Showing posts with label Lysander Spooner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lysander Spooner. Show all posts

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Abolishing the Federal Government and the Presidency in Seventeen Easy Steps

     Given the recent scandals in Washington, D.C. regarding Russian and Ukrainian spying and business deals, election sabotage and interference, and association of presidents with known child sex traffickers, it is becoming obvious to more and more Americans that the current federal government with which we are currently burdened, has become unbearably corrupt, as well as financially and morally bankrupt.
     The solution to these problems, in my opinion, must be to abolish the federal government, the Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. Additionally - possibly - to call for a new national government, if reassurances can be made that such a government would be tolerable). But most importantly, to incarcerate (and, if necessary, charge with treason and/or sedition) any politicians or federal officials whom have engaged in unlawful or immoral actions involving representatives of foreign governments.

     If I were asked what federal officials, and/or the president, could and should do, to abolish the federal government as soon as possible, then my advice would be what follows below.
     I would recommend that the president take as many of these sixteen steps as possible - and as quickly as possible, and in the order shown below - in order to achieve abolition of the United States federal Government as swiftly, successfully, and peaceably as possible.

     This list should be viewed as a set of stages.
     The purpose of the first two steps (Phase One) is to communicate clearly to the people why the federal government needs to be abolished. This will help ensure that the president who promises to abolish the government, has the people's trust and support when inaugurated.
     The remainder of the steps should be taken by the president as soon as possible following inauguration. Those steps include the first phase following inauguration (Phase Two). In Phase Two, the president makes sure that foreign nations recognize that the president was elected lawfully, in order to avoid an international incident, and ensure the stability of the new administration while it attempts to abolish the federal government (as the people will want it to do).
     In Phase Three, the president gives Congress, the Supreme Court, and the executive branch officials under the president's control, one last chance (each) to cease cooperating with the continued creation and enforcement of widely unpopular and unconstitutional laws. Many of these cannot even rightfully be called laws, because most unconstitutional acts of Congress, are unconstitutional because they disregard limitations which were put in the Constitution with the specific intent of ensuring that the states and the people retained a significant and meaningful measure of the right to govern themselves (as opposed to being governed by a central authority).
     In Phase Four, the president takes all steps necessary to abolish the entire federal government (with the exception of the offices of the president, and one diplomat for each foreign nation), and issues declarations and public statements explaining and confirming these moves.
     In Phase Five (providing that most or all of steps 7 through 10 were successful), the president declares that efforts to abolish the federal government were successful, and makes statements and invitations which recognize the sovereignty and independence of the fifty states as separate countries, each with their own diplomatic authorities.
     In Phase Six (after the world has recognized the freedom of each state), the president calls for the consideration of a new national or federal government and a new constitutional convention, weighs in on this matter, fires all diplomats still employed federally, and vacates the office of the presidency (leaving nobody to succeed).



     The Seventeen Steps:

Phase One (Before Inauguration):
     Step 1: Communicate, and Campaign on, the Need to Abolish the Federal Government
     Step 2: Communicate the Legal Rationale for Abolishing the Federal Government

Phase Two (Immediately After Inauguration):
     Step 3: Invite Ambassadors to Recognize the Legitimacy of the President's Election

 Phase Three (After Achieving Recognition of the Election Results):
     Step 4: Urge Congress and the States to Convene for an Emergency Amendment Session
     Step 5: File Lawsuits Which Could Severely Limit Federal Authority
     Step 6: Nullify Executive Orders

 Phase Four: (If Steps 4 Through 6 Have Little to No Effect):
     Step 7: Revoke the Authority to Enforce Federal Laws
     Step 8: Order the Congress to Disband
     Step 9: Charge Corrupt Officials with Sedition and Treason
     Step 10: Firing the Vice President and Refusing to Nominate Cabinet Members
     Step 11: Order the Arrest of All Persons Cooperating with the Federal Government

Phase Five (After the Federal Government is Abolished):
     Step 12: Declare the Federal Government Legally Foreign to the States and the People
     Step 13: Invite Ambassadors to Recognize the Sovereignty and Independence of the States
     Step 14: Insist Upon the States' Freedom to Conduct Diplomacy and Join the United Nations

Phase Six (After the World Has Recognized the Independence of the States):
     Step 15: Call for a Constitutional Convention
     Step 16: Fire All Federal Diplomats
     Step 17: Vacate the Presidency




Phase One (Before Inauguration):

     Step 1: Communicating, and Campaigning on, the Need to Abolish the Federal Government

     Make it clear that the presidential candidate, and the congressional and senatorial candidates, are running with the intent to abolish the positions for which they're running.
     It should be emphasized that various notable figures in pop culture have suggested doing without government (such as Kid Rock, who said something to the effect of "What if we decided to have no government, but everybody promised to be cool?"; and Alec Baldwin, who said, while portraying Donald Trump on N.B.C.'s Saturday Night Live, "Maybe it's time we take a break from having a president for about a year."). Forces in favor of abolishing the federal government should make it clear that they could not agree more.
     Attempt to make abolishing he federal government; incarceration of dozens of high ranking federal officials; and full investigations of Jeffrey Epstein, everyone listed in Epstein's black book of contacts, Ghislaine Maxwell, Joe and Hunter Biden, John Podesta and James Alefantis (etc.); into mainstream policies and platform planks (if possible, resulting in multiple parties adopting such positions).
    Additionally, for any officials running for federal positions having promised to work to abolish the federal government, it should be clear that they intend to return the power of attorney back to the people from which they have been borrowing it (through political representation).
     Moreover, campaigns to abolish the federal government should explain that repealing laws, and dismantling and abolishing entire departments, will drastically reduce not only government costs, but also the number of armed government law enforcement officials, as well as the number of violent attacks committed by government agents against civilians.


