and placed fresh flowers at his grave each Memorial Day. Mrs. Johnson wasn’t aware that America was not a democracy; that all democracies throughout history have devolved into totalitarianism which is why America’s Founders specifically created our nation as a republic. Mrs. Johnson had said the Pledge of Allegiance many times in her life, mouthing the words “… and to the republic for which it stands…” without ever once connecting the dots.

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She had believed Walter Cronkite when he told her that JFK was killed by a single magic bullet fired by a crazy lone gunman. She refused to believe that there were elite, private groups steering American policy from above the level of elected politics, groups like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderbergs. If there were, that young Tom Brokaw or her favorite newsreader, serious Peter Jennings would have told her so. She had heard that Randy Weaver was a crazy racist and certainly not a family man, although she felt bad for that poor wife of his for getting shot through the head. That's what happens to extremists who get all caught up with guns. She refused to believe that government agents could possibly have done anything wrong to those religious fanatics at Waco. She believed, because TV told her so, that they had refused to let their children come out, preferring to all die together in a fiery suicide pact. She saw the twin towers crumble to the ground on September 11, 2001, fully believing the ‘pancake collapse’ theory the government later reported, despite the fact that she saw the towers fall at near free-fall speed with her own eyes. Mrs. Johnson had bought the first television set in her neighborhood back in the early 1950’s and had loved television all her life. The fact that World Trade Center Building 7 had joined the first two towers by falling straight into its own footprint later that same day, never made it onto Mrs. Johnsons’ radar screen because that information was never shown on TV. Mrs. Johnson died of cancer, believing that whatever her doctor told her about treating cancer was the right thing to do. Because her doctor had never recommended natural therapies, she had scoffed at the idea because they weren’t "approved". Whatever her doctor prescribed she could “take to the bank.”

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Mrs. Johnson died without ever knowing the truth about any of these things. Fortunately, her children now have the Internet where they can regularly visit establishment media web sites and stay even more conveniently informed.

“The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” — former CIA Director, William Colby

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” – William Casey, former CIA Director, from first staff meeting (1981)

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Somewhat Less Than Honest Abe

OK, it’s time to deconstruct the Lincoln myth which serves to demonstrate the degree to which a nation can be deceived by forces powerful enough to obliterate, and ultimately reverse, true history. “Honest Abe” Lincoln is revered by virtually all Americans as perhaps our nation’s greatest President—as a great and godly Christian man who struggled against all odds to keep the Union intact during the Civil War and who “freed the slaves”. Millions of Americans of African descent living today revere Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. His statue at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. is so impressive, so imposing and so awe-inspiring as to render Augustus Caesar, were he alive today, green with envy. But are the stories about Lincoln actually true? Are any of them true? Was he really a Christian? Did he really free the slaves? Was he really a deep and abiding defender of the Constitution? Was he really all that honest? Most Americans are under the impression that Abraham Lincoln personally abolished slavery. Enshrined in American mythology is the Great Emancipator who freed the Negroes with a stroke of the pen out of the goodness of his heart, while at the same time saving the Union. Generations of schoolchildren have memorized these memes. Poets have wept over their drama and imagery. No other American story is so enduring, so comforting, or so false. The testimony of sixteen thousand books and monographs to the contrary notwithstanding, Lincoln did not emancipate the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was not a real emancipation proclamation at all, and did not liberate anyone. John F. Hume, the Missouri anti-slavery leader who heard Lincoln speak and

Page 108 Freedom to Freedumb who looked him in the eye in the White House, said the Proclamation "… did not ... whatever it may have otherwise accomplished at the time it was issued, liberate a single slave." J. G. Randall, who has been called "the greatest Lincoln scholar of all time," said the Proclamation itself did not free a single slave. There, then, the secret is out! The most famous act in American political history never happened. Carl Sandburg wrote tens of thousands of words about it. Aaron Copeland wrote a musical portrait about it. Martin Luther King, Jr. even had a dream about it. But the awkward fact is that Abraham Lincoln didn't do it. The truth is that Lincoln stated throughout his adult life that he did not believe in social or political equality of the races. He opposed interracial marriage and supported the Illinois constitution's prohibition of immigration of blacks into the state. He once defended in court a slave owner seeking to retrieve his runaway slaves but never once defended a runaway. Convinced that whites and blacks could never live together as equals, he was a lifelong advocate of sending every black person to Africa, Haiti, or central America—anywhere but in the U.S. He opposed civil rights for blacks, fought and frustrated abolitionists, endorsed the Fugitive Slave Act, pandered to voters’ anti-black prejudices, delayed taking steps against slavery, put consideration for slave owners ahead of justice for slaves, and actually tried, at crucial points, to save slavery. The Great Emancipator indeed. Pulitzer prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Donald wrote in his 1961 book Lincoln Reconsidered that "Lincoln was not an abolitionist." William Lloyd Garrison, the most prominent of all abolitionists, concluded that Lincoln "had not a drop of anti- slavery blood in his veins." Garrison and other abolitionists were also keenly aware that the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation freed no one since it

Page 109 Freedom to Freedumb specifically exempted all the areas which at that time were occupied by federal armies—that is, all areas where slaves could actually have been freed. So the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t really “free the slaves.” The proclamation had little effect on slaves in the Confederacy, of course, since they were beyond Lincoln’s reach. Wags quipped that Lincoln had freed the slaves he couldn’t help, while doing nothing for the slaves he could have helped. The proclamation was a brilliant propaganda coup that won foreign sympathy for the Union cause. It redefined the Civil War as a contest over slavery rather than secession, distracting attention from the basic question of whether a state could declare its independence of the Union. That question was brutally answered by the outcome of the war. Historians have portrayed the mythical Lincoln as a man who brooded for decades over how he could someday “free the slaves”. Nothing could be more absurd. In debating Stephen Douglas during their famous 1858 Senate race in Illinois, Lincoln flatly denied the charge that he favored racial equality. Here is Abraham Lincoln in his own words, and I quote: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

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He underlined the point by adding: "I am not in favor of Negro citizenship." Addressing the question whether individual states had the constitutional power to confer citizenship on the Negro, he said: "If the state of Illinois had that power I should be opposed to the exercise of it." In August 1862 President Lincoln spoke to a group of black freedmen in Washington. He was extraordinarily direct: "You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence.... It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated." — Abraham Lincoln By the end of the Civil War, Lincoln seems to have realized that the colonization schemes he favored weren’t going to work. Freed blacks didn’t want to leave America, Central America wouldn’t welcome them, Africa was too remote, and the cost of deporting them, even voluntarily, would be huge. The fact remains that the author of the Gettysburg Address was a segregationist. But as America’s pastors warmly assure young children everywhere, Lincoln was a devout Christian, was he not? Just as, over the years, we have all been treated to the ethereal fables of “Honest Abe” so we have been also treated to many stories about Lincoln's Christian faith. Carl Sandburg, in volume one of his six-volume set on Lincoln's life observed: "Close friends of Lincoln, such as his law partner Herndon, and Matheny, who stood as best man at his wedding, had a notion that Lincoln was a sort of infidel. They said Lincoln told them he did not believe the Bible was the revelation of God, and in a

Page 111 Freedom to Freedumb little book he wrote in New Salem he tried to prove that Jesus was not the Son of God. 'Lincoln did tell me that he did write a little book on infidelity - I got it from Lincoln's mouth' said Matheny. 'An infidel, a theist, a fatalist,' was Herndon's notion ...”. Herndon wrote a book called Life of Lincoln and stated quite forthrightly that: "Lincoln was a deep-grounded infidel. He disliked and despised churches. He never entered a church except to scoff and ridicule. On coming from a church he would mimic the preacher. Before running for any office he wrote a book against Christianity and the Bible." Lincoln's relatives and friends testified that he "scoffed and derided religion and the Bible." Mary Todd Lincoln herself stated that her husband "was not a technical Christian." So Lincoln was not the Great Emancipator, and he was not a Christian. Two strikes so far. But he loved and saved the Union and the Constitution, did he not? It is widely forgotten that many Americans at that time held that the Confederate States had every right to secede from the Union. To Abraham Lincoln, however, this was treason. In May, 1861, the Civil War was already raging. Lincoln called on Maryland to send four regiments to fight for the Union cause. The Maryland state legislature replied to Lincoln’s summons for troops with a resolution condemning the war as "unconstitutional and repugnant to civilization," adding that "for the sake of humanity we are for peace and reconciliation, and solemnly protest against this war, and will take no part in it." The legislature also called "the present military occupation of Maryland" a "flagrant violation of the Constitution." Lincoln was outraged and sent informers to determine which members of the legislature were disloyal. On the night of September 12, 1861 he had federal troops arrest dozens of

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Maryland legislators and other prominent citizens (including the mayor of Baltimore and a Maryland congressman) he suspected of Southern sympathies. Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus, claimed the power to arrest anyone arbitrarily, without specific charges and without a trial, and had thousands of suspected "traitors" (those who rejected his interpretation of the Constitution) jailed without formal charges, trials or contact with attorneys. When the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Roger Taney, ruled that Lincoln had acted unconstitutionally, that the President had no authority to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus; that only Congress could do that, and that even Congress couldn't authorize the President to do it, Lincoln had not only ignored the ruling, but ordered Taney’s arrest as well! Some within both the North and the South charged Lincoln with acting as a "dictator." After arresting its legislature, Lincoln moved to refill the Maryland legislature with reliable Unionists. He stationed thousands of federal troops in the state and used them to crush further dissent. As historian Charles Adams writes in his book When In The Course Of Human Events: "In November there was an election, and to make sure only Union people were elected, all members of the Federal armed forces voted, even though they were not residents of the state. At the voting booths, other voters had to pass through platoons of Union soldiers who had bayonets affixed to their rifles." Southern sympathizers attempting to vote were arrested. By such means Lincoln got the legislature he wanted. Across the North Lincoln authorized tens of thousands of arbitrary arrests and shut down hundreds of newspapers for criticizing his war. His military governors sometimes ordered hangings, without

Page 113 Freedom to Freedumb trial, for minor offenses. Mere suspicion of disloyalty was enough to expose the individual to danger from his own government. It was a genuine reign of terror, an era of government by hysteria. The Constitution was effectively suspended. Lincoln brought secret police to America, along with the traditional midnight "knock on the door", illegally suspending the Bill of Rights and, like the Latin America dictators he anticipated, "disappearing" thousands in the north whose only crime was that they disagreed with him. Moreover, Lincoln destroyed the most important principle of the Declaration—the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Southerners in 1860 no longer consented to being governed by Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, this didn't stop Dictator Lincoln from invading the South without the consent of Congress as called for in the Constitution; from declaring martial law; from blockading Southern ports without a declaration of war, as required by the Constitution; from illegally suspending the writ of habeas corpus; from imprisoning without trial thousands of Northern anti-war protesters, including hundreds of newspaper editors and owners; from censoring all newspaper and telegraph communication; from nationalizing the railroads; from creating three new states without the consent of the citizens of those states in order to artificially inflate the Republican Party's electoral vote; from ordering Federal troops to interfere with Northern elections to assure Republican Party victories; from deporting Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham for opposing his domestic policies (especially protectionist tariffs and income taxation) on the floor of the House of Representatives; from confiscating private property, including firearms, in violation of the Second Amendment; and effectively from gutting the Tenth and Ninth Amendments as well.

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Lincoln wanted a bloody war and the reason he wanted it had little or nothing to do with slavery. As he stated over and over again, his overriding objective was to destroy once and for all the system of federalism and states’ rights that the founding fathers had created as a check on the centralizing tendencies of the state. Napoleon III of France offered to mediate the dispute between North and South and was ignored. Lincoln wanted a war. He cleverly maneuvered the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter, where no one was hurt or killed. Even though he had sent warships to the fort, they did not return fire because their mission—to draw an attack—had already been accomplished. After Fort Sumter Lincoln thanked Naval Commander Gustavus Fox for helping him orchestrate the attack and to generate Northern support for a war.

