Killing Them Softly

YOU ARE NOT FASCIST, BUT YOUR COUNTRY IS:  

Killing Them Softly

            With sanctions, you don’t even have to get into the details of what they are because they are so simply explained by aims that cannot be denied.  Sanctions are a method of mass-murder set upon the civilians of a country in order to try and control their rulers.  And it may or may not work; all depending on if the rulers of said country are as ruthless as the one placing the sanctions.  I do not use the word murder loosely here.  It’s not used for shock or merely to offend, it is because sanctions work as a war without guns.  People don’t just starve, they don’t just suffer, but they die, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands.  Sanctions are murder.  The intent is death.  Nothing “cripples” the economy of a country like a pile of dead children.

            The current villain, Iran, is not America’s first journey into this immoral territory, though it is being ignored by the voting-class just as much as the last time major sanctions were put upon a country. Those sanctions brought about the death of up to 500,000 children.  Then only a few years later the Federal Government started a war, which killed hundreds of thousands, wounded hundreds of thousands, and made a refugee class out of millions.  I’m referring to the sanctions in Iraq in the 90’s under Bush I and Bill Clinton’s administrations.  If sanctions can kill so many, and the country that was being mass-murdered wasn’t brought to its knees, then why will it work this time?

            Sanctions are the silent war.  We only hear about them from the media and our leaders in the most basic words.  We never hear about the inflation, or the starvation, or the lack of medical supplies, or the deaths involved.  We never have it framed as war, but what else is it?  In the minds of most Americans it is just a word that means that somewhere some kind of punishment is going on and the people receiving it must deserve it because our rulers don’t like them.  Why would any Americans care?  They aren’t us.  They don’t look like us.  They don’t dress like us or eat like us.  They don’t worship like most of us.  How can we possibly relate?

The people that are suffering and dying are human beings.  Just like you and I, they have a runaway and controlling centralized government in which none of us has any control over.  Human beings don’t have to relate by culture, religion, or color to be the same.  Every time we sit down to dinner, with family or maybe alone; every time we drive to work or ride the bus; every time we go out for entertainment or take a sip from our favorite drink, this is all we need to connect.  Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness drives our cultures no matter who we are.  They are us and we are them, just people with desires for great things within our own lives.  Human beings don’t desire mass-murder, nations do.

             But we, as Americans, don’t realize any of this, because just as Iranians have been put to bed with hard sanctions, we are as oppressed in other ways.  Government and state media continue on with their propaganda, warning of bombs that aren’t there, and not talking of the oppression that is.  The realities of what we do simply do not reach us because the people being hurt are the “other.”  Would it matter of the realities of our actions did reach us?  It’s not an issue that we vote for, but most likely because they are Muslim that means they must want to kill us, and I have a feeling that if we did vote with sanctions on mind, things would be exactly as they are.  So while our rulers kill them, either with weapons or by suppressing their economic liberties, every death of every child will have been justified because we are America.  We are right and we are proud, even when our hands are covered in the blood of human beings just like us. 

The Splendors of the War Criminal

YOU ARE NOT FASCIST, BUT YOUR COUNTRY IS:
The Splendors of the War Criminal
 
The remedy to power is to simply withdraw that consent. – Murray Rothbard

For the second time in less than a decade Americans have gone out to the polls and reelected a war criminal.  2012 was very much 2004, years in which the people of a country could not see past their own boxed in ideologies and decided to go and vote when in reality there was no actual choice to be had.  They should have stayed home.  In these two years, not only were criminals given the reward of more power, but they were given consent to take even more rights away than they did in their first four years.  The worst picture painted on election night is right after this consent is given.  We see masses of people celebrating their very own natural human rights being legislated and executive ordered away; tearful, wondrous celebrations of their very own indefinite detention.  So while 60 million voted one way, we were sadly just over 2 million votes away from a different regime with very much the same views of authoritarian power. 

Over 100 million Americans chose abuse over enlightenment.

