Rights and Reality

I don't know why I have to explain this repeatedly. The Declaration was a memo to George III, Parliament, and a majority of American colonists who did not like the idea of upsetting their existing relations of obligation and comfortable privilege. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine blew a raspberry at Quakers in particular -- fat, prosperous Tories. The Committee of Safety in Boston had similar problems. Merchants and the governor saw themselves as Englishmen. A handful of lawyers, tradesmen, and clergy refused to accept limitation on the freedom and self-government that was created by accident in Massachusetts Bay Colony. I don't want to discuss that in detail. Suffice it to say that all American colonies had democratic assemblies, necessitated by the great distance from English authorities, absence of representation in Parliament, and colonial circumstances that required immediate attention, like Indian wars, heretics, and trade with the West Indies. Arbitrary, bizarre taxes were imposed, withdrawn, and reimposed on the colonies by Parliament and enforced by Royal tax judges sent from London. "An act against natural equity is void," James Otis thundered in tax court. He was clubbed unconscious by tax bailiffs and suffered brain damage. Sam Adams had to replace him as leader of the Committee of Safety. Sons of Liberty threw a shipment of tea in Boston Harbor. A company of Redcoats arrived and fired on Boston protestors.

Bottom line, the Declaration was calculated to foment united action. Ignore its assertion of natural human rights, a glittering generality without definition. It relied on Biblical faith in celestial Commandments that John Locke said justified authority of moral government. The best way to read the Declaration is to study its itemized indictment of George III, who was alleged to have terminated the obligation of colonial loyalty to the Crown because he failed to preserve their rights as Englishmen. We celebrate the wrong date. The Declaration was adopted July 2, 1776 by a congress of revolutionaries, chaired by a bootlegger.

Without the French fleet, we would have lost the War of Independence. Washington was a terrible general. At the conclusion of eight years of conflict, all of the colonies and Congress were bankrupt and deeply in debt to lenders and suppliers who were paid in worthless scrip (Continental paper dollars). Each colony saw itself as an independent state, and each had a separate "foreign" policy with respect to other states. Some were friendly to England, others to France. The Articles of Confederation were a toothless, unenforceable system of levies on state governments. States refused to pay troops who fought in the Revolution. They refused to pay Continental debt. They taxed each other's commerce. Dissolution into rival alliances was threatened, and all 13 states suffered worsening economic weakness.

Two young lawyers were alarmed, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. They petitioned Washington to convene a conference in Annapolis to discuss amendments to the Articles of national government. Some states sent delegates, most did not. Those who attended had no authority to agree anything, but they pledged to meet again in Philadelphia at a convention of all 13 states. Washington chaired the convention of 1787. Madison recorded a meticulous journal of their debates. Hamilton argued for monarchy, rejected immediately, and he left in disgrace. The two other New York delegates said they had no authority to consider a new constitution and likewise left after a single week of sitting there like bumps on a log. Slave States refused to yield, despite the logic and moral authority of Northern abolishionists. If slavery was outlawed, the South would secede. Small States wanted legislative power equal to Large States. George Washington said nothing as presiding officer. Ben Franklin was too feeble to stand and speak. His ideas, generally ignored, were read aloud by a friend.

After 55 days of stifling summer heat in a closed chamber, drinking barrels of whiskey every night, they mooted compromise upon compromise, fractions of advantage to be blurred and fudged by constitutional complexity. No one wanted to sign the resulting document. Franklin spoke and implored them to sign it because the economic and political crisis was desperate, and if no constitution was adopted, the United States would fail and dissolve, easy prey for England and France to divide and conquer. Hamilton returned to sign on behalf of New York.

Public debate for and against ratification raged for two years. In New York, a special state convention voted 30-27 to ratify, a decision tipped by two swing votes. In Virginia, the vote was 89-79, another skinny margin of only six delegates. Who knows what corrupt promises were made to win those votes?

What did the U.S. Constitution provide? Slavery. A post office. Minted gold dollars. Checks and balances to frustrate legislation. Tariffs. Excise taxes. Frequent elections. No inalienable rights, other than due process and compensation for property the government might take. Did it prevent civil war? No. Did it solve the problem of Continental debt? No. The only thing it established instantly and permanently was political parties, Federalists versus Democrats, spoils of office, and "gerrymandering" by Elbridge Gerry, delegate from Massachusetts, sly architect of a salamander shaped Congressional district to guarantee his election.