From the very beginning, Lincoln’s war strategy involved waging war on Southern civilians despite the fact that such tactics were denounced by the Geneva Convention of 1863.

From the very beginning of his administration he intentionally waged a cruel and unbelievably bloody war on civilians as well as soldiers. As early as 1861, Federal soldiers plundered and pillaged their way through the South for four years. In 1861 federal commanders began taking civilians hostage and sometimes shooting them in retaliation for Confederate guerrilla attacks.

Early in the war the towns of Randolph, Tennessee, and Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi, were burned to the ground by General William Tecumseh Sherman, who declared that to all secessionists, women and children included, "death is mercy." The bombardment of cities was considered beyond the bounds of international law and morality in the 1860s, but Lincoln paid no attention to such niceties.

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As Colonel John Beatty warned the residents of Paint Rock, Alabama: “Every time the telegraph wire is cut we would burn a house; every time a train was fired upon we would hang a man; and we would continue to do this until every house was burned and every man hanged between Decatur and Bridgeport." Historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel estimates that some 50,000 Southern civilians were killed during the war, and this number, even if it is exaggerated by a multiple of two, most likely includes thousands of slaves. In his “March to the Sea”, General Sherman boasted of having destroyed $100 million in private property and that his "soldiers" carried home another $20 million worth. Lincoln’s war ended up costing 620,000 battlefield deaths along with the death of some 50,000 Southern civilians. His armies slaughtered one out of every four white Southern males between 20 and 40. Standardizing for today's population that would be the equivalent of around 3 million American deaths, or roughly 60 times the number of Americans who died in Vietnam.

Additionally, thousands of slaves perished in the federal army’s bombardment of Southern cities and because of its devastation of the Southern economy.

We must take a breath here and remind ourselves that this is not some foreign tyrant or despotic ruler we are speaking of. This is the great American who “saved the union.” The Great Emancipator who privately ridiculed blacks, freely used racial epithets and said the N-word all the time, both in public and in private. Another myth about Abe Lincoln is that he was a tender-hearted man who sincerely cared about others. Hundreds of books have been written about Lincoln the humanitarian, a soft and gentle

Page 116 Freedom to Freedumb man. When General Grant was engaged in trench warfare in Petersburg, Virginia, Lincoln wired him, “Hold on with a bull- dog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.” Again, truth trumps fable. In his memoirs, Sherman wrote that when he met with Lincoln after his march was completed, Lincoln was eager to hear the stories of how thousands of Southern civilians, mostly women, children, and old men, were plundered, sometimes murdered, and rendered homeless. Lincoln, according to Sherman, laughed almost uncontrollably at the stories. Even Sherman biographer Lee Kennett, who writes very favorably of the general, concluded that had the Confederates won the war, they would have been "justified in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants." Lincoln saw the introduction of total war on the American continent—indiscriminate mass slaughter and destruction without regard to age, gender, or combat status of the victims— and oversaw the systematic shelling and burning of entire cities for strategic and tactical purposes. Lincoln was also a Socialist and a politically ambitious lawyer who eagerly prostituted himself to northern industrialists who were unwilling to pay world prices for their raw materials and who, rather than practice real capitalism, enlisted brute government force for dealing with uncooperative southern suppliers. When Lincoln first entered state politics in 1832 he announced that he was doing so for three reasons: To help enact the Whig Party agenda of protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare subsidies for railroad and canal-building corporations ("internal improvements"), and a government monopolization of the nation's money supply.

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"My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance," he declared: "I am in favor of a national bank ... the internal improvements system, and a high protective tariff." He was a devoted mercantilist, and remained so for his entire political life. Lincoln was a great admirer of Henry Clay and Clay's "vision" for America, which he called "The American System." For those who may not know much about Henry Clay, he was a committed Socialist. Lincoln eulogized Clay when he said "During my whole political life, I have loved and revered (Clay) as a teacher and leader." If Clay was a socialist and Lincoln considered him a great leader and teacher, what does that tell you about Lincoln? In his book Abraham Lincoln And The Second American Revolution, historian James McPherson first identified the link between Lincoln and Marxist leaders, noting that: "Lincoln championed the leaders of the European revolutions of 1848; in turn, a man who knew something about those revolutions - Karl Marx - praised Lincoln in 1865 as 'the single-minded son of the working class' who had led his 'country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world." Marx even wrote a letter to Lincoln, congratulating him on his re-election in 1864, and Lincoln reportedly responded warmly. Lincoln came from an area with a large German population, many of whom were exiles from the 1848 Marxist Revolution. Lincoln also appointed many German Marxists to high positions in the Union Army, including the likes of Joseph Weydemeyer, Carl Schurz, Franz Sigel, Thomas Francis Meagher, Peter Joseph Osterhaus, August von Willich, Friedrich Salomon, Alexander Schimmelfennig, E. S. Solomon, Albin Schoepf, Julius Stahel, Max Weber and Frederick Hecker—all revolutionaries

Page 118 Freedom to Freedumb from 1848 who found a home in the Grand Army of the Republic. The socialist connection with the North was strong enough for Southern Theologian James H. Thornwell to comment: "The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and slaveholders, they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battle ground, Christianity and Atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity the stake." Since 1865 it has been assumed that no state may secede for any reason, no matter how tyrannical the federal government may become, no matter how wildly it exceeds its constitutional powers. But your author would ask you this. Had the emissaries from the several states who met to form a whole new government been informed that, once created, the Union could never be dissolved; that the Constitution was like a lobster trap in that, once a state had entered into it, it could never get out of it, would the framers have gone ahead and formed the federated compact of the states that we have today? What do you think. Dear Reader? Here is what constitutional lawyer James C. Carter wrote in 1898: “I may hazard the opinion that if the question had been asked... immediately after the adoption of the Constitution, whether the Union as formed by that instrument could lawfully treat the secession of a State as rebellion, and suppress it by force, few of those who participated in forming that instrument would have answered in the affirmative.” Indeed. In the end, Lincoln didn't unite this country, he divided it along lines of an ugly hatred and resentment that persist to this day. If Lincoln could have been tried in Nuremburg for war

Page 119 Freedom to Freedumb crimes, he'd have received the same sentence as the highest- ranking Nazis. As for the notion of Abe’s “honesty”, the truth is that Lincoln was a conniving politician. As a lawyer, he had good training in the art of duplicity. The myth of “Honest Abe” walking for miles as a child to return a penny to its proper owner was apparently invented by a pastor (whom history fails to identify) as a “morality play” to impress young Sunday School worshipers. To this day, there can be found throughout Illinois copies of invoices and bills that the deadbeat, Lincoln, failed to pay in his lifetime. The bottom line is that the “high water mark” of the American republic was 1860 during the administration of the Great Extremist, Abraham Lincoln who established the precedent of presumption that the federal government, under the mantle of “emergency powers”, has jurisdiction in all matters whatsoever, and that the Constitution, rather than being a prohibition against powers not specifically granted in the Constitution, is an open “all you can eat” buffet of federal powers not specifically forbidden. This decline all began with the Great Emancipator, the Great Christian and the Great Healer: “Honest Abe” Lincoln.

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Twelve Generations Later... Pattern recognition is a highly useful skill that can be applied to all areas of life. As an experienced currency trader your author has learned to detect patterns on charts that lead to high- probability trade setups. We traders use a host of technical indicators in our work, the simplest among these being the basic trend. Trends go up and trends go down. Sometimes they just go sideways, which we call consolidation. And they are everywhere in nature. For example, all democracies throughout recorded history have deteriorated into totalitarianism. You'd think a pattern like that would prevent future democracies from forming, but apparently the public hasn't been informed yet.

Given that the politicians arise from the people, there is probably no better index available for tracking the decline of liberty than the declining 200-year simple moving average of presidential eloquence, made clear from an analysis of the grammar and linguistic complexity of past presidential speeches. Let's take a look, starting with the first two sentences from Barack Obama's second inaugural speech given in 2013: "Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy." Hmmm ... Since Mr. Obama referenced the Constitution while referring to America as a democracy, I can't help but remind the reader, as mentioned earlier, that our form of government is not a democracy, but a republic; that the Constitution itself under Article IV, Section IV guarantees to the states a republican form of government.

So the chief of the executive branch, head of the armed forces,

Page 121 Freedom to Freedumb leader of the free world and arguably the most powerful person on the planet, having just sworn an oath to defend a Constitution which (ahem) he may not quite understand, is out of the chute with some pretty glaring inaccuracies, and we're only 25 words into the speech so far. Now let's compare those two sentences with the first two sentences from George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation of October 3, 1789. “Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.” That was one sentence. Let's take a breath and dive into the second sentence: “And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties

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properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.” Let's see, that comes to 337 words, about 13 times as many words as Mr. Obama, and in just two sentences containing some nice parallel sentence construction, complex nested clauses and juicy modifiers. An inveterate logophile like myself could not ask for more!

Every farmer in Washington's day could read that speech in their local newspaper and follow along just fine. Were it to be printed in tomorrow's edition of USA Today, one can only speculate on the number of Americans who would make it past “beneficent author” without turning to the Sports section. I rest my case.

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Here Come’ the Jury!

In 1679, a century before our colonial ancestors would separate from the British Crown, freedom fighter Richard Rumbold was hanged for planning an insurrection against the despot du jour, Charles II. These were Rumbold’s last words before the tyrant snapped his neck: "I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another, for none comes into the world with a saddle upon his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him." Rumbold clearly understood that every man, from the lowest peasant to the most venerated nobleman, is born with rights equal to those of all other men; that no man is above another man. Echoing those words, John Locke would later warn: "I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else." Did you catch that? Once the tyrant controls your liberty, you can expect him to systematically control everything else. Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Short in 1825: “Aristocrats fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society." Jefferson also wrote to Samuel Kercheval in 1816: “I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom." When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear their own government, there is tyranny. A clear indication of the former condition is when a spider’s web of laws proliferate, as is the case today.

