This is a rotating sample of features from The Voluntaryist over the years.
- last update : 1 February 2000
Potpourri from Whole Number 54 - February 1992
Potpourri from Whole Number 71 - December 1994
Potpourri from Whole Number 79 - April 1996
Potpourri from Whole Number 95 - December 1998
from Whole Number 101 - December 1999
"The size of government does not increase because of any objective causes over which ideas have no control, and certainly not because there is a demand for it. It grows because the ideas that prevail in public opinion of what is just and what is wrong have changed. What once was regarded by public opinion as an outrage, to be treated and dealt with as such, has become increasingly accepted as legitimate. . . .
"[The tax-state] cannot be fought by simply boycotting it, as a private business could, because an institution devoted to the business of expropriating and exploiting does not respect the negative verdict revealed by boycotts. And it also cannot simply be fought by countering its aggression with defensive violence, because the state's aggression is supported by public opinion. Thus, everything depends on a change in public opinion. The private property ethic: the idea that private property is a just institution and the only means of creating economic prosperity, and of the state as an outcast institution that is destructive of wealth-formation, must be revived, and again inspire people's minds and hearts."
-- Hans-Hermann Hoppe,
The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (1993), pp. 46, 59 - 60
[Statesmen and politicians] will invariably intrigue, connive, dissemble and, like any caged rat, constantly fret over how to achieve unlimited wealth and power. This is the pathology of all mobsters of all history.
They can never be content with what they have. They want more - more of everything. They want more rackets. They want more turf. They want more power. They want, they want, they want. Does another mobster have a bigger castle? More square miles of dominion? A larger band of trained killers? More spies? More gold? Oh, really? Then there must be a war to take it. But, how to get the "field slaves" to do the dying and killing is the trick. Why of course, the "house slaves" are called in to set it up. It has worked forever; why should it not work again?
And what do the "house slaves" do for their mob masters to get the field hands to risk life and limb for an "attaboy"? They tell lies. They say things like: "He is worse than Hitler." "Fight for democracy in Kuwait." "Fight for the American way of the mob plantation." "Fight for our top mobster to become the absolute Godfather of the global mob plantation."
Consent of the governed? The duping of the dumb and the gulling of the gullible.
You want to understand every U.S. Government war of the 20th century - hot or cold? Simple! Our mob masters took something from another mob or had to protect the global mob plantation system from revolutionary "field slaves" who have tried to get out of it. This is the sum and substance of all so-called "geopolitics," from the big stick to the twisted shrub. This is the so-called "national interest."
"The National Identification Card (NID) is already in the works. The law requires that all states begin issuing drivers licenses to carry Social Security numbers and other security features by October 1, 2000. . . . [Having all licenses linked to Social Security numbers is only the first step toward the development of a national identification card. Others include:]
You will have to have a national identification card to get a job.
To obtain a passport you must have a NID.
To buy an airline ticket you must have a NID.
All gun purchases will require an NID.
"Also authorized and under development is Federal Biometric Coding. It's proposed that a magnetic strip on the NID card will contain positive identification of the bearer by a digitized fingerprint, retina scan, voice print, or other Biometric identification.
"There is much more, but I think these highlights will give you some idea of what's coming. . . . Surely this brief outline of public information will convince even the most skeptical person of the Government's ultimate intentions - absolute, total and positive control of every person in the United States. . . . The next step in all this will be the requirement to have a NID to have a bank account, buy/sell real estate, write a check or have an account with a public utility. . . .
"All the public comments supporting the new NID are about controlling illegal immigration, locating deadbeat dads, finding criminals, etc. This is a pure smoke and mirrors operation by 'Uncle.' Next they'll say this is to save the children, improve education and control drugs! This is all hot air to confuse the fact that 'Uncle' wants a NID to totally control the lives of every person in the United States."
"As I see it, libertarianism is primarily about responsibility and only secondarily about liberty. As Edmund Burke has memorably pointed out, 'Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less there is within, the more there will be without.' In other words, in proportion as we control our behavior and abstain from violating the rights of others, we are entitled to enjoy the fruits of liberty."
"A businessman could not sleep and he visits the doctor. The doctor told him his problem was psychologically based. 'You have to do something and you have not done it,' said the doctor. The businessman went to the Tax Office, paid $60,000, and said that this was his tax liability for the previous year. Then he went to a church, lit a candle and said, 'God, if I am unable to sleep in a week I shall pay the rest as well."
