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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
Gun
owners announce freedom initiative
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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." 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. |
If you don't want to keep receiving this newsletter, print RETURN TO SENDER above your name and address, cross out your name and address, and return the newsletter. When I receive it, I'll terminate your subscription. Back issues or extra copies of this newsletter are available upon request. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce this newsletter in its entirety or to reproduce material from it, provided that the reproduction is accurate and that proper credit is given. Please note that I do not have the authority to give permission to reprint material that I have reprinted from other publications. For that permission, you must go to the original source. I would appreciate receiving a courtesy copy of any document or publication in which you reprint my material. I solicit letters, articles, and cartoons for the newsletter, but I don't pay for them. Short items are more likely to be printed. I suggest that letters and articles be shorter than 500 words, but that's flexible depending on space available and the content of the piece. I give credit for all items printed unless the author specifies otherwise. This newsletter isn't for sale. If you care to make a voluntary contribution, you may do so. The continued existence of the newsletter will depend, in part, on such contributions. I accept cash and postage stamps. I don't accept checks, money orders, anything that will smell bad by the time it arrives, or anything that requires me to provide ID or a signature to receive it. In case anybody's curious, I also accept gold, silver, platinum, etc. I'm sure you get the idea. 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.
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
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