It's too much to recite all the waste, fraud, idiocy, and tragedy in U.S. history. It began with unpayable debt, roiled by slim majorities who ran roughshod over nearly equal "minority" political opponents, everyone in favor of more debt, more government, more payola. In reality, the people of America had no voice, past or present, no right to resist whatever the political elite decided to impose by horse trading or expedient improvizations. Removal of Indians. Land grants for Union Pacific. Ejection of Mormons from Nevada. Carpetbaggers. Segregation. Billions for Stalin. Stalemate in Korea. Duck and cover. Assassinations. Riots. Genocide in Vietnam. Alliance with Israel. Invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

None of it was necessary. Self government is liberty. If you continue to vote for politicians, they will tax and regulate every aspect of life, borrow and spend, stupify and indoctrinate your children, throw trillions at idle "consumers" and tens of trillions at a Green New Deal, relying on a corrupt compromise that had little to do with liberty in 1787 and less today.

.

BTW

Nothing will work right until we abolish legislation, election of public officials, and taxation. It's all well and good, I suppose, that most law school students are female, numerous courts have female judges, and welfare families with a female head of household can knock down $70,000 a year in benefits if she has three or more children, according to the Pennsylvania Secretary of State. It might be 20% more in Chicago and New York, with significantly higher housing and public school costs. Zoom out a little. Women are pushing men out of higher ed, the legal profession, and tens of millions of households. None of that would have happened without a show of hands, elected officials, and legislation. Capiche? If that's unclear, think about 18 years of folly in Afghanistan, 79,000 "wounded warriors" in Shrub's $2 trillion snipe hunt for WMD in Iraq, two million murdered in Vietnam by Johnson and Nixon. We're $25 trillion in debt, zero hope of reversing a dime of it, $200 trillion of unfunded entitlement promises without Bernie's plan to forgive student loans, free college, free Medicare For All, taxing gasoline, income, property, and savings out of existence for the public good.

A free society does not have "public" anything. All higher ed, law courts, and charities are private ventures supported voluntarily by people who want to support them. Ditto private border control, law enforcement, and national defense, which I've written and lectured about extensively. A necessary precondition for liberty is to shut down fascism. Duh.

Something I wrote 30 years ago: We're partying in the fading sunset of industrial power and privilege inherited from our grandparents and great grandparents, a vast shower of wealth soaked through to the weakest seed, you and me included.

Why anybody thinks that secession or civil war will be peaceful or rational escapes me. I just heard a book author on a morning radio show, cheerfully contemplating a negotiated fair division of the national debt, passport-free borders so that everyone can visit Disneyland, an expanded NAFTA confederation of states that despise each other. Maybe some of Virginia's counties could join West Virginia, and Northern California could divorce San Francisco.

Bullshit. Insurrections. Federal troops. A declaration of secession, then another. Millions of soccer moms terrified, schools closed, thousands of men killed, then rebellious troops versus Federal troops versus well-armed militias, neighbor against neighbor in race wars, collapse of the oil industry, no fuel in winter, no fuel to escape, WalMarts and gun shops looted.

Ludicrous to suppose that nothing will happen if Trump is re-elected. Absolutely certain that Milwaukee will explode if Bernie is shoved aside in a brokered convention. Paradoxically, a black socialist -- Blind Patrick or Malicious Michelle -- would pour snake oil over the Bernie bullshit and probably defeat Trump. Heads they win, tails we lose the future.

.

Private government

In the first, fundamental sense of the term, private government describes the power of each individual to control the conduct of his or her life, whether right or wrong, in sickness and in health, for better or worse, courageously, cowardly, or cooperatively with others. In America, toleration of differences and separation of church and state were a precondition for national union, and it resulted in a widely understood right of individuation legally protected by the First Amendment. The state cannot compel a citizen to attend a church or be taxed to support a religious sect. Individual decisions concerning education, career, marriage, and finance are largely unregulated, despite a mountain of legislation and administrative rules imposed to limit individual choice. Liberty stubbornly persists as a matter of personal aspiration or folly, contrary to the best efforts of family, neighbors, and politicians to induce conformity.

That, however, is not the topic I wish to discuss. Private government has another meaning pertaining to constitutional law, not in the present, but the future. In tempestuous infancy and adolescence, the U.S. Constitution was a legalized tug of war with periodic explosions. Colonial frontier pioneers did not perceive an obligation to be stewards of the planet. The Federal Convention of 1787 did not debate LGBTQ or transgender privileges, and the Civil War was not fought to give birthright citizenship to foreign anchor babies.

American constitutional thumb wrestling was a brief struggle in the sweep of human history, even if we graft it to the dead root of English common law. Some historians point to ancient Rome as a source for concepts like contract, or Bible stories as the source of all law. Athenian aristocrats experimented with democracy and trial by jury. The Code of Hammurabi is taught in U.S. law schools as the ancient basis of equity and criminal law, improved incrementally by thousands of years of judicial and legislative thought.

