Slavery or Freedom?- The State Is A Criminal Enterprise!

Slavery or Freedom

by Scott Lazarowitz
Reason and Jest

Recently by Scott Lazarowitz: Getting It Wrong, Over and Over and Over Again

Have you ever thought about the morality or legitimacy of politicians forbidding you to have a vegetable garden in your own front yard, or buying or selling raw milk, or merely having a lemonade stand without a local bureaucrat’s permission?

You see, when the armed bureaucrat is arresting the peaceful raw milk seller, the harmless vegetable gardener or the little lemonade proprietor, those arrestees are not the criminals here.

Those otherwise peaceful people have harmed no one, but they are the victims of the actual criminal, the one who is violating their rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. He is the aggressor and the criminal, he is the one who should be thrown in jail!

Much of what the State does now is largely criminal in nature: the violent enforcement of "victimless crimes," the warrantless spying and searches, the prosecutorial misconduct and asset forfeiture, and the drone bombings and murders of innocent civilians overseas, just to name a few.

Even the President and Congressmen – rubber-stamped by the Chief Comrade Roberts – ordering every individual to buy health insurance, are giving an unlawful order, in my opinion.

And the people in a supposedly free country have an inherent right to resist these government crimes and unlawful orders!

So besides the dictates of loathsome bureaucrats, Americans are also enslaved by the government-protected banking cartel and legal tender laws, and the sadistic impulses of the "law enforcers" who actually enforce – and often with malice aforethought – all those Soviet-like rules, orders, and prohibitions of the loathsome bureaucrats.

But millions of people still cling to this horrifying, increasingly-totalitarian State – the U.S. Congress, Supreme Court, state legislatures, local police, etc. – as their Savior, voluntarily choosing to be slaves to these bureaucratic worst of the worst in society.

And the faithful cling to their Rulers, despite how contemptuously those Rulers view the people whose hard labor funds the Rulers’ paychecks.

Unfortunately, most people tend to go into denial about what’s really happening to America, even though they see the growing totalitarianism right before their very eyes.

So here is a very well done video by Larken Rose which not only refutes the assertion that "it can’t happen here," but describes how totalitarianism is happening here, and only getting worse.

As part of our enslavement, the State demands involuntary payments for nothing, while simultaneously locking out entrepreneurs, laborers and immigrants alike.

The current IRS scandal, for example, as Robert Murphy points out, is that those complainers amongst our fellow hoi polloi want to be exempt from the same criminal wealth-seizures the State inflicts on everyone else.

But the complaint should be that everyone should be exempt from any transaction that is involuntary, coerced, compelled, or accompanied by threats from the taker.

"But we must pay for government’s services," some people cry.

Yes, we must pay for huge bureaucracies such as the FDA and HHS so they can take care of the fat cats of Big Insurance and Big Pharma. That sounds fair.

And we must pay for DEA, FBI and local police S.W.A.T. raids to make sure that innocent, peaceful civilians who have harmed no one have their homes broken into and even be murdered for no good reason. Check.

And we must pay for more wars and false flags to provoke more foreigners and take care of the fat cats of the military industrial complex. (Except we can’t actually say that out loud. Shhh.)

But the enslaved State-faithful live their lives with rationalization, knowing full well that their labor and livelihoods are being raped by genuine shysters.

I wish more people could understand the inherent immorality and undermining of the rule of law caused by any form of compulsory State taxation, including sales taxes, for example.

You see, when you have a transaction you then have a contract, which is presumably voluntary. However, the transaction is supposed to be between the two traders, neither of whom voluntarily consented to a third-party intruder coming along and seizing part of the trade.

But if third parties (such as government bureaucrats) were allowed to intrude into other people’s lives, contracts and property, then what’s the point of having any laws against trespass, theft, or harassment?

And the government’s thuggish restrictions on employment, entrepreneurs and immigration lock out those who want to start a business here but can’t. That is because of the government’s union protectionism, costly red tape or, because of minimum wage laws prospective entrepreneurs can’t afford to employ enough laborers including entry-level workers.