"The main thesis of this chapter is that the sovereign territorial state claims, as an integral part of its sovereignty, the right to commit genocide, or engage in genocidal massacres, against peoples under its rule, and that the United Nations, for all practical purposes, defends its right. To be sure, no state explicitly claims the right to commit genocide. . . but the right is exercised under other . . . acceptable rubics, notably the duty to maintain order, or the seemingly sacred mission to preserve the territorial integrity of the state."
from Whole Number 95 - December 1998
Coercivists believe that all order in society must be consciously designed and implemented by a sovereign government power. Coercivists cannot fathom how individuals without mandates from above can ever pattern their actions in a way that is not only orderly, but also peaceful and productive. For the coercivist, direction by sovereign government is as necessary for the creation of social order as the meticulous craftsmanship of a watchmaker is necessary for the creation of a watch.
At the other end of the spectrum are voluntarists. Voluntarists understand two important facts about society that coercivists miss. First, voluntarists understand that social order is inevitable without coercive direction from the state as long as the basic rules of private property and voluntary contracting are respected. This inevitability of social order when such rules are observed is the great lesson taught by Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and all of the truly great economists through the ages.
Second, voluntarists understand that coercive social engineering by government - far from promoting social harmony - is fated to ruin existing social order. Voluntarists grasp the truth that genuine and productive social order is possible only when each person is free to pursue his own goals in his own way, constrained by no political power. Coercive political power is the enemy of social order because it is unavoidably arbitrary - bestowing favors for reasons wholly unrelated to the values the recipients provide to their fellow human beings. And even if by some miracle the exercise of political power could be shorn of its arbitrariness, it can never escape being an exercise conducted in gross ignorance. It is a simpleton's fantasy to imagine that all the immense and detailed knowledge necessary for the successful central direction of human affairs can ever be possessed by government.
Society emerges from the cooperation of hundreds of millions of people, each acting on the basis of his own unique knowledge of individual wants, talents, occupations, and circumstances. No bureaucrat can know enough about software design to outperform Bill Gates, or enough about retailing to successfully second-guess the folks at Wal-Mart, or enough about any of the millions of different industries to outdo people who are highly specialized in their various trades.
The coercivist-voluntarist vocabulary is superior to the left-right, or liberal-conservative, vocabulary at distinguishing liberty's friends from it's foes. Support for high taxes and intrusive government is a "liberal" trait. A supporter of high taxes and regulation is also, however, properly labeled a coercivist. But note: no less of a coercivist is the conservative who applause government regulation of what adults voluntarily read, view, or ingest. Both parties believe that social order will deteriorate into chaos unless government coercion overrides the myriad private choices made by individuals.
Voluntarists are typically accused of endorsing complete freedom of each individual from restraints. This accusation is nonsense. While they oppose heavy reliance upon coercively imposed restraints, sensible voluntarists do not oppose restraints per se. Voluntarists, in contrast to coercivists, recognize that superior restraints on individual behavior emerge decentrally and peaceably. Parents restrain their children. Neighbors use both formal and informal means to restrain each other from un-neighborly behaviors. The ability of buyers to choose where to spend their money restrains businesses from abusing customers.
A free society is chock-full of such decentrally and noncoercively imposed restraints. Indeed, it is the voluntary origins of such restraints that make them more trustworthy than coercively imposed restraints. A voluntary restraint grows decentrally from the give and take of everyday life and is sensitive to all the costs and benefits of both the restraint itself and of the restrained behavior. But a coercive restraint too often is the product not of that give and take of all affected parties but, instead, of political deals. And political deals are notoriously biased toward the wishes of the politically well-organized while ignoring the wishes of those unable to form effective political coalitions. What's more, members of the political class often free themselves from the very restraints they foist upon others. Coercively imposed restraints are not social restraints at all; rather, they are arbitrary commands issued by the politically privileged.
The Bob Livingston Letter is by no definition a "tax protest" letter. In the strictest sense, there is no such thing as a "tax protester" because it is an impossibility to be a tax protester with only credit as money in the United States. I fully understand that this statement is not understandable to those who have not studied monetary realism. The term "tax protester" is a creation of the IRS. It is full of design as follows: It implies that everyone by law is a "taxpayer." For their purpose it is very important to their scheme and propaganda for everyone to think of themselves as "taxpayers." A "taxpayer" is bound by law to pay taxes. The goal of the income tax system is for everyone to become income tax debtors by thinking of themselves as "taxpayers." The goal of the income tax system is for everyone to become tax debtors by thinking of themselves as "taxpayers." The deceit has succeeded beyond all comprehension.
On the contrary, no one is a taxpayer or tax debtor unless they decide to "volunteer" to be one. We make ourselves "liable" by volunteering and making a 1040 return. We do this under duress of propaganda deceit.