     Step 2: Communicating the Legal Rationale for Abolishing the Federal Government

     In order to justify, and provide legal context and rationale for the legality of, abolishing the U.S. federal Government, campaigns to abolish the federal government should cite the fact that the Declaration of Independence recognized the people's pre-existing right to alter or abolish our government if it becomes destructive of the liberties which it declared an intent to preserve.
     Additionally, at least six state constitutions recognize a right to reform, alter, or abolish government; -and many nations acknowledge the right to revolution and/or the right to rebel - so those facts should not go ignored in the president's statements.
     [Note: The Supreme Court, historically, has not considered the Declaration of Independence to be organic law, and thus the court does not consider the Declaration to be part of the U.S. Code. However, Congress traditionally has recognized the Declaration of Independence as organic law. This information may be relevant in order to pursue a successful legal defense for the case in favor of abolishing the government.]




Phase Two (Immediately After Inauguration):

     Step 3: Inviting Ambassadors to Recognize the Legitimacy of the President's Election

     [Note: Step 3, and subsequent steps, should all be taken on January 20th, in the afternoon and evening immediately after the inauguration of the president, and within the first 24 or 48 hours of the inauguration.]
     The president should instruct all sitting United States ambassadors to foreign countries, to meet with their counterparts in those foreign nations, and ask those counterparts whether they will affirm that the election of the president was carried out duly and legally.
     This step will help reduce the risk that an international incident (whether diplomatic or military) could flare up, at the news that a presidential candidate has been elected who promised to abolish the position of president as well as the national government of the United States. This step will also help ensure that foreign nations will interact with the states in good faith, following the next several steps which the president should take to abolish the government.






Phase Three (After Achieving Recognition of the Election Results):


     Step 4: Urging Congress and the States to Convene for an Emergency Amendment Session

     The president should strongly urge Congress to convene for a brief, one-time, emergency legislative session, to give Congress one last chance to amend the Constitution in a meaningful way.
     While doing this, the president should cite the need to review the existing set of national emergencies (of which there are dozens and dozens, and probably too many); and the need to declare national emergencies regarding civil liberties, due process, government transparency, and corruption.
     The president should do this, while specifically demanding that the members of Congress authorize their own arrest for misdemeanors as well as felonies, and also demanding that Congress refrain from interfering with any efforts by the states to hold a constitutional convention.
     The president should accomplish this by insisting that Congress and the states work together to immediately pass an amendment which would amend (and repeal a portion of) Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution. That amendment should replacing that clause with the following language: "The Senators and Representatives shall not be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance of the Session of their respective Houses, nor in going to nor returning from the same, and in addition to any Speech or Debate in either House, they may be questioned in any other Place."
     The president should additionally insist that the convention of states consider amendments which would repeal the U.S. Constitution in its entirety and revert to a confederation, and/or abolish the office of the presidency (by striking Article II, Section 1).
     In the (extremely likely) event that Congress were to refuse to accept the president's insistence that this emergency legislation be considered (i.e., proposals to allow the arrest of congressmen for misdemeanors, revert to a confederation, and abolish the presidency), then the president should proceed with any and all plans to order the Congress to disband, since it will have signaled that it is not willing to acknowledge the right to hold a constitutional convention as acknowledged in Article V of the Constitution.



     Step 5:  Filing Lawsuits Which Could Severely Limit Federal Authority

     The president and the new administration should file lawsuits intended to make it impossible for the U.S. Supreme Court to avoid promptly weighing in on three key constitutional issues, the outcome of which rulings could have major impacts, potentially including the abolition of the federal government as we know it.
     These lawsuits include suits which will pressure the Supreme Court to issue rulings:
     1) whether there is any constitutional merit to the claims that Amendment XVI (income tax) was passed unlawfully;
     2) whether there is any constitutional merit to the claims that the Titles of Nobility Amendment was passed as Amendment XIII, but has been disregarded despite having been lawfully passed by Congress but not signed by the president; and
     3) whether there is a difference between "the Constitution of the United States" and "the Constitution for the United States", and additionally, within that controversy, whether the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 violates the provision in Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 that the federal government exercise exclusive jurisdiction only within the District of Columbia itself, and limited to 100 square miles ("ten miles, squared").
     A ruling on the first issue could have the result of repealing and abolishing the income tax, which would defund the federal government by depriving the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) from collecting approximately half of the total amount of receipts from which the federal government derives its revenue. With its funding halved, the federal government will struggle to fund its enforcement of unconstitutional federal laws.
     A ruling on the second issue could help prohibit federal officials - especially judges and congressmen - from receiving any form of foreign honors, titles, or privileges whatsoever. If the language in the Titles of Nobility Amendment becomes law, then federal judges will likely lose much or all of their power to issue orders which affect the states and localities.
     A ruling on the third issue will help determine whether the federal government is, in a strict legal sense, exercising exclusive jurisdiction anywhere besides the District of Columbia (for example, on federally managed and owned lands, and on U.S. military bases overseas, and in our various overseas territories and possessions, etc.).
     The president should additionally insist that the Supreme Court issue a ruling regarding whether Congress's refusal to allow an emergency convention to amend the Constitution (as described in Step 4).
     If the Supreme Court refuses to take any of these cases, then the president should call for the court to be abolished. If the justices of the Supreme Court refuse to accept their dismissal and the court's abolition, then the president should call for their arrest. These arrests could be performed by branches of the national guard, officials representing the states or community governments, and/or volunteer citizen militia wishing to assist in a citizens' arrests.



