Tag: liberty

Government-Supremacist Assumptions

Kent McManigal

You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass. Government-supremacists are easy to spot by the bad assumptions they naturally make and wave around in public.

They’ve always argued over how to spend “tax” money; they won’t consider the fact that “taxation” is theft.

They’ve argued over what should be taught in government schools, but never questioned government control over (and destruction of) education.

And now they argue over whether it was the right move to issue stay-at-home orders and cripple the economy, but they never consider that no one has the right to do so.

It’s not government’s place to decide to shutter the economy to “save” lives from coronavirus or anything else. They don’t have that right and they shouldn’t be allowed to have the power.

It’s never an “adult decision” to govern other people (the political means) rather than letting them work it out for themselves (the economic means/the market). It’s the most childish thing anyone can do. No one should be allowed to make those decisions and decide for you what you will be permitted to do with your own life.

They also substitute government-supremacism for thinking in other ways.

If you are making the dishonest argument that to fail to sufficiently cripple the economy on account of the coronapocalypse is going to kill 50,000 additional people (or whatever your number might be), without taking into account those who will die because the economy is being destroyed, you aren’t contributing anything useful.

You can’t know how many the virus will kill, nor do you know how many will die from the effects of a shut-down. The number of dead from the shut-down could well vastly outnumber those who die from the virus, making the “net deaths from coronavirus” being tossed around a completely fake number. Any discussion of “net deaths from coronavirus” without taking those a shut-down will kill into account is– as of now– a lie calculated to limit the discussion to government-supremacist answers.

To pretend that someone has sufficient information to make such a decision, or the right to impose it, is to be dishonest. It’s what makes one a government-supremacist.

Government edicts and orders are the opposite of responsibility. You have the responsibility to not violate the life, liberty, or property of anyone else. Government-supremacy is explicit irresponsibility and is shameful. No matter who exhibits it or what excuse they grasp at to justify their violations. I have no respect for government-supremacists; they deserve none. They’ve worked hard to prove that.

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Don’t be Controlled by Government

Kent McManigal

I drink water. I’ve done so all my life. If government passed legislation today ordering me to continue to drink water, would I stop drinking water just because they ordered me to drink it? No.

Would it be hypocritical of me to continue to drink water while pointing out that the new legislation was evil? No.

I would be smart to be suspicious of the reasons behind any legislation ordering me to drink water, and perhaps I would seek out my own sources. I’d wonder what they had put in it if they were ordering me to drink it (I know some people already do).

But water, and drinking it, doesn’t suddenly change into the wrong thing to do just because government orders it.

Well, trying to avoid exposing yourself or vulnerable people to a potentially harmful disease– even when you don’t know the true risks– is the same thing. It’s strange that I feel the need to point that out, but some people actually don’t understand that reality.

If you stop doing something you’ve been doing just because government tells you to do it, you are letting government control you every bit as much as if you stop doing something you know is right just because government makes it “illegal”. Don’t do that.

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How Freedom Can Survive This Pandemic – With Your Help

James Walpole

There are not many possible outcomes in which humans become freer after the COVID-19 pandemic. Already Western governments (see: United States) are taking unprecedented powers and violating civil liberties on a mass scale, despite farcical mismanagement of the crisis. Countries already well along the authoritarian road are openly embracing dictatorship (see: Hungary) or violent suppression (see: the Philippines, China).

The stay-at-home orders and lockdowns have probably made you feel powerless to help fight either this pandemic or the emerging fascistic orders. But there is plenty we can do. This list is just a start:

Make yourself more resilient

Are you isolated? Very well. Become a stronger individual. Do things which will reduce your dependence on the people who would run your life.

  • Wear masks in public (and practice physical distancing): Protect other people from transmission of the virus by wearing a mask. You may be a carrier without having any symptoms. Stay at least 6 ft. away from others, and limit unnecessary travel. All the basics: don’t make things worse for yourself or others.
  • Stay fit: Eat well and exercise and monitor your own health.
  • Prepare for shortages: It’s a bit late in the game to “stock up”, but supplies of some things are still plentiful relative to supplies in a few weeks. Don’t hoard, but at least make sure you have enough for yourself and your family to avoid the bread lines.
  • Keep some cash: Having cash (rather than debt) right now will be a source of optionality. The more cash you have, the longer you can resist the dole.
  • Get good at doing things yourself: Whether you’re making a mask or raising chickens or building a home gym, you’re going to have to do a lot of things yourself, or else do without. You’ll have to fix a lot of things.
  • Learn self-defense, and get the tools for it: This virus will be making traditional police forces both weaker (due to sickness) and more dangerous (due to new levels of power and nosiness). You would be well advised to learn gun safety, get a gun, and maybe acquire some other self-defense skills (such as a martial art).