Why do we write about the income tax system? We do so because it is a fraud of monumental proportions that induces millions through deceit to sacrifice their time to this Anti-christ beast system. This is a worldwide system and I know no better description of it than to call it modern Mystery Babylon. It is not all of modern Mystery Babylon, but it is without a doubt the foundation of modern Mystery Babylon. Modern Mystery Babylon operates and thrives upon deceit. The IRS income tax system is a masterpiece of cynicism and deception. A true monument to this chicanery would have to be Satan himself. The IRS is fraud in its stated purpose of being a tax collector. It is specifically a consumption regulating agency. It is equally a national information agency identical to the Gestapo.
All modern governments rule by deceit. To rule by deceit, all governments must have an information system on all its people. The IRS is this information system in the United States. But this fact is hidden from the public mind with propaganda which has been developed into the perfect art of massive human manipulation.
The New World order is a present reality founded upon perpetual psychological warfare of all governments against their populations.
Propaganda is not something we can take or leave. It is the constant bombardment of word patterns and thought systems that penetrate the consciousness, chemically rearranging neuron structure. It is an electrochemical stimulus that programs the mind to controlled responses, which we sometimes refer to as "conventional wisdom." Programmed neurotransmitters in the brain can inhibit mental thought processes as surely as steel bars in a jail can restrain your physical freedoms.
A testament to his mind manipulation is the lawyers and accountants who are mentally victimized by the manipulative language of the tax code and it never ever crosses their minds to inquire beyond their training. The cynical truth is that they all work for the IRS but you pay them. How about this to get sick on?
The dynamics of psychological warfare and authoritarianism are built upon group consciousness. Group consciousness is a mass programmed thought system (conventional wisdom). Stimulus from unconventional wisdom turns off the receptors and - evokes no response at all or evokes hostility.
[Excerpted from The Bob Livingston Letter (February 1998), Box 110013, Birmingham AL 35211, U$ 39 for 12 monthly issues. A recent example of this deceitful propaganda appeared in The Wall Street Journal, February 17, 1998 (A22). Illinois Governor Jim Edgar "vetoed a $500 state income tax credit for parents who use private schools. He claimed such use of 'public funds for private K-12 education diverts dollars from public priorities.' The governor needs a course in Taxes 101. Money belongs to individuals until taxed, Allowing people to keep more of their own money isn't a use of 'public funds'."
Another example is Senator Bob Kerrey's statement: "If all we do is pay attention to IRS abuse . . ., we'll miss the importance of making sure the IRS has sufficient power to stop taxpayers who want to abuse other taxpayers - and who want other taxpayers to subsidize their unwillingness to pay taxes." (The Wall Street Journal, April 22, 1998, p. A1)]
from Whole Number 79 - April 1996 "In a police state, the government can legally ransack your house; they can come into your business; they can take whatever you own; they can assault you with impunity; they have no accountability. In a free society, government can't do that. And we're not a free society any more. People have to recognize that."
Aaron Russo, "Russo and Revolution: The LIBERTY Interview," Thomas Nixon Carver,
Ian Lamont in Yorkton Natural Resources,
"Unique in the world's legal systems, any person, American or not, at home or abroad, who participates in any [way], however insignificant, in helping an American citizen or resident to break the law (no matter how trivial), is part of a conspiracy. This conspiracy is another crime usually considered more serious than whatever is being done. To put it in perspective, if a Frenchman in Paris advises an American to show his contempt for his own government by spitting on the sidewalk in front of the nearest USA embassy, the FRENCHMAN is guilty of a conspiracy to commit misdemeanor. This is a felony under existing USA laws. Under those same USA laws, his (French) home can be raided by USA law officers, and searched. Any of his property can be confiscated by USA agents even if they are illegally in France and even if those USA agents are breaking the laws of France. Further those USA agents can, legally under USA laws, as in the recent Noriega case, legally KIDNAP the Frenchman, and legally torture him on the way back to the USA in order to legally extract a false confession to a more serious crime. Or the kidnappers can legally secure fraudulent testimony to convict. They can legally arrange to have him placed in custody with known rapists and killers, and have him physically and mentally abused by other prisoners and interrogators. And it is all legal (from a USA point of view)."
Dr. W G. Hill, The Passport Report
"[T]he importance of force and force-threat in human behavior is richly demonstrated by the rarity of its use. Living as we do in protected environments, we rarely see anyone manhandled or hear an overt threat . ... [E]very social system contains mechanisms, processes, and patterns whose results and often intention is to prevent the outbreak of overt force.
"... Much force appears to people not as a threat of violence, but simply the rules of the game, the obvious reality of the cosmos, to which one must bow unthinkingly.
"... It follows from this orientation that all highly industrialized societies are high force systems, by comparison with almost all societies that have gone before them. No dissident groups of substantial size can hide out and engage in armed resistance, set up a competing regime, or impose a radically different system. ...
"In general, the widespread use of physical force by the regime or dominant groups in a society is probably negatively correlated with that country's position on the scale of the force it commands, because the application of overt force tells us that many people in the society oppose the political or social system, and are unwilling to back it by force. ...
