DisillusionedPatriot
12-18-2010, 04:28 AM
I've been thinking a lot recently about the source of government power. Obviously, it derives from the consent of the governed. Why do we not just withdraw it? Our forefathers made the pledge in pursuit of freedom, to give "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Can we not muster a spirit of the same?
Any lover of liberty must realize that compliance with tyranny serves no fruitful purpose. Why do we continue to give it our sanction? In other words: why do we follow illegitimate laws?
I believe the answer for most of us is simple - convenience, and fear. In other words, it is easier to "go along" and follow the law, or break it through subterfuge, while privately expressing disagreement and disdain than to stand publicly in support of our freedoms - at a possible cost.
We are afraid of the repercussions - stigma, jail time, possible career problems, deliberate government retribution, etc. In fact, it is only to easy to say that we will "work towards changing" the law which we deem to be incorrect. This method of thinking is both fallacious, and precarious. To accept this stance is to agree, as a supposition, that the government agency/body in question has the right at all to settle this question. Indeed it is to acknowledge their authority in the matter. People will certainly say, "oh but as we work to change it, it will be on the grounds that the law in question is unconstitutional." Alright, then why on earth would we follow it?!
I just wish, somehow, that we, as a people could be shot with a dose of courage, and I only too sadly include myself among that number. Please let us remember the origins of the American Revolution. I find the offenses of King George, enumerated so eloquently in the Declaration of Independence, to bear flagrant similarity to the humiliations suffered upon us by the federal government.
Our Founding Fathers would be ashamed. Worse still, they would both pity and condemn us. They had to fight, some in actual combat, but with all risking everything they had, to win the freedoms we so carelessly subject nowadays. We have to risk so much less. Can't we do better?
I think people should just stop following bad laws. It's so obvious, and yet we don't do it. If 1 person in North Carolina walks down a busy street smoking a bowl, he's likely to be pulled over and charged. He'd probably get fined; possibly worse. And yet the man beside him smoking a cigarette will pass by unmolested (as of now at least - I say give it twenty years and smoking will also be "regulated" or "restricted" or some such).
I've thought a hundred times about going, buying a bowl, buying that stupid "spice" chemical mess that actually makes people sick, and lighting up right in front of a cop. I mean like, literally, right in front. If I'm in a public street where smoking is allowed, he can't really do anything. But even that is so insubstantial. It serves only to highlight an absurdity rather than to take a stand on personal freedom.
Why don't we just smoke in public? I mean, honestly, if all the people smoking weed in their homes or cars went and smoked on the sidewalk instead, the cops couldn't handle it. It's the magic of collective action.
Now I don't mean to focus on weed - it's just because it's really late, and I'm really high (ARREST ME!) - because the underlying message is the same.
Why don't we all just own up to our legitimate beliefs? Why do we follow laws that we all know are wrong and know perfectly well we had no say in making. How do I know? Because no lawmaker, even an elected lawmaker, has the authority to violate my rights, endowed by my Creator, and secured to me as a citizen under the Constitution of the United States of America. Have I "the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant"? I'm afraid Thomas Paine would think so. And every other great man I've respected since I can first remember.
I truly believe that the time has come, and that Americans must express, forcefully, though not with force, that we will no longer surrender our rights, nor submit to any government that wishes to subvert them.
All we have to do is stop. We do not have to be violent. We do not even have to protest. All we have to do is stop following stupid/illegitimate/unconstitutional laws.
Do we have it rough? Are our leaders so cruel, so omnipotent, so nefarious as to completely overwhelm any resistance?