     Step 6: Nullifying Executive Orders

     The president should undertake all efforts possible to nullify all past executive orders, presidential signing statements, and line-item vetoes which remain active and have no constitutional merit. These may include executive orders which the president believes to be destructive of civil liberties, or destructive to the rights of the people to be governed in a decentralized fashion.
     The president may need to use both active and passive methods in order to accomplish this. Likely, some executive orders (etc.) can be ignored through the president refusing to issue orders to enforce them, while others may have to be accomplished through presidential actions. These may include new executive orders which invalidate old executive orders.
     Whatever the case, the presidential candidate who intends to abolish the federal government should be prepared to undertake whatever legal means necessary to rescind, or otherwise invalidate, the executive orders which still exist and have been  destructive to freedom or empowering of tyranny.
     These include, but are not limited to, executive orders which: 1) deprive accused people of the right to a trial; 2) establish and maintain secret prisons; 3) instruct officials to deprive detainees and incarcerated migrants of their right to a basic standard of health and safety while in custody; and 4) provide for "continuity of government" programs and exercises which make it difficult to abolish the federal government.






Phase Four: (If Steps 4 Through 6 Have Little to No Effect):


     Step 7: Revoking the Authority to Enforce Federal Laws

     On the president's first day in office, the president and/or the new administration should insist upon the president's right to tell all armed bureaucrats working for the federal government to surrender their badges and to return or lay down any and all arms issued to them by the federal government.
     The rationale for this should be that the president has the right, as the chief executive of the nation's armed forces, to issue orders requiring the firing and disarmament of any and all law enforcement officials continuing to claim to work for the federal government, and attempting to enforce federal laws (which will, as provided in Step 4, have been repealed en masse just prior to Step 5).



     Step 8: Ordering the Congress to Disband

     The president should make an appeal to the people, explaining that the president would not be in the White House unless the people who elected that candidate truly wanted the candidate to abolish the federal government, and truly believed that the candidate would do so if given the opportunity.
     The president should use these facts to justify and explain the president's next step: an order for the United States Congress - i.e., the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives - to disband. If the Senators and Representatives just elected, refuse their dismissal, then state or community officials (or private citizens) should remove them from the chambers of Congress, and take them into custody.



     Step 9: Charging Corrupt Officials with Sedition and Treason

     On January 20th, the president should be prepared with orders to indict all federal officials (justices, elected officials, law enforcement officers, etc.) who continue to serve under the guise and authority of the federal government, and who continue to attempt to enforce federal law.
     The list of this set of federal officials should be made up primarily of the following: 1) elected and appointed officials who abused their oaths of office by engaging in corrupt foreign business deals and/or election collusion; 2) justices, senators, and congresspersons who refused to vacate their offices; and 3) potentially dangerous federal law enforcement officials, intent on continuing to enforce federal law after the authority to do so is rescinded, whom are not likely to give up their arms without a fight.
     Most importantly, the president should be prepared to charge the first set of officials enumerated above, with sedition and/or treason (whichever is appropriate).



     Step 10: Firing the Vice President and Refusing to Nominate Cabinet Members

     The president should ask for the resignation of the running mate who was elected along with the president, and/or undertake any and all peaceable measures possible which could prevent the vice-president-elect from taking an oath of office.
     The president should also refuse to cooperate with any demands to hire a chief of staff, and also with demands to nominate cabinet members. The president should explain that at least half of those cabinet members would only end up heading federal departments which lack proper constitutional authorization (so most of what they do is unlawful).
     The president should dismiss the vice-president-elect, and refuse to hire a chief of staff and nominate a cabinet, in order to prevent those persons from being arrested for cooperating with the federal government (which they would not deserve, having been elected specifically in order to abolish the federal government).




     Step 11: Ordering the Arrest of All Persons Cooperating with the Federal Government

     The president should issue an order which will prohibit, and provide punishment of, all state and local officials, and all citizens of the states, who continue to cooperate with officials claiming to work under the auspices of anything described as a federal or national government of or for the United States.
     If circumstances merit and necessitate it, then the president should be prepared to charge any such "federal officials" - or persons aiding and abetting them - with treason (and/or sedition) against the people and the states.
     The president should issue just under two hundred exemptions, however. The president, and one diplomat for each foreign nation, should be retained, until such time as the president would be prepared to relinquish them from the federal employment rolls. This will be necessary in order to ensure that the president completes the mission to abolish the federal government, and in order to ensure that foreign nations will accept the sovereignty of each American state after that mission is over.