It is a terrible position for people to be put into.  Essentially we have a choice between a man who promises to murder thousands, and the other who speaks the rhetoric of peace while actually murdering thousands.  How did we get to this point?  The illusion of choice has become strong within our society, an illusion that has us believing there are two teams in existence within this political structure, and that one is more evil or less evil when they are both evil all the same.  Those who choose to vote are celebrated while the individuals who choose to opt-out are derided for their conscious decision.  Even those who do vote, but do so for a third party in protest of the corporatist party, are considered fools for wasting their vote.  Patriotism is reserved for those who choose to reelect war criminals.  The bright minds of the future are those who are bribed with their own money. 

The opt-outers of the abusive federal system, in which there were at least 100 million, aren’t even considered.

Revolution will never come by casting a vote.  Men who gain enough money and advertising to head the corporatist state have clearly been bought.  They have made promises to nefarious people and they have lied to millions.  It is not a problem for them to have blood on their hands or to take in billions of dollars through force and act as if they have the know-how in which to distribute it.  These are not men with great courage.  They are men who simply have the guns and know where to point them.  Yet we still find so many people believing their promises when we should all know by now that they are just slick advertisements or flat-out lies. 

No voter can truly be blamed.  This picture of the powers that be is never painted for us because both figureheads of the one-sided coin have their very own television station.  Each station worships their own celebrity and each paints their celebrity’s equal as the evil version of themselves.  The voters no longer have access to watchful eyes that report truth (if they ever did), only promoters and handlers that shape, clean, and shine their restoration project until the rust has been scraped from the surface.  Because of this power worship, the election process has become a long-winded, never-ending reality show, and the voting class doesn’t quite understand that at the end of the game it is their own heads on the line.  The casting of ballots has become a foolish task in which we acquiesce our rights to a man who simply seeks power.  Voting is a reminder to the elected leader that “yes, they can.”

Yes, they can take away your rights.

Yes, they can take your labor and your property.

Yes, they can murder whom they want.

Yes, they can waltz into any country they please and join in on the oppression that already exists there.

The worst part of the continuation of this self-abuse is that you cede ownership of your life and will.  They own it now.  Yes, they do.

You are the splendors of the war criminal.  

A Bagful

The thought began with a carelessly placed bag of apples falling from the counter and rolling to all corners of the kitchen floor.  He then remembered months later finding two that had been lost in the space between the refrigerator and the wall, shriveled down to silver dollars.

She got so mad at him that day, and it was so damn stupid.  The entire time she knew she had smelled something off, but he said she was fool-crazy.

Why was this the memory that had started him crying?  Why, when there were so many others…

You Are Not Fascist, But Your Country Is: Introduction

Some would say the use of the word fascism is an exaggeration, but I don’t think so.  If we feel comfortable calling our system of government crony capitalism, or corporatism, then I see no reason why we can’t call it fascism.  It is straight to the point, but at the same time I can see where it is misleading, so this series of essays will be about figuring out how to define fascism in our current context.  I’m not referring to Europe in the 30’s and 40’s, but America now.  I’m not going to use the lists that authors have compiled as tenants for what they think makes a fascist society.  I don’t have to.  While this country may hit a lot of the benchmarks, I believe that we are suffering through a uniquely American fascism.  One in which we maybe don’t realize is happening, but we actually embrace.  It’s the old boiling frog scenario, and the heat has been on a slow rise in temperature for a very long time, though the times are changing and many of us are just now starting to realize we better jump from the pot before it’s too late.

If this country isn’t suffering through a long bout of fascism, then what is our system?  I know, it’s a Republic, or a Democratic Republic, right?  Sure, and on its surface The 4^th of July is about independence.  But of course we know that is nonsense.  Just as much as our country is not free, that day of nationalistic fervor can only really celebrate the past, America’s heyday of independence.  But how do they connect it to the present in any substantial way?  They’ve slowly reframed it as a day of celebrating militarism.  Though most likely, we no longer know many of the soldiers who go overseas.  We no longer see the pictures from their wars.  We barely know their stories.  We hardly grasp that their suffering has nothing to do with independence.  So if it isn’t about independence now, what was all this pain about in the past?  Even beyond the last American century, how long did independence really last?

