Frontiersman, February 1995

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Frontiersman, February 1995

The Land of the Fee
And the Home of the Slave
by Sam Aurelius Milam III
Slavery is prohibited in the U.S.A. by the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That sounds good, but what does it mean? What's a slave? Here's a definition:

slave ... 1. One bound in servitude as the property of a person or household.
— from The American Heritage Dictionary
of the English Language, Third Edition

According to that definition, partnerships, privately owned companies, churches, or any other institution which doesn't qualify as a person under the law, or as a household, can own people and those people aren't slaves. Clearly, the definition is deficient. Let's improve it.

slave — Anybody who is involuntarily bound in servitude, other than as punishment for a crime, for the benefit any other person or group of people.

— Milam

The laws being what they are today, I'm being extravagantly generous to the government when I exempt convicted criminals from the definition of slavery. Anyway, how do you recognize a slave? It's easy. You check his behavior. If he's involuntarily working for the benefit of somebody else, and hasn't been convicted of a crime, he's a slave. Now we have a better definition and a reliable test for the condition defined. The test is easy to apply, and the results are easy to determine.

Go look in a mirror. Are you compelled to perform for the benefit of the IRS? Probably for about 20-30% of your labor your are. How many hours per day are you required to work for the benefit of your county tax collector? How many hours per day are you compelled to work for your state income tax agency, your state sales tax bureaucracy, your local sanitation district or school district? You get little or nothing for this labor; it's mostly or entirely for the benefit of someone else. It's easy to see that, by my definition, you're a slave.

Sadly, even this definition isn't completely rigorous. Working for someone else's benefit isn't the only criterion of a valid test for slavery. Here's another: if you must obey someone else whether or not you wish to do so and he has the power to punish you for disobedience, then you're a slave whether or not your obedience is for his direct personal benefit. For example, what happens if you're observing the police questioning someone on the sidewalk, and you don't move along when the cop tells you to? What happens if you don't allow a cop to search your car when he wants to do so? Suppose the county decides your front fence is too tall, and you refuse to remove it when they tell you to do so. There are even places in the U.S.A. where the local authorities can tell you what color to paint your house.

Whether or not you're a slave isn't the question. The fact is that you're a slave. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

Obey or Die!

by Sam Aurelius Milam III

Russian behavior in Chechnya is yet another lesson in the obvious: government will exert a virtually limitless amount of force to compel the obedience of people, with no regard whatsoever for the resulting effect upon the well-being of those people. All else is secondary to obedience. That is, if you resist each successive effort to force you to obey, you can expect escalation without limit until you are dead. This characteristic of government is, in and of itself, a sufficient mandate for the destruction of government as we know it. Next month, I'll begin a presentation of an alternative to such government: the Doctrine of Social Contract.

Noise Pollution
by Sam Aurelius Milam III
I'm really tired of illiterates who think they can speak to a subject. You speak about a subject. You speak to a listener. I also resent the usurpation of words by special interest groups. I'm sometimes gay, but I'm never homosexual. Another thing that annoys me is the animal documentaries. For example, the frisky little grey-crested kangaroo frog doesn't go down to the river to feed. He goes down there to eat. You feed an animal. An animal eats.
There are at least two things the sanctity of which must be preserved. One is contracts and the other is language. Predictable performance according to contract and clear understanding by the precise use of language are both vital to the continued existence of orderly human society.

Gun owners announce freedom initiative
Page 1 Box 1 The Montana Shooting Sports Association (MSSA), a state-wide, political-action organization of gun owners, has announced plans for a constitutional amendment to repeal Article I of the Montana Constitution, the Compact with the United States. MSSA was prompted to take this step by Congress' passage of the Crime Bill which contains a ban on many different semi-automatic rifles, a ban on magazines which hold over ten rounds, and a de facto firearm registration scheme. MSSA is calling upon leaders of other groups concerned about federal incursions into states' and individual rights to participate in this effort.
The president of MSSA, Gary S. Marbut, stated, "When Montana agreed to become a state, there was a basic presumption that the people of Montana would always be protected from the federal government by the Bill of Rights. Congress has abrogated that presumption, and has thereby nullified Montana's contract with the other states. Therefore, we have no further moral or legal obligation to maintain the Compact with the United States."
Page 1 Box 2 Marbut continued, "We love freedom more than we respect the federal government, which, quite frankly, has crossed over the double yellow. Montana is still the land of the free and the home of the brave. We will keep our freedom, even if it means going on our own."
For more information, contact Roger Koopman, MSSA Public Affairs, (406) 586-0231 or (406) 587-7555.

