Billy Beck VS The State: Musings on the Efficacy of Various Strategies

"Exposure of corruption" toward a purpose of alleviating violations of liberty is a hugely daunting task in the face of the goal. My own personal view is that the depth and breadth of ideological "corruption" is beyond the reach of such methods with regard to the years, days, and hours of my own life. I cannot imagine how I will ever be permitted to live as a free man, in the original heritage of American politics, as a result of such methods. This government is fatly seated, now. It avails long-standing intellectual foundations, un-challenged for generations. Ideas which I hold important to these matters are routinely dismissed as "whacky", and otherwise beyond the pale, in mainstream discourse which shapes the world-view of fellow men who only vaguely "feel" that something is desperately wrong in America, but who do not commit their own intellectual efforts to sorting through it in explicit terms.

"As for adopting the ways which the state has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone."

(Henry David Thoreau - "On Civil Disobedience")

This point cannot be overstressed. The reason that a man takes up resistance to government is that his own life is his highest value. He necessarily holds it in higher regard than assertions of "public policy", or their methods. A rational man understands that he is given to walk the planet for only a limited number of days. A principled man, who would make the most of each one of those days, will also never submit a single one of them to any other powers but his own.

As for "violent confrontation", I have long believed that it would be virtually inevitable, while hoping that I was wrong.

The reason for the belief has been the steady progression of government into the private affairs of individuals. I have always understood that such progression, sufficiently advanced, would reach a point where people who have borne "compromise" and euphemism would finally rise in anger and outrage founded in reason...but that reason would not be enough to overwhelm and reverse the logical fallacies of public policy.

Rational people yearn for liberty. This passionate recognition of their own nature cannot be denied or suppressed. Every human being has a "threshold of outrage" beyond which a transgressor proceeds at peril of response. At this point in our history, individuals are responding ever more frequently. The only question to me concerns the nature of the response.

There is no question over the rampant destruction which must be manifest in widespread armed confrontation. All rational people will agree on this point. Most will agree that is should be avoided.

Does this mean that those who passionately hunger for liberty must resign themselves to endless pedantic debate over definitions and principles, without satisfactory resolution?

I think not.

I see a course lying between your two alternatives. That course is massive, passive, civil disobedience.

I am convinced that sufficient numbers of rational individuals could focus the essential dispute of our times by simply, and peacefully, rejecting the claims of government.

Stop paying taxes of every kind. Stop voting. Burn drivers' licenses, social security cards, marriage licenses, business licenses, and every other document which attaches the sanction of government to one's own private affairs. Cease, immediately, the obedience to every article of posited law which our "representatives" scribble across our days and years. Conduct one's affairs according to the right, regardless of the "law".
Music notes

:Rock on:

I am fully aware of the implications of such a course.

I am, right now, a "criminal" by the definition of the federal government. I await my arrest. I have brought harm to no person, but I have acted in perfect disregard of certain federal "laws" which presume to dictate the disposal of my productive efforts. They are wrong, and I will not submit my conduct to their error.

However, I will not resist with arms against prosecution. In my view, such a course would commit the future to complete hopelessness. The reason is that my individual resistance would be perfectly futile against the massed force of the government. The destruction of my life which would result, would also leave not the slightest possibility that the future might see a day when my liberty will again be upheld as a proper object of "public policy"...and not its subject.

Full essay.

Like I said, my kind of man!

:You Rock:

Billy Beck VS The State: Musings on the Efficacy of Various Strategies

Billy Beck VS The State: Musings on the Efficacy of Various Strategies

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