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Living the outlaw life:
To hell with freedom!
By Claire Wolfe
Editor-at-Large, Backwoods Home Magazine
So here I sit, facing a tough Duffy deadline. It�s my job in life (and in this
article) to
give readers practical ideas for how to live free. I�m supposed to engage enthusiasm.
Concoct creative concepts. Inspire glorious disobedience to all that�s stultifying,
bureaucratically burdensome, and contrary to the way good, contrary Americans like
to live.
But you know what? I don�t wanna.
To heck with it. Freedom�s too hard, as readers have been informing me for years.
And hey, 285 million Americans can�t be wrong. So I�m going to go write romance
novels instead. TV scripts. Yeah, that�s the thing, sitcom episodes.
I mean, look at it. What�s the big deal about freedom that makes it worth all that
effort?
Freedom�s a nice luxury, of course. If you were free you wouldn�t be a dependent, a
collaborator, or a victim of an aggressive government. You�d be able to live and think
as you saw fit, as long as you respected others right to do the same. Your life
wouldn�t be dedicated to �compliance� (or else) with any old random order written by
any old random bureaucrat. You�d support the causes and people you value, not the
causes and people some interest group wants to force you to support with your
money, your labor, and your life.
Wow, what a rush that would be.
But you can�t do that, these days. They won�t let you. So why even try? And look at all
the reasons not to try!
Freedom is dull. If you want to be free you have to understand the principles of
freedom. You have to read boring old documents like the Declaration of
Independence, The Federalist Papers, The Anti-Federalist Papers, Common Sense,
and intellectual tomes that are thick with old-fashioned words by Locke,
Montesquiue, de Tocqueville, Bastiat, von Mises, and people like that.
If you don�t, then your grasp of freedom will never go beyond some insubstantial
thing like �freedom is whatever feels good� or worse, �freedom is what the politicians
tell us we have in America.� And that�ll get you exactly nowhere.
So you gotta study. But face it, none of those dead philosophers could hold a candle
to Danielle Steele when it comes to prose. Du-u-u-l!
You�ve also got to keep track of laws and regulations even if (maybe especially if)
you don�t plan to obey them. You�ve got to know what�s coming at you so you can
fight it or dodge it.
That means you have to spot in advance when �health-care privacy regulations� are
actually going to create a giant federal database with information about your
hemorrhoids, nose-picking, flatulence, vaginal infections, depression, or drug abuse.
Or when some teeny clause in some �moderate, common-sense� bill to �close the
gun-show loophole� might end up creating a federal record of everybody who ever
even sets foot in the door of a gun show.
Even when some politician hits your particular happy buttons � like �curbing illegal
immigration� (Yeah, we gotta stop those people from stealing good American jobs!) �
you�ve got to be on the lookout for the inevitable consequences. Consequences like
national ID cards, asset forfeiture, random checkpoints, and pilot programs to keep
you, Mr. or Ms. Whole-Wheat America -- not just those brown-skinned guys -- from
getting a job without prior federal permission. Politicians bury that stuff deep, deep,
deep -- way down where the friendly news reporters don�t look. (And why should you
go to all the bother of finding out, if people who are paid to keep watch on
government don�t? If you thought reading Tocqueville was dull, wait till you read
Feinstein, Hatch, Schumer, McCain, or Feingold.)
In your private life, freedom means taking full responsibility for your own actions. I
hardly need to mention what a drag that is. In a free country you�d have to pay the
consequences of your screwups unless someone voluntarily bailed you out. (And I
mean voluntarily in the old sense, not in the NewSpeak sense of �Do it voluntarily or
we�ll hurt you.�)
That is just not the modern American way. Playing Tomb Raider is far more
entertaining.
Freedom is risky, besides. And the risks are everywhere. Try exercising even itty-
bitty freedoms and the jackboots can come marching right into your most private life.
If you think it�s more dangerous than helpful to vaccinate your children, the
government might just take your kids away. They certainly won�t let them into school
(schools you paid for with your tax dollars).