Phase Five (After the Federal Government is Abolished):


     Step 12: Declaring the Federal Government Legally Foreign to the States and the People

     The president should declare intent to re-affirm the only provision of the 1789 Treaty of Paris which is left standing; i.e., the provision which recognizes that the states are, and of right should be free to behave as, "free, sovereign, and independent" states.
     While issuing this declaration, the president should explain that: 1) without recognizing the freedom and sovereignty and independence of each U.S. state, they cannot rightfully be called "states"; and 2) the federal government is, legally speaking, foreign to the states, and to the people.
     The president should predicate the validity of the second point, on the facts that the federal government has alienated the people, the federal government has treated the people as strangers and aliens in their own lands (as if they had no rights), and the federal government has transported accused people to far-off secret prisons for indeterminate lengths of time and without trial (which was one of the main reasons, if not the biggest reason, the Declaration of Independence was drafted in the first place). The president should cite Grievance 8 and Grievance 9, of the Declaration, in order to explain and justify the decision to declare the states' and the people's independence from federal and national government.
     This declaration by the president should be made publicly, and should be billed as "the Second Declaration of Independence" of the United - and fully sovereign - States of America.



     Step 13: Inviting Ambassadors to Recognize the Sovereignty and Independence of the States

     The president should instruct all sitting United States ambassadors to foreign countries, to meet with their counterparts in those foreign nations, and ask those counterparts to affirm that they will not undertake any actions resisting or challenging the president's orders to dissolve and abolish national government for the United States.
     This step will help reduce the risk that an international incident (whether diplomatic or military) could flare up, at the news that the national government is unstable or could soon disappear (because the federal government's abolition is likely to have far-reaching and grave effects on the state of world peace and world finance, as well as on the state of society and the freedom revolution at home).
     Diplomats from the United Kingdom, in particular, should be invited to re-affirm what it affirmed in 1789 when that nation recognized that America was no longer under British control. Namely, that - as provided in the 1789 Treaty of Paris - the American states remain free, independent, and sovereign. 
     This step may, and hopefully will, have the effect of insuring against attempts from within the remnants of the federal government, to either: 1) engage in collusion with foreign governments abroad; 2) challenge or depose the president, or to create another national government; or 3) invade with a foreign army, thus occupying the states with a national government (albeit a foreign one).



     Step 14: Insisting Upon the States' Freedom to Conduct Diplomacy and Join the United Nations

     Immediately upon completing the tasks of ordering the abolition of the federal government, the president should point to the fact of widespread approval of that move, to make it clear that the authority to engage in diplomacy and trade, is now vested in the states themselves, or in the people.
     Next, the president should communicate with all fifty state governors, and insist that those states have the right to join the United Nations, to participate in its programs independently, and to participate in international diplomatic and trade deals without consulting any other governmental body. The president should also insist that each governor extend invitations for foreign diplomats to meet in their states' capitals, to acknowledge the sovereignty of each state, separately and in person.
     If necessary, the president should defend this insistence upon full state sovereignty, by citing the fact that even the Soviet Union (with its storied reputation for repression of both civil liberties and democracy) allowed the Ukraine and Belarus to be members of the United Nations long before the Soviet Union was finished being dismantled.







Phase Six (After the World Has Recognized the Independence of the States):


     Step 15: Calling for a Constitutional Convention

     [Note: This step should only be taken if, and after, it has become abundantly clear that there no longer remain any realistic challenges to the new administration's authority, nor to the federal government's abolition, nor to the states' total sovereignty and independence.]
     The president should call for a second constitutional convention of states. As provided in Article V, no amendment shall be considered which could potentially violate the provisions of Article I, Section 9 as amended.
     In defending the move to call for a constitutional convention, without citing the Constitution's authority, the president should cite the fact that Article V of the U.S. Constitution (which authorized constitutional convention) remained law before the president's inauguration, but was never taken seriously by Congress or enough state governors to make such a convention happen. This made reforming the federal government all but impossible, and made revolution or abolition inevitable.
     The president should call for a constitutional convention of states, to determine whether to create a new national or federal government. However, the president should insist that, if such a government is created, then it should only happen on the condition that the Bill of Rights is strengthened and clarified (or, at the very least, left alone).
     [Note: In my opinion, Amendments II, V, IX, and X could benefit the most from clarifying and modernizing language, through better encapsulating the spirit of liberty which informed the original intentions and original meanings of those amendments.]
     If a new national or federal government is formed as the result of these proceedings, then the most important matters which should be considered in the creation of new amendments, should revolve around: 1) what the structure of the new government should be, and in that issue, how to safeguard civil liberties and severely and explicitly limit the government's powers (which would hopefully include language resembling the suggested amendment outlined in Step 4); 2) how to have free, fair, and open elections; and 3) which measures to adopt in order to ensure the financial security of the new government (and the national economy in general).



     Step 16. Firing All Federal Diplomats

     The president should fire all diplomats still employed by the federal government (which shall have been retained this long solely for the purposes of ensuring international recognition of the legitimacy of the new administration).



