Sleep

The silent shrug of myopic minds,
deters the wake of caring sighs.
It steers away from heartfelt ache,
the pain of knowing the real mistake,
of clinging to comfortable diatribes,
from politicians to media lies.

The tunneled vain of vanquished care,
for plights of those we’re not aware,
shall bring a path of forgetful bliss.
The moral dilemma won’t seem amiss,
as drone like brain-waves usurp a hint,
of gross injustice in our midst.

Super bowls and reality shows,
jackpot troves, and numbing loaves,
of bread and circus pablum fare,
it keeps our minds from real despair.

Shell games crossed with Ponzi malice,
invade the state with viral madness.
Revenues stolen to fund the scheme,
from you and me to bring the dream,
of rule by force to the looter class,
and deified power within the grasp.

Super bowls and reality shows,
jackpot troves, and numbing loaves,
of bread and circus pablum fare,
it keeps our minds from real despair.

Jackboot thugs claim innocent lives,
with drug war raids-- no law provides.
Yet swat teams crash and shred the law,
matters not the purported cause.
Alphabet agencies storm with guns,
for views or vitamins-- unsanctioned ones.

Super bowls and reality shows,
jackpot troves, and numbing loaves,
of bread and circus pablum fare,
it keeps our minds from real despair.

Collateral damage rules the day,
as innocent people are bombed away.
The hydra snake in Islamic dress,
multiplies fast, and so, to stress,
the self-fulfilled prophesy now is real.
Let’s go after Goldstein, now, with zeal!

Super bowls and reality shows,
jackpot troves, and numbing loaves,
of bread and circus pablum fare,
it keeps our minds from real despair.

Hush, little ’mericans, don’t say a word,
Uncle Sam provides a life secured.
Though that type of life is shallow,
making your brain a tower of jello.
Uncle Sam does the thinking for you,
just obey the call of the red, white and blue.
Hush, little ’mericans, don’t say a word,
Uncle Sam provides a life secured.
Hush, little ’mericans, don’t say a word,
Uncle Sam provides a life secured.

Sleep . . . Sleep . . . sleep . . . sleep . . .

The Cult of Force

Well, its been over a week since the heinous, outrageous, horrible, terrifying, sad, heart-wrenching, and tragic crimes took place in . . . Massachusetts, Utah and Pakistan. Gotcha, didn’t I. Thought I’d say Tuscon. And of course, all of those adjectives apply to that crime, too. But there are other crimes that have happened, that objectively, must be viewed as even more tragic and terrifying because it took place by our would-be protectors-- the police in swat teams where innocent people have been killed by trigger happy, fear-filled swat team members operating with the war-on-drugs mentality that has brought so many tragic deaths to our country, and for no good reason. Also, innocent people are being killed in Pakistan killed by US drones in violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty with no war declared by the United States. The politicians and talking heads weep not for these tragedies.

Eurie Stamps, 68 year old retired grandfather of 12, was gunned down in a swat team drug raid in Farmingham, MA on January 6 of this year. The police were not looking for him but for the son of his live-in mate. The official story doesn’t mention any resistance but the authorities are keeping the details from the public.

In Ogden, Utah, in late December of last year, a police officer shot 45 year-old Todd Blair in a no-knock drug raid where Blair was holding a golf club in the air at least 8 feet from the officers. Ogden police officer Troy Burnett shot Blair three times killing him stating “I saw something shiny like a sword or something.” Burnett admits that Blair didn’t charge him. The State's Attorney in charge has called the shooting justified. One can view the actual murder at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/18/utah-video-police-kill-man-drug-raid_n_810420.htm

And as recent as January 6, US drone planes have fired missiles killing 12 Pakistanis. Over 100 attacks have occurred last year, many of these attacks killing innocent civilians or what our government officials call “collateral damage.” Are these Pakistanis any less human than the victims of the Tuscon shooting?

There is much chatter among politicians and talking heads about setting examples of civility, and toning down the rhetoric in political discourse in response to the Tuscon shooting. First, one thing should remain clear. One man alone is responsible for the tragedy in Tuscon. Politicians aren’t responsible; neither are pundits or talk show hosts or guns.

However, if we really want to take a look at root causes of the violence that permeates American society, we should first look at the top, the entity that sets the standard for violence, the government. With the US government, war, is, too often, the battle cry to address problems. The war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on poverty, in total, the war on freedom permeates the lives of Americans.