You see, in the current collectivist slavery, the U.S. government assumes ownership of the capital and labor of both American and immigrant entrepreneurs and workers. Just as Americans are slaves of their government bureaucrats’ restrictions, mandates and other intrusive trespasses, so are prospective businesspeople and immigrants.

I’ll never understand the collectivist anti-foreigner crowd, those who believe in some sort of communal ownership of the whole territory with total disregard for private property and freedom of trade. (Are they closet communists? Who knows.)

And now we have ObamaCare, which is now compulsory, just like the dysfunctional government-run retirement scheme.

I can’t believe that Americans would bow to their government’s demand to report their private medical or insurance status, and allowing such private information to be entered into government databases. Absolutely shameful!

And similar to the Nazi-like "If You See Something Say Something" campaign, doctors will be obliged to report patients’ gun ownership, and report on patients’ "abnormal" behaviors or their criticism toward the government, etc.

The deniers don’t think this is a big deal, but this really is right out of Nazi Germany.

Both doctor and patient are made to follow orders like prisoners, and any mistake one makes in various payment matters or reporting matters could cause one or both of them to be heavily fined (i.e. robbed) by the State, or even jailed.

Following the Boston Marathon bombings, there was a completely unconstitutional police siege, door-to-door searches mainly in nearby Watertown. Heavily militarized government police ordered residents to leave their homes while the homes were searched, without warrants, without probable cause. Some media propagandists even denied that such illegal behavior even occurred.

Will the "authorities" be knocking on the doors of those reported by doctors to have criticized government-run medical care? Or a patient who mentioned that he and his wife had an "argument"?

In contrast, in a free society the people would never allow government police "authorities" to harass innocent people who are not suspected of having committed actual crimes, or order innocent people out of their homes as happened in Watertown. Such a suggestion would be absolutely absurd to freedom-loving people.

Frankly, a government monopoly on policing and security shouldn’t exist anyway, and can easily and more economically be replaced with private providers. Boston was a great example of why market law is morally and practically better than martial law.

And when we have freedom (as opposed to the current slavery and government disarmament of the people) there would be no records of which private civilians have what weapons and who doesn’t.

For some reason, the ignoramuses and chicken littles don’t understand that such an atmosphere would discourage would-be muggers, rapists, burglars, murderers, mass shooters, and government thugs from committing their crimes.

But sadly, most Americans, hypnotized by hours of television watching and constantly staring at their cell phones like zombies, defend the criminality of the State.

And economically, a real free market (sans slavery) would be this: the workers, producers, and salespeople voluntarily contract with other employers, clients, customers, laborers, shoppers, for some kind of goods, labor or services, in exchange for some kind of monetary compensation and/or other goodies. And any third-party such as a government bureaucrat who intrudes into such associations or contracts demanding reporting or receiving a take from the laborer’s compensation or traders’ income is nothing but a criminal and will be treated as such.

With freedom, American business owners can hire whomever the employers feel are the best-qualified and who can best serve their customers, the treasured consumers. And such employers would have the freedom to pay workers whatever the employer decides the workers’ labor is of value, regardless of what government bureaucrats or union meddlers have to say about it. And yes, the workers actually benefit from a real free market.

The consumers are much better served as well, when there is freedom than under the current slavery.

And in the much preferable scenario of medical freedom, because there will be no government regulations, red tape, mandates, restrictions, protectionist patent laws, taxes, licensure or other governmental intrusions, the prices for medical care, medical equipment, insurance, pharmaceuticals or supplements will be much, much lower and more affordable to most people.

With freedom, the medical patient sees a doctor of one’s own choosing, or doesn’t see a doctor at all. It’s the individual’s choice.

 No government involvement here.

And one contracts with a third party insurer if one wants to, and doesn’t do so if one doesn’t want to.

No bureaucrats involved here. No fascist Nazi-like orders from non-productive apparatchiks like Nancy Lugosi and Chief Comrade Roberts.

And the patient’s payment is between doctor and patient, including whether the patient wants to pay with cash or use a third-party insurer, or can receive services for free, for that matter.