     Step 17: Resigning the Presidency and Vacating the Oval Office

     Before the states and the people decide whether to convene for a constitutional convention, the president should announce resignation from the office of the President of the United States - and announce an intent that the office of the presidency be vacated forever, from this day forward (hopefully January 21st) - in a public address which explains the reasons for doing so.
     That address should include the president's thoughts regarding whether a constitutional convention should take place, and whether there is a justification for any national or federal government to exist again in the territory once occupied by the United States federal Government.
     The president should also communicate an opinion about whether positions like the presidency, the chief executive, and the unitary executive, ought to exist or be trusted ever again. This will help make it clear to the people that the president truly is about to become the last president (or, at least, the last president under this current constitution) upon the resignation that follows this address.
     If this public address is not televised live, then it should be either pre-recorded and broadcasted, or else a statement to the same effect should be sent to members of the press and officials representing the fifty states.
     If this public address is broadcast live, then the president should be shown signing a letter of resignation live on television, and then, the president should insist that everyone present in the Oval Office, leave the room immediately (i.e., the president and any remaining members of the president's retinue, members of the press, and/or any state governors or foreign diplomats invited and present for the resignation).





     Those interested in these topics may additionally wish to read my 2011 article "The Spooner Amendment", a suggested list of reforms to the U.S. Constitution. That article is available at the following address:




Based on Notes Taken on October 17th, 2019
Written on October 25th and 31st, 2019

Published on October 31st, 2019
Originally Published Under the Title
"Fourteen Recommendations Regarding How to Abolish
the Federal Government and the Presidency"
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Sunday, April 20, 2014

Criticism of the Secret Ballot Voting System

Written on December 8th, 2011
Edited in April 2014



   Any candidate for public office whose campaign does not emphasize the abolition of the secret-ballot voting system - whether Democrat, Republican, or independent - favors a secret, private government; one which rests on power which is maintained through aggressive, violent force and the threat thereof, rather than on consent, voluntary association, and duly-delegated decision-making authority.

   Secret ballots make for secret government; government which is - by force and power disguised as "law" - unaccountable and irresponsible to the people of which it claims exclusive dominion.

   Irresponsible, exclusive dominion is indistinguishable from the right of private property; these politicians literally own us. Why should we elect a politician who does not make it an issue that he will only use his violence-defended power but once, in order to release us from his ownership?

   Show me the document that proves you ever authorized one of your elected representatives to make decisions on your behalf. You can't do it because the secret-ballot system makes this impossible and "illegal".

   "All votes shall be by secret ballot." - Constitution of the State of Wisconsin, Article III, Section 3.

   Read "No Treason" by Lysander Spooner.




[The remainder of this entry is a response to someone's comment that "The secret ballot protects my right and yours to vote for whom we choose without intimidation or force. Abolishing the secret ballot would be abolishing the most crucial element of a democratic republic. It's an idiotic idea."]:


   It’s fine when people agree to use the secret ballot, like when they freely join labor unions, and vote on issues in them. But we’re talking about the government here. Take the State of Wisconsin for example.

   The land of Wisconsin was conquered (stolen) and secured through force. Nobody ever unanimously consented to be governed and protected by the Wisconsin government – especially the people who had the right to the land – and now people have no choice as to who protects them.

   Governments have a monopoly on the provision of security, and a “monopoly of legitimate violence” (which Obama has supported). We are forced to pay them taxes, which gives them the power (but not the authority, by which I mean authorization) to defend us against real enemies, as well as any enemies they feel it necessary to invent.

   But even if any group of people had ever unanimously consented to be controlled by a government which operates under the secret ballot, those people’s consent would not be binding upon we individuals today. We are absolutely sovereign to control our own destinies, and our ancestors cannot compel us into supporting a system which we wish to have no part in.

   Being that we must consent to be controlled by the government which claims the exclusive, monopolistic right to protect us within the territories over which they exercise jurisdiction, the secret ballot only entrenches the government’s power to do things that we do not wish them to do, including to hide the results of the elections from us, or at least from the majority of us, and only show those results to unaccountable bureaucrats.

   The secret ballot does not protect us against intimidation and force; the secret ballot is the basis of government intimidation and force. We are not free to resist the government, and that is why all voting is done under duress. We are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, and we are never free to choose that nobody control us.

   If any one of our politicians were asked to produce a list of the group of people who delegated their authority to him, he would legally not be able to do it. Our politicians can also not produce written evidence that they ever swore an oath to support our government’s founding document.

   They are not accountable to the people, they are not accountable to a piece of paper, they are accountable to nobody but themselves. Clearly the secret ballot is the problem. Whether and how an open ballot system might be the solution remains to be seen.

   I say it’s worth a shot.


For more entries on elections and campaign finance, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/why-voting-is-not-necessarily-evil.html

For more entries on government secrecy and N.S.A. surveillance, please visit:
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The Piscean Ethic in Government: Ecology and Technology

Written November 10th, 2010
Edited in April 2014
as a note about running for the U.S. House in 2012



    I was born on February 24th, 1987. This makes me a Pisces, only several days away from the Pisces - Aquarius cusp. The year I will be running for Congress (2012) is recognized by many as the year of transition from the current Age of Pisces to the coming Age of Aquarius. I feel that my run would be symbolic of this transition. Due to the procession of the equinoxes, the 2,153-year era associated with Pisces precedes the one that is associated with Aquarius, so now seems like my time to shine
(http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/02/terence-mckenna-and-novelty-calendar.html).