With war comes the associated devaluing modus operandi: irrationality, avoidance of logic, emotionally charged actions, and led by despots with titles of “Czar.” Compassion, reason, tolerance, deliberation, empathy, objective weighing of evidence, dissent; these are values voided by the execution of war. Liberty is the ultimate casualty in these never ceasing wars. Yes, war is the health of the state, force its raison d’etre, and “You’re either with us or against us” its battle cry. Freedom, prosperity, limited government, personal rights, dissent, adherence to the Constitution, and the lives of innocent people are all “collateral damage” from the execution of these wars.

Most of the alphabet agencies of the federal government have swat teams and use them, even in raiding health food stores for the horrible crime of selling raw milk.

Is it any wonder why American society is ridden with so much violence?

Don’t pay your taxes? They come with guns.

Self medicate? They come with guns.

Teach your children at home? In some states, they come with guns.

Sell “unapproved” alternative health remedies? They come with guns.

Sell a shotgun with the barrel a quarter inch too short? They come with guns.

Use a gun in self defense? They come with guns.

Form a religious commune? They come with guns.

Fill in lowlands on your property? They come with guns.

Run your own numbers game in competition with the government’s game? They come with guns.

Pick up an eagle feather? They may come with guns.

Build a better automobile? Preston Tucker found out they’ll come with guns. Yes, DeLorean, too.

Organize war protests? They come with guns.

Grow unapproved vegetables or herbs on your own property? They come with guns.

Government is the organized monopoly use of force. Natural law dictates that force should be only used as a defense measure against the initiation of force. Yet virtually every aspect of our lives has been criminalized by government.

Force begets force. And when Americans are treated like children using force to enforce the myriad of regulations that criminalize peaceful non-coercive action that should be legal in any rational, free society, they will do what children do. They’ll tend to mimic their parents actions, the parent in this case being government.

There must be a better way . . . And there is.

Short of the use of defensive force to mitigate and punish murder, rape, and theft, the mind-set of America must turn to peace-nurturing cooperation, toleration, free exchange of ideas, products and services; and an allowance for lifestyles that don’t infringe on the rights of others if the cult of force is to be reversed.

It’s time we enacted some meaningful gun control and its associated uses of force on the government.

Thomas Paine said, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."

Swat teams with guns enforcing laws that shouldn’t even exist has made government an intolerable evil with its predictable ramifications in American society. This cult of force must be stopped.

A tolerable evil in the name of truly limited government would be a step in the right direction.

The Real Wasted Vote

The Republican and Democratic Charlie Browns are at it again. Election cycle after election cycle, the Republican and Democratic Lucy politicians of America promise to hold the football for Charlie Brown-- for sure, this time, instead of pulling the ball away at the last second so to make Charlie Brown fall on his butt as he tries to kick his field goal.

“Cut spending, lower taxes,” the Republican politicians say. And the Charlie Brown voters fall on their butts once again.

Restore our rights, get out of foreign wars,” the Democratic politicians say. And the Charlie Brown voters fall on their butts once again.

What makes anyone think that this year will be any different? If you keep on doing what you have always done, you'll keep on getting what you always got. And if you keep on voting for Republicrats who try to sound like Libertarians at election time, you'll keep on getting higher spending, higher taxes, more big brother, and more costly foreign wars affecting the lives of our nation's young and the nation's pocket book. Lots of sore butts out there.

Many people fall for the Lucy trap because of what is known as the “wasted vote” syndrome. It is thought that voting for the lessor of two evils is better than allowing the opposition party to take power.

But voting for the lessor of two evils is still evil and if evil takes power does it really matter if the evil manifests itself on the margin for more taxes, spending and regulation with a loss of our rights and the continuation of a destructive foreign policy, rather than on the margin for a loss of our rights, the continuation of a destructive foreign policy, and slightly less of “more taxes, more spending and regulation?”

Not a dollars worth of difference (in these inflationary times).

What many people don't realize is that politics is not a horse race. It is a protracted conflict in the battle of ideas and trends matter. One does not have to win to effect change.

If a person believes that the libertarian philosophy is the wave of the future then one should register that belief now by voting for Libertarian candidates in the coming election. The more votes Libertarians get, the sooner will a libertarian future be achieved.