Instead of a day of blind nationalism where we celebrate what they tell us to, I think it’s time for a day of questioning where we can all put our collectivism that has been built over the years to good use.  We can get together and openly question policies set forth by the government.  These won’t be Republican questions or Democratic questions, because as an institution, the government doesn’t exist within in those ideologies, it is now one beast whose figurehead sometimes changes, but beyond that the song remains the same.  

For this day of national questioning instead of being mesmerized by the booming fireworks, we can ask why we have such expansive militarism in so many countries all over the world and whether you feel comfortable spending $1,000,000,000,000 on it every year.  Instead of singing the empty words of patriotic songs, we could try to understand what these words mean and how they actually relate to the America we are living in.  We can look at the words that our authoritarian leaders use and understand that sometimes independence actually means dependence.  Instead of saluting Old Glory, we could look at all those stars and stripes and try to understand what actually holds us together like a bundle of sticks.  Is it that social contract that none of us has ever seen or signed?  Is it the Constitution?  Maybe it is just fear.

What is it about keeping this bundle so tightly wound that is more important than freedom?  In this convoluted yet archaic system that we have allowed to be built around us, where does the individual truly stand anymore?  Who are the Americans beyond the management and beyond the central planning?  Can we still be the masters of our own lives?

This is the first of what I hope to be many essays on the crumbling road that America has decided to traverse.  This isn’t about George Bush.  It’s not about Obama or Romney.  These men are just personalities that every now and then hand off the reigns to one another for something that is bigger than they can ever be.  There is nothing organic happening between them and us.  Government is a power-sucking machine and the people outside of it are just grease grinding through its gears making sure that it continues to run.  This is why it is us who have to dry up these old ideas of empire and fascism.  This deeply entrenched system must not continue to move through our lives as if it were the natural progression of humanity.  Force and control on such a massive scale are not naturally occurring concepts; they must be taught and embedded within us.  It is time we stop learning from the wrong people, those who would have you believe that liberty is a virtue to be granted by a higher authority.

It is my hope that with these essays I can help convince a few people to open their eyes when our fearless rulers want them closed.  I hope that you feel the need to speak, when they want you to shut up.  It is time to look directly into the soul of what we have become, and not weep in pain, but speak in the clear and sure voice of a free thinker. 

Let the individual emerge and show the path to the future.  

State of Mind

A bottle burst in the street and they both sprung up fast.  Her eyes screamed terror as he leapt from bed with a wooden bat in hand.  There was hesitation to even look, but he slowly made a space in the shut blinds.

“There’s nothing,” he said with moonlight sneaking in and hitting his face.

She could see he had not been sleeping either.  The stories people told on the ham radio of what was happening in other cities had them mad with thought.  Eventually, the tanks would arrive, and more than bottles would break.  

It Came As It Went

“Equal at last,” she said aloud, closing her eyes.

The law had passed that granted the rights of this group be no greater and no less than that group.  Together, they were free.  The euphoria that had swept the country swirled through her bedroom as she dreamed of the future.

Then she heard the crash.  Footsteps.  Pounding.  Yelling.  She looked out her window and saw police forcing her handcuffed neighbor into a car.  Another officer followed with a pile of books and a hard drive. 

Closing the blinds, she said in silence, “...at long last.”

Turn It Off

I was at a Wilco show a few weeks ago and noticed something about the audience: they were very energetic, very young, and very happy to be there.  I don’t know why this struck me on this particular night.  It’s not abnormal to find a bunch of people at a rock show having a good time, but there was a special feeling to this crowd.  While I was watching this sea of people ten to fifteen years younger than me dance and live it up, it projected a whole lot of positive thought about the future.  Now, I don’t know what sort of ideology this crowd carried as they are growing up in a time of almost complete authoritarian control and it is hard to see beyond the propaganda, but all this positive energy that kept Wilco on stage for 2 ½ hours gave me a bit of hope that this crowd wouldn’t be growing up with anger guiding the way.  To really achieve an enlightened shift in mindset I believe there is something very important they all need to do.  Turn off the TV.

Television, radio, and print are cesspools of establishment ideas, and it isn’t just entertainment personalities, it is political leaders too.  These ideas and these people are hate-catalysts, and they are exactly what the young need to move away from.  This is not a screed about left media, or right media, it is about all media that coddles the establishment line of thought.  That just happens to be pretty much everything you’re going to find on television these days and the only way to escape is to turn it off.

