Goat, Regarding the first parts of your reply: I believe (I usually don't like to reply to your difficult-to-read posts) you came full circle, from disagreeing, to agreeing with my guard-dog-product analogy. I believe YOUR computer/car-analogies fail because they can not come back to actively kill you, no matter how badly they fail to function or how badly they are maintained. Of course we must agree that no analogy can come close to meeting the level of aggression of govt. But one thing is for certain: the problem results not from beating the dog.
Sorry, but my handicap won't allow me to decipher the points in the rest of your post accurately enough to directly reply to them. Let's re-clarify (has been said many times before, but...) the essence of "no-government" libertarianism: All it does is identify a big problem and offer a simple solution. The problem is initiated aggression and the solution is eliminating it. This is no different than saying that people harming others (direct harm to non-consenting others) is bad and should stop. Few will disagree with this most obvious ethic, but most will disagree with it when it's applied to government. ------------------------------- > The system is a product that was represented to work for the > people. It didn't. Now you blame the people? (Well OK, it worked > for a while, but then broke - but the point is, it is broken > now.) Your analogies are lacking. A more apt one might be getting a new computer, and taking it home, hooking it to the net, not paying any attention to the instructions and warnings, and then letting anybody as well yourself, cruise the net looking at whatever in all the "wrong" places, without any protection even however simple even attempted (kind of like always having open borders, instead of having a firewall and anti virus in place), and then blame the people who sold it to you, that the operating system / hd / hardware is all messed up. Is the person that allowed / owned the computer to be used so unwisely responsible? Certainly, but he had a lot of help from hackers, crackers, and carnival barkers. > > Most products claim to "work" for this or that purpose. If the > product fails to do that, often there is an argument between the > parties about who is at fault. Often the seller will blame the > buyer and claim that their misuse of the product was the cause. > But more often, the product was simply misrepresented by the > seller/manufacturer and failed to work as claimed. But in the case of the constitution, it had a pretty good history of working pretty well, when it first was sold on the market. So here the analogy is more like buying a car, that you drive for a couple hundred thousand miles, and wonder why it breaks down when you have never giving it any maintenance. > > If a customer buys a guard dog for protection and it later turns > and attacks its master, do you blame the customer/master? No; you > blame the seller/trainer who sold you a defective product. While > it's true that our particular American dog was sold with the > disclaimer to be constantly vigilant, no one would actually buy > such "protection" with such a ridiculous disclaimer: "buyer > acknowledges that he needs to watch this dog 24/7 because if not > it will come to kill him". That's basically a product that OOH > guarantees satisfaction, but OTOH disclaims that "buyer is solely > responsible for ANY product failure". But that wasn't at all how the constitution was sold. The constitution was sold as a dangerous dog that will chew your arm off, if you don't watch it ever second and follow the handling instruction, even if the dog was sold to protect you. The FFs knew that government was a wild beast, but could see no other way to keep the beast from running wild (as a power vacuum will always be filled by those who are looking to fill a power vacuum), and then gave us the keys to unlock the beast, if it should be needed to protect ourselves with it, even if the cage that it was in completely surrounded the house so it could keep out intruders if required (borders), and watch the surrounding jungle (navy, both navy and borders were to be self financed, and that was about all the fed government was suppose to do, and really all it needed finances for, and why duties were required at the borders so they would be payed mostly by the people benefiting from the protection). Even in your example, if I buy a dog, and then beat the thing daily, is it the seller's fault if it turns on me? > > With "protection" like that, who needs crime? Except that wasn't how the constitution was sold, at least not in whole. The FFs knew that no government could or would protect you completely, as if it could or would, it would become exactly the thing that you probably needed protection from. Such is the reason they left our protecting, as our responsibility. Even with a written guarantee, that it was not only our right, but our duty to provide for our common defense, we didn't do it, and I see no reason to suggest that if we had no government (though that is a fallacy in itself that there can be such, at least as long as any human is alive, though it seems that those who may have sold us this particular fallacy of no government, does indeed have that as a goal, so perhaps there is more truth to it then I give it credit, but after all, death of the "enemy" is the goal of war in most cases of aggression, and the ptb being mostly advocates of eugenics / genocide, actually don't even consider themselves the same species as us little folk) it would ensure that we would value that responsibility, or that any future monopoly would even have that as a foundation premise that we might point to it, as a legitimate means of holding