Wait a minute. Spaceflight was derived from rock throwing?

Obviously not. The American Experiment was a clean break with all previous governments, and it was totally rewritten twice, by Civil War and by 20th Century Supreme Court decisions. If the Founding Fathers knew what we've done to their Constitution, they'd shout from their graves to damn us. Everything in law today is a radical break from its original intent, no better than juvenile delinquency, defying Madison and Franklin and Otis. You don't know who Otis was. Nor do you know why Franklin proposed that judges should be elected by lawyers, or why Madison opposed a Bill of Rights. Without Madison, Franklin, and Otis, there would be no Constitution to reinterpret and coin gay marriage rights.

Be that as it may, I'm not interested in political footstamping or current notions of political rights. What matters is the future, and I'd like to return to the idea of private government. Let's suppose that the public tussel of democracy is arbitrary and unpredictable. The United States is a bankrupt nonprofit corporation, a global welfare fountain that no one owns.

Private government is totally different. Instead of voting, free of charge, expecting the U.S. to hand you a pile of benefits, in a private government there are joint venturers (partners) who pony up "cash calls" to retain their right to elect a board of directors. There are no taxes, no regulation of commerce, no social benefits. The sole function of a private government is national defense, funded by insurance companies, banks, and wealthy individual citizens who can afford to buy a vote to determine the scale and scope of national defense. It's less nutty than it sounds. The American Revolution was funded entirely by private backers and fought by volunteer civilians.

I wrote a short story and recorded a lecture to explicate the idea.

.

Okay, fine.

I accept that I'm going to lose during my remaining lifetime. Jews, blacks, gays, bureaucrats, media marionettes, mystics, and man-haters will win. That does not, however, make them victors, destined to rule forever. To grab the levers of legislation and starve our women and children today or tomorrow proves nothing. Love of liberty will never die, and the bloody hands of socialism will wither and crack, poisoned by their own evil.

The next century will be mine (and every freeman's).

Political struggles are measured in centuries. For thousands of years, men were ruled by a cabal of incoherent priests and absolute monarchs. Science consisted of devising weapons, no different than Raytheon. Architects built sacred temples and artists painted fantasies, no different than the Kennedy School of Government, the Kennedy Center, and Marvel comics depicting verklempt, altruistic superheroes who do not and cannot exist in reality. All of it is a stupendous bluff to keep men cowed and dreamy, engineered by Democrats, praying for another Kennedy dynasty to be celebrated and immortalized and worshipped as airbrushed cartoon superheroes. The Clintons attempted it. Obama succeeded.

Against this, lone heretics like Spinoza and Voltaire spoke simple truths, not addressed to those in power, but to freemen who would follow in the future. Their wisdom powered our Gilded Age, a brief interval in American history that spawned an industrial society of factories and railroads, an explosion of opportunity and wealth. Government was nearly disbanded. Authority was ridiculed by Thomas Edison, an uneducated orphan who became an engine of useful inventions like stock tickers and multiplex telegraphy, audio recordings and motion pictures, electric illumination and magnetic separators. Another orphan, Philo T. Farnsworth, walked away from the imbecility of Mormon fantasy and created television. A pair of bicycle mechanics made powered flight a new goal to inspire generations of aerospace engineers, and another loner who tinkered with motor cars pioneered mass production and made it possible for farmers to retire their horses and mules, merchants to deliver goods in remote locations. We owe him our very lives, because medicine and surgery were freed from a cage of isolation and ignorance. An impoverished Polish chemist discovered radium and led the way to modern physics, sustainable space exploration, and nuclear powered submarines. A penniless Scot came to America in the Gilded Age, organized efficient steel production and endowed lending libraries to lift the veil of superstition.

My job was simple. I followed a lead that Benjamin Franklin bequeathed, to liberate lawyers and judges from the sewer of political appointments. I took James Otis literally, that an act of legislation, no matter how popular, was void if it violated the principle of equity. It's a grim indictment of American culture how badly that term has been twisted by Democrats. It does not mean "social justice" or seizing wealth from those who earned it.

As the Gilded Age enabled us to enjoy material prosperity 100 years ago, it will come to pass 100 years hence, when men are free to colonize space, that another stake will be hammered into the black heart of government. You'd think it would be obvious today that legislation is a moral, financial, and social trainwreck, destroying everything and everyone that it attempts to transmute, no different than medieval alchemists and deluded Crusaders. Seizure of our liberty as pioneers and experimenters is an illusion, a bad bluff that evaporates when we give them nothing, no votes, no respect, no taxes, not a single word of debate in their rigged law courts, and ignore their vapid academic entreaties to kneel at the altar of obedience.