Also, the conversation between the doctor and patient is between doctor and patient only – there is a confidentiality and trust which will not be broken into by the bureaucratic burglars of Leviathan.

If it’s none of the neighbors’ business, then it’s none of the government’s business, I always say.

And no ObamaCare-Patriot Act-Complex tyranny. No government databases. No billion-dollar boondoggle NSA domestic spying centers in Utah.

And with guns, regarding background checks and databases, as mentioned, a free society would have no records of civilian arms ownership (or have any other government-run databases of any information on innocent private people!).

However, if government agents such as local police or the feds must be armed, there should be privately-run civilians’ databases of government employees’ weapons possessions, and other matters as well.

A database on the Internet into which all government employees or prospective employees, armed or not, must enter their complete personal background information including school records, criminal records, gun ownership, etc. And if you don’t like that, then don’t work for the government!

Besides making it uncomfortable for anyone to work for the government, free people must shun government employees, as Jim Davies noted.

Then, we would hope to have fewer and fewer government employees to enslave us, and harass, extort, expropriate, burglarize, mug, rob, search, abuse, assault, unlawfully detain, unlawfully arrest or jail, taser, shoot, or murder the people.

In a society of real freedom, all relationships, associations and contracts are to be voluntary. Restoring private property rights, the individual’s right of self-ownership, and the non-aggression principle is just common sense, after all.

With freedom rather than slavery, no more compulsory government Social Security, tax-thefts, land-thefts, IRS, the Fed, or any other such illicit monopolies and criminal rackets in Washington.

The people really have to decide, and soon, whether they want to continue being slaves, or whether they want to live in a land of real freedom.

You know, some people who are afraid of the necessary decentralization process will bring up the collapse and decentralization of the old Soviet Union, and how millions of people just couldn’t handle such sudden freedom. But that was because the government bureaucrats who had been in control made the process gradual and painful.

Then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, Perestroika and Glasnost schemes were "only expedient measures to preserve the centrality of the Soviet Communist Party and to salvage what was left of the socialist system," according to Russian-born economist Yuri Maltzev, author of Requiem for Marx.

Those Soviet bureaucrats were the real "bitter clingers" there, the power addicts who couldn’t let go of their little fiefdoms.

And that is exactly what we will experience here in America, by decentralizing gradually, as the bureaucrats attempt to preserve their central planning crimes.

As Murray Rothbard wrote,

Holding back, freeing only a few areas at a time, will only impose continuous distortions that will cripple the workings of the market and discredit it in the eyes of an already fearful and suspicious public …

To achieve genuine freedom, the role of government and its advisers must be confined to setting their subjects free, as fast and as completely as it takes to unlock their shackles. After that, the proper role of government and its advisers is to get and keep out of the subjects’ way.

So, now it is time for a "Requiem for Soviet Amerika," that’s for sure.

We must resist the evils of collectivism, socialism, and compromise, as Rothbard observed.

There is no other way out of the Rulers’ Soviet-style legislative trespasses, and their constantly provoking foreigners to justify their parasitic war bureaucracies, but to dismantle that Leviathan apparatus.

It is finally time to undo the slavery of central planning, the shackles of State monopoly, and the lawlessness of authoritarianism, root and branch.

June 3, 2013

Scott Lazarowitz [send him mail] is a writer and cartoonist, visit his blog.

Copyright © 2013 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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The Best of Scott Lazarowitz

"Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out"- by Paul Rosenberg

[ onbornfree/ and Freedom Network  commentary: another great article from Mr Rosenberg, plenty of good and inspiring advice here, I believe. If you would like to discuss with me any of the points/issues he raises here  with me, let me know. We could either "Skype" or talk face to face somewhere convenient- regards, onebornfree.]



"This was a big phrase in the 1960s, as young people turned away from the corporate conformity of the 1950s and decided that they wanted more out of life than being an adequately-fed cog in a big machine.