   I plan to embody what I term the "Piscean ethic" in my politics. That is, my ideas will go many directions at once, as do the two fishes. I am as tolerant of extremely libertarian views as I am of extremely progressivistic views (remember that Adam Smith, often revered as the founder of capitalism, favored what could be interpreted as progressive taxation). Both the libertarian and progressive movements are essentially populistic in nature. I recognize the truth latent in the opinion of every person because I recognize that everyone is correct for their own purposes.

   Just as I believe in Ron Paul's call to obey the Constitution, so too do I lend equal credit to 18th-century anarchist Lysander Spooner's claim that the Constitution should to an extent be disregarded because it only applied to willing civic participants in the Revolutionary government during the generation in which it was drafted
(http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/09/spooner-amendment.html).
   And just as I believe that the administrative districts in this country should be redrawn to consider watersheds and natural physical boundaries, so too do I also support re-envisioning the way we see government as transcending geographical boundaries, in the tradition of Frederic Bastiat's Panarchism as well as in Otto Bauer's National Personal Autonomistic Socialism (http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/11/jurisdictional-aterritorialism-bastiat.html).

   I believe that building a coalition of the best minds among the congressional independents, Tea Partiers, the two libertarian committees, Main Street Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, Progressive Democrats, and Populist Democrats in the House of Representatives is essential to opposing the oligarchy- and bureaucracy-mired policies resulting from the collusion of the Clinton-Obama New Democrats with the majority of the Republican Study Committee associated with Bush and McCain.(http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/ideological-caucus-membership-in-us.html).

   As the beginning of the Age of Pisces brought the Judean rebellion against Rome and its conquest of the Mediterranean Sea, the end of the Age of Pisces also represents the end of dominion by the Roman Empire over the seas; that is, the end of imperialism as we know it. The United States' imperialistic tendencies are a legacy of Ancient Rome and its proxy, the British Empire. The U.S. is stretching its military, its sphere of influence, and its scope too far and too thin. We cannot survive with a robust economy when we have 700 overseas military bases and at least one soldier in four out of every five countries. Fortunately for us, the Age of Aquarius is also recognized as a harbinger of environmental sustainability and consciousness expansion as well as innovation. We must move forward with technological innovation that is environmentally sustainable.

   As your congressman, I promise to do everything I can to help the United States succeed in pursuing reforms in agribusiness and science education, among other things, that promote a wave of innovation that allows our country to become self-sufficient, stay the premier national purveyor of freedom of enterprise in the world, foment a new era of personal responsibility, and allow the market to create environmentally sustainable industry and jobs, both now and for generations to come.


For more entries on borders, immigration, and territorial integrity, please visit:

For more entries on coalition building and ideological caucuses, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/02/ideological-cmo-membership-images-for.html

For more entries on world religions and mysticism, please visit:
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Sunday, January 5, 2014

To Critics of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker

Written in January 2012
Originally published 1-23-2012



     On November 6th of this year, we will elect a representative to the U.S. House who will be paid 174 thousand dollars a year. Now, the Statutes of Frauds which are found in the legal codes of the various states provide that if two parties agree to sell goods worth at least a number well below 174 thousand dollars, that contract is unenforceable unless it is made in writing.
      But why should the requirements for contracts to provide the public services of government be any weaker?
      We have been led to believe that the secret-ballot-voting provisions in most of the states’ constitutions enhance democracy and protect our privacy. But – in truth – there is a more sinister reason why our voting is private, secret, anonymous, and unwritten; and why our elected representatives stand in a giant room in Washington speaking their congressional oaths instead of being required to sign a written oath to support the government and the documents upon which it is based.
President Kennedy once said that “[t]he very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society”, but the secret-ballot system protects our unduly-elected representatives’ privilege never to be bothered to provide written evidence proving that any particular person delegated his authority to them.
Although it has been suggested that to destroy the secrecy of the voting system would signify the abolition of civil society, the abolition of the secret ballot would in fact serve to augment its freedom and openness. Your revered secret ballot possesses the same type of freedom and independence held by the Federal Reserve Bank which brought on the current financial crisis; and that type of freedom is ownership.
      Our government agencies are contractually irresponsible to the people they control. This irresponsible, exclusive dominion has been described as “political slavery… identical to the right of private property”. What this means is that when we vote, we are being permitted to choose who owns us – who we must pay to control us – without ever being given the option of choosing not to be treated as other people’s property in the first place.
Let it therefore be said that voluntary action, free association, and written contracts are the basis for all just and legitimate governance.