Strengthen voluntary communities

Even strong individuals will look outward for help. We can let them turn to dictators and/or bureaucrats, or we can make voluntary associations and the voluntary institutions of civil society strong enough to meet the demand.

  • Help your neighbors: Your neighbors will be suffering too, whether from loneliness or from actual need. Donate to your food bank, send food or supplies to your local medical workers, volunteer if you can do so safely, and bring groceries for your older neighbors.
  • Support small businesses: The more independent entrepreneurs survive this crisis, the fewer the people forced toward welfare-dependency, government work, or employment for the crony corporations.
  • Create value: Entrepreneurs who can build new technologies and businesses to help during this pandemic will be doing a great deal for freedom, even if they don’t speak about politics at all. Growth and innovation are their own arguments for liberty, and private initiative to solve social problems will be a clear counter-example to the corruption and incompetence of bureaucracy.
  • Make churches and community groups work well remotely: You must find a way to transition traditional mass gatherings into forms of peer to peer connections. Livestreams won’t be enough. People need interaction. Consider group video calls, group chats, email threads, etc. for the communities you care about, and keep interaction going.

Organize and foster dissenting voices

Shutdowns and lockdowns create perfect opportunities for petty tyrants to rule isolated individuals – unless we find each other online. We will have to organize regardless of the distance:

  • Connect with fellow freedom-lovers: Reach out to your friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who are likely to share a concern for political liberty. Find people you can trust and people who will be willing to stand alongside you in protest and even disobedience. There may be differing levels of interest or commitment as well as different ideological orientations – that’s fine. Work with people where they are, and build a coalition of people who care.
  • Share information: Watch and share important news about the pandemic and government overreach. Curate from many sources. Take the pandemic seriously and avoid fake news.
  • Speak out: I’m generally cynical on the value of political speech, but you never know how you might shift what someone else is willing to accept from their government. Say something. Share why bailouts are destructive of economic welfare, criticize police harassment of solo beach walkers, point out the illegality of business shutdown by state fiat, etc. Share how deregulation of a choked medical industry is helping, and how free people working together have often bested government solutions.

Prepare for active dissent and disobedience

More steps toward tyranny have happened in the past few weeks than have happened in a year, or so it seems. As economies quickly degrade and social unrest rises, governments will claim more power which they may use against dissidents in the name of safety. And if lockdowns on travel, free assembly, and free enterprise continue, civil disobedience will be both just and necessary (if more dangerous). So it’s not a bad idea to be prepared for further crackdowns by paranoid governments, as well as the risk of being libertarian in that eventuality:

  • Do the anti-surveillance basics: The surveillance state will probably take this opportunity to reveal itself fully. Make things harder for it, at least. Encrypt your chats using an app like Signal, encrypt your emails using PGP, and remember that your devices’ microphones and cameras might be watching/listening to you (block them if you can).
  • Reduce dependence on anti-privacy platforms: Platforms like Google, however well-intentioned, seem to have no qualms about making your data (location, etc) available to governments. Facebook certainly won’t mind turning over your communications if doing so can be justified by “the emergency.”
  • Reduce dependence on censorship-oriented platforms: Twitter recently announced its intention to remove tweets contradicting “expert” information about COVID-19, at a time when “experts” were still claiming that masks were ineffective (they now acknowledge masks’ usefulness). These platforms may continue to make terrible editorial/censorial decisions as economies .
  • Learn your legal rights: It has become a meme, but you should know how to challenge police officers for violation of the 4th amendment (and other rights). Consider the possibility that you may be arrested either for something as silly as going outside or for deliberate disobedience of business shut-down orders.

This pandemic will pass. The authoritarian gains made now will remain for a long time. But if we act early and often, we can thwart a lot of it, give the state some black eyes and PR nightmares, and maybe even eke out some victories for freedom.

Originally published at JamesWalpole.com.

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The Cowardocracy

Kent McManigal

More and more I’m seeing all statists– those who believe governing others to be a legitimate human endeavor– as cowards.

This coronapanic has exposed them better than anything in recent memory. Probably better than anything since the Blowback Attacks of 2001– which, I admit, almost drew me in.

Cowards always want someone to save them from dangers they exaggerate.

It’s not about your risk of getting coronavirus– you’ll probably get sick with something in the next few months regardless– it’s about your chances; your risk of dying from the illness. No one is being honest about that risk, because they don’t know what it is and won’t admit they don’t know.