Let’s be honest and admit that the modern corporate script involves selling your own wishes and dreams for paychecks. I know that a lot of us have played along with it because of necessity, but this is not a way of life to cling to, it’s a way of life to escape.

You are meant to live your life. Yes, I know it can seem hard, but it’s the only life that’s really worth living. You have to give meaning to your life, and you’ll never get it by following the televised script and hoping for pats on the back from the people who are playing along with you.

This life you have is precious. Human beings are engines of creation; we are able to imagine and to turn our imaginations into reality. And we are capable of supercharging our creative abilities by sharing our lives and loves with other people. We are astonishingly capable creatures.

Don’t waste all your life’s abilities in a corporate cubicle. You’ve already seen how that goes: Work excessive hours, go home tired, watch TV, sleep, and start over. Your kids end up in mini corporate worlds called “schools,” where they are taught to sit, be quiet, obey, and turn off their internal desires and loves. If you play that game you’ll miss most of your life in the process, as well as most of your children’s lives.

Once you get some corporate inertia going, it is all too easy to get sucked into it permanently. Don’t let that happen to you.

So, here’s my modern (and slightly adjusted) interpretation – Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out:

Tune In

Wake up and see the world as it is. Turn off the talking heads on TV and get to know the real world. Stop spending all your brain cycles on celebrities, sports heroes and gossip hounds – get to know your neighbor and the old woman who lives around the corner, strike up a friendship with someone on the other side of the world. Travel. Spend your time with real people; get to know them, and reveal yourself to them. It only seems weird because the people who programmed you didn’t want you to think freely.

Do you think I am being dramatic by referring to “the people who programmed you”? If so, read this:

Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished.

That was from the highly esteemed Bertrand Russel, by the way, and I’ve got plenty more of them. Take this seriously, because your programmers have been.

Tune in to yourself rather than your programming: What do you really want? Most people can list a dozen things that bother them, but not a single thing that they really want. This is a problem. Find out what you want. What do you love? What do you want to work for?

Do you remember all those times in the Bible where Jesus berates people for being “hypocrites”? Well, the real word he used was actors – as in stage actors. And whether you are religious or not, this is crucial: Stop acting in someone else’s play. Take off all the masks and find yourself.

Turn On

Start doing what you love. Don’t wait for someone else, do it yourself. Start helping your friends and neighbors, spend serious time with your children – not at a game or a party, but just you and them, talking. Find out what they love. Tell them what you love, what you are proud of, what you regret. Tell them you love them. Tell them things you don’t tell your friends. Let them know you.

Start living, not merely existing. DO the things you feel an urge to do. And don’t fall into the usual trap of “what if I make a mistake?” That’s simply fear-based conditioning. Resist it. Do what you love, and in so doing, you will turn yourself on.

Are you going to go through your whole life and never follow your own wishes, always sacrificing them to the tyranny of other peoples’ opinions? Please don’t do that to yourself – you’ll suffer greatly for it when you’re old.

Screw all the expectations and turn on – act on your own will.

Drop Out

Stop wasting your time and energy on governments and arguments and politics. Drop out of their mindset and start reclaiming all those wasted hours. Lying politicians are simply not worth your devotion. Drop the endless party fights and stop arguing about them. Politics is ugly, and politics on the brain makes us ugly.

Stop paying attention to the hundreds of ads you see every day – they are scientifically designed to grab your thoughts. Turn away. Stop buying trendy things, and definitely stop buying things for the purpose of impressing other people.

Stop trying to fit in, and stop living according to other people’s expectations. Let them call you weird. Let them talk about you. Stop caring about it. If they were real friends, they wouldn’t treat you like that. So if they are willing to call you names, you’re better off dropping them now.

Don’t fight the system – that just keeps all of your energy and attention focused on them. Forsake the system and start creating a better life for yourself, the people you love and the people you respect. Stop giving all your life’s energy to a barbaric system of force and manipulation.

Let the system go; all of it. Move on and let it rot where it sits.

But We Need A Plan!

No, you don’t. You need a life!

Let go of the plan addiction. Life is organic, not mechanical.

