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Slavery -- Failure of an Armed People

For some men falsely persuading themselves that bad governments are advantageous to them, as most conducing to gratify their ambition, avarice, and luxury, set themselves with the utmost art and violence to procure their establishment; and by such men almost the whole world has been trampled underfoot, and subjected to tyranny, for want of understanding by what means and methods they were enslaved. ~~ Andrew Fletcher (1698), A Discourse of Government With Relation to Militias

It is clear that there exists, among the freedom loving citizenry of America, a fear of the consequences for civil disobedience; but there seems to be no clear understanding of the method of operation used by government to enslave the general population. It is paramount that we learn the means used to create slavery and keep citizens enslaved. The alternative is to do precisely what is needed to secure our own chains.

Historically there are two forms of slavery; these are voluntary and forced.

Voluntary slavery comes about when a person sells his labor, as an act of free will, for debt or favor. This has Biblical grounds and was common throughout the ancient world.

Forced slavery is the antithesis to voluntary enslavement since it lacks the action of free will by those who are being enslaved. This form of slavery is the product of violence and has two origins which briefly are:

1) The result of war whereby a conquered nation is dispossessed from their own land to work as slaves for and in the country of the conqueror or sold, by the victor, to a third nation to work as slaves. An example from history would be the conquering of Israel in 606 BC by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who sent the population of Israel, as slaves, to the Euphrates River Valley where Babylon was located.

2) The insidious work of a government originally established by freemen and women, which turns from its founding principles to enslave the population by gradually depriving all citizens of their liberty and property.

It is the second form of enslavement we are concerned with in the United States today, because it has at its core the most diabolical of means to place and keep the people in slavery. This slavery can be characterized as a three sided cell with each side being held in place by the mortar of fear; fear that is instilled by the use of lies and intimidation originating at the federal level.

[T]he state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies - and whatever it has, it has stolen.

Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth. Even its belly is false.

[I]t will give you everything if you worship it, this new idol: thus it buys for itself the luster of your virtues and the glance of your proud eyes.

I call it the state where everyone, good and bad, is a poison-drinker: the state where everyone, good and bad, loses himself, the state where universal slow suicide is called - life.

~~ Friedrich Nietzsche, 1884

The Mortar of Fear or When Government is placed above the Law

There are many that believe that authority to govern has its root in the government instead of the law. Such a view holds the government to be either above the law, or the fountain and sole giver of the law. Such a view assumes that sovereign law originates from the government. This is blasphemy. Every man is a liar, and any law that deserves the name of a law can not be deceitful. Some view kings to have such prestige that their will must be done either in us or on us. However, this is a great untruth. ~~ Samuel Rutherford's LEX REX1644

When we allow government in any form to define morality, we have set the course for tyranny. It is inherent in government to call evil good and good evil, contrary to the stated laws of God and common sense. Corruption at any level of government, due to the bureaucracy commandeering the sovereignty of law, will always translate into obedience to governmental dictum due to fear. This two edged sword is used against all sectors of the population. Study closely how this is done from the following examples.

The Desire Created (The beginning of fear)

The first step to enslavement is done by appealing to the emotions of a population about a potential crisis, real or imagined. In the late 1960s the new elite began calling for action concerning the disappearing, endangered almost extinct bald eagles, along with the eastern peregrine falcons and a few other creatures such as the gray whale. Who didnt want to protect our national symbol? Who didnt want to save the peregrine falcon? The answer to both questions is that no one wants any animal species to disappear. So the population rallied and began listening to the call for action.

The Need (Fears played on and amplified)

This is the point where a good moral idea departs from the truth and begins an immoral campaign. The population needs to be convinced that bad government will be advantageous to them as stated in the opening quote. The appeal to save the bald eagle reached a fevered pitch from about 1969 to 1971, when the new environmentalists began to lie about the cause of the problem. This was done by vilifying landowners, hunters, sheepherders, cattlemen, and farmers as being the major reasons for the decline in bald eagle and peregrine falcon populations. The need for action was amplified by the constant mantra of the left concerning how quickly these species would disappear forever if something was not done quickly.