But cowards don’t care, they want reassurance and they want someone else to take care of them. Even if what is being done is the wrong thing– possibly making things worse. Even if they are being lied to. As long as someone else seems like they are taking charge.

And you and I are paying for their cowardice.

Depending on someone else to hold your hand through the pandemic is probably not the healthiest way to respond. Allowing someone else to herd you like cattle is the worst way to respond. Life shouldn’t stop just because you don’t know what’s happening or what will happen next. If you think you know what the future holds, at any time, you’re fooling yourself anyway.

A police state is a symptom of widespread cowardice.

But I know you aren’t the one who’s the problem. The problem is those people who only watch MSNBC, CNN, or FOX news. They are being misinformed and it is making them cowards (if they weren’t before). It’s absurd. But they v*te. And they “support” the Blue Line Gang’s villainy. And they bleat and plead for government to “do something”.

Why should cowards control society? Why should they have power over your life just because of their superior numbers? You know the answer: they shouldn’t.

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“Papers, Please” is Now Reality

Kent McManigal

Even more than it has been, I mean.

And how much do you want to bet the “please” is a lie?

Local employers are now giving employees “travel papers” so they can prove to cops who might stop them for being out on the road that they are traveling “legitimately”. I personally know that Walmart, Family Dollar, a cattle feed producer, and other businesses have issued such papers. Probably everyone whose business is deemed “essential” enough to be allowed to stay in business is doing the same.

So far, only the New Mexico parasites have clamped down on the right to travel, but the Texas employers around here are also issuing the papers because many people cross the state line, in both directions, for work.

How long until some Blue Line Gang scum murders someone for being on the road without permission?

Some statists seem shocked by this Nazi-ish turn of events. Yet it’s their fault! Totally! Their ongoing support of the state, for their whole lives in most cases, has led directly and inevitably to this.

Who are these political thugs to decide which jobs are essential? They wouldn’t recognize something essential if they stepped in it.

Every job is essential to those who perform it, and to those who rely on it.

The ONLY “jobs” which are non-essential are government “jobs”— because they aren’t actual jobs. Some of those “jobs” are even worse than non-essential; they are actively harmful. Keep these people off the roads if you have to keep anyone off.

Police officers, specifically– your “job” is not essential by any stretch of the imagination. It is harmful and parasitical. You are a drain on society. The same goes for every bureaucrat, politician, and whatnot. YOU are the vermin who need to be out of a “job”, now and forever. Let the productive people work while you rot in a hole in the ground.

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I’m a Horrible Person

Kent McManigal

I hate to admit it– it probably means I’m a horrible person– but I’m having fun. I’m enjoying the coronapocalypse. Just a little.

Yes, I feel a bit guilty for enjoying this as much as I am. I also know the enjoyment will fade the longer this goes on.

I feel bad for people who are really hurting and suffering. I feel awful for those who have lost loved ones. I have empathy for those who are scared. But this is the sort of thing I thrive on– at least for a while. It’s what I’ve prepared for… for decades.

Plus, I’ve been doing all I can for many years to tell people to prepare for this sort of thing. If they refused to listen…

I consider this a practice run for a real breakdown. I’m taking notes so I’ll be even more prepared next time. Yeah, I know every event will be different, but I still plan on learning from this one.

I’m doing what I can to keep my family members safe and healthy. Nothing is guaranteed, obviously. But that’s the case every day. I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me before.

My parents, who didn’t take the virus at all seriously at first– have gone into full-blown quarantine lock-down mode. I drop supplies and their mail for them in their garage and they go get it after I’ve left. I’m wondering if they are decontaminating it. As long as the electricity flows they aren’t going to be running out of food for a very long time, having multiple freezers and refrigerators. And quite the pantry, as well. I enjoy doing what I can to help them. My mom is sewing masks for the family and my dad is watching Hallmark Channel Christmas movies that he has recorded, I suspect they are both kind of enjoying this, too.

I’m fine on food and supplies for a long time– even if I couldn’t buy anything new. But I can, even though the food aisles have gone eerily empty. People might not be able to buy what they wanted, but there is something available. My yard– and every other yard in town– is chock full of edible “weeds”. No one will starve unless they choose to.

I’m taking long daily walks around town (as long a walk as I can take in this town– I zig-zag a lot) in the sun and fresh air.

Money has gotten tighter– your donations and subscriptions have become even more important than in the past (I also know some of you are probably losing income, too). I will get through this one way or another. Except in the unlikely event that the virus gets me– which I highly doubt it can.

I feel as though I am in my element– which is rare. I might as well have fun while I can.

Are any of you as awful as I am? Feel free to judge me.

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