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In her seminal freedom novel Atlas Shrugged, author Ayn Rand explained that laws are not made for honest men. When so many laws have been passed that every man and woman is guilty at any given moment of at least some law or other, the policing power of the state can then be summoned on demand to accuse and round up political dissidents under the slightest pretense. In The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton write: “The U.S. Code, which contains all federal statutes, occupies 56,009 single-spaced pages. Its 47 volumes take up nine feet of shelf space. An annotated version, which attempts to bring order out of chaos, is three feet long and has 230 hardcover volumes and 36 paperback supplements. Administrative lawmaking under statutes fill up the 207- volume Code of Federal Regulations, which spans 21 feet of shelf space and contains more than 134,488 pages of regulatory law. … Federal law is further augmented by more than 2,756 volumes of judicial precedent, taking up 160 yards of law library shelving.” And you’re certain you’re not breaking any of those laws? Americans are suffering under the burden of arbitrary and capricious enforcement of poorly written, unconstitutional laws. When there is no law, there is anarchy. When there is a mountain of unconstitutional law which no citizen has a duty to obey, a condition of de facto anarchy exists. "The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law....In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed." — Grant Gilmore in Age of American Law "... a government of laws and not of men." — John Adams, Declaration of Rights, Massachusetts Constitution, 1780 "The historic phrase ‘a government of laws and not of men’ epitomizes the distinguishing character of our political

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society ... [L]aw alone saves a society from being ... ruled by mere brute power however disguised. If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny." — Justice Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court, concurring in United States vs. Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 258 (1947) With the above in mind, if you will kindly forgive me again, Dear Reader, for tiptoeing out onto yet another politically incorrect and very creaky limb, it would appear that the ‘system’ doesn’t want you to know about juries and how important they are (gasp). So how important is the jury, anyway? Try this on for size: the jury—12 of your fellow citizens—is all that stands between you and overreaching government. Millions of Americans will, at one time or other, be called to serve on a state or federal jury whereupon they can take pride in knowing that they, and they alone, will be the ultimate arbiter of the fate of the accused. Or not. The reason being that every jury in the land is instructed by the judge that they must accept the law as given to them by the court, and that the jury can decide only the facts in the case. Sounds reasonable to the uninformed American (again, they might have missed this day in public school), but let’s see what various notables including the highest court in the land have to say on the matter of juror discretion. "The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy." – John Jay, 1st Chief Justice United States Supreme Court (1789)

"You have a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in

Page 126 Freedom to Freedumb controversy." – State of Georgia vs. Brailsford, et al, 3 Dall 1 (1794) "The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts." – Samuel Chase, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1796)

"For more than six hundred years--that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215, there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws." – Lysander Spooner, An Essay on the Trial by Jury, p. 11 (1852)

"The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact." – Oliver Wendell Holmes, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1902) "The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided." – Harlan F. Stone, 12th Chief Justice U.S. Supreme Court (1941)

"It is not only his right, but his duty...to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.” – John Adams, Second U.S. President, in 1771 as quoted in the Yale Law Journal 74:173 (1964) "...if exercising their judgment with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction that the charge of the court is wrong." – Alexander Hamilton (1804) on why jurors should acquit even against the judge's instruction, as quoted in Joseph Sax, Yale Law Review 57: 481-494 (1968)

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"The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge..." – U.S. vs Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 113, 1139, (1972) "The jury has an unreviewable and unreversible power...to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge..." – U.S. vs Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 1113, 1139, (1972) Well, I guess the jury can decide pretty much whatever it wants, including to ignore the judge completely! Case in point: during Prohibition when it was illegal to manufacture or transport intoxicating beverages, everyone and their uncle was making beer and wine in basement stills. Making your own booze was a virtual cottage industry. Were people seriously going to stop drinking adult beverages just because the government said they couldn’t? Time and again juries refused to convict defendants being tried for violating these prohibition-era laws, thereby sending a message back to the legislature that they were lousy laws. The truth about being a juror is that you have the absolute right to decide everything about the case at hand: the facts, the evidence, the character of the defendant, whether the actions of the defendant were reasonable under the circumstances, whether you would have done the same thing yourself if you‘d been in the same situation, even whether the law being applied is a lousy law or a reasonable law. In short, when you sit as a juror you have more power than the judge and even the entire legislature since you can throw the law right back at them! So if you ever get called for jury duty and have to decide , for example, whether it’s right to cage a fellow citizen who hasn’t harmed a flea, simply for being in possession of a small amount of recreational drugs, you’ll know what to do.

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Out of the Cave

The reader may recall the allegory of Plato's Cave where the truth that lurks behind a mere facade of reality is mistaken as the real thing. Your author recently delivered an introductory lecture on monetary principles to some new folks who had just been led out of Plato's Cave. Let's listen in as they ask some follow up questions. Q: So why is there paper money? A: Under a hard money system, kings and queens of old had to stop warring when they ran out of gold. Under fractional reserve banking, paper money can be printed endlessly so wars can be fought forever. Q: But today’s wars eventually end, so does this make gold less important than it used to be? A: Governments today can declare war on anything, two examples being the War on Drugs which caused drug use to skyrocket, and the War on Poverty which has dramatically increased the number of poor people. Both of these wars are still being waged. Then there’s the War On Terror which looks like it could be perpetual. Of course, terror is a military tactic, not an enemy. A war against terror is like a war against cavalry charges. But the public buys into it because they watch television. Q: Monarchs of old could be brutal. Aren't today's governments kinder and gentler? A: No, actually, hundreds of millions of people died at the hands of their own governments during the 1900's alone. Today's governments are said to be democratic, a word that the public has been led to believe means fair. All democracies throughout history have failed when a majority of the public discovered they could loot the treasury at the

Page 129 Freedom to Freedumb expense of the minority. From there it was just a short downhill trip to bureaucratic corruption and totalitarianism. Ancient Rome started out as a republic, deteriorated into a democracy which means ‘mob rule’, stretched to the corners of the Earth as it ballooned into an empire funded by a debased currency, then collapsed completely, followed by the Dark Ages. Q: I see, but aren't democracies better than monarchies? A: That would depend on the monarch. There probably has never been a person born who would not eventually be corrupted by enough power. Plato suggested that the world would best be served if ruled by an all-wise philosopher king. Perhaps he had himself in mind. A democracy is where a majority of the people need someone to tell them what to do. So they pretend to elect just rulers and the rulers rule the people any way they want. Since the rulers arise from the people, if the people are moral, the government will pretty much be moral too. If the people are raised on video games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto the government will have no problem stealing from them. Q: But where do the rulers come from? Can the common man get to rule? A: No, that would be a little too democratic. Certain candidates are selected to emerge, then spend millions running for office. Q: Do the people really support these candidates? A: Usually, but that's because they don't see that they have other choices. The author Douglas Adams said it best in an excerpt from his book So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish. Let's listen in as two characters, Arthur and Ford, discuss this very thing. "The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people." "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

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"I did," said Ford. "It is." "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?" "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?" "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in." Q: I think I'm beginning to see the light. So who selects the lizards, I mean, the candidates who get to run? A: Private memberships like The Council On Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, The Trilateral Commission, private foundations and think tanks. Q: And who chairs these private societies? A: The bankers. Q: Where do the millions in campaign donations come from? A: Largely from corporate donors. Q: And who chairs the corporations? A: The bankers. Q: So where does the government get its army so it can kill other armies? A: From the people. Television tells them there are bad people in other countries who hate us for our freedoms and that we need to invade their countries and kill them. That way the world will enjoy peace. Q: Aren't there real dangers to America from foreign governments?

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A: The last war fought in the legitimate self-defense of the United States was the War of 1812. Since then it’s been invasion and expansion of empire. Not to mention that there isn't a country on the planet today that poses any real threat to the Pentagon which could put their lights out in a New York minute. Q: So why do young people serve in the army? A: Serving in the army is glorified on television and roadside billboards. “Be All You Can Be” in an “Army of One.” It's all very macho. Much of today's voluntary army consists largely of young people who can't find a job and can get paid by Uncle Sam to kill other people and break their stuff, with the government's permission. In private life, premeditated murder will get you the electric chair. In the army, you don't get prosecuted for killing strangers. Do it well and you get a medal. Do it well for long enough and you get chest ribbons and a pension. Q: And who controls the television? A: The bankers, through the corporations that comprise the media. Q: How does the government pay its army? A: With paper money. Q: And who provides the paper money? A: The bankers. Q: But where does paper money come from? A: From the bankers. Rag linen from the flax plant is fed into one end of an intaglio printing press and legal tender coupons emerge from the other bearing the trophy likenesses of various deceased notables. Q: Why do you say trophy likeness? A: Because many of the people depicted on Federal Reserve Notes vehemently opposed paper money during their lives. Andrew Jackson called the bankers a 'den of vipers.' Abraham

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Lincoln referred to them as the enemy to his rear. Thomas Jefferson just thought they were creeps. Q: Is a Federal Reserve Note a dollar? A: No, a dollar is a unit of measurement, like an inch or a quart. A dollar was defined in the 1792 Coinage Act to contain 371.25 grains of pure silver. A Federal Reserve Note is about 1 gram of pure paper. The only difference between a $1 bill and a $10 bill is the ink required to print the extra zero. Q: So who gets to print and spend this fresh paper money without being prosecuted for counterfeiting? A: The bankers, of course. It makes them vastly richer. Paper money is the transfer mechanism they use to siphon wealth from the people into their own coffers. It's called inflation. Q: So does the government just print up all the paper money the economy needs and send trucks around the country to deliver it to the people for their use? A: Certainly not, for then the people would labor no more than absolutely necessary. They would work mornings for themselves, then take the rest of the day off. Today they labor all morning just to pay the government 50% of their wages in the form of taxes, fees, fines and inflation which, of course, is the biggest tax of all. Q: To whom are these taxes and fees paid? A: To the government which then uses much of it to pay the bankers for the rental use of the banker's debt paper money. Q: So why doesn't the government just print its own money and sidestep the bankers? A: Because the bankers own the government and that wouldn't be good for business. Q: Why must everyone's taxes be so high? Can't the government just print the money it needs and leave the people alone? A: No, the government needs to tax the people so it has enough money to pay huge amounts of interest to the bankers for the

Page 133 Freedom to Freedumb use of their credit money. Someone has to pay all that interest. That's why the IRS exists: to collect it. Q: Can't the government just spend its own money to pay that interest? A: The government doesn't have any money of its own. No government does. It either prints it or taxes it. The modern way is to do both. Taxes are exacted from the public under threat of force, penalty and incarceration so we can enjoy the freedoms that foreigners hate. Q: Why don't governments just print and distribute interest-free money? A: Because then there would be no inflation and the people would relax and work less. Less work would mean fewer taxes. Fewer taxes would mean smaller government. A smaller government would collect even less in taxes and have even less money with which to pay the interest to bankers to create more credit money for them. It's a downward spiral that could lead to a very small government and a great deal of personal liberty for the people which, of course, would be bad for business. Q: So the government delegates the credit money creation process to private bankers instead? A: You've been paying attention. Q: Is all of our money paper money? A: It's not our money, it's their money. They just let us rent it from them. Q: Got it. But, again, is it all in the form of paper? A: No, paper money is the small part of the currency iceberg that you can see. Coinage aside, most modern money is electronic and remains invisible beneath the surface. It's born in a computer, lives as a magnetized spot on a computer hard drive, travels between computers over phone lines and dies in a computer. From time to time a modest portion of it emerges as visible green paper coupons.

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Q: But why do ever increasing quantities of credit money need to be created in the first place? Isn't there enough to go around already? A: No, there is never enough for 'tax and spend' politicians. Q: So how does new credit money come into existence? A: When a banker issues someone a loan. Q: Is this true of all new money, or just some of it? A: All money except coins. If every loan outstanding were paid back our entire money supply would cease to exist. We are absolutely without a permanent money supply. Q: So there is no new paper money created until the act of borrowing creates it, yet the additional money needed to pay the interest on this newly created money does not exist at the moment it is created, is that right? A: Right. That additional money only comes into existence when even more new money is borrowed. Q: Wow. So the ever-expanding creation of credit money must be the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world. A: Bingo. By virtue of its pervasive nature and Brobdinagian scope and volume, credit money is the ultimate 'something for nothing' scheme, violating in every way the TANSTAAFL principle. Q: What does that stand for? A: “There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.” Q: But doesn't nature abhor a vacuum? A: Yes, but bankers love one. Fresh credit money rushes into the economic vacuum created through fractional reserve banking. Ponzi schemes can be found everywhere but bankers rule the roost. Government-sponsored wealth redistribution programs like Social Security where Peter's pocket is picked to pay Paul stand a distant second in line. Fees paid by governments to private

Page 135 Freedom to Freedumb bankers for the use of their money has enriched the bankers beyond comprehension. Q: This fractional reserve banking scheme sounds like it could expand forever. A: Only until it crashes. All paper monies throughout history have failed. This one will too. Q: But isn't our money system too big to fail? A: Ask Rome. Q: So why do the people borrow so much money? A: So they can have more stuff. Q: Do they really need all of this stuff? A: No, but television tells them they do. Social approval requires that people have the same stuff as their neighbors. When new stuff comes out, they sell their old stuff on Ebay or give it away on Craigslist. You can get some great stuff that way. Q: And the bankers control the media and tell the people what they need. Whew. A: Was that a question? Q: OK, so the bankers really have things wrapped up. But who are the bankers? A: The members of centuries old dynastic families who own the Class A preferred voting stock and sit as directors on the boards of the corporations that own the Federal Reserve and the world's other central banks. Each modern nation has one. The knee bone is connected to the thigh bone. Q: Why are the people willing to pay such high tax rates? A: So the government will protect them from external threats like middle eastern people who fail to certify to fly tiny airplanes at regional flight schools, then hijack sophisticated modern airliners containing row after row of people who could defend themselves with their shoes; who outfox the entire American defense apparatus, wandering around off course with transponders turned off; who can arrange for fighter jets to be