On January 24, 1995, star chamber judge Lance Ito denied O.J. Simpson's request to speak to the jury in his own defense.

Star Chamber ... n. 1. A 15th-century to 17th-century English court consisting of judges who were appointed by the Crown and sat in closed session on cases involving state security. 2. star chamber. A court or group that engages in secret, harsh, or arbitrary procedures. [So called because the ceiling of the original courtroom was decorated with stars.]

— the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition

Dixie
by Sam Aurelius Milam III

There are many lies in the U.S.A. today; pick your subject. Some of them relate to the so-called Civil War. Not the least of them is the name of the war itself. Properly speaking, a civil war is a war between a civilian population and its government. It is a civil uprising. In the south, they call this war The War Between the States. The common but incorrect name was dictated not by accuracy, but by the winners.
Page 2 Box

Another lie is that Lincoln fought the war to free the slaves. He may or may not have cared about ending slavery, but he didn't fight the war for that purpose.

Indeed, slavery hasn't ended yet. The 14th amendment only made citizenship the equivalent of slavery. Since then, you can no longer tell the difference.

Yet another lie is that the southern states had an obligation to remain in the union. There was no such constitutional requirement. The evil of slavery was irrelevant to the legitimacy of secession because, evil or not, slavery was legal according to the U.S. Constitution. As the Continental Congress pointed out over 200 years ago, the sanctity of contracts must be respected. If the abolition of slavery was desirable, such abolition should have been accomplished by amending the U.S. Constitution. In the meantime, the southern states were within the law of the land to keep slaves. They were not bound to remain in a union which illegally sought to destroy their constitutional institutions, however controversial those institutions may have been. The southern states behaved with propriety when they seceded from an oppressive union. Their behavior was at least as legal as that of the original thirteen colonies which seceded from England.

Presented following this article, as examples of the valid actions taken by the southern states, are portions of the declarations legally issued by South Carolina. These documents are entirely as valid as the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, the only significant advantage of the legality of the American Revolution over that of the southern secession is that after the southern secession, the advocates of central authority got to write the history books. America has never recovered from the loss.

... Contracts between Nations, like contracts between Individuals, should be faithfully executed even though the sword in the one case, and the law in the other did not compel it, honest nations like honest Men require no constraint to do Justice; and tho impunity and the necessity of Affairs may sometimes afford temptations to pare down contracts to the Measure of convenience, yet it is never done but at the expence of that esteem, and confidence, and credit which are of infinitely more worth than all the momentary advantages which such expedients can extort.

But although contracting Nations cannot like individuals avail themselves of Courts of Justice to compel performance of contracts, yet an appeal to Heaven and to Arms, is always in their power and often in their Inclination ....

— from the Journals of the Continental Congress

Volume XXXII, pages 177-178, Friday, April 13, 1787

SOUTH CAROLINA ORDINANCE OF SECESSION

December 20, 1860

An Ordinance to Dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled the Constitution of the United States of America:

We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the 23d day of May, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying the amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States under the name of the United States of America is hereby dissolved.