"... [A] society's total force is not a summation of the individual capacity to kill, but a function of the social organization of force. Consequently, armed but unorganized citizens may be, and indeed usually are, helpless before the organized might of a tyrant's army and police, even when these are few in number.
"The force of a free citizenry is not, then, determined by how many guns they possess, but by their collective determination to resist. This in turn is primarily a function of their faith that their fellow human beings will not let them stand against the physical force of a ruler, but will rather risk individual injury to prevent collective injury. Thus, in ranking a citizenry by the force it commands, the question is not so much whether it owns more guns than the government, but whether its members can count on each other for support against encroachments on their freedom. That is the measure of its force. With that capacity, guns can be obtained; without it, guns have historically been of little use.
"... In older terminology, military analysts spoke of the will to battle, an imponderable that has more than once outweighed firepower.
"... One might, then, as a challenge to rulers everywhere, point out that we can in fact test their claim that their system is based on justice and on people's allegiance to it, by reducing the use of physical force to buttress it. ... [T]hat system which requires the least physical force [and threats] would more closely approximate justice than any we now know."
William J. Goode, "Presidential Address: The Place of Force in Human Society,"
Eileen Egan, a member of the editorial board of The Catholic Worker, was mugged on August 30, 1992 on Manhattan's Upper East Side. It took her a year to recover from her injuries, and to decide to become an "advocate of helping prisoners turn away from lives of crime and violence." Her outlook remains optimistic, although her attempts to help her assailant have been mostly rebuffed.
Michael Ryan, "I Refuse to Live In Fear,"
Writing about a small business tax strike in Athens, Greece in May 1995, the editors of The Wall Street Journal (May 19, 1995, p. A14) noted that the Greek government had passed a law "that independent professionals will pay taxes not according to what they earn, but according to what they could be expected to earn on the basis of criteria such as their occupation, their number of employees, and their place of business." According to a book review in the same newspaper (July 10, 1995, p. A12) Switzerland imposes an annual wealth tax. Those advocating such a tax in the United States, want it annually imposed in addition to existing estate taxes. Meanwhile, the United States Congress has considered legislating an "exit tax" on the wealth of those Americans whose renunciation of citizenship and emigration abroad are motivated solely by tax motives.
Chuck Shiver, The Rape of the American Constitution. Available from Loompanics Unlimited, Box 1197, Port Townsend, WA 98368. Non-voluntaryist, analysis of the violation of rights encountered in American history. Concludes that the "Constitution is just a piece of paper" that provides some mystique and legitimacy to the current political rulers.
Larry Pratt, editor, Safeguarding Liberty : The Constitution and the Citizen Militias. Available from Legacy Communications, Box 680365, Franklin, TN 37068. Fifteen non-voluntaryist essays on the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. Refers to the privately organized rifle movement in Denmark, which traces itself back to the British "National Rifle Association in 1860. ... [C]ivilian corps of motorcycle-mounted machine gunners ... possessed more automatic weapons than the Danish army in 1914 (when they covered the latter's mobilization)." After World War I, the Danish Parliament abolished the voluntary rifle corps because "it was simply felt that national defense should be the business not of the individual citizens but of the state. In 1937 the corps were disbanded, [much] to their country's rue on April 9, 1940." p. 881
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"In a free country you have a right to be left alone as long as you don't hurt anybody else. You have a right to live your own life peacefully and enjoy your property, and to be free from government interference.
Liberty Magazine,
(Box 1181, Pt. Townsend, WA 98368), January 1995, p. 33
"In the absence of force, peace and liberty simply exist; they do not have to be created or supported. Capitalism has its beginnings in a condition under which no man can be dispossessed of what he has produced or discovered except with his own consent. In the absence of force, capitalism automatically exists in the same sense that peace and liberty automatically exist."
The Present Economic Revolution in the United States (1926), p. 5
"We also have a problem believing that rescue packages are the correct solution to such financial crises. The problems arise from debt - you cannot go bankrupt if you don't owe anybody any money. Debt, as we have often said in the past, is like alcohol or narcotics in that it is a mind-altering substance and can be highly addictive."
Feb. 6, 1995. Yorkton Securities,
Suite 406, Salisbury House, Finsbury Circus,
London EC2M 5RQ, England
Waterlooville, U.K.: Scope International, 7th ed., 1992, p.265
37 American Sociological Review (October 1972),
pp. 507-519. Excerpts from pp. 511-518
"The answer to [the] question [of whether trying to help her attacker has accomplished anything] was quoted by Gandhi from a Hindu treatise, years ago," she said. "It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results are coming from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result."
Parade Magazine, October 23, 1994, pp. 73
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