Page 136 Freedom to Freedumb kept grounded for an hour and a half when they could have been scrambled within minutes; and who can fly highly complex modern jumbo jets straight into tall buildings while turning, banking and descending under high-G's at maximum air speed with pinpoint accuracy, a feat that ‘Top Gun’ fighter jet pilots claim they could not do; all directed by a guy who hates us for our freedoms, from a cell phone in a cave in Afghanistan where I'm told the connection is terrible. Q: And the public goes for this? A: The public wants to feel secure which is easier than accepting responsibility for understanding the actual situation. By way of analogy, there is a species of ant that herds a smaller insect called the aphid, much as mankind herds sheep. When the ant strokes the aphid with its antenna the aphid produces a drop of liquid that the ant takes and uses as nutrition. In exchange for the aphid's contribution the ant protects the aphid from its only known natural predator: the ant. It's a protection racket that Al Capone understood well. Q: So taxes are a protection racket? A: No, taxes are a protection scheme. A scheme is a legal method of taxation. The legal method of taxation as authorized under the Constitution is revealed in The Internal Revenue Code which is the most exciting non-fiction thriller ever written: full of convoluted plot twists, a vast cast of sleazy characters including drug manufacturers, bootleggers, gun makers, even Communists, and all written on 9,600 pages of tissue thin paper printed in an 8-point font. You wouldn’t believe the ending. But getting back to rackets, racketeers ignore the law, preferring to operate above the law where there is less competition. Ancient Egyptian pharaohs sent out tax collectors to bludgeon farmers who failed to pay over a tenth of their crops. Today the IRS takes as much as half. Maybe we should bring back Pharaoh.

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Q: Getting back to money, didn't a high Fed official once admit that taxes are collected by governments to protect the buying power of their credit money. A: Yes. Former chairman of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve system, Beardsley Ruml, explained this in a 1942 essay titled Taxes For Revenue Are Obsolete. He said that since the government can print all the paper money it needs to pay its bills and meet its obligations, it has no need to collect taxes from anyone. But printing too much money would cause excessive inflation, perhaps even hyperinflation. So the government forcibly collects taxes so that when the people pay taxes to the IRS it leaves less spending power in their hands, therefore removing much of the excess created credit from the money supply, thereby controlling and protecting the spending power of paper money. Q: Do you mean to say that the bankers can deliberately create more credit money than is actually needed, then mask the fact by getting the government to siphon some credit back off the top of the money supply through taxes that wouldn't need to be collected in the first place if the government just printed and distributed its own money, interest-free? A: Go to the head of the class. Q: Wow, that's quite a feedback mechanism. A: Yes, it's just like the floating ball in the back of the toilet tank. When the water gets too high, the valve shuts off. The water is the money supply, the buoyancy of the rubber ball is the tax rate and the IRS is the flush handle. Q: Jeepers, why do people put up with all this? A: Because they do not know what is going on. Besides, they're happier that way. Q: Why doesn't the government run public service announcements on TV to explain it all? A: No one would watch them. Without wardrobe malfunctions,

Page 138 Freedom to Freedumb people eating bugs for money and similar forms of entertainment, the people simply aren't interested. Q: So why don't the preachers, priests and rabbis explain it from the pulpit? A: Because they don't work for real churches. A real church operates independently of government as a free assembly of worshipers without regulation. Of course, there can be no regulation of worship since the exercise of personal spirituality is above the jurisdiction of government. But preachers who choose not to be regulated and attempt to operate real churches are arrested and have their churches shut down. That's why most preachers today choose to preach with the approval of the IRS. Q: I don't get it. How are they preaching with the approval of the IRS? A: Simple. First a corporation is formed with the permission of state government which regulates all corporations within its borders. The corporation looks like a real church because it has a steeple, maybe some statues out front, stained glass, candles and other trappings of religious worship. This corporation then applies (a voluntary act, of course) to the IRS for a tax identification number so it can withhold taxes from its employees. The preacher is made an employee of the corporation. The corporation then applies to the IRS for non- profit status, which comes with regulations that forbid the preacher to criticize the government. This arrangement benefits both the pastor and the shareholders of the corporation because now parishioners can pass the plate and write off donations on their tax returns. The IRS perches on the preacher's shoulder, so to speak, like a little bird so it can keep a close watch on everything the clergyman says. If he or she crosses the line, the corporation

Page 139 Freedom to Freedumb loses its tax exemption and that's not good for church business because now parishioners will attend a competing steepled corporation where they can get a tax deduction for their beliefs. Q: Are there any public school teachers who are aware of these things? Why don't they teach the children? A: They can't. The Teachers' Union won't allow them to. If they did, the state wouldn't give their school its fair share of subsidies from the federal government. Q: Wow, they've pretty much got this whole thing locked down, don't they? A: Pretty much. Q: But don't the people want to be free? A: A pet is free to love whoever feeds it. Pets never wander far from their food bowl. Taxpayers don't wander far from their food bowls either, by which I mean Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidized housing, food stamps, welfare vouchers and other forms of federally redistributed free cheese. Taxpayers love it when the government takes care of them since it's easier than taking care of themselves. Q: Sounds to me like the public is pretty well conditioned to believe whatever the government and the media tell them. How long has this system of mass mind control worked this way? A: For thousands of years. The church ran it for a long time. Today it's TV. Who knows, maybe tomorrow it will be on a chip. Q: Is government even necessary? A: That's an ongoing debate. Most governments throughout history have been little more than bands of rogues in temporary possession of territory. The bankers had a hand in the writing of the U.S. Constitution to make sure that the new federal government would pay off the debts of the colonial government. They had a hand in fomenting the War of 1812, the War Between The States, World Wars I and

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II, and they've had a hand in the perpetuation of war—with occasional outbursts of peace—ever since. Q: Can't the people just govern themselves? A: Apparently not. That was the great American experiment America's founders had in mind, but it isn't really compatible with hi-definition TV and lavish surround sound. Q: So what can people who want to be self-governing do about all this? After all, the ant is much larger than the aphid, plus the ant has all the guns. A: Yes, but the aphid has the juice.

[At this point several of the students removed their sunglasses and headed back into the cave.]

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We’re All Socialists Now

A common complaint of modern conservatives who bemoan the deterioration of the traditional American way of life is that we are rapidly becoming a socialist nation. Not true. We are a socialist nation already, and have been for many decades now. Socialism was officially instituted, by law, on August 14, 1935 when President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, thereby officially mandating wealth redistribution in America. Since forced wealth redistribution—where Peter is coerced under threat of fines and incarceration to contribute the fruits of his labor to Paul—is a total violation of the common law protection of property rights that go all the way back to the Magna Carta, the Social Security Act effectively erased our republic and transformed America into a socialist democracy wherein various competing classes of citizens, like fledgling birds in a nest fighting over worms, could vie for their ‘fair share’ of the socialist pot. This is the point at which a republic degenerates into a democracy, and it’s just a short (and typically fiery and spectacular!) ride from there to totalitarianism. Interestingly, the passage of the Social Security Act was made all the more curious in light of a decision of the Supreme Court which, on May 6, 1935, a scant three months earlier, had just shot down federally sponsored wealth redistribution completely. The issue before the Supreme Court in the case Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad Company had been whether Congress had the constitutional authority to legislate a retirement pension plan for railroad workers. The government had argued (with a straight face) that since railroad workers crossed state lines in the conduct of their

Page 142 Freedom to Freedumb employment, the “interstate commerce” clause in the Constitution came into play. The Supreme Court’s denial of Congressional authority in ruling the Railroad Retirement Act thoroughly unconstitutional is one of the most delightful of the Supremes’ rulings your author has ever read. Here is an excerpt from that ruling (bolded text is my own): “The admitted fact that many railroads have voluntarily adopted pension plans does not aid materially in determining the authority of Congress to compel conformance to the one embodied in the Railroad Retirement Act, nor does the establishment of compulsory retirement plans in European countries, to which petitioners refer, for in many of these railroads are operated under government ownership, and none has a constitutional system comparable to ours. “The federal government is one of enumerated powers; those not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people. “The Constitution is not a statute, but the supreme law of the land to which all statutes must conform, and the powers conferred upon the federal government are to be reasonably and fairly construed, with a view to effectuating their purposes. “The catalog of means and actions which might be imposed upon an employer in any business, tending to the satisfaction and comfort of his employees, seems endless. Provision for free medical attendance and nursing, for clothing, for food, for housing, for the education of children, and a hundred other matters, might with equal propriety be proposed as tending to relieve the employee of mental strain and worry.

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“Can it fairly be said that the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce extends to the prescription of any or all of these things? Is it not apparent that they are really and essentially related solely to the social welfare of the worker, and therefore remote from any regulation of commerce as such? “We think the answer is plain. These matters obviously lie outside the orbit of congressional power.”

BAM! The Supremes slap down Congress and put an end to social wealth redistribution in the name of caring for citizens in their old age. So did that stop Franklin “Surprise Attack” Roosevelt for one second? Not on your life. Our consummate New Dealer got the Social Security Act passed with no worries over further interruption by the Supremes, the decision in the Alton case notwithstanding. And how was this amazing feat of social plunder accomplished? Here is where the grease meets the skids. The only way you can possibly come under the provisions of the Social Security Act is to get a Social Security Number (SSN) and participate. Makes sense, right? Without an identification number of your very own it isn't possible to process you. After all, if you want to participate in your state's lottery you have to buy a ticket. No ticket, no chance at the big jackpot. Same thing here.

If you Kind Reader, have decided to participate in Social Security (which, begging your pardon, makes you an official, card-carrying socialist already) you do so freely. You didn't know that? Let’s take a look. Most Americans believe the SSN to be required. If that were true, why would Form SS5, titled “Application for Social Security Number” even exist? If the government could simply

Page 144 Freedom to Freedumb rubber stamp the process and hand out numbers to everyone, why would there be a need for anyone to apply? I spill no beans here in pointing out that SSA Publication No. 05- 10023 titled Social Security Numbers For Children, available straight from the Social Security Administration, asks and answers the question: “Must my child have a Social Security number?” And the answer, straight from the horse’s mouth (being careful to identify the correct end of the horse) is, and I quote: “No. Getting a Social Security number for your newborn is voluntary.” Hmmm… voluntary? Then why does every newborn automatically get a SSN? The answer is that they don’t. The process just appears to be automatic. Do government spies lurk in birthing centers, listening for screams from delivering mothers, then burst in when they hear a baby wail its first breath and exclaim, “Ha! We see you! Here’s your very own SSN, little one. You’re a taxpayer now. Welcome to the world!” Clearly this is not what happens. What actually happens is that the elated yet weary, shell-shocked parent is handed a pile of paperwork by hospital administrators that must be signed before the newborn can be “released.” SIDEBAR: Isn’t it interesting that this is the same language used for prisoners at the end of their incarceration? “Released.” This term is also used by public schools when children are sent home at the end of the school day. “Released” Why not “dismissed?” “Discharged?” Or just “Signed out?” But I digress. Contained within this parental “release” paperwork is language that grants the hospital power-of-attorney to apply, on behalf of the parent or guardian, to that state’s Department of Vital Statistics to request a SSN for the newborn.