The Right (Fear matured & beginning of tyranny)

The time between 1971 and the end of 1972 saw the end of all pretense of honesty by the environmentalists. Emboldened by their past success, they continued the shrill of doom for the eagles and took up crusade for the rights of these animals along with the right of government to do whatever was necessary to ensure the survival of all animals. No lie was considered too large, the means justified the end, everything said and done was to further the unholy cause. The level of fear this generated was punctuated by protests world wide, with Green Peace leading the charge. Finally in 1973 congress was forced to pass the Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act writes Rocky Barker in his book Saving All the Parts: "elevated protection of all species to one of the U.S. government's highest priorities." In his work Endangered Species Act: Making Innocent Species the Enemy, Richard L. Stroup says of this act:

It is ironic that the Constitution explicitly forbids the U.S. Army, even in the name of national defense, from requiring that a citizen quarter a soldier (that is, provide food and shelter for a soldier). Yet the government can require the same citizen to quarter a grizzly bear, a spotted owl, or any other member of a threatened or endangered species, at the landowner's expense.

The irony progresses even further, for this act allows government agencies, in the name of animals, insects or birds to confiscate private land with no compensation to the owner. The government has ceased to be the enforcer of law for the good of the people and has announced it is a god, capable of saving animals from extinction (in spite of the fact that all admit the Endangered Species Act has failed) and deciding what is morally correct for the citizenry.

It should also be noted that as of this date no government official has been found guilty for theft of private property under this act. Nor will there ever likely be; unless the law is changed. So the fear has been transferred from those who were worried about losing an animal species to those citizens of the U.S. who now fear losing their property over a slug or in some cases a fly that lives for only 2 to 3 weeks. I hope the moral decay is obvious to the most casual reader. The property owned by the citizens of the U.S. was once called good, but now because of the whims of government, is in some cases called evil. All the commandments that God gave to man governing the proper use of his creation have been turned on their head; we have now reached the point of blasphemy spoken of above, using the very means Friedrich Nietzsche warned of.

If we pay attention to the above method we will see the same three principles used time and time again with relation to gun laws. With freedom at stake, these principles should be taught in every home. It does not take much to see how the assault on the 2nd Amendment is being sold to the willing slaves of America. Heed well the words of Thomas Paine:

The city of London, notwithstanding its numbers, submits to continued insults with the patience of a coward. The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture. The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a spaniel. ~~ Thomas Paine, 1776, Common Sense

This then is the mortar that holds this whole decadent system together. The system, as stated earlier, can be likened to a three-sided cell with each side being of equal importance to the success of holding the population in check and suppressing rebellions.

Ignorance (The first side of the cell of slavery)

Ignorance strikes at the very heart of the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights. There is no doubt that the founding fathers understood the importance of the 1st Amendment rights because they are in fact the foundation on which all other rights rest.

Between 1720 and 1723 a series of letters were written by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon entitled Catos Letters. These letters deal with the importance of civil and religious liberties. In their February 4, 1720 letter on freedom of speech they write:

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as publick liberty, without freedom of speech: Which is the right of every man, as far as by it he does not hurt and control the right of another; and this is the only check which it ought to suffer, the only bounds which it ought to know.

Note the progression illustrated in the previous quote. Freedom of thought precedes wisdom, which precedes speech, which in turn precedes liberty. How are we to have freedom of thought without a proper education? Have you ever wondered why the education level of our children has been put in such a state of decline? What education is necessary to maintain a state of freedom? Is it not in the basics of reading, writing, and mathematics? This is not to say that every child must have the eloquence of the speech and writing of a Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry. The premise is that without a solid foundation in reading no one can understand the concepts of the spoken or written word concerning policy or law let alone the concept of freedom. Is anyone so foolish not to believe that writing and reading are the foundation for coherent speech? How then can a child convey or defend the precepts of freedom to others without being able to form a sentence or use the proper term for the idea being expressed? Consider the canons of ethics as expressed in religion. Can one who does not have a foundation in reading and writing understand these principles and if not, what are the means for knowing the comprehensive and fundamental rules governing those rights, given by God, that allow man to maintain his freedom? The answer is obvious, there are none! Tyrants feed off the ignorance of those who are not taught or craftily mistaught. Where thought is repressed is it any wonder that wisdom will cease, speech will be stopped and liberty lost?!