First of all, you need to identify what you want to create with the precious life you’ve been given. Not what you want to stop, but what you want to make.

If you’ve never been told to do this before it may seem hard, but you can do it if you try.

Don’t sit and wait. Stop talking and start doing.

ACT!  NOW!"

Paul Rosenberg
www.FreemansPerspective.com

Porcfest! American Revolution 2.0 begins in New Hampshire

[Onebornfree/Freedom Network commentary: Porcfest 2013- this sounds like a fun place to be- men in skirts with rifles, women with rifles {see pic. below} , mushroom aficionados- you name it- I'm sorry I could not make it- maybe next year?- Regards, onebornfree.]

by Kevin Barrett, reporting from the 10th annual Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancaster, New Hampshire: 

"What do you get if you mix marijuana mavens, gun-lovers, unschoolers, computer hackers, bitcoin evangelists, survivalists, tax heretics, cop-blockers, cop-watchers, civil disobedience practitioners, gray- and black-market entrepreneurs, anarcho-activists, nullification enthusiasts, freedom theorists, sovereignty rebels, love-our-freedom Muslims, truth terrorists,de facto defectors, and other self-described enemies of the state?

The answer: Porcfest – as in porcupines, not pigmeat. Porcfest, a.k.a. the Porcupine Freedom Festival, showcases the Free State Project, which asks freedom-lovers to move to New Hampshire. Their goal: Make the “live free or die” state live up to its motto. If New Hampshire becomes a haven of liberty, these folks believe, it will not only be a really fun place, but it might even spearhead American Revolution 2.0. and help save America, and the world, from the forces of tyranny.

In ten years, the Free State Project has convinced more than a thousand liberty-lovers to move to New Hampshire. Their goal is 20,000 – which they calculate would be enough to radically change how business and government are conducted statewide. While they haven’t liberated the whole state yet, I can testify that the Free Staters have set up a wildly successful week-long Temporary Autonomous Zone here in the White Mountains of Northern New Hampshire.

The sweet smell of weed hangs over this place, rivaling the pungent woodsmoke from campfires and spicy meatsmoke from barbecues. All kinds of people are packing serious heat – not just holstered pistols, but also semi-(?)-automatic rifles slung casually over a great many backs. (That may be one reason visible law enforcement has chosen to stay away.) Some of the gun-toting guys look like hippies; a few even wear skirts. Others are skinheads in camouflage.

If you want magic mushrooms, you won’t have to wander around any cow pastures to find them. Unlicensed bars and lounges, some in plushly-furnished tents right out of the Arabian Nights, will serve you up just about anything you might desire, from absinthe to homebrew, from top-shelf wine and liquor to Miller Lite. (Since I’m a love-our-freedom Muslim, I prefer the equally luxurious gourmet tea-house next door.)

If the fear-mongering media stereotypes were true, PorcFest would be a terrifying place. During this week-long wild-and-crazy party, the official laws governing drugs, sex, firearms, currency, taxation, licensing and regulation are effectively null and void. All of us here at Rogers Campground are at the mercy of our fellow freedom-loving citizens. The state apparatus that normally “protects us” from each other is conspicuous by its absence. And yet somehow I feel safer here, among the pot-smoking survivalists with AK-47s slung over their backs, than I did at the normal campgrounds I stayed at while driving here from Wisconsin, where cops and park rangers are on duty to make sure you and your fellow campers follow all the laws…and if you don’t, they’ll kidnap you and put you in a cage.

It makes you wonder: Do we really need all those uniformed guys with badges threatening to kidnap and cage us, and beat the hell out of us or even shoot us if we resist? To borrow a phrase from police-beating victim Rodney King: Can’t we all just get along…without them?

Here at PorcFest, the answer is: Yes we can.

Several heroes of the resist-the-police-state movement are here: Jacob Crawford of Cop Watch, Pete Eyre and Ademo Freeman of Cop Block, and Antonio Buehler of the Peaceful Streets Project. All of these guys have come to the same conclusion: Since the police state is watching us, we’d better watch them right back. One way to do that: Film the cops whenever you can.