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This request is then forwarded by state administrators to apparatchiks at the Social Security Administration where the application is processed. A couple of weeks later and a Social Security Card arrives in the mail for the newborn as the parents beam with pride. Our child is now a real citizen! Many parents have chosen not to serially number their children (the formal term is “enumerate”), typically based on religious grounds, although in recent years philosophical grounds have played a large role as well. After all, these parents argue, livestock are branded. Appliances are stamped with model and serial numbers. Consumer items of endless description carry bar codes. Even books get identification numbers. But children are not things. They are human beings. And it’s wrong to serially number a human being like a horse, a toaster oven or a can of beans. The truth is that there are millions of Americans who have never obtained a SSN. I’m not speaking of illegal aliens who sneaked (snuck?) into America, but people who were born here, often at home. Of course, in the real world, it’s almost impossible to function without a SSN. Original SSN cards stated at the bottom of the card (as mine does): “For Social Security Purposes - Not For Identification.” Funny how things change. Today, you can’t get a driver’s license, open a bank account or get a job without providing a number. Unless, perhaps, you’re an illegal alien who can purchase a SSN for anywhere from $50 to $500 down near the U.S.-Mexico border, depending on how many times that number has been sold already.

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I’ve often joked that if the SSN that was issued to you were really yours, you could sell it on Ebay for quick nice cash flow. After all, it's your number, right? Let’s say the government is currently sending you $1,000 a month in Social Security benefits. You’re 65 years old and according to www.deathclock.com you can expect to live to age 85. That’s 20 more years of benefits, a total of 20 years x 12 months x $1,000 = $240,000 in cool cash you can look forward to receiving from Uncle Sam before your clock runs out. But let’s say you need that cash right now. Hmm... come to think of it, real estate notes bearing monthly cash payments can be sold at a discount for quick cash. Why not sell your future stream of Social Security earnings to a third party at a deep discount today? Maybe 50% OFF for a nice $120,000 cash on the barrel head? Sorry, no can do. It’s illegal. So what does it mean? It means that your future benefits are not really yours. They belong to your benevolent central planners who choose to dispense your benefits (or not) at their largesse. The fact is that Congress could vote tomorrow morning to cease all benefit payouts and there’s not a thing you could do about it. In the 1960 case Flemming v. Nestor, the Supreme Court ruled that no one has a legal right to Social Security. A beneficiary has no legal standing against a benefactor. If I were to give you a dime every time you pass me on the street, then stop doing that one day, can you sue me for the missing dimes? Of course not. Ditto with Social Security. The reality is that you can work for years, pay tens of thousands of dollars in employment taxes to the federal government, and still have not a single penny deposited “on account” that has been set aside for you. What you have on account is not money, not even any specified amount of benefits, but credits towards benefits.

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By law, the employment (i.e., Social Security) tax is just another form of income tax, measured by the amount of reported income. The more employment tax you pay, up to a mandated ceiling each year, the more credits you accumulate. Based on the amount of your lifetime accumulated credits, Congress then determines how many dollars those credits get you in monthly benefit payments. SIDEBAR: Readers old enough to remember S&H Green Stamps will be familiar with this process. Save up enough stamps and you can redeem a prize. With the above in mind, namely that no money has been set aside for your old age by the government, let’s extend that a little and state that no money has been set aside by the government for anyone. It’s all a bookkeeping trick. Let’s see what some very important people have had to say on this subject.

Scary Social Security Quote #01: "Every dollar collected in... payroll taxes is spent the very minute, the very hour, the very day it comes in the door... any funds left over, they are spent on other programs or used to pay off the national debt. But nothing is saved. No money is stashed away in bank vaults; no investments made in real assets." — John C. Goodman, President of the National Center for Policy Analysis in an article published by The Washington Times, April 12, 2002.

Scary Social Security Quote #02: "The truth is that the Social Security Trust Fund has already been stripped bare. There is no trust and no fund... the Social Security cupboard is bare." — Senator Ernest Hollings in the Congressional Record, April 24, 1991.

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Scary Social Security Quote #03: "Trust Fund balances are available to finance future benefits...but only in a bookkeeping sense... they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes or borrowing." — President William Jefferson Clinton in his Analytical Perspectives section of the 2000 budget.

Scary Social Security Quote #04: "We have no positive assets in the Social Security Trust Fund." — Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, on June 19, 2001 at a luncheon speech to The Coalition for American Financial Security in the Sky Room of the World Trade Center and later to Sam Donaldson on This Week, Sunday, June 25, 2001

Scary Social Security Quote #05: “These so-called trust fund 'assets' simply reflect the accumulated sum of funds transferred from Social Security over the years to finance other government operations." — June O'Neill, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) at the CATO Institute's Conference for Women and Social Security.

Scary Social Security Quote #06: "... ordinary working Americans, like teachers, police officers and firefighters, who believe their payroll taxes are going toward their Social Security retirement are in for a surprise..." — Robert Matsui (D-CA), Chairman House Ways & Means Subcommittee on Social Security, Associated Press, March 30, 2002.

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Scary Social Security Quote #07: "...the money the government has supposedly been putting aside from the Baby Boomers' Social Security taxes is not there. The government has been borrowing the money to pay for the budget deficit." — Newt Gingrich on April 7, 1995.

Scary Social Security Quote #08: "Washington politicians have for decades been doing precisely what Enron has been accused of doing — concealing debt with accounting tricks. Congressmen tell us that our Social Security taxes go into a trust fund to pay for future retirement pensions. That is a boldface lie. The Social Security trust fund has no money in it." — Walter Williams, Professor of Economics, George Mason University in The Washington Times on April 17, 2002.

Scary Social Security Quote #09: “When the money going out exceeds the money coming in, you are in trouble and that happens in 2016. Those who try to push the fatal date off to 2038 are counting the money that Social Security has in its so-called trust fund. However, the so-called trust fund exists only as a legal technicality, not as an economic reality...you cannot spend and save the same money." — Thomas Sowell in The Washington Times on July 29, 2001.

Scary Social Security Quote #20: “Government trust funds are simply... accounting mechanisms that record tax receipts... and associated expenditures." — Barry Anderson of the Congressional

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Budget Office in testimony before the House Budget Committee, September, 2002.

And there you have it, Dear Reader. No lock box. No trust fund. No funds, and might I add, no trust! Congress could kill the whole plan tomorrow and you’d be on your own. Or, as is more likely, Congress will allow the dollar to continue inflating into virtual worthlessness, while continuing to beam the promised benefit payments to your bank account each month, thereby making good on their promise to take care of you in your old age, while essentially giving you nothing. Incidentally, in closing this chapter I should mention that there is a street in Baltimore, Maryland called “Security Boulevard.” I kid you not. Cruise down this street and you will see acres of administrative buildings stretching back to the horizon as far as the eye can see that form the Social Security Administration complex, the largest wealth redistribution factory in the history of all humankind. The reader might be shocked to learn that each month this factory sends out millions of Social Security payments to foreigners from all over the world, people who worked as resident aliens here for American companies, paid employment taxes to the federal government, accumulated credits towards Social Security benefits, then went back home to collect monthly retirement payments from Uncle Sam. Of course, there is no money actually set aside for these people either. The only way they can get paid is for the government to send them your money, and I have no doubt they are extremely appreciate of your generosity, whether or not they hate us for our freedoms.

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“Those Were The Days, My Friend…”

As a currency trader I'm pretty good at detecting trends on my charts. We call this pattern recognition. Let’s take a minute and see if you can detect any trends in the following comparisons between America (today) and 50 years ago Then: Bill of Rights revered and honored Today: Bill of Rights shredded and ignored

Then: Property rights protected by government Today: Property readily subject to government seizure

Then: America respected internationally Today: America despised internationally

Then: National debt low and contained Today: National debt spiraling out of control

Then: One-income families can be self sufficient Today: Two income families barely surviving Then: Public schools turning out educated citizens Today: High school graduates unable to read their own diplomas

Then: Children reading books Today: Children playing video games and staring at smartphones

Then: Lawsuits uncommon Today: 'Litigation Nation'

Then: Frugal, thrifty Today: “He who dies with the most toys wins”

Then: The use of credit a badge of shame Today: Can’t live without credit

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Then: The right to privacy a given Today: No more privacy

Then: Courteous drivers Today: Road rage

Then: Integrity in personal and business affairs Today: 'Winner takes all'

How did that work out for you? Did you detect a trend there? Which way would you say that trend has been going? If you were to project this trend into the future another 50 years, what do you think America would look like then?

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What Most Americans Do Not Understand

"As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron." — H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), journalist, satirist, critic, in an editorial for the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Stop for a moment to consider the astonishing fact that most Americans alive today do not even know what form of government they live under. Let that sink in for a minute. Do Cubans living under Fidel Castro not know what form of government they live under? Of course not. They know that Mr. Castro is dictator and that they live under a dictatorship. What about the Chinese people? Do they not know that they live under the iron fist in the velvet glove, with a bullet to the head for political dissidents? Of course, they do. So what about Americans? What form of government do we live under? Stand in a shopping center once again with a clipboard and a bucket full of $1 dollar bills. Offer a free $1 to anyone who can state our form of government in ten words or less. I can almost guarantee that this exercise will cost you no more than a dollar or two. So, you think you live in a democracy, do you? BZZZTTT! Sorry, please accept these lovely mental handcuffs plated in 24 carat Fool's Gold as our consolation prize and thank you for joining us on The Price of Freedom Is Right.

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President Bill Clinton—a guy who never inhaled, then sold military secrets to the Chinese (read Betrayal by Bill Gertz)— said America’s job was to make the world free for democracy, no doubt keeping his friends in Bejing firmly in mind. Every sitting president in this writer’s life has referred to America as a democracy, which is why Americans stand at sporting events to pledge allegiance “to the flag, and to the democracy for which it stands.” No? Sorry, make that “republic.” Surely the chief executives of the most powerful nation in world history couldn’t possibly misunderstand the nature and character of the very government they lead… could they? Democracy sounds good to most people. It’s something you can wrap your feelings around. It smacks of truth, fairness and the American way. The problem is that every democracy in human history has failed. This one will, too. Here is what James Madison had to say on the subject:

"Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths... A republic, by which I mean a government in which a scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking." — James Madison, Federalist Papers No. 10 (1787)

John Adams chimed in with this:

“Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy

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yet that did not commit suicide.” — John Adams: letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814

Even the American military knows the difference (or used to anyway). The following is from Training Manual No. 2000-25 published by the War Department, November 30, 1928. “DEMOCRACY: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of "direct" expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic-- negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.” “REPUBLIC: Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them. Attitude toward property is respect for laws and individual rights, and a sensible economic procedure. Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences. A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass. Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy. Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress. Is the "standard form" of government throughout the world.” So it’s down with democracy for America and up with something else. What good news! You don’t live in a democracy, and you never have. You live in a constitutionally limited republic under the rule of law. Isn’t that great!? But most Americans don’t know this (it’s not on TV). In fact, they know just as little about a lot of other important economic and political concepts, too—ideas that go to the very root of our ability to live in a peaceful, prosperous and lawful society.

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There are so many things most Americans don’t understand about government, politics, rights and freedom that, were I to list them all you couldn’t lift this book. Here are just a few:

• Government is the mechanism whereby various segments of society seek to plunder each other, with government functioning as the wealth redistribution middleman.

• All democracies throughout history have failed when a majority of the public discovered that they could vote themselves their 'fair share' of the public purse.

• The essence of government is the collective expression of the individual right of self-defense.

• Government will always consolidate power until the privileges it accords unto itself transcend the rights of the people whose taxes feed it.

• Government tends to attract individuals who seek personal aggrandizement from the power to tell others how to live their lives.

• The longer public servants serve, the more they tend to serve not the public, but themselves.