And here in Illinois it is even more critical to do so, for to achieve “major party” status, the Libertarian Party needs to get 5% of the vote or more. If Lex Green, Libertarian candidate for Governor, gets over 5%, then the onerous ballot access requirements that have prevented the Libertarian Party in the past from becoming viable will no longer be operative, and Libertarians in subsequent elections can concentrate their efforts on the election rather than managing the multiple hurdles the major parties have placed to make it so difficult to get on the ballot.

So in this election, make the smart choice. Vote for who or what you truly believe in. And if the belief is freedom, don't waste your vote, vote Libertarian.

Collateral Damage and Revolution

Neoconservatives and the war establishment are fond of using the term “collateral damage” when referring to the killing of innocent people as a result of the perpetual war in the Middle East. After the latest “event” in Afghanistan, General McChrystal’s profusely apologized for the deaths. That’s the extent of “accountability” for the war establishment.

On the domestic front, there is an ongoing war against the established power of the federal government. The fronts of this war have taken on many facets. Most are peaceful, without “collateral damage.”

There are the actions as exemplified by the tea party patriots, including protests and the petitioning for redress of grievances at various town hall meetings. All this has all been very peaceful, yet very vocal and the establishment is taking notice. Also occurring is the significant Petition for Redress from the We the People Foundation.

With the recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, the voters have chosen a path, at least at the margin, of less government and have rejected government-meddling, corporate- protecting, budget-busting healthcare.

The ascendency of Congressman Ron Paul and his Campaign for Liberty exemplifies another aspect of the battle against tyrannical government. Dr. Paul has continuously, for the past 25 years or so, fought against expansive war in international affairs, the theft of natural rights guaranteed by the US Constitution through the war on drugs and the war on terror, and the assault on the taxpayers through profligate government spending with a piling of bankrupting debt, via its enabler, the Federal Reserve. Now Dr. Paul is a regular on most of the cable news/talk shows.

And much to the chagrin of the big-government Right, Ron Paul continues to make inroads especially influencing the young to remake the Republican Party into a party of liberty. His recent overwhelming win in the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) presidential preference poll, taking a full 31% of the vote versus 22% for Romney and 7% for Palin, indicates that the efforts of Ron Paul are paying off in this fight for freedom.

There have also been some important wins in federal court (possibly jury nullification decisions) concerning the laws for filing income tax returns and the aiding of the act of nonfiling including the victory of former IRS criminal investigator, turned freedom fighter, Joseph Banister.

Many states are passing nullification resolutions that proclaim the right to refuse to enforce laws passed by the federal government that they regard as unconstitutional.

On all these fronts, freedom fighters have used the libertarian constant, a peaceful means in achieving the end of big government tyranny, which is consistent with the Libertarian Party certification, “I oppose the initiation of force to achieve social or political goals.”

Of course the million dollar question is, at what point does the use of government power that is inconsistent with the US Constitution and contrary to natural law, attacking the objective right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, become the use of force, and how individually directed should that defense against government force be.

Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence stated, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

So the right to rebel tyrannical government is firmly enshrined in the American tradition. But how should this action proceed? And who decides?

It occurs to me that every man must look into the mirror and decide this ultimately personal decision. To be consistent with libertarian principles, a collective should never force a decision about rebellion on an individual.

War is the ultimate collectivist act. And so in a defensive rebellion for liberty, it must be individually determined to be consistent with the concept of liberty. And to reduce the possibility of collateral damage, notice must be given to parties associated with the enemy.

And so to the case of Joseph Stack, who recently flew his plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, who stated in a heartfelt letter explaining his actions, “Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well." Anyone who has had the misfortune of dealing with any federal bureaucrats or bureaucracies can sure empathize with the anguish Joseph Stack felt. An IRS ruling that changed Mr. Stack’s classification from an independent contractor to an employee eventually set events into motion that brought him to believe that the only act left in his being was a final act of desperation and revenge.

In Mr. Stack’s understandably anguished mind, he had no choice left. Tragically, in my opinion, the deep emotions he felt clouded what objective observers should conclude are hopeful signs that the American people are waking up and a new renaissance of freedom may be developing. Possibly those signs were coming too late as he felt that big government had already destroyed his life.

The result of Joseph Stack’s actions was one dead IRS agent. No notice was given. It is highly unlikely that the dead agent was the agent working on Stack’s case. And in this point of time, the reeducating of the populace to the tenets of individual freedom have not reached the point where it is an obvious fact to many government workers that they are working for an evil organization hellbent on absolute despotism.