SOUTH CAROLINA DECLARATION OF CAUSES OF SECESSION

December 24, 1860

The people of the State of South Carolina in Convention assembled, on the 2d day of April, A. D. 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in their withdrawal from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other Slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.
In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the articles of Confederation; and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended, for the adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States.
... Thus was established by compact between the States, a Government with defined objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant .... We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely, the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that, where no arbiter is

Secession documents of South Carolina are taken without change from:
DOCUMENTS of AMERICAN HISTORY, eighth edition, edited by Henry Steele Commager, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Division of Meredith Corporation, New York, COPYRIGHT © 1968 BY MEREDITH CORPORATION

provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused for years past to fulfil their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows:

"No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
Stars and Bars

This stipulation was so material to the compact that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which obligations, and the laws of the General Government, have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the acts of Congress, or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from the service of labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of Anti-Slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own laws and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constitutional compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States; and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation ....

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace of and eloin the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books, and pictures, to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to Slavery. He is to be intrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the subversion of the Constitution has been aided, in some of the States, by elevating to citizenship persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its peace and safety.

On the 4th of March next this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the Judicial tribunal shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against Slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guarantees of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The Slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation; and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that the public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief.

We, therefore, the people of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent state, with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

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Money (the series): The Thrilling Conclusion
by Sam Aurelius Milam III

Did you get the house? Of course not. The numbers are worthless by themselves, and that's all you get when you deposit your check: numbers in a computer.

So what if you don't have good money? You can still take your plastic to Lucky's and get your Twinkies and Budweiser. So what's wrong with an economy based on the Vapor Standard? I'll tell you. The value of good money is based on the thing used as money, and not on the integrity of the people in charge. The value of good money is very stable over a long period of time, and is difficult for anyone to manipulate. The value of bad money isn't stable. With bad money, you might work for 1 hour to pay for a six-pack, and the next year the same purchase might cost you a day's labor. Or, if you're selling the stuff, you might get a lot of money one year and a lot less the next. When this sort of thing happens more than occasionally, some deficiency of the money is probably the cause. With the present "money," the only stability comes from policy decisions of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the IMF, etc. Your ability to survive in today's economy depends upon the integrity of these people. They control the value of the money. If they're honest, you're home free. However, before you open another Budweiser and settle back in front of the tube, maybe you should check and see if these guys know any voluptuous redheads.

So now you know how to tell good money from bad money, and you can make an educated guess about whether a thing isn't money at all. You have some insight into the present system of non-money, based on the Vapor Standard, and you have an inkling of who controls it. Maybe you're even beginning to suspect that you've been had and you're wondering what to do about it. I suggest you start by trying to get paid for your work in money. That'll be even more educational than this newsletter.

The most hated sort [of wealth-getting], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest*, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.

— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

* tokos, lit. 'offspring'.

Dear Frontiersman

This is a tardy response to your Dec. & Jan. articles, and I do not expect you to print my remarks. First of all, how many of your readers are women? You dwell on feminism quite a bit in 1994, and behold the whole December issue is a rerun on a very tedious subject. You are surely going to turn them off. I agree completely that women have been sold a bill of goods, and all the points you make about inequality are well taken. But for Pete's sake (and mine!) don't run the subject into the ground. All the "minorities" are doing the same thing. It's boring, it's dishonest. Save it for the media.

— Shirley; Urbana, Illinois

Dear Shirley
Thank you for the letter. I'm happy to print your remarks and respond to them. First, about 15% of my subscribers are female.
As for dwelling on feminism, running the subject into the ground, or "turning-off" my female readers, I expect that I'm as tired of the feminists as my female subscribers are of reading my opinions about feminism. The advantage of my subscribers is that they have the ability to stop reading my opinions if they wish. Men, however, have no way to escape from the feminists, who're aggressive, intrusive, and persistent. The policies and legislation they demand treat each man as if all men are the enemy. The effect is that men (as a group) are being attacked by women (as a group). As long as the feminists refuse to relent, I intend to "dwell on feminism".
The feminists have demanded equality at any cost. However, they want to be the only ones who decide what's equal and what isn't, and who gets it and who doesn't. This is unacceptable. Equality cuts both ways. If they're equal, then we can have anything they can have. For example, if they can require us to be good men by their definition, then we can require them to be good women by our definition. Quid pro quo.

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