      Since the current financial crisis began, our Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin has voted for a round of bailouts and restructuring that have cost our government an estimated 12 to 24 trillion dollars, which is equal to 80 to 160 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
      Not only this, but the total unfunded liabilities projected over the next 75 years now number somewhere around 165 trillion, which is 11 times the Gross Domestic Product, and 10 percent larger than the planet’s annual earnings. Every 3 ½ years, the federal government’s unfunded liabilities double.
      Unfortunately, there is no legal safeguard against such excessive spending. In fact, Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits anyone from questioning the validity of the government’s public debt. But the 14th Amendment also prohibits involuntary servitude, except as punishment.
      So now I ask: do we have the voluntary choice to either support and obey this government or not, or are we compelled to serve it involuntarily? Do we have free will and the right to our own bodies, or are we nothing more than political debt slaves being used as the whipping boys of the politicians who have stolen from ourselves and our children?
The current political system – inasmuch as it is a secret, closed, and unwritten system – is in fact the world’s wealthiest criminal gang, and that we the people – inasmuch as our associations remain free, open, and voluntary – are charged with the responsibility to bring charges and punishment against those who would provide aid, comfort, or material support to our treasonous, alien enemy the State.
      This debt that we are required to pay at the threat of being put in a tax prison; what is it more than restitution – that is, criminal responsibility and liabilities for having committed theft – being passed onto a group of people who never signed a single written document promising to pay the government’s generational debts?

      Set aside Citizens United and the railroad robber barons who wrote their privileges into the Supreme Court reports during the Industrial Revolution; if you want to talk about how corporate personhood is corrupting elections, let’s talk about another oft-overlooked legal fiction.
      The vast majority of us were made U.S. citizens and given Social Security numbers within our first year of life, at a time when we have no comprehension or awareness what is being done under our assumed consent.
      But once we come of the age of reason; are we given the option to renounce our citizenship and end our use of the public services provided by the established civil society, or are we told that we will be sued for over 100 thousand dollars if we do not agree to potentially kill and die for the government if and when asked?
      Why do we permit our government to assume our permanent consent, blackmail us into murdering foreigners, and limit our rights to privacy and to defend ourselves?

Wisconsin’s new Republican-supported Castle Doctrine law provides that if a home owner injures someone who breaks into his home trying to kill him, the home owner may be sued to pay that person’s medical bills, so long as the home owner was engaging in criminal activity at the time, or the victim was a peace officer performing official duties. Democrats objected that the bill would provide too much leeway to home owners assessing the threats against them.
What the Democrats failed to see in this issue was that the rest of the bill – in concert with federal legislation like the PATRIOT Act and the 2012 N.D.A.A. – would do nothing to stop a federal agent from unconstitutionally writing his own search warrant, breaking into your home, enter into evidence your glass bong and your hundred-dollar receipt that you gave to an overseas charity that the government doesn’t like, coming after you with a gun, suing you to pay for any injuries he sustains trying to prevent you from defending yourself, charging you with providing material support to terrorists, and asking the Secretary of Defense to allow military personnel to place you in Guantanamo Bay indefinitely and without due-process access to legal representation.
I repeat, this is the policy of the Democrats; Democrats like Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary and former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, who were recently grilled on the CIA / Homeland Security “Operation Fast and Furious”, which later became “Project Gunrunner”.
Imagine the American people’s surprise when they discover that these two Obama appointees conspired to assassinate Republican Federal District Court Judge John Roll and Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who were investigating the matter with a Congressman from West Texas.
While some have described President Obama as supporting gun control, murdering political figures while arming drug lords suggests an intentional relinquishment of control over weapons. But Democrats in the state legislature have been actively pro-gun-control.
When gun freedoms are too loose, a child may shoot his friend to death with his father’s shotgun, or a madman may shoot 30 people, and that is certainly very sad. But when gun controls are too tight, gun control proponents like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot may obliterate five percent of humanity, and that – my friends – is a tragedy.

It has been just under three months since the day a fifth of the unarmed audience of the Wisconsin State Assembly was arrested by armed security guards while their fellow audience members brandish plastic handguns in open mockery of their new-found temporary privilege to defend themselves, while Democrats failed to make the Republicans give up a little of the people’s leeway against criminals as well as the established, organized cadre of violent police and military agents that we call our duly-delegated sovereign.
The politician who votes to keep weapons out of any place – whether private or public – is sending a message to criminals that law-abiding citizens in such places will be guaranteed not to be able to defend themselves.
I will accept nothing less than my absolute freedom to defend myself against those who would seek to harm my person and describe my resistance as illegal competition against their exclusive monopoly power to force, compel, coerce, defraud, intimidate, and manipulate me.
The offender has made it clear that this is a battle based on power and strength; I have no delusions that giving up my right to stronger weapons and shields – whether real or symbolic – will inspire sympathy in him.

      But I mentioned the government’s monopoly force, an idea to which President Obama subscribes. This is the monopoly force of government that privileges the large, well-established, and centralized banks from fair competition with smaller, newer, and more community-oriented ones; that privileges large, well-established, and multinational companies from fair competition with smaller, newer, and community-oriented ones.
Despite their awareness of the roles of monopoly capital and monopoly government colluding to engineer the current economic crisis, most on the left have still neglected to examine the role of monopoly unionism in all this.

Gone are the days of dual- and multiple-unionism and wildcat strikes which were once the tactically-pure principles of the labor movement, uncorrupted by the desire of institutionalization and privilege conferred by coercive monopoly government.
This conflict was the reason for the 1924 split in the I.W.W., between those seeking political union privilege; and those who sought to refrain from using violence to compel others to accede to their demands, but instead to make employers and the public aware of and sympathetic to their concerns, and to spread information about the plight of the working man through peaceful discourse.
But the administration of the banker Franklin Roosevelt effectively ended this dispute; in 1935, his National Labor Relations Act outlawed wildcat strikes, and required management to negotiate with the agents authorized to represent their employees.
Certainly we can agree that when workers with more modest demands form their own rival union to compete with the established union in their workplace, this can undermine worker solidarity within that workplace. But when a more extreme segment of employees feel that the established union is being too modest, and desire to have a wildcat strike, the established union can bring charges against the more extreme workers, sacrificing their just demands in the name of getting things done.
Thus, we see the established unions undercutting the efforts of both the more modest and the more extreme workers, each group of which assuming the risks and responsibilities associated with their actions. It becomes evident that – primarily – the established unions seek not solidarity, but rather the entrenchment of their own exclusive power to represent workers; their monopoly power of representation.