So in all likelihood, Mr. Stack’s suicide assault brought on some collateral damage.

My hope is that all peaceful means to achieve the goal of liberty in our time be used up before violent defensive force is employed. And then, if necessary, the focus should be laser-beamed not to foot soldiers of tyranny, but to the architects.

Neoconservatives believe that the end justifies the means and that “collateral damage” killing is justified. Libertarians hold themselves to a far stricter moral construct. The means must be as moral as the end. And collateral damage is unacceptable.

Speech at the "End the Fed" Rally in Chicago, Nov. 22

Now is the time.

Now is the time to stop freedom crushing, poverty producing, out-of-control government spending.

We know that the politicians do not have the testicular fortitude to do this.
There really is only one way, to abolish the Federal Reserve and replace it with an honest, commodity backed currency, prohibiting fiat fractional reserve banking for demand deposits.

There is no other way. The Fed has been the paramount enabler of crippling debt, costly, destructive counter-productive wars, corporate bailouts, park barrel spending, the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time-- the so-called Social Security system, the hosing bubble, depression era unemployment, and consumer debt which is at an all time high.

The wall street “experts”, the Ivy League “gurus”, and the mainstream media lap dog chatterers have been proven wrong again, conclusively. Real unemployment is at depression levels probably around 20%, even the official rate is over 10%. All that tarp money and bailout dollars was supposed to bring unemployment under 8%.

And as we know, that money was created out of thin air by the FED reducing all our purchasing power accordingly. It is theft, pure and well maybe not so simple–or the American people would have revolted by now. As the champion of funny money, John Maynard Keynes, has said, “Lenin was surely right, by a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved an important part of the wealth of its citizens. There is no surer more subtler means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch its currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, It is done secretly and unobserved, and done so in a manner in which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

And Federal Reserve printing press money is pure inflation. And it is destroying our country.

Yet the arrogant elite in our country just think we need even more of the same.

Of course the benefits of bailouts and subsidies go to the big banks, other failed financial institutions, and failed corporations. And the trickle down theory hasn’t even produced a trickle.

But our children, grand children and great grand children will bear the greatest brunt of this economic catastrophe.

Let me ask you a question, when is the last time you heard a Democrat declare John Kennedy’s economic prescription, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” You would think they were corporatist Republicans–which they are. There is no difference between the leadership of either parties. They both support the fascistic power of the federal government, the corporatist partnership of that grandiose good ole boy network between corporations and the government, and the mercantilist philosophy having the average Joe fund the economic exploits of government connected corporations.

And the enabler of all of this is the Federal Reserve.

Now Ron’ Paul’s bill, which to my knowledge has gotten out of committee unscathed, is a great first step concerning reigning in the Fed. But we need to push on and finally abolish the Federal Reserve.

In the mean time, we need to fight this plunge into tyranny and poverty by refusing to cooperate at any level with the government to the extent that we can while being able to have the strength to fight another day.

There are many ways we can do this.

Let me suggest a few:

Fight all traffic tickets and demand a jury trial.

Continue to educate our fellow citizens of the right, power and duty to nullify unjust law on juries.

Give only the Constitutionally required information to census takers–that is the enumeration of how many people live in your household.

Only pay taxes that have been lawfully levied.

Don’t ask for permission what is Constitutionally your right to do.

Remind you representatives who is in charge and the oath that they took.

Write as many letters to the editor as you can in support of freedom.

And educate your friends, family, neighbors, work associates, and other colleagues on the importance of liberty, and the paramount means of getting there:

End the Fed.

End the Fed . . .

An Open Letter to Congresswoman Schakowsky

Dear Ms. Schakowsky,

I have always had great respect for you as I perceived you a true liberal who wasn’t swayed by politics or political contributions but stuck to your own philosophical framework as a liberal. As a left leaning libertarian, I have found myself in great agreement with you on personal rights issues and foreign policy even as I have diametric opposite views to you on economics.

The “Tea Parties” in which I participated, are the quintessential exercise in the right of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment, heretofore honored and celebrated by the left and liberals like yourself. So it is with extreme regret that I see your reaction vilifying the “Tea Parties.”