• Political parties exist to create the illusion of meaningful dialog to distract the unsuspecting from core issues.

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Government As Great Provider

As stated previously, today's average American has been mentally conditioned to view government as the provider of all things. This conditioning occurs virtually everywhere: in the government’s own schools, on the media and even from government-subsidized pulpits. A rainbow of benefits from cradle-to-grave covers the head and hearth of each citizen, ready to succor and provide for each should the vicissitudes of life prove too challenging, or perhaps too daunting even to attempt. Subsidized prenatal and nursery care, subsidized day care, subsidized grammar schooling, subsidized school lunch, subsidized secondary education, subsidized college education, subsidized small business loans, subsidized housing, subsidized transportation, subsidized farming and grocery allowances, subsidized health care and medications, subsidized retirement, a subsidized rest home—even a subsidized funeral! A cornucopia of comfort and protection, all extorted from one’s neighbor through the fraud of welfare wealth transfer, in violation of the Fifth Amendment which prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. Yet hardly anyone complains. And why should they? There is free cheese for everyone! Government is the great Sugar Daddy, the Great Provider, the Keeper Of Us All. But is it? Or is government more like the Praying Mantis that will eat its own young at the first opportunity? Stop to consider that literally thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of governments the world over have come and gone since civilized man first appeared on Earth. The transitions from one form of government to another in any given locale on terra firma has almost without exception been the direct result of violent force which we call war.

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When Europeans first arrived on the American continent, they discovered tribes of native Americans in frequent conflict with each other over territory. Contrary to the establishment promulgated myth of the “noble savage,” indigenous Americans were frequently as barbaric as one would expect of a neolithic people. Stories of tortures and agonies endured by settlers who fell into the hands of these original peoples read like something out of a Stephen King novel. Many settlers first shot their children, then committed suicide by shooting themselves when confronted with the likelihood of capture. European invaders then promptly moved west, eradicating these indigenous peoples from the face of the earth en route to the Pacific ocean, leaving their present day kin corralled into poverty stricken reservations and dependent upon benefits from the Great White Satan. But none of this should surprise us. When viewed through the lens of objective rationalism, it will be observed that governments throughout history have consisted largely of cartels of alpha-males (although females have often played a significant role) in the form of tyrants, thugs and thieves in temporary possession of territory. This same behavior is observed in all primates. The stark truth is that, from the birth of Christ until the middle of the 2nd millennium, the primary threat to the well being of all human beings everywhere on Earth has been government— usually their own. More people the world over have been extorted, suppressed, abused, tortured and murdered by governments—again, usually their own—than the sum total of all the evils ever committed against each other by the people themselves. It is of interest to note how many people were slaughtered by their own governments in just the 1900’s alone. Here are just a few examples:

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• In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated; • In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated; • Germany established gun control in 1938. From 1939 to 1945, millions of German gypsies, intellectuals, artists, professors, historians, Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up. • China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated; • Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated; • Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated; • Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million 'educated' people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in just the 20th Century alone because of gun control: 56 million. And who made the determination to disarm these populations? Their own governments! Which is to say, coteries of power-seeking opportunists in temporary possession of the territories in which individuals worldwide happen to find themselves. In America today we are ruled by 546 elected and appointed officials: a President, a Vice President, 9 Supreme Court justices, 435 Representatives and 100 Senators.

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That’s 546 tax-consuming public servants—hardly enough to make up a decent small town parade—collectively managing several hundred million citizens who simply want to be left in peace to live their lives. The constitutional compact we citizens live under could work really well if each of these 546 were a properly educated public servant: steeped in real history; imbued with a profound understanding of the historical relationship of man to government; fiercely protective of the rights of the individual; deeply versed in the principles of liberty, etc.; and whose only purpose was to administer adherence to the rule of law. Unfortunately, a handful of true patriots aside, it would appear as though most of America's top elected and appointed officials today are doing everything in their power to avoid paying the slightest attention to our trusty Constitution. That being the case, one might ask: who are they actually working for? Perhaps the potential danger posed to Americans today may be less from politicians seeking and maintaining power by ballot or bullet, but from politicians eagerly catering to an almost unimaginably wealthy, supranational elite that sees as its destiny the management of the entire planet.

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Toilet Paper Money (Are You Sitting Down?)

Are you prepared, Dear Reader, for the day when the dollar gets, ahem, wiped out? Consider if you will the humble roll of toilet paper. Or for those of you living east of the Potomac, bathroom tissue. Toilet paper doesn't ask much of society, other than the modicum of respect that Rodney Dangerfield found so elusive. Truth be told, toilet paper is more valuable than rubies. Try going one day without either and the point is made, and hopefully not a sharp one. Our grandparents were well familiar with the Sears catalog which kept them company both on the hearth and in the outhouse. We hear that the world's more remote areas are serviced these days by the New York Times, although perhaps the editorial pages of the Boston Globe would be more suitable. When your author was a lad, his father (an Army captain in World War II), told of his artillery division receiving a memo during the thick of action in the Battle of the Bulge, ordering that soldiers thenceforth would be “folders” and not “bunchers” since the latter were depleting available inventories too quickly (a true story). One can certainly sympathize with the increased need for toilet paper in the face of hostile fire. But didn't Eisenhower have more pressing concerns? Perhaps he too was running low. Then again, that could just be a bunch of rumors. Digressing for a moment, one imagines mighty flotillas of Army transport ships crossing the Atlantic, their holds groaning with toilet paper, all fodder for lurking German U-Boats that perhaps sought more to capture their prey than to perforate it since a used copy of Mein Kampf only holds so many pages. We're really on a roll here, so let's move on to more financial considerations. Shop at your local grocery store for a roll of

Page 162 Freedom to Freedumb toilet paper these days and you will pay $.50, which is to say one-half of a dollar. But look at the top of a dollar bill and it announces itself to be a “Federal Reserve Note.” What gives? As you doubtless learned in public school, a “dollar” is actually a unit of measure. Specifically, a unit of weight. You say you didn't learn that in public school? Please allow me to explain. The 1792 Coinage Act defined a “dollar” as a weight of 371.25 ounces of 90 percent fine silver. This being the case, one is forced to wonder what today's one “dollar” bill weighs? And could the ten “dollar” bill weigh slightly more than the one because of the extra ink required to print the zero? So it appears that the Federal Reserve Note isn't actually a dollar at all (if it called itself a “One Banana Note", would you take a bite?). The reader will note that the Federal Reserve Note isn't federal, there are no reserves, and it fails the legal definition of a note. It is the mass-produced product of a private, for-profit corporation that is no more federal than Federal Express.

But lest we be concerned, the back of the note calms us by asserting the Fed's piety in these matters in stating: “In God We Trust.” Reassured that all is well, and undeterred by the unreality of the situation, we go about our business (sorry) and move on. Store a roll of toilet paper in the cabinet, retrieve it 20 years from now, and it will do its duty (sorry, we've now lost all control) just as admirably as it will today. Store a FRN in the same cabinet and 20 years from now it may not purchase a single sheet of toilet paper, let alone an entire roll. The uncertainty of the situation is enough to produce the urge to go out and purchase 20 year's worth of toilet paper right now. So let's imagine that we do that.

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The well-fibered American family of 5 will consume about a roll of toilet paper each day, which comes to 365 rolls per year at a current annual cost of $186.25. Over the next 20 years they will consume 7,300 rolls at a current cost of $3,650, the key word being current. For, again, no one knows what the FRN will buy next year, let alone 20 years from now when outhouses may be stocked with boxes of the stuff. Let's analyze this situation from a worst-case-scenario perspective. Say that hyperinflation causes the cost of everything purchased with FRN's to rise twenty-fold over the next 20 years, causing a roll of toilet paper to cost $10 in 2032, at which time a year's consumption would set you back $3,650. That's not as crazy as it might sound, considering that a roll cost a nickel back in 1960. Had you bought a shipload (heh) of toilet paper back then, you could sell it on Ebay today for a vast profit! So here, Dear Reader, is the question. Which would make more sense, to stock up $3,650 today so that 20 years in the future you are already prepared to purchase that year's requirement of 365 rolls? Or purchase those same 365 rolls today at 1/20th of their potential future cost, store them in the basement, and use them up when the time comes? Do you see the equivalence? An hour of your labor, assuming that you earn $15 an hour, is equivalent to being paid 30 rolls of toilet paper at today's prices. Let's say that, instead, you saved up those $15 and socked them away for retirement 20 years hence. Unfortunately, just as you are ready to cross the retirement finish line 20 years in the future (when the mandatory retirement age is 85), the FRN is retired and replaced by a new green federal coupon (perhaps bearing the likeness of President Chelsea Clinton?), with so many zeroes added as to be invisible without a powerful microscope, and your $15 will buy a single sheet of toilet paper (single ply only, and unscented).

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With your future currency so debased as to be what some today would disparagingly call “toilet paper money,” a roll of toilet paper purchased today could one day be more valuable as a unit of barter than a dollar bill which, given its size, wouldn't begin to compete in terms of bottom line utility with a page from that old Sears Catalog. Nuts! This, then, is the essence of preparedness. Do you store up today's labor in the form of federal spending coupons that even a squirrel wouldn't be dumb enough to touch? (squirrels don't save coupons with pictures of nuts on them, they save the real thing). Or do you stock up on those items today that you will need in the future at today's vastly cheaper prices, not knowing what a FRN will buy down the road? Seen in this light, the dollar truly is a hot potato, the difference being that you can always eat a potato, even when the FRN won't buy a single potato chip. We would suggest, Dear Reader, that if you have not yet taken measures to prepare for the severe future inflation of the FRN (and one hopes not hyperinflation) that is most certainly inevitable, you could be left sitting without a pot to “you-know- what” in.

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A Can of Worms

Just twelve generations since the signing of the Constitution, "America The Beautiful", conceived in Liberty, born in often bloody personal sacrifice and delivered in magnificent revolution, has decayed both morally and ideologically to the point where one can only wonder whether our nation's Founders would even recognize their once proud Republic. Indeed, one could fairly ask whether we are worthy children of the fathers who founded our great nation. Abigail Adams wrote the following in 1776 to her husband, John Adams, the future President of the United States: "I am more & more convinced that Man is a dangerous creature & that power whether vested in many or a few is ever grasping &, like the grave cries give, give, The great fish Swallow up the Small, and he who is most strenuous for the Rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of Government." A wise woman, indeed. If you've ever looked into a can of worms, you know that you can't tell one end of the same worm from the other, let alone one entire worm from another. Throughout recorded history, government has always been mankind's most dangerous enemy. Governments have destroyed more property, confiscated more wealth and ordered the murders of more men, women and children than any other enemy of the human race. If politicians hope to continue their criminal ways, they must maintain control of the schools. But government cannot be entrusted with the minds of our children. The government schools teach children that they live in “the land of the free”, and when they grow up, they still believe they are free. "The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the

Page 166 Freedom to Freedumb same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." — H. L. Mencken "Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery." — British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli Believers have mental problems we will define as limited conscience. An individual would not consider personally stealing from his neighbor. That same individual however, will sign up for every government subsidy or cash grant that government makes available. In other words, it's wrong to steal from someone else, but it's no problem if the government steals it and then gives it to you. This is known as receiving stolen property, unless it is government that is committing the theft. People with limited conscience know that it is wrong to harass, intimidate, terrorize or kill one of their own countrymen. If however, someone in government orders them to commit crimes, they will comply. Politicians thrive where people are infected with limited conscience. People with limited conscience want to believe politicians' lies when they promise ever more goodies from the public treasury. "People say I lost my belief in politicians; they all seem like game show hosts to me." — Pop artist, Sting, from the song If I Ever Lost My Faith In You History indicates that politicians have been around for a long time. The governments that we find on the junk heaps of history bear witness to that fact. Logic tells us that limited conscience has also been around for a long time too. When most of a nation's people are infected with limited conscience, politicians will control that nation's government.

