November 5, 2014 (Remember, Remember)
Santiago, Chile
Long ago when I was a fresh young Army lieutenant straight out of the academy, I spent six months at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, learning how to be an intelligence officer.
Fort Huachuca (pronounced wah-CHOO-kuh) is nestled snugly on the Mexican border, so there were a lot of other government outfits in the area like US border patrol and the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Military intelligence officers routinely do stints in drug interdiction, so the relationship among all the agencies was quite chummy. And one day we had an agent from the local DEA office talk to our group about his agency’s local activities.
He was passionate, and went on about the scourge of drugs and all the statistics about how many plants they seize. At one point the lead instructor asked him what would finally solve this problem.
The agent didn’t skip a beat. “Declare war on drugs,” he said.
In his view, only if the US government declared all out war on drugs would they finally have the resources and wherewithal to win, whatever ‘winning’ actually meant.
Now, that was a long time ago… back before I began my own journey into personal and economic liberty. But even then I remember thinking, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
Seriously, how does one wage war against a noun? It’s not even possible. Declaring war on drugs is like declaring war on humor. There’s no enemy to fight, no objective criteria for victory. It’s absurd.
And yet the US government routinely does this– from drugs to poverty to terrorism.
I think about this from time to time whenever I hear people say how they’re going to ‘stay and fight’.
A lot of people realize at this point that things are different. No matter where they’re from, people all over the world wake up every day and realize, “this is NOT the country I grew up in.”
Freedom has been squashed– there’s very little of it remaining in the world. Privacy has been destroyed.
Regulators and bureaucrats tell us what we can/cannot put in our bodies and how we’re allowed to educate our own children.
Police and government agencies confiscate our assets at gunpoint. Politicians tax our hard-earned incomes and spend it all on bombs, drones, and welfare programs that keep them in power.
Unelected central bankers conjure trillions out of thin air, decimating responsible savers and retirees in order to benefit indebted governments, banks, and the ultra-wealthy.
People get it. They don’t like what’s happening. And for many, their solution is to ‘stay and fight’. Fight for freedom.
This is clearly a noble, respectable idea. But in fairness, fighting FOR a noun is just as futile as fighting AGAINST a noun. It’s not possible.
In the ‘fight’ for freedom, there is no real enemy. There’s no evil villain twirling his mustache. The enemy is the system itself.
[SPOILER ALERT]
In the climactic ending to V for Vendetta, the entire country goes into the streets to do battle with the police on (remember, remember) the 5th of November, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason Plot of 1605.
I think this is a lot of folks’ idea… that there’s going to be some climactic battle between imperial storm troops and armed, angry citizens, and that afterwards, balance will be restored to the Force.
I would suggest that life is much more complicated than this.
If Michelle Obama’s Fried Chicken appeal is any indicator (not to mention government statistics on taxes and benefits), there are still tens of millions of your fellow citizens who have a strong, vested interest in the status quo.
More importantly, why wait around for such carnage? Especially when there are far more effective tactics.
Human beings are thinking creatures. Our best and highest use is not to stand in the street like neanderthals and beat each other to a pulp.
Consider that this system depends on paper currency, taxes, and debt to sustain itself.
Governments need tax revenue to pay their goons and regulate the citizens. They need central bankers to print money and buy debt.
This addiction to debt, paper money, reckless spending is their major weakness. Thus, a far more effective approach is to disconnect from this system as much as possible. Stop participating. All of the tools and resources to do so already exist.
Think about it– with a simple table top aquaponics system (or some productive land), you can completely eliminate their ability to regulate what you can/cannot put in your body.
3D printing technology means there is effectively nothing they can ban (including firearms) which you cannot create for yourself.
You can also render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; consider trading at least a portion of your fiat money for alternatives like precious metals or digital currencies, and stop using their corrupt paper. This substantially reduces their power over you.
And, yes, you can also move out of the country and legitimately reduce your tax burden, depriving them of much needed revenue.
This is a radical option for many folks. Yet it’s important to understand that by moving abroad you are no longer directly funding their bombs, drones, and wars of terror.
And by starving the beast, you do more damage to the system than any level of violence can possibly achieve.
If you really want to fight for freedom, these are not options to ignore.