Why did I protest? The continued out-of-control spending by Congress and presidents, past and current, is bringing our economy to the brink of destruction. Bush’s trillion dollar war was a waste of human and financial capital and crowded out the lending markets. And now the “stimulus” package is doing the same only by multiple factors. As one who dislikes the overreaching power of corporations in this country and their partnership with government that has kept the “little guy” and small business down, I was appalled by the act of government bailing out these hat-in-hand corporate thieves who have had a big role in driving our economy down. The sign I carried at the Tea Party was, “Billions for the bankers, for the taxpayer, the shaft!” This was a position I would think all good liberals and people on the left would agree with, indeed would want their message heard at a protest.

I have heard many people on the left blame the lack of regulation under “unfettered capitalism” as the cause of our current financial crisis. But what those on the left don’t understand is that it is the very possibility of failure that is the self- regulatory mechanism the makes participants in the free market accountable on the one side, and flourish on the other. Bailing them out has taken away that very necessary and essential regulation that the free market provides.

The trillion dollar bailout and spending packages are going to over-burden everyone, especially the poor and underclass. It can be financed in only three ways, higher taxes, printing money–the most destructive taxes to the underclass and disenfranchised, i.e., inflation, and borrowing–which will burden our children and grandchildren with a huge debt that will have to be paid with confiscatory taxation. Our children and grandchildren will be saddled with this taxation with no voice–no representation on its passage. Taxation without representation!, which is why the framers carried out the first “Tea Party” and ultimately a revolution seceding from King George. So one might say that we are doing it for the children.

To call what I and a million others did “despicable” is for you, unconscionable. I was protesting not for the corporate interests but against them. And I am not right wing. I can only conclude that you are either totally ignorant of the motivations of the “Tea Party” protests, you have sold out to the corporate interests, or you are just totally disingenuous in your playing of party politics.

That makes you, in my mind, as despicable a hack as Newt Gingrich.

Advocating in non-libertarian forums

I’m on a list-serve that is based on my high school graduating class. From time to time we get into political arguments. One of those who is active is my friend, Mark Smith, from my same graduating class who also happens to be a libertarian. Lately we have been talking about Lincoln and Thomas DiLorenzo’s books on him exposing Lincoln for the tyrant he was. The discussion has degraded to the point where Bill M. implied that DiLorenzo was a racist via a guilt-by-association with “The League of the South.” Finally Phil Pienkos chimed in with the following:

I've been watching this line of conversation with great interest, though the threats to punch Phil Harte in the nose were a little alarming. I kept thinking Bill would forget which Phil he was talking about and I stayed up nights waiting for a knock at the door.

To a certain extent, I understand Phil's frustration with a long history of criticism of the US from some on this page, but I think he missed the point. Clearly, the willingness to criticize vociferously while remaining a US citizen implies either laziness or an inherent appreciation for some underlying national characteristics. The criticism is meant to call to mind aspects that need improvement. In Bill's case, that is fairly clear. He was opposed to the actions of the Bush administration and congressional enablers and is optimistic that the Obama administration is trying to set things right. I tend to share that assessment. But it's not so clear in Mark and Ken's case. Both Ken and Mark work very hard to read about local and national politics and dig deeper into many issues to inform their opinions. I mostly stay out of these discussions because I can't match the depth of my knowledge on most of these topics with the rest of you.

But consistent criticism implies (at least to me) that there is something worth improving. I don't believe that either Mark or Ken are anarchists, and so they believe that a political system of some sort is worth having. I'd like to hear their views on the positive aspects of this country and how their libertarian views could make things better in a real way. I think that Phil was also looking for something like that, but the conversation got sidetracked with threats of fisticuffs and lobotomies.

Phil

Here is my response to Phil.

Phil,

Thanks for checking in. I’ve actually wanted to write something along the lines of your request for a while. Since I don’t have the time it requires at this time, I will attempt to give you a “Reader’s Digest” version.

I grew up in the government school system firmly believing in the ideals of America expressed to us in the classroom. Individual freedom and personal responsibility, entrepreneurial spirit, the American inventors, the special nature of the founding of our nation and what the founding fathers did to bring it about.

I was excited and fascinated about what made Americans “special.” I read books on Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine and the “Swamp Fox of the Revolution,” Francis Marion, on whose life the movie, “The Patriot”, was made. The first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence always fascinated me. I guess I even fantasized about being a revolutionary patriot at the founding of our country. Many people have told me that I was born in the wrong century.