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The cancer will become incurable and that government will destroy itself. The difference between Statesmen and Politicians becomes even more visible when you consider the following list of contrasts: • A Statesman loves and enforces the Constitution; a Politician hates and violates it. • A Statesman uses truth to keep power in the hands of the people; a Politician uses lies to gain power over the people. • A Statesman's primary concern is to secure freedom for future generations; a Politician's primary concern is to get re-elected. • A Statesman will not play politics with the people's money; a Politician will buy votes with tax money. • A Statesman knows that the people must control government; a Politician believes that government should control the people. • A Statesman knows that people must limit government's power to tax; a Politician believes that government should have unlimited power of taxation. • A Statesman gives allegiance to the people and country; a Politician gives allegiance to government. • A Statesman will demand a balanced budget; a Politician will spend money stolen from future generations through deficit spending. • A Statesman will cause peace; a Politician will create wars.

America has the debts, deficits and decline as evidence to prove that Politicians, not Statesmen, control our government today. And this government, too, shall end up on the junk heap of ruined nations unless rescued by Statesmen.

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We Have a Winner!

The politicians keep lying and the people keep electing them. To quote Peter, Paul & Mary, “When will they ever learn...?” Allow us some poetic license and let's revisit some recent presidents and see who told the biggest virtual whoppers in our Famous Presidential Liars Contest: Richard Nixon: "I am not a crook!" George Walker Bush: "Read my lips, no new taxes!" John Kennedy: "I had no idea the mob rigged my election!" William Clinton: "I did not have sex with that woman!" George Bush, Jr.: "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction!" Franklin Roosevelt: "I had no idea the Japanese were coming!" Harry Truman: "I had no idea the Japanese were trying to surrender!" Lyndon Johnson: "We were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin... our boys are in the water!" And finally, Barack Hussein Obama. Here we must take a deep breath. For the lies, like great hits, just keep on coming! “No more wiretapping of citizens.” “You can keep your family doctor.” “The NSA is not abusing its power.” “I will restore trust in Government.” “I am not spying on American citizens.” “If elected I promise not to renew the Patriot Act.” “If you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it.” “My budget will cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years.” “We got back every dime we used to rescue the financial system.” “I will close Guantanamo within the first 6 months of my term.” “I will end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan within the 1st 9 months of my term.” “I will walk on that picket line with you, if workers are denied

Page 169 Freedom to Freedumb the right to bargain.”

And finally, the whopper to top all whoppers: ”I, Barrack Hussein Obama, pledge to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America." I believe we have a winner!

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Freedom and the Collapse of Empire

"Freedom hath been hunted round the globe... Europe regards freedom like a stranger, and England hath given freedom warning to depart. O America, receive the fugitive freedom, and prepare, in time, an asylum for humankind." — Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776) The American experiment in self-government was birthed in 1776 when the several sovereign colonies got ticked off enough to write the British monarch a love letter telling his royal majesty to take a long walk off a short pier. The high water mark of the American experiment occurred four score and five years later under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln who, as discussed previously, attributed to himself without constitutional authority the various powers of a dictator. To this day the state song of Maryland contains the following rather politically incorrect opening stanza: The despot's heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland! Avenge the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore, And be the battle queen of yore, Maryland! My Maryland! The despot, of course, being Abraham Lincoln. The descent of the republic passed progressively downwards through raw democracy in 1913 with the passage of the 17th Amendment which converted senators into 100 additional popularly elected representatives, thereby eliminating their status as ambassadors from the several states to the seat of government which the states created. SIDEBAR: Sorry, I need to keep throwing that reminder in from time to time, lest the reader think that the government came first and merely allows the states to coexist.

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The already crippled republic sank into socialism in 1935 under Franklin 'Sneak Attack' Roosevelt, and all the way to fascism shortly after '9-11' such that the powers of today's chief executive are virtually indistinguishable from those of any monarch, putting us essentially back where we began. Since more Americans today would prefer a king who would provide them with food stamps and free cell phones to anything resembling liberty, we're still a far distance from any major push of the political reset button. "People do not want freedom. They want comfort, two hundred channels on the cable, sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, an easy job and an SUV. No country with really elaborate home-theater has ever risen in revolt. An awful lot of people secretly like being told what to do. We would probably be happier with a king." — Fred Reed Remember the expression, 'It's a free country'? Someone might say, “Go ahead – say whatever you like. After all, it's a free country.” Now ask yourself this. When is the last time you heard someone say 'it's a free country'? Not in a long time, right? Ask your friends the last time they heard someone say 'it's a free country' and you'll get the same answer from them. NO ONE SAYS THIS ANYMORE. Isn't that interesting? And why is that? Because deep inside at an intuitive, even subconscious level, everyone knows that America isn't a free country anymore. Just a few generations ago people would come to a town meeting and speak their minds. These days everyone keeps their thoughts to themselves, afraid to speak out due to 'political correctness.' There is nothing more important to the happiness of mankind than freedom. There can be no peace, no security, no true

Page 172 Freedom to Freedumb progress without freedom. It is the one factor in all of human action that underlies the ability to express all the rest. Yet, given our roots as a still-evolving predatory species, freedom for the average person in a world still dominated by alpha-elites remains as elusive as ever. The undeniable fact for any student of real history is that the American experiment of liberty under a supreme written law and elected, representative government has failed. Our national slide began under Alexander Hamilton, bankers' agent of monetary corruption, slipped a little further when John Adams championed the Alien And Sedition Act, took a big lurch backwards under the dictatorial rule of Abraham Lincoln, fell off the cliff when Woodrow Wilson penned the Federal Reserve Act and 'Fed' (sorry) American production and ingenuity into the wealth-robbing vortex of fractional reserve banking. Basically, the high water mark of the republic was 1860 and has been in decline ever since. The right to be secure in our papers. Gone. The right to free assembly. Well, sure. In government approved 'free speech zones.' The right not to be forced to testify against ourselves. Gone. You do that on a federal tax return. The inviolable right to property, gone. Eminent domain means the economic interests of the community supersede your own. The right to bear arms. OK, but you gotta' fill out forms so the gubmint knows where all those guns are. All of these rights lost, one by one, over a long succession of imperial presidents. Then there's the end of habeas corpus. That was a good one. Lost that one under Bush the Lesser. How about the end of literacy and a classical education? Those took a dive when Lyndon Johnson signed the National Education Act, guaranteeing that endless millions of school children absolutely would be left behind... and are.

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As for the end of decency, civility and integrity, we can thank the hypnotizing beam in the living room for eliminating those. Commercial television is just another social addiction, albeit electronic. Why listen to the voices of your ancestors when Hollywood has so much more to offer, like distraction, instant gratification, voyeurism and the magical ability to co-opt your thought processes. Why think at all when you can enjoy a one- way, passive, non-engaging conversation with an endless parade of experts, talking heads and short skirts? The truth is that, like the bombers in the movie Fail Safe that could not be recalled once they had passed the critical fail safe point; or like an avalanche that, once triggered, cannot be stopped until it has run its course, it is too late now in the decline of the American experiment in representative government to recall our vanishing freedoms. Which is not to say that we shouldn't resist tyranny. We should, and always must. And the best way to do this is to educate our nation's young people to these principles so that when the day comes for glorious liberty to spring forth once again, the history, causes and conditions of its past occasional eruptions will not be forgotten. But that's not going to happen quite yet. There have been powerful forces at work for many generations now to convert our republic into an oligarchy, and transform our once liberty loving people into subservient subjects of a monolithic super state that would have left pharaohs of old breathless. It is tragic but nonetheless truthful to say that we have lost almost all of the liberties that were intended to be protected under a written Constitution; and they will stay lost until a future generation finds itself in the right place, at the right time, to reclaim them. It is with heavy heart that I write these words, but the hard fact of the matter is that in spite of all the efforts over all these years on the part of so many thousands of freedom fighting authors,

Page 174 Freedom to Freedumb speakers, movie producers, investigative reporters, constitutionalists and other brave patriots, many of whom were attacked, marginalized and incarcerated, we blew it. Like trying to start a campfire with too much wet tinder, we failed to produce the bonfire of love for freedom in the minds of our fellow countrymen and women that would have been necessary were we to excise the metastasizing tumors of tyranny from the body of our once healthy republic and rid it of toxic, inveigling agents before it was too late. But we didn't. The American body politic became riddled with the cancers of coercion and collectivism and, like the zombie in a horror movie, was taken over by the very disease that killed it. The result today is a massively powerful surveillance and intelligence superstate that can not just crush dissent, but murder just about anyone in their sleep anywhere on the planet via unmanned drones.

Hope springs eternal and denial is a seductive mistress. But take off our rose-colored glasses and the few cards left to be played in the freedom deck are not aces. They're jokers. The people lost this game. Sure, there will be more games to be played as future centuries come and go, but the end stage of the collapse of this republic will probably play out, right on schedule, just as did Rome's republic, and for most of the same reasons. The grim reality is that those forces now in control of the territory known as the United States of America have accumulated far too much power backed by vastly superior force of arms for the virtually total control they hold over the populace to be broken and reclaimed by a people too mentally infantalized to know what to do, let alone take action. “The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.” — H. L. Mencken

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If and when it comes down to troops in the streets, perhaps after draconian restrictions on gun ownership impel military veterans and their fellow travelers in the so-called 'freedom movement' to start shooting back, a docile, apathetic public conditioned to expect security from their rulers will beg the government to quell 'gun nut' uprisings so they can resume their entertainment and other distractions. Did you ever ask yourself why neither the mainstream media nor the public schools ever seriously present or discuss the ideas of Henry David Thoreau, Etienne de la Boetie, Frederick Bastiat or Lysander Spooner? Unfortunately, everything you need to know if you are to protect and preserve your freedoms isn't discussed on TV or in the public schools. That wouldn't serve the interests of those who sit on the boards of the institutions that manage, control, filter and deliver the information the public is permitted to receive. Think of it from their point of view. Imagine that you control all the wealth in the world through the power to manufacture paper money, lend it to governments at interest and inflate it over time so that everyone gradually becomes poorer and poorer. But not you. You're on the profit side of the equation. Borrowers must pay you back more than they borrowed. When they cannot make their payments and default, there is lost property to seizure and foreclosure. And who gets it? You do. Gradually, over a period of decades to centuries, you come to own or control virtually all of the world's assets and monopolies through the silent appropriation of wealth. In that way your system of banking and monetization of credit money functions as an economic black hole, ultimately sucking in everything that gets near it. Is it in your interest to have the little people discover what you're doing too early in the game? Of course not, which is why you install your people in positions of power so that the stopper

Page 176 Freedom to Freedumb can be kept in the bottle. In the United States the electronic and print media have kept the bottle stopped up for a long time now, with the hand of the intelligence apparatus firmly in control of the cork. After all, if you were the guy in the beret directing The Truman Show, would you want Truman Burbank to have access to books and other material that could quickly and easily educate him to the reality of his circumstances? Or would you want to carefully filter out and withhold critical information, while lending the appearance of full transparency and disclosure? Truman had to find out for himself the hard way that there was indeed an exit to his manufactured reality. There is a world of difference between being uninformed and being ignorant. To be uninformed is a passive condition; it means simply that you lack information on a subject. We are, each of us, highly uninformed on a wide range of subjects. For example, I know almost nothing about magneto hydrodynamics, to pick just one subject. To be ignorant, however, is an active condition, deriving as it does from the verb ignore. It means actively ignoring, even rejecting new information. It's something you have to work really hard at. Are most Americans uninformed about the loss of the freedoms, or are they ignorant? I'd say it's a blend of the two. I'm close to my 70's now and have lived to see ordinary, everyday freedoms we accepted as commonplace 50 years ago all but nonexistent today. I've often said that the freedom movement is neither free nor moving in any discernible direction. Freedom fighters can fight as hard as they like, but all of their efforts will come to naught without public support. Which is why the only recipe for true freedom is education. And freedom education must begin with the young. Just not in public school.