To this day, the I.W.W. promotes dual unionism, and even goes so far as to recommend that non-unionized workers engage in solidarity unionism tactics, rather than to pursue, quote, “the legalistic strategies that have led us to the current mess”. Perhaps the I.W.W.’s humble anarchism explains why it claims just one-nine-hundredth as many members as the A.F.L.-C.I.O., one-fifth of whose members are associated with the public service and automobile industries which were bailed out under Bush and Obama.
Despite all his rolling-back of union privileges, Governor Walker has stated that he has no desire to use the provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act to make Wisconsin a Right-to-Work state… and to the detriment of the labor movement. For history has shown that when and where union membership is optional and voluntary; union membership, employment, and wages tend to increase.
Now that we have discussed the dangers of using government force to grant monopoly privileges to oligarchical labor and capital, we are ready to understand how to undermine the very monopoly of force on which the government and its dependents rest.

The actions of the Obama Administration have shown an appeasing unwillingness to allow the governments and the states compete against the federal government to provide public services. The Administration has taken a similar attitude towards private enterprise.
I believe that the state governments, the private sector, and fledgling labor unions pose some of the most significant threats to the perception that the federal government is the most legitimate, moral, efficient, and qualified to provide public goods and services; and – as such – experimentation regarding their role competing against the federal government to do so should be encouraged. It is this competition that undermines the monopoly of government.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at a point in American political economy when the majority of leftists have deviated from their socialist roots and acceded to the power of the established centralized, federal social democracy; even – sadly – the Mutualists, who have exalted both the free-market principle of competitive capital and the anarcho-syndicalist principle of competitive labor.
But to the extent to which an embrace of Mutualist anarchism would solve the problem of monopoly labor and capital, the problem of competing against monopoly government – specifically, centralized monopoly government – remains to be addressed; in particular, the monopoly power that Governor Walker and the Republicans currently have the potential to wield over regulating the benefits and negotiation privileges of government employees providing public services.
Make no mistake; the Democrats constitute no real challenge to the current Republican power monopoly. In fact, most if not all Democrats actually desire to entrench the government monopoly; namely, through increased taxation which would provide for the expansion of government cooperation with both established unions and – quite often – established capital. We would be hard pressed to find a single Democrat in power who votes to encourage competition against both established monopoly labor and monopoly capital.

But replace Governor Walker with a Democrat if you must. Replace him with a Democrat who wants to– even further than the Republicans do – chip away at your right to defend yourself against those who would seek to threaten violence against you for rightfully asserting that you never knowingly entered into a contract promising to give them as much money and blood they please for the rest of your life.
Or instead we can bring charges against our state governments, compelling them to decide whether the Statutes of Frauds violates the secret-ballot provisions in the state constitutions, or whether the secret-ballot by its very design flies in the face of basic principles of the Anglo-American common contract law; essentially, getting the states to declare whether their authority comes from us voluntarily giving up the right to make some of our decisions, or else getting them to admit that they are only based on domination and force.
Instead we can abandon these spectres of secret, coercive, monopolistic government, capital, and labor; and instead provide public goods and services through open, legitimate, local government; through charity and religious organizations; through consumer- and citizen- advocacy agencies; through gift-giving, bartering, trading, and sharing; through the efforts of small and local private businesses seeking to undermine the strength of the established multinational corporations and state-sponsored enterprises; and through direct-action general and work-to-rules strikes, picketing, boycotts, and confrontation of management by freely associating and disassociating segments of mutually sympathetic workers; lest we consign ourselves to manipulation by big-labor leaders, corporate lobbyists, and corrupt, well-paid career politicians in the national government who until this moment have used us as pawns to entrench their own wealth and power.
Instead we can revive the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment – that the powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people – ushering in a new era, wherein the federal government’s grip on the affairs of the states and the people is loosened, permitting us to engage in political experimentation in which exalts participatory democracy and local governance over representative democracy and centralized governance, for only then may we learn to tolerate a diversity of administration of best practices, and come to discern for our own subjective purposes which combination of practices suits us best.
Let us require no teacher or health care worker to worry about his pay and benefits while toiling under the reign of a politician who doesn’t represent his political and economic interests. Let those who provide public goods and services – Republican or Democrat, libertarian or socialist – work to provide them in the way they see fit.
Achieve these goals, and you will have total liberty and equality of opportunity, without sacrificing a financially secure outcome for those who provide us safety, peace, and prosperity.



For more entries on elections and campaign finance, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/why-voting-is-not-necessarily-evil.html

For more entries on government secrecy and N.S.A. surveillance, please visit:

For more entries on unions and collective bargaining, please visit:
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