I really have no idea what popular viewing is, but it does not matter because while the voices may be different, from Jon Stewart to Sean Hannity, the message is the same.  They always protect the state, no matter how wrong or how far it goes.  It may seem at times that Jon Stewart is going after politicians for various social issues, but in the end he makes so light of most of the corruption that he helps his audience look past it.  He is an enabler, because while making sometimes poignant jokes about one group, the very serious civil rights issues and drone-murder atrocities fall way in the background to the point where his audience comfortably gets to forget what the Democrats are really doing.  How else could you explain how the anti-war left has failed so miserably in holding these people’s feet to the fire?  After 6 years of a Democratic Senate, 4 years of the Presidency, and 2 of those with the House, the wars are worse then ever and expanding.  This is why the left media is as dangerous and ugly as the right, and why we must recognize the whole shebang as state media.  Acquiescence to authoritarian power is what they aim for.  It is the same reason why they frame the argument for gay marriage as a right we must have bestowed upon us, not one that should be given back.  It is always about the creation of new laws, not the repeal of old ones.  Our rights were always there.  It is the state that has taken them. 

The conversation is always framed towards the benefit of power, never in rejection of it; people who are much older and come from a different era, one that was enveloped by conformity and propaganda, frame it for the young.  The “trust in government” cycle has been going on for much too long and it is time to break it.  The people appearing on your television are deep in it, whether they believe that American empire must shape the world, or they believe it belongs in every aspect of our lives, what they don’t believe in is solutions.  They believe that your life belongs in the hands of a higher authority, and that your volition does not move beyond voting for one of two ideologies.  Beyond the parties and their push in one direction, you barely exist.

But your life belongs to you and only you.  You must take control of yourself.  It’s like we have been thrown into a padded room wearing a tightly fitting straitjacket.  The walls surrounding us are covered in words and phrases that don’t amount to more than talking points and empty rhetoric.  These are the crazy ideas of bureaucrats and managers that believe they can control your life better than you can with programs that box humans with different needs into a one-track life.  Even with all this distraction, there still exists a door in this room and it is left unlocked.  There is an escape.  You just have to somehow turn that knob.  Maybe it’s a little harder because your hands are not free, but in real life, it’s even easier to get the process going of leaving behind the noise.  It starts with clicking the power button on a remote control. 

Is there still hope for my own relatively young generation?  I’m not sure.  Most seem to continue to fall in line.  They watch the old media and listen to the same old voices that protect their ears from hearing the serious violations of human and civil rights by their government.  They still seem to believe in leaders who wear their corruption on their sleeves ( It’s funny, you always hear that politicians should have to wear patches like NASCAR drivers to show who owns them.  But they really don’t have to, do they? We already know they are corrupted and vote for them anyway.  If anybody should wear the patches, it is us, because we really have no clue just how owned we are.).  The people I grew up with still believe that the authority they like should also have authority over their neighbor’s life, even when your neighbor does not agree at all.  We have yet to turn it off. 

I used Jon Stewart as an example of a protector of the establishment earlier, mostly because he is seen as a guy who is there for us.  But he isn’t alone.

Lawrence O’Donnell – Born 1951

Glen Beck – Born 1964

Rush Limbaugh – Born 1951

Chris Matthews – Born 1945

Stephen Colbert – Born 1964

Keith Olbermann – Born 1959

Bill O/Reilly – Born 1949

Sean Hannity – Born 1961

The youngest person I could find on this list was Rachel Maddow who was born in 1973.  Of course I haven’t had cable news on in quite a while so I’m not sure if these folks are even the main personalities anymore.  It doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t, the fact is that they are on TV because and other parts of establishment media because they are going to play nice.  Whichever side they represent, they protect our authoritarian government.

