De Facto Liberty

Here is a guest opinion from a good friend of mine, David Geissel.

"Humans exist in perfect freedom. Obedience is a choice. Government is therefore an illusion."

Wolf DeVoon - Government is a Quack Faith-Healer

For all the Constitutional sophistry that exists in the "liberty movement," only a tiny minority has observed that, for all the chest thumping about returning to a "Constitutional Republic" (whatever that means), the Constitution has not gone away. It is sitting there, quietly sanctioning every action of the Federal Government. It gives the Supreme Court ultimate authority in determination of what laws will be enforced, authorizes the Income Tax and, through the powers delegated to Congress, implicitly sanctions the Federal Reserve System.

To complain of Judges "legislating from the bench" is to be anti-Constitution. To complain about the Income Tax is to be anti-Constitution. I point this out simply to make the point that the Laws of the Land are not necessarily something to advocate for or against. They are what they are, and to wave the so-called flag in support of any established legal system is to endorse a set of contradictions. Claiming to be a Constitutionalist is to wave the flag in support of all Supreme Court decisions and the IRS. Claiming to be a "strict" Constitutionalist is to do so "strictly."  Am I missing something here?

It's said that that the problem is a lack of adherence to the "founders' intent" by the courts, etc. What was their intent? Which founders? This assertion largely misses the point anyway. No matter what your predisposition (left, right, whatever collective you claim to be part of), it's clear that the ability to shape the role of government in America was left to the people (the majority mob) through the amendment process and democratic process. To complain about what exists today is to be critical of democracy itself (including in its "Constitutional Republic" form). With Democracy being elevated to the level of God (maybe one notch above) in the 20th century, such a complaint would make one a political heretic. Count me in.

Lysander Spooner sums this up in his essay No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority:

The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: 1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes – a large class, no doubt – each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a "free man," a "sovereign"; that this is a "free government"; "a government of equal rights," "the best government on earth," and such-like absurdities. 3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to, so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.

A Mirror

This is where a mirror comes in handy. The Truth (big T) is that Americans have gotten exactly what they have asked for, demanded even. As the majority mob shifted from a mindset of "live and let live" to "I've got mine jack!" the government has capitulated to its demands. At only one notable point in American history did the minority mob question the legitimacy of mobocracy as a system of projecting power and remove their sanction for it (and they did so by setting up their own mobocracy, nicely done). In almost every instance since then (and especially since the founding of Imperial America in 1898) the minority mob has only questioned what the majority was doing with said power and set about attempting to recapture it for themselves.

As fun as it is to blame the "left" for some vast conspiracy to "ruin America," the cold hard fact that those in the "liberty movement" don't want to face is that they should look into the mirror if they want to know where to start with their inane blame game. The lust for power runs just as deep on the "right" as it does on the "left." Sadly though, the irony of complaining about the Federal Government while simultaneously dumping vast amounts of energy and money into elections in an effort to take back control of leviathan is completely lost on them. Don't want a control freak telling you how to live? Then stop being a control freak who seeks to tell other people how to live. Profound.

Thus, there will be no meaningful social change until the following is both realized and acted upon:

THE SHORTCOMINGS OF GOVERNMENT ARE NOT ADMINISTRATIVE.

THEY ARE EXISTENTIAL.

As long as those who claim to seek liberty attempt to do so by seeking power, they will get what they deserve: servitude.

Perhaps Étienne de La Boétie put it best in The Politics of Obedience: Discourse of Voluntary Servitude:

“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.”