“Laws are rules, made by people who
govern by means of organized violence, for non-compliance with which the
non-complier is subjected to blows, to loss of liberty, or even to
being murdered.”
– Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
There is the only one true sign of freedom once all is said and
done. You can live in a geographical location or tax jurisdiction
(fondly called countries) and you are subject to no law except what you
agree to so long as you may opt-out as you wish; that simple, your
compliance is not mandatory except where your behavior is initiated
aggression through force or fraud.
So where exactly is this country? It does not exist outside the kingdom of conscience.
Strip away all the notions of Constitutional protection, action in
the courts to beat back bad laws and all the rest of the distractions
and misdirection the government places in your cognitive path and you
are left with one stark reality: your refusal.
Want to solve the Socialist Security benefit disaster looming on the
horizon as a demographic non-funded tidal wave of fiscal despair? The
accompanying Medicare/Obamacare fiscal mayhem? The insufficient funding
at all levels to meet government employee retirement benefits in the
coming years? Recognize the basic human imperative to refuse to comply.
I would gladly stop paying Socialist Security and forever opt out. I
would be happy to stop paying property taxes in exchange for zero
government services I would use. I don’t want to pay for government
education camps and government libraries. I don’t want fire services, I
would gladly pay for a private subscription service for fire protection
much as I pay for car and home insurance (although both would be much
more affordable absent government mandates and meddling).
This isn’t simply about money; it is about the freedom to choose. This goes far beyond the book by Milton Friedman; he limited his choices
within a government framework. This extends to every aspect of our
lives whether it is consumption of raw milk, undercooked hamburgers or
the ingestion of non-government approved home-grown meat and
vegetables. Everything I have just mentioned comes with a penalty,
ultimately, of death for the non-compliant in American society. When
the SWAT thugs raid the raw milk warehouse, your refusal to bow and scrape before the “thin black and
blue line” may lead to your demise. Ironically, their desire to get off
the government teat, as it were, when it came to dairy consumption
crossed the line when the regulatory functions were given the middle
finger. I won’t belabor the point that cops are the number one danger to
human freedom around the globe and I have covered that in detail
before. I use that to illustrate the point that American freedom is
illusory and non-existent. It is only tolerated as long as the cattle
pay the rulers, comply with the Praetorians and don’t stray off the
regulatory reservation…ever.
It strikes at the heart of what freedom actually is. At its most
basic and stripped down level, it is elegantly and brutally
unsophisticated; freedom and liberty is the imperative be left alone and
not forced to comply with anything you don’t consent to. Are
there negative consequences and sad outcomes as folks choose to do
stupid and counter-productive endeavors? Absolutely. Freedom is messy
and perilous and on occasion, lethal. Most of my neighbors and
acquaintances therefore insist that people with the power to fine,
kidnap, cage, maim and kill be empowered to protect us from our
stupidity and imprudent decisions. Most of my neighbors think of their
own neighbors as their property, otherwise, who in their right mind
would consider the institutionalization of force imposed through
administrative fiat or majoritorian tyranny?
This has led to the prison planet we now inhabit and the abridgement
of the one true notion of self-ownership that no man should be able to
impose. Whether it is the nefarious machinations of the local Home
Owners Association (HOA) as they employ the state as a violent proxy to
keep the grass trimmed or the thoroughly evil complex of imperial
extermination of brown people around the planet that disguises itself as
foreign policy in DC, we live in a world made wrong by compliance.
This is not about the black-clad property-destroying adolescents who soil the name of anarchy or the Occupy Wall Street Marxoid cretins whose idea of freedom is a larger global police state. This is not about the Tea Party that requests permission to put tea
bags in the Mirror Pool in DC. None of these folks are interested in
the ability to opt out of government compliance. They are all wholly
owned subsidiaries of the government compliance complex, they wish
nothing more than a nod from the rulers to practice their kind of
obedience and craven submission and impose it on every human within
striking distance.
If we distilled the essence of freedom down to one singular and crucial element, it is no more than the right of refusal.
Resist.
“What is peculiar in the life of a
man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts.
In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Publisher’s Note: Kaiser provided a link to a science fiction short story that illustrates the virtues of this essay: http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php
Opinion • More about 