Drive within a thousand feet of a school with a gun in your vehicle and you can get
five years in the federal lockup � even if you don�t know the school or the gun is
there. (And if great champions of liberty like the NRA, G.W. Bush, and John Ashcroft
actually want the feds to crack down harder on that kind of �gun crime,� well, maybe
we�re just wrong to get so upset about it. Maybe, like our congressmen keep telling
us, we really don�t understand how things are done in Washington.)
Don�t wear a seat belt and you might go to jail. Heck, be a bad enough seat-belt
scofflaw and you could get shot dead, like Timothy Thomas, that kid in Cincinnati
whose shooting by a police officer was the trigger for all those riots last May. Thomas
had warrants for a variety of traffic infractions, including several seat-belt
violations.
Oh, sure, it�s not nice to run from a cop, which Thomas did. It�s dumb to the tenth
power. But when did we end up in the kind of country where failure to wear a seat
belt, coupled with a fast sprint, merits the death penalty?
Okay, bad example. Thomas was a black scofflaw in the inner city. He was �them,�
not �us,� and I can just hear some lawnorder reader snorting, �He made the cop
shoot him. He asked for it.�
Middle class white folks are somewhat safer when they try to exercise the occasional
random freedom.
We can �merely� go to jail for refusing to landscape our property exactly as the
Zoning Nazis demand, as golf-course owner John Thoburn did this year in Virginia.
We can lose our home to � believe it or not � a provision of the Anti- Terrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act, as Dianna Luppi did after she dared fight the U.S. Forest
Service, which tried to make her pay for a right-of-way that had been free for more
than 100 years. We can get hit with huge fines, as race-car driver and sports
commentator Bobby Unser was, merely because he might have crossed into a
federal wilderness on his snowmobile while trying to save himself and a friend in a
blizzard.
But as long as we don�t follow any really weird religions or express unpopular ideas,
our rulers probably won�t send people to shoot us in the back for doing stuff like
that.
We should be very grateful to them, don�t you think?
Still, the safest thing is to comply with their rules. Assuming you can figure what the
rules are this week.
Freedom is a money-losing proposition. People who truly value freedom don�t merely
read about it or grouse about the lack of it. They do their utmost best to live it. And
this, I must tell you from bitter experience, isn�t an �economically viable�
proposition.
For example, if you really oppose tyranny, you won�t pay to support it. That might
mean working in the underground economy � which, unless you�re a major drug
dealer or can catch the next big illegal trend (cigarette smuggling, maybe?), means
living narrowly. For other people, it might mean choosing an Atlas Shrugged life,
staying legal, but earning very little money and giving the smallest possible portion
of
your efforts to the state. In either case, you and your family do without while others
prosper.
And people who really believe in freedom also avoid tax-funded goodies � grants,
low-interest loans, housing subsidies, farm subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid,
government jobs, Social Security, and all the rest.
But man, that means you lose! Everybody else indulges. So, like the cynics say, why
not �just get back your own�? Don�t worry about the principle of the thing. Pay up,
then suck up. Big Mama DC�s tit is there for you, too. Grabbing on is much less work,
and much more lucrative, than standing on impractical principles in this crazy, old
world. Get with the program, people.
Freedom makes you a freak. Us freedom-lovin� fools � and fools we certainly are �
used to think that if we could just alert people to the dangers of government
everybody would stand up and fight. If we could just show them the evil that lies at
the end of all the claims of �for your own good,� �for the children.� �for
standardization
of records,� and �for public health and safety,� they�d wake up and bite and claw like
tigers for freedom.
Well, hahaha on us. Turns out all that ordinary middle- and working-class Americans
really want is � guess what? -- entitlements of their own. As long as they get cheap
pharmaceuticals, scholarships for little Brittannee and Joshuah, government
contracts, grants, subsidized energy, and pork delivered to their district by willing,
vote-buying politicians, they could care less about some nebulous abstraction like
�freedom.�
They�ll even barter the kiddies for government perks. If you want tax deductions and
credits, submit your kiddies to a federal citizen-tracking number at birth, the feds
say.