It is a sad fact that when tyranny controls the education of a civilization from generation to generation, the possibility of rebellion is greatly reduced because there is little chance that the governments position, as god, will be replaced by the justice of the law. Thought, wisdom and speech will cease to rule the minds of men and will be exchanged for ignorance, blind obedience and silence.

Consider the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Would any uneducated person feel threatened by the loss of this amendment? No! Not being able to read, how could it be understood what was being lost!

Unfortunately, the American public is already so uneducated and illiterate that the latest polls show that nearly ˝ of the population of the United States say they would not vote for the ratification of the Constitution if it were proposed today? Is it any wonder that they are willing dupes who find freedoms not specified in the Constitution and are unable to comprehend those freedoms which are clearly stated? Is there a more ignorant statement than that the Constitution of United States is a living document not capable of saying what it means and meaning what it says?

Anyone, who cares to look, can easily see the insidious march of tyranny in the U.S. since early in the 20th century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most children graduated from the 8th grade with a better education than many receive today after four years of high school. To stress my point I include five questions of an 1895 8th grade final exam from Salina, Kansas. Are our children as well prepared, as our grand and great grandparents were to face the responsibilities of freedom?

1) Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

2) What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?

3) Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

4) Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.

5) Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.

In despotic states, each house (of the government) is a separate government (unto itself). As education, therefore, consists chiefly in social converse, (In a despotic state) it must be here very much limited; all it does is to strike the heart (of the tyrant) with fear Learning here proves dangerous, emulation fatal; and as to virtue, Aristotle cannot think that there is any one virtue belonging to slaves; if so, education in despotic countries is confined within a very narrow compass.

Here, therefore, education is in some measure needless: (for the government) to give something, one (the government) must take away everything (including knowledge and education), and begin with making a bad subject in order to make a good slave.

~~ Charles de Montesquieu: The Spirit of Laws, Book IV

Disarmed (The second side of the cell of slavery)

Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. ~~ Frederick Douglass, civil rights activist, Aug. 4, 1857

The words of Frederick Douglass are as relevant today as they were in the days preceding the Civil War. The designed purpose of the Federal Governments wanting to disarm the American public should be blatantly obvious to anyone reading this work. Many scholars have written concerning the validity of the 2nd Amendment; the arguments are well cataloged for any that would take the time to read them. The most compelling argument for staying armed comes from the bureaucrats themselves. Each of the following could be the cause behind the headlines in tomorrows newspaper. Frederick Mann in his work The Economic Rape of America expands on the following observations concerning bureaucrats who call themselves the government.

1) Bureaucrats think they are the only ones qualified to do the things they do; therefore they must have a monopoly to do the things they do and no one else may do them.

2) In particular, bureaucrats (feel they) must be the only ones who have a monopoly on legalized violence.

3) Because bureaucrats (feel they) are so highly qualified, they can't persuade people to do what they want; therefore they must use coercion, violence, and armed police to force the rest of society to follow their orders.

4) Because bureaucrats (feel they) are so highly qualified, they can't persuade people to pay for their wonderful services; therefore they must use coercion, violence, and armed police to force the rest of society to pay.

5) Because bureaucrats (feel they) do their jobs so well, they must use coercion, violence, and armed police to force people to not compete with them.

An unarmed slave is a pacified slave. Is anyone persuaded that if we disarm, the above observations would be nullified and not escalate?! It is paramount for tyrants to make the people dependent on government for every means of support. This would include the protection of the general population and securing of ones personal safety, which is only achieved by capitulation to the fear of governmental coercion and violence. This fear, of coercion and violence from the government, must increase at a rate directly proportional to the removal of those means a population has to defend itself!