Voltaire and Spinoza showed us the path forward. James Otis was physically attacked and maimed by tax collectors, inspiring a revolution that dethroned a king and freed us to walk away from a distant and corrupt Parliament, vainglorious figureheads and manipulators of rotten boroughs, no different than today's "community organizers" in bullet riddled Chicago and Baltimore, gutted ruins of formerly prosperous producers of plenty. California was an unrivaled industrial giant, home to aircraft engineering, shipbuilding, and oil exploration, highly skilled and highly paid employment. Gone, all of it, the rotten borough plaything of Democrats and ghetto thugs chanting murderous doggerel to unemployable incompetents who suck the swollen teats of a bankrupt welfare state and sell drugs to school children.

Give them nothing. Find a new frontier to explore.

.

Has it occurred to anyone that the government shutdown should be made permanent?

If I understand it correctly, essential services are uninterrupted, Social Security and Medicare payments continue to gush, the Treasury is borrowing and jawboning as usual, and DoD has over a million people stationed all over the world eating three squares. FBI, DEA, BATF, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons are staffed 100%, and there's no question that Capitol Police and Secret Service are being paid. The Federal Government is the world's largest consumer of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, paying up to $100 a gallon to deliver it to Afghanistan. All of our MRAPs, F-16s, and ships at sea are still in business, every tank truck, barge, and escort.

It's hard to grasp how big the government is. Nine hundred thousand structures around the world, 3.4 billion square feet, 122 square miles under roof, with over two million vehicles and aircraft parked outside. Estimates of Federal employees and contractors are between thirty and fifty million, depending on how you count teachers, college professors, coaches, doctors, bankers and brokers worldwide who skim a six-figure income from Treasury debt, mortgage scalpers underwritten by Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie, FHA, and Section 8 largesse.

It's dead certain that Boeing, Lockheed, GE, and Raytheon would collapse without fat DoD contracts, but their national defense cash flow is contractual, immune from shutdown. If I had to wager, I'd bet that Congressional staff and travel junkets are immune, too.

I trust you know that the U.S. Government annually spends over $1 trillion more than it takes in from taxes and an infinity of fees including tariffs, asset seizures, and fines. The Feds are roughly $22 trillion in debt, unless you count unfunded entitlements of $200+ trillion. So, the obvious question is -- why not make this 25% "shutdown" permanent? It won't balance the budget or nick the ever-expanding entitlement gravy train, but it's a nice down payment.

Oooo, scary. People out of work!

I don't see why not. Every dollar the government spends on itself is a dollar taken from the private free enterprise economy, engine of all innovation and profit, minus the burden of regulatory compliance and shipping and handling by tax accountants and molasses slow bureaucrats who can't be fired or compelled to show up for work.

Returning medical practice to the doctors would be nice. When I was a young man, we paid doctors in cash like plumbers and grocers. All private hospitals did charity cases, no charge. I know it's hard to believe, but drugs were cheap. Not in some distant prehistoric time, but in the 1960s, before affordable Blue Cross was hijacked by a tidal wave of suddenly sacrosanct welfare payola, illegal aliens, and anchor babies.

I'd like to see Congress undertake a new mission, no new laws, only repeals, but I'll take a 25% shutdown gladly. Let it run a few months. Kick the tires on smaller government. Make it easier to hire people in the private sector by cutting regulations -- or furlough enforcement staff, turn off a few light bulbs and computer screens, have a garage sale and sell off some of the quarter million GSA vehicles that regulators toodle around in. It'll be difficult to retrain former government employees to do anything efficiently and cheerfully, but newspapers say that there are more jobs available than those unemployed, so a big chunk of the 800,000 out of work at Federal agencies will be snapped up in a hurry by private employers. Who knows? They might enjoy working for a living, instead of snoozing at the Bureau of Paperwork.

I'm told by NPR that vital Homeland Security operations like TSA are working without being paid. First off, pull the plug on NPR, thanks. TSA should be funded by airlines and airports and ordered to keep their hands off frequent flyers, cute chicks, grannies, and children.

Above all, bring the troops home. Not just a handful from Syria. An orderly retreat from bases in Korea, Okinawa, Guam, Bahrain, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Germany, and Saudi Arabia would go a long way toward enhancing national security, concentrating on defense of North America, patrolling our shores and borders. International trade is a stupid justification for imperialism, and there's no sane purpose in policing the Islamic world as badly as we police Chicago.

Whether private citizens want to subsidize Israel or cancer research is up to them. Voluntary associations are the whole meaning of a free society. Let freedom ring and put government on a Weightwatchers diet, shed some of those bloated trillion dollar deficits.

.