Here�s my firstborn son, American�s reply. And take my daughter, too, while you�re at
it. (When conscience-stricken parents, concerned about the life they might be
condemning their child to, ask me how high the tax deduction should be before it�s
�worth� it to tattoo infants with a tracking number, I tell them the standard fee for
that
transaction is 30 pieces of silver.) You earned the money in the first place! Why
should you have to sell your children to get it back? Ah, but there goes the dumb
freedom fighter talking again �
If people are willing to trade freedom for goodie-filled baskets of tyranny, they
positively crave tyranny when they hope it�ll hurt someone else. Sure, let�s have
�sentence enhancements� for rag-head terrorists, dopers, and inner-city gang-
bangers. Never mind that those �enhancements� might one day hit their own kids.
That�s all just theoretical. Paranoid nonsense. Only alarmists talk like that. (Whoda
thunk that when the original �drug czar,� Harry Anslinger, was telling tales to
Congress back in the 1930s about the �100,000 � Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos,
and entertainers� in the U.S. whose marijuana smoking �causes white women to
seek sexual relations� with them that someday Anslinger�s laws would be used to
lock up the grandkids of all those middle-class white folks who drooled gleefully over
Anslinger�s salacious horror stories�?)
Sure, let�s have all the government in the world -- as long as it�s to our momentary
benefit.
And us people who actually want less government? Buncha right-wing extremist
whackos. Throwbacks. Gun-nut, mean-spirited, reactionary, religious-nut, hate- filled
bigots.
Yep, that�s us all over. And who wants to be perceived like that? Better to go with the
flow. Forget those unfashionably goofy principles. Go along to get along.
Freedom�s a hopeless cause. You know it. I know it. Every time you turn around,
they�ve got some new surveillance device. Some new regulation. Some new
database. Some new punishment. Geez, these days, thanks to Deadbeat Dad
tracking you can�t even get a fishing license without a federal government ID number.
Try to resist these things and � well, heck, you can�t drive, can�t get a job, can�t
open
a bank account, can�t get a credit card (and of course you�ve just gotta have credit
cards). You�ll end up on some enforcement agencies� list -- and that�s something
nobody but a fool would welcome.
We hardly need to make things worse for ourselves by fighting some big, noble loser
of a battle. Right?
Anyway, how can anybody expect one person, one ordinary little citizen, to fight
anything so big? It�s unreasonable. Yes, indeed. Nobody can be expected to take on
an adversary as big as the federal government (not to mention all those other
governments, state, county, city, regional, global, public-private partnerships and
that
new thing they�ve imported from Europe, the �quasi-governmental organization�).
And who are we to go against what the majority wants? How can we be arrogant
enough to imagine that our pathetic little efforts might actually make a difference?
Tom Paine and Patrick Henry and guys like that � well, they lived in a different time.
It was probably easier for them.
We�ll just have to adjust. Learn to live with it. It won�t be so bad. And after all,
it�s all
for our own good.
Okay, maybe there�s one reason to bother with freedom. Just one.
Because if you don�t free yourself you�ll be a nice, comfortable, happy slave. If you
don�t fight for freedom your children will be slightly less comfortable slaves, wearing
their little ID-number tattoos under their skin as they walk past the retina- scanners
and body x-rays to go to work, submitting numbly as robots armed with pain rays
arrest them after computers diagnose their �suspicious� behavior patterns, stumbling
through their therapeutically controlled lives. Your dependency, your collaboration,
your tacit agreement with the goals of tyrants will have made it inevitable.
And your grandchildren will �
But hey, that�s their problem, right? Let the little bastards take care of themselves.
As
long as you get what�s coming to you, make a few bucks, don�t make waves, and
lead a nice, comfortable life, who cares?
Hey, has anybody seen my copy of TV Guide? I think they�re re-running my favorite
episode of �Sex and the City� tonight.
Claire Wolfe is an internationally known columnist and an Editor- at-Large for
Backwoods Home Magazine. Comments regarding Claire Wolfe's articles may be
addressed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Comments may appear online in
"Feedback" or in the "Letters" section of Backwoods Home Magazine. Although
every email is read, her busy schedule does not permit a personal response to each
one.
www.backwoodshome.com designed and maintained by Oliver Del Signore
� Copyright 1998 - 2002 Backwoods Home Magazine
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