a future monopoly to the letter of their responsibilities, especially if future generations, that is obvious of it being so now, have lost the understanding of the breach of contract clause when it is written down, would be that much more likely to lose the concept of it (the breach of contract clause) altogether, as it will no longer be etched in time. If we didn't have the precedent of our history now, then there would as well be nothing to point to to give us guidance of what is right and wrong, except for that of being the strongest, being right. If we allow the idea that right makes might, to be replaced by the idea that might makes right, as it has always been before in history, then we or our posterity may never have a chance to regain the idea that right makes might (freedom), and our posterity may forever know the misery of perpetual war (death and slavery). Such an idea may sound far fetched, but it is a very real possibility that the scientific dictatorship (brave new world and 1984 like, that one will not even have a basis to think or know what freedom is) now having us to a large extent in its clutches, may not have to kill us to achieve its goals of no government, but just that it may well make us not human too (like they consider themselves not the same species), that we completely will have had stolen or even extinguished completely from the hive will, the very concept of what it is to be human, and what makes us that is freedom (self rule, anarchy, self determination, free will) or as Jefferson said, the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. What Jefferson and others of the FFs hoped for was a system that allowed an infinite number of anarchies (self rule or government of one) or government (cooperation for a common goal of freedom, whether we as outsiders of that government saw it as freedom or not) under a common arbitration and limited protectorate to provide a means of protecting the infinite governments (whether anarchy or cooperative) under its umbrella, from each other, and threat from not only outside, but to provide recourse from threats from the umbrella itself. And what was the number one reason the FFs feared it might not work? That the people themselves might not be responsible or able (as in informed, skilled and willing) enough for anarchy (or self rule). And some would have us replace it with no government (complete slavery or complete death, or perpetual war on being human). Yep, the no government meme is slick, you have to give then credit, but such is the art of war, which at the art of war's "finest," is nothing more then deception, so that you will willingly give up your freedom and life, when the only other alternative is organize as a government (cooperation) and fight. Fight like your freedom and life depends on it, as it does, as well as the future (as in if it has one) of humanity itself. Now you have to ask yourself, if those who wage war on us to make us slaves or dead, have ulterior motives (deception, as in the art of war), of other policies besides the no government one, they consider articles of faith, that they have as well been able to have us internalize (indoctrinated) as for our own "good" concern? Two of the biggest internalized of the enemy's memes (under our current debt money system, and we should all realize that debt makes us a slave to the debtor. I don't make it up, I just report on it) in not only the libertarian movement, but most other movements too have internalized these two memes (whether socialist or supposedly capitalist movements the meme has taking hold in most movements), is that of unlimited immigration and "free" trade. What is the purpose of war? What is war? War is the purposeful trespass upon your property and rights with the intent of killing, making you a slave, and / or stealing your property. War is crime, or crime is war, if you were the aggressor. The defender is not required to stand and be killed, enslaved or be stolen from, though it is nice for the aggressor if he can talk you into doing so without a fight. The founding fathers had just fought a war against an enemy (pretty much the same ones we fight today) that was trying to kill, enslave, and steal there property. The FFs were smart enough to know (probably because they were feeding from a new land that still had an enriched soil, and their minds were running on all eight cylinders, and food, or lack of adequate nutritional food, has long been a means of conquest and control, and we should keep that in mind especially now) from experience that there are three primary means of waging war on a people. Physical, economic, and ideological (one of the reasons that food is a primary concern is that it is useful under all 3 means, as lack of proper food can make you unproductive and thus unable too protect and provide, and combined with lack of production, and a decrease in mental keenness, it can be used to control a people's ability to think or will to think, it can also be used as physical, as in lack of it, to out right kill you, or even to much of it to poison you, So it is a very good idea, that when others wish to make war on you, that you not depend on them for food, or anything else, and it is a very good idea to know the people that do raise your food if not yourself, as it makes you independent from undue outside influence to make war on you, and such perhaps is part of why Jefferson thought every "man" should have his own land, but as well because that is the only way you can have true anarchy and self government, or independence and freedom). When the founding fathers wrote the constitution, they took these 3 primary means of waging a war against the people into consideration and instituted protections to mitigate the effect of these three means of waging war on them and their posterity. While most of the institutions that were put in place can be used to protect against different types of threats, some of them are as follows, freedom of speech, or the first amendment (though freedom of assemble is also related to militia and physical protection) to guard against attacks of ideology, the second to guard against physical attacks, and duties on imports to guard against economic attacks, and a border to guard against both economic and physical attacks. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it does reflect our current problems of having war waged on us, and certainly at different times in history, some of these safe guards can be relaxed, such as the need to enforce borders, But borders was included as an institution to be able to protect against war being waged on the population under self rule (anarchy) from becoming dead or slaves, but a free people have to be wise (ideological) enough to realize when war is being waged upon them, for these safe guards that were put in place to protect us, for them to work. Saying that you must leave the border wide open for unlimited trade incoming or unlimited immigration at all times, is as antilibertarian, as is saying it must always be completely shut all the time, as much as it would be for somebody to tell you that the door in your own house had to always be left completely open, or completely shut or locked all the time. These mechanisms were put in place to protect your security and prosperity, from an internal or external people that would wage war on you. The "elite" want them open not because they have your best interest at heart, or they are in anyway libertarian, except for what liberty they wish for themselves. They have waged war on you, so why would they, when nothing else they do is for our concern, do so on these two issues? Why? Because it ZAPs (take a nap or get a zap, one wonders if some don't have the same sense of humor as why neocons and liberals call themselves such) our strength and independence to be able to provide for our own defense (and if you don't know what it takes now to provide for your own protection, then how are you going to know or stop it from happening without such mechanism that are designed to provide for your own protection in place?), and it isn't exchanging of value for value, as some suggest about "free" trade and open borders, and use that premise to make the whole rest of their argument based on it, seem correct, even if the original premise is false. An argument based on a false premise is false in its whole. What it is, is exchanging something of value for fiction at best (which cheats the original owner of the property or labor, and makes us all crooks) or at worse, it is a lien on you (and us) and all we or our posterity will ever own. If you were selling just yourself into slavery (or death) for something of value *you* own in whole, that would be bad enough, but you also think you should sell us and all our posterity into slavery or death too, without us finding that at least a tad antilibertarian. The reason that they want the borders open is because the have waged war (slavery, death and theft) on us (and much of the rest of the world too), and they have even got you to lay down without even a fight, and in fact, you have embraced your own (and ours) slavery, death, and poverty. Then you wonder why we don't trust your judgment when you try to tell us, "don't worry, no government (or no self rule) will just work, because we or somebody else has said so" when it is obvious you have never thought about it, or even some may be part of the enemy army trying to bring us all to ruin. Marx said it best, that open borders at this point in time, is nothing more then a way to break your independence and ability to self governor (and protect ourselves), and steal everything you and I have or will ever have, including our own lives, and turn our rights to self govern (anarchy) and protect ourselves, over to a global monopoly. "A first attempt to recover the right of self government may fail, so may a second, a third, etc. But as a younger and more instructed race comes on, the sentiment becomes more and more intuitive, and a fourth, a fifth, or some subsequent one of the ever renewed attempts will ultimately succeed... To attain all this, however, rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over; yet the object is worth rivers of blood and years of desolation. For what inheritance so valuable can man leave to his posterity?" --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1823. > > That being said, all your suggestions are good ones. I would add > that authoring/supporting or continuing to enforce any > unconstitutional bill/legislation should be made a capital > offense. The question is: Is the product too damaged to still > allow the customer to fix it? Since this particular product is a > living organism, certain defects become self-perpetuating. But at > this point it doesn't really matter whether you want to repeal > (fix) 75% of the govt or eliminate it entirely; the effect is the > same. Both camps have every incentive to work together to defeat > our enemy-in-common. The product is us, but the question is valid. Are we to damaged to govern ourselves? The very thing the no government crowd is willing to give up, is the very thing they say they want to achieve. I certainly hope that we can begin to throw off the false understandings so we may be become undamaged, and hope you are one of the multitude who will continue and help us, return us to self government (anarchy). Goat ------------------------------------