If we listen to arguments being made against the authority on firearm ownership, we can see clearly the need for heeding the words of Frederick Douglass. We are being told that the modern era is too civilized to need the 2nd Amendment and yet crime continues to rise in those countries that have yielded to this ignorance. We hear the whining of those who say we have police forces to protect the citizens of the country and yet the crime rate continues to climb in those countries where the police are the sole protectors of the citizenry. We endure the sniveling of the liberals on how benevolent they are and how the world would be a better place if only we would listen and disarm. Yet the breaking of laws, the undermining of the Constitution, and the possible death of millions (born and unborn) can be laid at the feet of these wretched fools. Have we reached the limits of our endurance? And will we resist? Or will we lay down and keep taking the abuse offered by those self appointed disciples of liars and lies?

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. ~~ Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Poverty (The third and final side of the cell of slavery)

Is it any wonder that those who have sold their souls for the weekly or monthly handout from the Federal government vote in the majority for the liberal cause? We need only look within our own country to see the ability of poverty to influence the thinking of many people who have become malleable slaves to a corrupt system, much to the benefit of tyranny.

This point was brought home in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece dated Wednesday, November 1, 2000 and entitled Who's Free, Who's Not written by Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr., Kim R. Holmes and Melanie Kirkpatrick of the Heritage Foundation. They state that,

The average man, woman or child living in a repressed or mostly unfree economy, lives a life of poverty on only about $2,800 a year. Compare this with the prosperous residents of the world's free economies, where the average per-capita income is $21,200, or nearly eight times greater. Put simply, the difference between poverty and prosperity is freedom

A star here is Lithuania, which catapulted to #42 from #61 last year after an ambitious program of private sector development and lower government spending. It is also the most improved economy in the history of the Index. Of the former communist countries, Estonia (#14) is the closest to becoming a fully free economy, with lower taxes and lower inflation raising its score this year.

Contrast these with Moldova, whose score declined more than any other country in the world. It's now way down the list at #120, due to growing inflation, higher government spending, more regulations and a not unconnected rise in black market activity. Russia, #127 this year, has seen its score drop year after year.

The evidence is overwhelming: when government leaves its citizens alone to achieve the promise of Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the results are a free people and a healthy, thriving, rich economy. On the other hand, history recognizes the folly of the legalized thief of the wealth of a productive nation. In Charles Adams book entitled Fight, Flight and Fraud: The Story of Taxation he writes concerning the Ancient Egyptian Empire:

[T]he continual and unabated tyranny of Egyptian tax collectors produced a nationwide decline in incentive. Egyptian workers and farmers lost their desire to work - agricultural lands fell into disuse, businessmen moved away and workers fled. Sound money disappeared as a raging inflation destroyed what capital there was. The land became filled with robbers who wrecked commerce and brought fear and despair to the populace. Boating and sailing along the Nile became as dangerous as walking at night on the back streets of New York and Detroit. In the end, thieves were no longer only in the tax bureau - they were everywhere."

Who in their right mind would want to try and survive in a society described above, unarmed? Yet, that is exactly what the moronic philosophy of the liberal agenda would ask of us. The making of slaves of American citizens by the malicious folly of the liberal ideology will have a negative and fatal result as Professor John Hospers wrote in 1975:

"... [W]hen it is no longer worth the producers' while to produce, when they are taxed so highly to keep the politicians and their friends on the public payroll that they themselves no longer have a reasonable chance of success in any economic enterprise, then of course production grinds to a halt... When this happens, when the producers can no longer sustain on their backs the increasing load of the parasites, then the activities of the parasites must stop also, but usually not before they have brought down the entire social structure which the producers' activities have created. When the organism dies, the parasite necessarily dies too, but not until the organism has paid for the presence of the parasite with its life. It is in just this way that the major civilizations of the world have collapsed."

Course of Action

What can the freedom loving men and women of America do when faced with a three-front battle for their liberty? In a previous article entitled Tyranny An Historical Prospective, I undertook to show the driving force of all those who would claim the title of tyrant, was greed. Knowing this, we will be met with heavy resistance regardless of what we attempt. It seems that we are confronted with the same problem our founding fathers faced prior to 1776 and the Confederate States struggled with in 1860. Do we accept the status quo and capitulate to our detriment? Do we fight and if so how? Some have suggested open warfare; others postulate the act of secession as the answer. Still others have advocated the changing of the system from within by electing men and women who will uphold the Constitution of the United States.