What I’m not trying to say is that because these people are older they are wrong.  Each individual is wise in their own way, and every one of them is going to understand and convey truths that cannot be denied.  They are wrong because they are part of ideological teams that they cannot see beyond.  They promote the vision of their team, and ultimately that vision is state power.  For their generations, freedom is an afterthought.  You would think after years and years of failure to move liberty forward in any way, they would see that the authoritarian power structure that they promote would no longer be the solution, it would only be the problem.  Forcing the individual to be a part of the collective would be the problem.  Forcing free and naturally working markets to be ordered and controlled would be the problem.  Forcing other areas of the world to Westernize through coercion and violence, instead of promoting our way with peace and freedom using the tools of the information age, is the problem.  These people on television are wrong and they remain on television because they are wrong.  They create an unquestioned reality for viewers to soak in.  They create the angry divide.  They create hatred in our society and enable state power to work off that hatred.  And they probably don’t even see it because they’ve been in the thick of it for so long.

So turn it off.  Find out what reality is.  Find out who people really are.  Understand your natural human rights.  Live beyond the state.  Live as an individual who wants others to be able to live in their own way.  Leave the loony bin behind.  Turn it off.

Government in 2016

With the illusion of choice being set out before us, I thought it would be a good time to muster up some mystical energy and foretell future events.  Now I’ve never actually done this before, so one or two things may be wrong within this list, but I really don’t think I’ll be too far off.  If history tells us anything about tomorrow, it’s that the future is a closed book collecting dust on the shelf, we’ve read it all before, every time closing it without having learned a damn thing.

Of course these predictions are for either boss from either gang taking the reigns of the protectionist scheme called government. 

• The economy will continue to be a centrally controlled system in the hands of a few men.  If Executive Order #13603 is enacted, most of private industry will be nationalized, meaning control of various industries will be handed off to officials within the President’s administration.

• The natural rights you were born with will continue to be controlled through the following:
• The Patriot Act  
• The NDAA, in which the Presdient claims the power to throw you in a cell indefinitely without trial or charges.
• Executive Order #13603, which not only claims state-ownership of private industry, but ultimate ownership of your life through conscription.
• The Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act , which denies free speech wherever the Secret Service decides.

• Government will still claim ownership of a certain percentage of your property, which was earned through your labor.  Therefore government claims ownership of your labor.  

• Children will continue to be born slaves to the debt of previous generations.

• Plans for Predator Drones flying over American skies will still be in place, though they will be re-branded “Patriot Drones” and they will be providing “Freedom Surveillance.”

• The Federal government will still be murdering innocent civilians (sometimes Americans) with killer robots called Reaper Drones, yet when new terrorists come about with bombs strapped to their chests, our freedoms, yours and mine (and theirs, if they too weren’t so controlled to realize it), will be blamed for why they want to kill us.

• Public-Private partnerships, or corporatism, or fascism; such as Trapwire  and Monsanto, or legislation such as the Affordable Care Act will continue to thrive.

• Still more natural rights will be under attack as the TSA moves from airports, to subways, to the roads.

• Plants that grow naturally out of the ground will continue to be illegal, while drugs that are created in laboratories which not only have horrific side-effects, but also kill people, will continue to be legal.

• The wealth you earn will still be redistributed to foreign dictators who will continue using it for purchasing weapons from American companies (yet more corporatism) so that they can continue to uphold a totalitarian state.

• Men and Women in government that have sworn to protect the Constitution will continue to go to trial and be ostracized when they do so because they weren’t instead protecting secret government powers.

• Elected officials will continue to be liars, cheats, thieves, and murderers.  They will continue to legislate to the highest bidder on all matters healthcare, military, and energy.  They will continue creating hundreds of thousands of new laws every year to further control the masses.

• No matter what these elected officials do, no matter how awful, you will continue to vote for them.  As you continue to choose this authority over your life, and as your life continues to be ruled by these select few, your life will continue to not be your own.

• Finally, no matter how many die, whether through sanctions or bullets, the actions of your government will continue to be justified with the rhetoric of democracy.  These people will continue to die for the better good.  War will continue to be peace. 

You don’t have to stop voting, but you better realize that there is no lesser of two evils.  Voting should be understood as a moral issue.  If you understand that everything stated above (amongst many other things) will continue to happen no matter who is elected, and you accept that, then by all means go out and vote.  As the executive office grows stronger, maybe you will feel more comfortable that it is your guy who gets to be judge, jury, and executioner.  I won’t.  When the government that takes charge of my life decides to murder a 16-year-old American boy in Yemen, understand that it doesn’t matter who is in charge.  These powers never retract.  They only grow stronger, and sooner or later, it won’t be in Yemen that executioner is working.  It will be in your backyard.  