But cops don’t like being filmed. It’s almost like they have something to hide.

So when you film the cops, you risk arrest.

All of these guys – Jacob, Pete, Ademo, and Antonio – have been repeatedly arrested for filming cops. But they just keep doing it. Often, the cops will notice they’re being filmed, and decide not to carry out an arrest. Other times, the film will help the arrestee avoid jail. (Cops are trained to spin the facts and lie under oath, so having video of what actually went down can be useful to defendants, and embarrassing to cops…which is one big reason the cops hate being filmed.)

That willingness to tell the state “screw you, I’m going to stand up for liberty and take the consequences” also characterizes the civil disobedience panelists: Ademo, Ian, and Derrick Freeman, Lauren Canario, and Jim Johnson. They advocate Gandhi-style non-cooperation with the state at every level: don’t pay taxes, don’t get licensed-approved- and-regulated, don’t do what police and bureaucrats tell you, push it as far as you can (or as far as you dare), and when they kidnap-and-cage you, consider your stay in the Cheshire County Spiritual Retreat as a soul-building experience.

The panelists pointed out that when you’re resisting in a way that’s going to get you kidnapped-and-caged, it’s smart to do it in a place where the local jail is run by human beings, not sociopathic assholes. Fortunately for the free-staters in the Keene, N.H. area, the local boys-in-blue are mostly members of Law Enforcement Against Marijuana Prohibition, so a certain mutual respect prevails between the enemies-of-the-state and the thin blue line. Unfortunately, the same is not true in Manchester, where people are mistreated and (rumor has it) even occasionally “suicided.”

The freedom-fight in cyberspace

As the cop-watchers, cop-blockers, and civil-disobeyers fight for freedom on the ground in their local communities, other activists are doing the same thing in cyberspace. And the biggest freedom-fight in cyberspace right now is over Bitcoin, the leading crypto-currency.

What is crypto-currency? The short answer: Currency that gives its users privacy and anonymity in on-line transactions, in the same way that cash gives its users privacy and anonymity in real-world transactions.

If you use checks, bank cards, credit cards, pay-pal or other non-crypto-currencies, all of your transactions are being traced in real time by Big Brother. The Orwellian state can easily profile you, surveil you, and ultimately control you, based on the state’s knowledge of your recorded economic transactions.

And it isn’t just the state. Marketers can use knowledge of your activities, including economic activities, to figure out how to push your buttons and make you buy their stuff, based on surmises about the unconscious factors that drive your choices in life. In other words, they can profile you, attach puppet strings to your unconscious mind, make you dance to their tune, and steal your money.

The government (like the big corporations that own it) doesn’t like Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies for the same reason it doesn’t like cash: Big Brother wants to know every detail about every penny that passes through your hands. The most obvious reason, of course, is taxation.

The government wants to know about every penny you spend so it can extract a sales tax. And it wants to know about every penny you earn so it can extract an income tax.

A fringe benefit of knowing every last detail of your economic activity, from the government’s perspective, is that it can use that same information to profile, surveil, and control you. If you seem to have a little bit more money than you should, you’re probably growing a couple of marijuana plants in your closet: Time to kick in your door, shoot your dog, terrorize your kids, beat the shit out of you, and put you in a cage.

If you use crypto-currency carefully, the government and the corporations that own it will not know about your economic transactions. When tax time rolls around, you can actually do the “voluntary compliance” the IRS requires. What I mean by that is that your compliance with the tax laws will actually be voluntary, as it is officially supposed to be.

Needless to say, most of the end-the-state folks here at PorcFest will “voluntarily comply” with taxation as little as possible. They believe that taxation is theft, and that its main product is not roads, bridges, education, and security, but violence and injustice.

I used to think such people were crazy. But 9/11 and the so-called war on terror woke me up. It now seems fairly obvious to me that the government is just as evil as the wildest-eyed Rothbardian anarchist says it is.

Maybe even more evil.