We as a free people have forgotten that this nation was conceived and born out of civil disobedience. Our founders fought against the largest and best-equipped army and navy Europe had ever seen. The task set before them could not have looked any smaller to them than ours does to us. They too, must have wondered if they could win, but they saw no alternative; their freedom was worth the struggle -- so they risked their fortunes and lives. Harvey Wheeler in his work The Constitutionality of Civil Disobedience states:

What is the remedy when official political institutions as a whole operate despotically? The Constitutions built-in devices for checking tyranny fail to function, the individual citizen is left without a champion, and issues come to depend upon individual acts of resistance in the John Brown tradition.

But under what principle can the needed the constitutionally required acts of individual Civil Disobedience be defended? It is clear that constitutional theory supports and defends Civil Disobedience there would be no such thing as constitutional theory without it. But does it follow that populist Civil Disobedience is protected by constitutional law?

Anything required by constitutional theory ought to find recognition in constitutional law. But if that is the case, what is the principle of constitutional law that protects Civil Disobedience?

In the first place, in constitutional theory all acts of Civil Disobedience have an a priori claim to protection under the First Amendment. Beyond this, however, the principle of Civil Disobedience is also protected under the same doctrine that underlies the exercise of Judicial Review itself.

If recent history is any example of what civil disobedience can accomplish we should consider the events surrounding the 2000 census. When citizens of the United States felt the questions asked on the census form intruded too deeply into their personal lives they rebelled. The en masse anger forced not only the Census Bureau but also the Congress of the United States to claim that the government would take no action to force anyone to answer the questions and no fines would be levied against those who did not complete the forms. Civil disobedience caused the Federal Government to capitulate.

Have we learned nothing from the civil disobedience of the 60s and early 70s when laws were changed, an administration was toppled and a war stopped? Is there a lesson to be learned from the 1992 debacle in Somalia, a country only slightly larger than Oregon, Washington and Idaho, where nearly 1/3 of the population was starving, and had no standing army? Where disorganized tribesmen turned back an army of nearly 50,000 modern American and UN troops (with all their technology), because they would not be disarmed!

What then is our course of action? First, we must understand that we are faced with a force that thinks itself superior, an ideology that feels we are evil and fear us. They tremble at our strengths, our sense of morality and longing for justice. They know their failures but refuse to acknowledge them. They believe the means justifies the end, regardless of who is hurt and what is destroyed. In his book Parliament of Whores, P.J. O'Rourke writes:

"... Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. ... Every government is a parliament of whores.

Second, we must work within the confines of the Constitution to change the system that seeks to destroy us, and we need to become active en masse now!

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. ~~ Voltarine de Cleyre

Beyond the bounds of civil disobedience, we have no say in what happens next, that decision rests entirely in the hands of our enemies. We can be sure history will repeat itself and the words of Herbert Spencer will be prophetic:

"It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last forever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization - is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential, but incidental The once universal despotism was but a manifestation of the extreme necessity of restraint. Feudalism, serfdom, slavery, all tyrannical institutions are merely the most vigorous kind of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same - less government... Thus, as civilization advances, does government decay. To the bad it (government) is essential; to the good, (it is) not. It is the check which national wickedness makes to itself, and exists only to the same degree. Its continuance is proof of still-existing barbarism." ~~ Herbert Spencer, 1844, The Right to Ignore the State

The laws of nature are at work and will not be denied. Either those who wish to remain free start acting to change the system that oppresses us or we all become slaves. There is no one to turn to but ourselves. We are about to find out if we deserve the liberty that was won for us by our forefathers. I pray that God grant us the will and means to stay free.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." ~~ John Stewart Mills

Tim Case is a featured writer at KeepAndBearArms.com. His archive can be found at http://www.KeepAndBearArms.com/Case.