Free Everyone

Is it a great stretch for the individual to try to understand and love all people of the world, strangers that should really have no effect on their lives?  This isn’t to say that we must love everyone in the same way that we love our family, but in a way that we respect each individual’s personal freedom enough not to infringe upon it.  This can be as simple as not trashing your neighbor’s yard, or as complicated as finding the correct response to the violence of criminal extremists in which you don’t hold an entire people responsible.  While culture may be greatly different in the world’s various regions, the want for living as a free person is not.

Your love for the world is the love of freedom, and freedom can only extend to all by example.  Might does not make right in a free world for the simple fact that it exemplifies force as the answer, and that the user of the force is justified. 

The only true freedom that can exist is that of the individual, for each individual is born a free and natural person.  Eventually a compulsory system of social order comes into their life and the collective mind is born.  The rights of the collective are a crime against the individual, because when rights are created for groups, other groups must enforce them.  A hierarchy of authority is then created, and eventually that authority will come to have the ultimate rights and the ultimate justification.  An unnatural system that is created to control, coerce, and fool the individual into believing that their life belongs to the collective is no example to show the rest of the world.  There can be no peace amongst people when association is violent and managed. 

The people of this world will find no great love for each other’s freedom if their minds are shackled to authority.  They will not be able to grow out of their own prejudices and extreme ideologies when violence and control are the example.  Truth and liberty does not come with a gun to the head.

For the world to be free, understanding of individual liberty has to come first.  We must understand that community should be natural.  Help is a voluntary gesture from each individual.  Some will not help, but most will, because as humans our first reaction to others is empathy.  When we hear stories we try to relate to them, if we can’t, we try to understand them through learning.  We are adults who can make our own decisions and work towards the paths we want.  We won’t always win in these pursuits, but the example isn’t winning, the example is being free. 

The majority of this world is born without chains, but it doesn’t take long for the state to start placing them around our necks, and sooner or later we come to accept this unnatural social order and our very own hands then tighten the chains. 

Love yourself.  Respect yourself.  Free yourself.  The world may follow.

Free The Ones You Love

The only person you can control is yourself.  Personal liberty is a journey that people must not only discover for themselves, but must also guide themselves through.  One person may not take the same path as another because ultimately it’s about finding your own way, and finding your true individual self.  That isn’t to say you couldn’t be someone’s initial burst of truth, but seeking answers is up to each person on their own terms. 

Unfortunately there are minds that will always be trapped, whether it is in statism or other abusive systems, and you sometimes find that love is just letting go.

All people are free to take the chances that they think are best for them.  Anything you have to say in regard to that choice is just opinion.  Your two cents may be from experience, and you may think that mistakes are being made, but ultimately you have no say.  Not even in your child’s life, because the life of your child is not your own. 

The idea of love is to let people be free enough to choose their own life.  Freedom is the chance to fail.  Failure is the chance to grow.  Growing is the chance to understand the next logical step to better decisions. 

But saying all that doesn’t mean there aren’t times to step in.  Love is also volunteering your help, time, value, and sometimes a part of your own life to others.  The risk you take in helping somebody is your own.  Being selfless can result in gratitude, it can result in respect, and it can result nothing.  The help you give is about the decision you made without any coercion or force.  The results are never perfect, but loving those closest in your life is never easy.  Loving others means taking on burdens, whether it is the time you say “no”, or the time you say “yes.”

There is great responsibility in your own actions, especially those that affect others.  The most useful step towards greater freedom in your own life and in the life of others is through an understanding of the non-aggression principle.  If you expect to be treated peacefully, you should take the same action with respect to those you love.  If you are attacked, defense should be held in just as high of standards, but the ethics of freedom is letting go of ever being the attacker.  Liberty by example may be the strongest attribute in freeing the ones you love.  The strongest aspect of personal liberty is being able to share it and spread it without having to force it beyond your own life. 