Another huge advantage of Bitcoin crypto-currency is that it is a commodity currency, not a fiat currency. Bitcoins are based on a type of mathematical object that exists in limited numbers. Half of all bitcoins have already been “mined” (discovered). Unlike US Federal Reserve Notes and most other official currencies, bitcoins cannot be printed in unlimited numbers. For that reason, they are likely to hold their value, or rise in value, while official fiat currencies perpetually lose value as governments print more and more of them.

No wonder so many PorcFest participants have phased US dollars out of their lives, and are using Bitcoin and commodity currency (mostly gold and silver) for all of their market-exchange transactions.

Could the crypto-currency revolution bring down the government? That is what many here hope. Their forecast: Because crypto-currencies offer privacy and stable value, all rational economic actors will gradually move out of fiat currencies into crypto-currencies. The dollar, and all other fiat currencies, will collapse. Governments will no longer be able to print currency or tax their subjects. Bankrupt, they will wither away, replaced by mechanisms of voluntary association, beginning with the free market.

In preparation for that day, the Freedom Movement is big on agorism: Entrepreneurship in gray or black markets. Agorism basically just means starting a business – except you do it in such a way as to minimize or eliminate taxation and regulation. If possible, your agorist business will also help spread the word about the movement.

A PorcFest event called The Agorist Pitch offered prizes worth thousands of dollars to those with the best business ideas. The winner: Davi Barker’s plan for crowd-funded follow-ups to the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments on obedience to authority. Runners-up included an educational game and a chicken farm.

Unlike the 1960s hippies who camped out and partied at places like Woodstock and Altamont, the folks here at PorcFest are not using “freedom” as a vague and mystical slogan. Their intellectual heroes – people like Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and of course the overrated Ayn Rand – offer a rigorously analytical libertarian philosophy and economics. Personally, I’m not convinced that these ideas always have straightforward and unambiguous real-world applications; like PorcFest speaker David Friedman, the son of famed Chicago School economist Milton Friedman, I think we need historical observation and empirical reality-testing to complement and sometimes contradict all of the wonderful libertarian theories.

But if the anarchists finally won their argument with the Marxists, as I think history shows they did, it was for a reason. The anarchist critique of government is correct.

If the government isn’t around to tell us what to do – or if we just ignore it – what will stop us from doing terrible, evil things?

The dominant school of thought here at PorcFest holds that humans are rational animals who will find ways to maximize mutual benefit through free interaction. People will find ways to pool their money to build roads and schools, defend their communities, and enforce justice, without something called the “sovereign state” threatening to cage or kill them if they don’t.

Others, including myself, believe that people need divine guidance to fully achieve their highest goals, aspirations, and potential. Like Will Coley of Muslims for Liberty, and Davi Barker the Muslim Agorist, I draw on divine revelation as the source of real freedom.

If you submit absolutely to God – not to anyone or anything else – you are truly free.

And if you care only about God’s opinion of you, and care nothing for what anyone else thinks, you have achieved real inner freedom.

Even David Friedman, a brilliant Jewish scholar who is neither deeply religious nor a hard-core anarchist, finds Islamic “law” – a deeply pluralistic set of guidelines that needs no state and is not meant to be coercively enforced – to be one of the most promising alternative models for libertarians.

Are David Friedman, Davi Barker, Will Coley and I “trying to bring shariah to America” ?

I plead guilty.

I’m a truth terrorist.

I’m an “Islamic radical.”

Because I love our freedoms.

And I’m tired of seeing them taken away.

Hope to see you next year at the 11th annual Porcupine Freedom Festival, insha’allah!"

Article source

George Carlin On The Real Truth About The American Dream

The great George Carlin on the truth about "The American Dream" . Only Carlin can make make me laugh at such a dire situation as described. Enjoy!.

From onebornfree and The Freedom Network.
[ Caution some "bad" language, may not be suitable for some ears].

"Why Government Fails- But Free Individuals Succeed‬" :John Stossel

P.S. If you agree with the sentiments expressed in this video, you might also enjoy: The Freedom Network!

Regards, onebornfree.