By the time I graduated college from the U of I in economics, I was starting to think that the American ideals I read about came up short in reality. But I really had no idea to what extent that was true until I started my painting business full time. The school of hard-knocks reality hit me pretty hard. The taxation and regulation imposed on Americans–from my perspective, especially on small businessmen, seemed to run contrary to what our founding fathers had pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. After one season, I hit a winter downturn and had time to read a book recommended to me while standing in line during commencement exercises the previous year, “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. Reading that book changed my life. She revealed to me what I had believed about freedom as a kid in the primary grades , but was gradually, subsequently “educated” away from my thought processes since. And page after page read as the headlines of the day. It was February of 1976. Rand finished writing the book in 1956 and I was amazed about how much this Russian emigre had foretold.

A jolt of vitality struck me. My thirst for knowledge the next four years was inexorable. One book led to another. In those four years I received for the first time, truly, a real education, not the stuff of so much boredom in the formal schooling I had received.

I discovered that my area of major, in economics, that was fed to me in Champaign, was even more a pack of nonsense than I had realized. I remember going over and over again the Keynesian “multiplier” theorem, based on mathematical calculations and thinking that it just didn’t make any sense. The theorem is the basis for what Obama is doing right now. The idea that you can create wealth just by printing money in order to spur “pent up” demand. Through my reading I discovered “Austrian” economics, true free market economics that had a real formal scholarly basis to it, with its most celebrated advocate, Ludwig von Mises, as the head of the movement, who, if one reads his writings, must conclude was a true genius. And one of Mises’ students, F. A. Hayek, actually received the Nobel Prize in economics.



Austrian economics clearly showed the flaw in the reasoning of Keynes–that you can create wealth out of thin air. The discipline showed that it was savings and investment that created wealth, and consumption was the result of such wealth creation, not the cause. It made perfect sense and all the fancy math that had befuddled me all those years I now knew was just economic alchemy.

So those four years I absorbed this rich field of libertarian education that has a depth not understood by those who haven’t traveled the path Mark and I have. Now, before anyone accuses me of narrowing my educational factors, remember that I had almost a whole lifetime indoctrinated from an opposite viewpoint of the libertarian philosophy, which can be summed up in one phrase. “I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force or fraud to achieve social or political goals.” There is a lot of controversy around what this statement means. It does mean that one has the right to self defense. It does mean that free adults should be able to do what ever they wish as long as they don’t infringe on that equal right on others. Or as William Allen White once said, “Liberty is the only thing you can not have unless you are willing to give it to others.”

Government, by nature has a monopoly on the use of force. It may be a necessary evil, but since it has this monopoly, it must be restricted as much as possible, so that it’s only legitimate function is to protect the natural rights of freedom of its constituents. That is why Jefferson stated that government is “bound by the chains of the Constitution.”

Well, unfortunately, a long time ago, government has burst those chains, and by the way, Lincoln was the main culprit.

So what is my vision? That of a cooperative society that trades freely, a countless millions of positive-sum-game transactions between people in the free market place. Where the cooperation turns into coercion, government is there with police and a court system to resolve those disputes. What government should never do is create zero sum games that take from one individual or group and give it to another individual or group.

Are there flaws to the libertarian system? Of course, because we are all human. Is it the best system to foster freedom and prosperity for the greatest number? In my mind, absolutely.

I understand that this country has been living under a different paradigm for a long time. It is very difficult to get people to see a different vision if they have been living their own “Truman Shows” all of their lives.

So it takes education and a lot of it to achieve the new paradigm of true freedom. It probably won’t happen in my lifetime, but for the same reason many of our parents sacrificed their own dreams for the benefit of their children, I have devoted most of my life to educate, advocate and activate for a system of life that I think is the only system worth living in–a life of self direction maximizing the potential of every individual in pursuing his or her dreams to its greatest potential, where reason triumphs over force, where initiative triumphs over dependency, where cooperation triumphs over compulsion.

Phil Harte implies that I am merely jousting at windmills. He is entitled to his opinion but I do take heart in the fact that I am able to inspire some people to fight for freedom. Within the last two months I was introduced to two individuals, one about the age of thirty, the other about the age of twenty, both of whom, when they discovered that I was the person involved in the seatbelt fight, considered me a hero. Now, I don’t consider myself a hero, but it sure did make me feel good that I am able to inspire others of a younger age to continue the fight for freedom. It makes it all worth it.