The love of freedom is the freedom to love, and the more free you are, the further that love can spread.  

The Ultimate Irony?

Two weeks ago I went to the Reno Hot Air Balloon Races and something that I saw has been on my mind ever since.  As usual they send one balloon up with the American flag hanging from it as somebody sings the National Anthem.  Before they did this they let us know that the flag being used had just returned from the Middle East where it flew over Afghanistan in a Predator drone (which they called aircraft to hide what it was).

I thought it to be pretty ironic that a flag once considered the symbol of justice and liberty was inside of a Predator drone, a symbol of the loss of privacy and property as it helps occupy a sovereign land.  At least they didn't put it inside of a Reaper drone, the one that kills and brings terror to places the US isn't even at war with.

Most people were clapping and cheering when they heard this.  I just wanted to look the other way.

Free Yourself

         Freedom must always start with one’s self.  Within your mind there exist barriers set up by your life’s education that keep you from understanding what it is to be free.  Freedom itself should only be understood by the means of natural rights, the rights and liberty you are born with, but in the world we live in, this description is simply not feasible.  We have to look at freedom as something to be obtained, and the only definition that now works for freedom is to no longer be confined or imprisoned.  We must break those barriers that exist in our mind.  To do this, we must first learn to love ourselves. 

            Love your life.  Love your worth.  Love your ability.  Once you start to learn to respect yourself, you may also feel a little helpless.  Part of the reason is that fallacies will be everywhere.  The most powerful fallacy being the one thing that has been schooled into you since birth: that there is a greater authority over your life than yourself.  This of course is a completely unnatural thought that has been pushed into your mind and will probably be one of the hardest things to unlearn.  And unlearning is the key to freedom, a struggle you will most likely go through for a lifetime because the greatest traps have been set in your own mind.  The strongest opposition may be your belief system, which is in fact not always your own. 

This is where an ultimate respect for your own body and mind becomes so important, and for the most basic of reasons, you are the sole owner of both.  Being that you are the proprietor of your life, you must accept that ultimate responsibility lies in your own hands.  To all others, responsibility for your life is a voluntary option.  Another person may help you and take care of you, or they may not.  In the case of others, this same option belongs to you as well.  When you give a dollar to a man you do not know, or even a pint of blood, there is a social contract there, but one in which you wrote and signed yourself.  There were no other hands involved.  There was no force.  The decision to give came from your own volition.

            Personal liberty is not only loving and respecting yourself, but it extends to that which you have built and sustained from the work of your hands and mind.  It is also knowing yourself.  If you think you can better the world by being productive, then you must take that path.  If you think that you can better the world by being charitable, then you must do so.  It doesn’t matter because when you take ownership over the means by which they come to fruition, they are one and the same.  But you cannot think that you can better the world by taking away another’s liberty, for if someone were to take yours, then you can only be hurt.  A part of your life, your worth, and your ability is stolen away, and most unfortunately a part of your mind is caged without escape because it becomes “just the way things are.” 

Taking possession of the property of others through coercion is wrong.  Liberty is not created for you by anything written on paper or because a collective of people allow it to you, it is with you at birth, and once you understand how authoritarian force hurts you, you can start to understand how it hurts the world.  Once this personal liberty is an active component of your own life, the love of freedom and the freedom to love will start moving to all aspects of the world around you, because while changing the world may not be an option, changing the world around you is.  Without coercion, without aggression, without force, your most viable tools become reason and respect, and of course a little love never hurts either.

Let's Try this again.

I can't believe it has been a year since I tried to start this thing.  A year since I tried to start and a year since I've posted anything.  The main problem has been that I'm writing three different comics and building a website for them, so there really hasn't been much time for me to write short stories.  None at all.

I'm going to make an attempt to revamp the website though.  Now it will be all about very short stories like I do yearly for the local 95-word story contest.  I like the format and it forces you to say what you have to and paint a picture in very little space.  I'm also going to be writing short essays that are based on my fumbling with a new philosophy.  An exploration into peace, non-aggression, and liberty.  Expect that within the very short stories as well.

I guess this wasn't so much written for people to read, but it's my mission statement that I'm going to try damn hard to stick to.

- John