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“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin The mind starts out like wet papier mache: pliable and easily formed into new shapes. But once it dries it's no longer amenable to new ideas: it's as hard as a rock. Typically, the only time those in their middle age wake up to their missing freedoms is when their own ox gets gored, to use the hoary old expression. So how does the would-be freedom fighter become truly effective? March and petition with signs? Write letters to officials? Join groups and organizations? Case in point: the Free State Project (FSP) which makes its home in New Hampshire has as its stated objective to get thousands of libertarian-thinking families to move to the Granite State and eventually take over the state's political machinery, from dog catcher on up to Governor, with the objective of reversing liberty-robbing laws and regulations. It's a great idea on the surface, but will it work? The way most freedom fighters go about battling for the freedom they seek is to band together. But the government doesn't particularly care for freedom fighters. Which is why those agencies in the gubmint tasked to keep freedom in its place love it when self-described 'patriots' and 'sovereigns' join pro-revolutionary clubs and organizations. Think of it this way. If I want to round up the moths in my backyard I can run around trying to snare them one by one. Or I can simply wait until it gets dark, turn on the back porch light, go grab some coffee and wait for the moths to gather around by themselves. Then I simply turn out the light. Gotcha. Sun Szu taught that he who enters the battlefield first loses. When the FSP becomes a big enough burr under FedCo's saddle (the federal government is now the world's largest corporation),

Page 178 Freedom to Freedumb the FSP will be shut down like turning off a switch. And should New Hampshire even think about seceding from the union, the ugliness that would follow would make Waco look like target practice. In the year 1552, a 22-year-old French seminary student by the name of Etienne de la Boetie wrote an essay titled The Politics Of Obedience: The Discourse Of Voluntary Servitude in which he asked the then heretical question: Why it is that men enable with their loyalty, their labors and even their lives, the very tyrants who oppress them? The author left the question unanswered in his day. Actually, it was so dangerous even to ask such a question that his essay was published posthumously. The answer today, and this has been true throughout the ages, is that the average person really doesn't know any better, being as they are woefully uninformed in those areas of the most pressing importance to their social, economic and political well being. Some would say that I'm being harsh and judgmental; that it's not the public's fault for being so unaware. How would they know any different? After all, as Merrill Jenkins once remarked: “The unaware are unaware of being unaware.” But let's get a little real here, shall we? Most people know they haven't been told the whole truth about some of the more traumatic events in recent American history like, say, '9-11'? So here is how difficult it is to inform yourself. You go to Google (or your favorite search engine) and type in '911 truth.' That's not too terribly difficult, wouldn't you agree? Go ahead and give it a try. You'll be astonished at what comes up.

We can forgive those living in eras when the public wasn't allowed to read or own books, let alone ask dangerous

Page 179 Freedom to Freedumb questions. But today we have the Internet, the information superhighway. What excuse does Boobus Americanus have today, 13 years later as I write, not to know that not two, but three skyscrapers dropped straight into their own footprints on September 11, 2001, the third being World Trade Center building Number 7, a 47-story skyscraper that would be tallest building in most American states, at about 5:20PM that same day. To put it bluntly, the legion of consumers wandering America's shopping malls know as much about what's really going on in the world around them as they do their gluteus from their ulna. Here for your convenience is a quick snapshot of today's average American adult. • No concept of individual liberty • Thinks America is a democracy • Thinks democracy equals liberty • Has never read the Constitution • Saves and invests in paper money • Takes one or more prescription drugs • Has no concept of personal sovereignty • Automatically conforms to authority at all levels • Thinks the government should supply everything • Votes repeatedly for collectivists and sociopaths • Watches 20-30 hours of television programming a week

Throughout history, only a small percentage of the population has ever bothered to challenge the status quo. During the American Revolution, by various estimates about 5% of the colonists agitated against the tyrannical acts of King George III. Another 5%, called Tories or Loyalists, were ardent supporters of the British crown. The remainder of the population simply did not want to become involved. “Wake me when it's over and let me know who won,” was their battle cry and contribution to the separatist effort.

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Mankind’s epic struggle for political freedom—the endlessly recurring cycle of revolution, liberty, abundance, comfort, apathy, dependency, oppression, rebellion and revolution, which is the point where the Wheel of Freedom resets—will end only when people finally come to understand that the corrupting desire of the few to rule over the many means that governments always end up oppressing the very citizens who feed them; that the mission of freedom seekers everywhere is not to petition governments to govern justly, but to quietly withdraw their support from oppressive government and learn to govern ourselves. We must create a world in which the rights of each person to fulfill the full expression of their dreams and ambitions are protected, so long as the rights of others are not encroached in the process. In other words, we must create a culture in which the free market will crowd out collectivists and expose the fallacy of their theology. Only through a proper education and understanding of the true nature of government, including the true nature of those who crave the power and control to rule according to their own whims and ambitions, can mankind learn to reach above the plane of agitation against the current generation's 'flavor du jour' of political oppression and move into a future in which problems are solved using reason, cooperation and a free market. At the beginning of the third millennium we stand at the threshold of momentous political and economic change, and most of it not for the better. By all appearances, and in seeming defiance of the growing awareness of a deep need for political and economic freedom that can be seen sweeping across the globe, America stands poised to devolve into a high-tech version of the impoverished medieval village; where a dictatorial oligarchy employing advanced surveillance and control technologies will rule with an

Page 181 Freedom to Freedumb iron first over every citizen; where most of your labor will be surrendered in taxes; in which your choice of occupation, freedom of travel, freedom of speech, even freedom of thought will be in the hands of central planners; a future in which there will be nowhere left for freedom lovers to be free, except to take the flame of freedom underground and try to keep it burning. Indeed, with the passage of each year, freedom continues to die by a thousand small cuts. And yet most do not notice. Oh, they may suspect something is not quite right. But they can no more easily put their finger on the source of their malaise than Truman Burbank could identify his puppet master. For thousands of years, mankind has struggled to cast off the yoke of slavery, to remove the spurred boot of despotic government from its neck and to breathe the intoxicating air of political and economic freedom. From William Wallace to Daniel Shays, from Henry Thoreau to Mahatma Gandhi, each tiny advance has been met with a wall of governmental hostility, force and violence. "Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves." — D. H. Lawrence (1885-1938) Freedom yearns to be free, but real freedom can exist only in the presence of social consciousness and awareness of the attributes and merits of true freedom. But why bother trying to be free when you think you already are? So let's end this work on a positive note. What is the solution, Dear Reader? The solution is to teach our children all that you have read thus far, and much more. They are the future. I'm just a cranky old guy in New Hampshire who has learned a thing or two. It will soon be my turn to get off the moving walkway of life. The future belongs to those who are just now getting onto life's conveyor belt.

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Today's youngsters are tomorrow's entrepreneurs, scientists, teachers and, yes, politicians. Let them enter adulthood whether in the private or public sector, with a firm understanding of the true nature of government, of man's relationship with the governments we create, of free market commerce, of avoiding the 'entangling alliances' of which George Washington spoke, and the future can be a place of peace, prosperity, growth and wonderful adventure as mankind slowly progresses towards the day when we depart this small blue pebble and head out to meet our neighbors, and maybe even God.

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EXTRA MATERIAL THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE USED

After all the time, money and manpower invested in the Manhattan Project, Harry's advisers were not about to pass up the opportunity to test the effects of their new super weapon on human target populations.

When the movie Dirty Harry starring Clint Eastwood was released in 1971, a number of elderly Japanese who had survived the atomic bombings assumed that the movie was about that famous war criminal, Harry Truman.

In a world where the epithet 'terrorist' is quick to be pinned on America's current enemy du jour, the United States® remains the only nation ever to detonate the ultimate terror weapon — as one writer put it, a genuine 'hell bomb' — in the midst of non- combatant civilian populations whose only crime had been to reside beneath the flight paths of American bombers. “[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.... [I]n being the first to use it, we... adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." — Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff, in his memoirs "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us... we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them." — Leo Szilard, physicist who drafted the original letter to Roosevelt that started the Manhattan Project. "The atom bomb was no 'great decision.' It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness." — Harry Truman

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* We unplugged cable in our home back in 2001, right after our first child came along. I like to say that there is only one sewer line in our house now, and it goes out. I regret that our children have seen fewer than a dozen TV commercials in their lifetimes, and those only at neighbors' houses. They probably won't be very good consumers. xxx

EXTRA

Xxx

As for disproving any notions of my being a Gloomy Gus — here is the good news for all you freedom seekers, and you heard it from me: The Wheel of Freedom (to be discussed later) will roll back to the top and “Liberty” will appear prominently at the top of the wheel once again. Isn't that wonderful? We the People, vindicated at long last! But I left out a few modifying phrases. Let me run that by you again: The Wheel of Freedom will roll back to the top when it's good and ready, and only then will “Liberty” appear prominent at the top of the wheel. Alas, this is not wonderful at all... sigh... certainly not to freedom fighters currently engaged in what is loosely referred to as the 'Freedom Movement' which appears to be neither free nor moving in any discernible direction. Freedom fighters tend to see the conquest of tyranny as a sporting event, where “we win, you lose” (you nasty government, you), and everyone goes home to pop a cold one.

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But these things cannot be rushed, youthful idealism and the zeal of newly converted libertarians both young and old notwithstanding. The reason is simple, if disagreeable to hear: the cycles of civilization are not subject to being tampered with or short- circuited. All things must run their course and the Wheel of Freedom (not a TV game show) must inexorably turn. Here is what that looks like. At the top of the wheel is Liberty, a very nice place to start. From there we progress in a clockwise direction to Abundance and Prosperity, then to Satisfaction and Apathy, then to Sloth and Dependency, from there into Oppression and Servitude, thence to Discontent, Anger and Rebellion, and finally to Revolution and back to Liberty. This mighty wheel of civilization has been rolling along throughout all of antiquity, variously subjecting entire populations to prolonged twilights of grinding subservience and misery, only to occasionally elevate them like a Ferris wheel into the glorious sunlight of newborn sovereignty and freedom. This is one heck of a big wheel. Try to stop it and it will roll right over you. So where are we today? Probably somewhere between Dependency and Oppression, with outright Servitude still a generation or two away. The point being that we're still far away from Revolution and Liberty, as much as today's freedom fighters remain in denial over the reality of their struggle. All cycles in Nature must take their course, and we humans are just a part of the larger cycle. Liberty will reappear when, and only when, the people are ready to receive her. Which, from the looks of things, won't be any time soon. Then again the lumpen have always enjoyed their distractions,

Page 186 Freedom to Freedumb whether it be slaves vs. hungry lions in the Roman circus; burnings and beheadings in the medieval town square; even late night lynchings in southern America as late as the 1930's with everyone turning out to catch the show. There's nothing like a little live entertainment to take one's mind off of everyday drudgery. The masses today are more sophisticated in their voyeurism, content to occupy themselves with reality TV shows, sporting events, celebrity wardrobe malfunctions and other distractions of the modern feudal class. But that will all change one glorious morning when good citizens everywhere awaken en masse to the grim if startling realization that the welfare state dream is over; that they have been sitting in mental cages with the door wide open; when they begin to ask themselves, “Have regulated thoughts been running through my head?” and figure out that they have nothing left to lose by making a mental break for it. That is when We The Taxpaying People will burst forth from our cages; when the Wheel of Freedom will clank forward another dangerous notch from Anger to Rebellion and we'll be on our way to Libertyville once again. And not one minute sooner.

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