No! The truth is in fact far worse - we supply our oppressors with all the power and influence they supposedly hold. Our complicity is their strength. All we need to do is withdraw it,
"To see an endless multitude of people not merely obeying, but driven to servility? Not ruled, but tyrannized over? These wretches have no wealth, no kin, nor wife nor children, not even life itself that they can call their own. They suffer plundering, wantonness, cruelty, not from an army, not from a barbarian horde, on account of whom they must shed their blood and sacrifice their lives, but from a single man; not from a Hercules nor from a Samson, but from a single little man. Too frequently this same little man is the most cowardly and effeminate in the nation, a stranger to the powder of battle and hesitant on the sands of the tournament; not only without energy to direct men by force, but with hardly enough virility to bed with a common woman! Shall we call subjection to such a leader cowardice? Shall we say that those who serve him are cowardly and faint-hearted? If two, if three, if four, do not defend themselves from the one, we might call that circumstance surprising but nevertheless conceivable. In such a case one might be justified in suspecting a lack of courage. But if a hundred, if a thousand endure the caprice of a single man, should we not rather say that they lack not the courage but the desire to rise against him, and that such an attitude indicates indifference rather than cowardice? When not a hundred, not a thousand men, but a hundred provinces, a thousand cities, a million men, refuse to assail a single man from whom the kindest treatment received is the infliction of serfdom and slavery, what shall we call that? Is it cowardice? Of course there is in every vice inevitably some limit beyond which one cannot go. Two, possibly ten, may fear one; but when a thousand, a million men, a thousand cities, fail to protect themselves against the domination of one man, this cannot be called cowardly, for cowardice does not sink to such a depth, any more than valor can be termed the effort of one individual to scale a fortress, to attack an army, or to conquer a kingdom. What monstrous vice, then, is this which does not even deserve to be called cowardice, a vice for which no term can be found vile enough, which nature herself disavows and our tongues refuse to name?
Place on one side fifty thousand armed men, and on the other the same number; let them join in battle, one side fighting to retain its liberty, the other to take it away; to which would you, at a guess, promise victory? Which men do you think would march more gallantly to combat---those who anticipate as a reward for their suffering the maintenance of their freedom, or those who cannot expect any other prize for the blows exchanged than the enslavement of others? One side will have before its eyes the blessings of the past and the hope of similar joy in the future; their thoughts will dwell less on the comparatively brief pain of battle than on what they may have to endure forever, they, their children, and all their posterity. The other side has nothing to inspire it with courage except the weak urge of greed, which fades before danger and which can never be so keen, it seems to me, that it will not be dismayed by the least drop of blood from wounds."
- Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de La Boetie (1550s)
Any lover of liberty must realize that compliance with tyranny serves no fruitful purpose. Why do we continue to give it our sanction? In other words: why do we follow illegitimate laws?
I believe the answer for most of us is simple - convenience, and fear. In other words, it is easier to "go along" and follow the law, or break it through subterfuge, while privately expressing disagreement and disdain than to stand publicly in support of our freedoms - at a possible cost.
We are afraid of the repercussions - stigma, jail time, possible career problems, deliberate government retribution, etc. In fact, it is only to easy to say that we will "work towards changing" the law which we deem to be incorrect. This method of thinking is both fallacious, and precarious. To accept this stance is to agree, as a supposition, that the government agency/body in question has the right at all to settle this question. Indeed it is to acknowledge their authority in the matter. People will certainly say, "oh but as we work to change it, it will be on the grounds that the law in question is unconstitutional." Alright, then why on earth would we follow it?!
I just wish, somehow, that we, as a people could be shot with a dose of courage, and I only too sadly include myself among that number. Please let us remember the origins of the American Revolution. I find the offenses of King George, enumerated so eloquently in the Declaration of Independence, to bear flagrant similarity to the humiliations suffered upon us by the federal government.
Our Founding Fathers would be ashamed. Worse still, they would both pity and condemn us. They had to fight, some in actual combat, but with all risking everything they had, to win the freedoms we so carelessly subject nowadays. We have to risk so much less. Can't we do better?
I think people should just stop following bad laws. It's so obvious, and yet we don't do it. If 1 person in North Carolina walks down a busy street smoking a bowl, he's likely to be pulled over and charged. He'd probably get fined; possibly worse. And yet the man beside him smoking a cigarette will pass by unmolested (as of now at least - I say give it twenty years and smoking will also be "regulated" or "restricted" or some such).
I've thought a hundred times about going, buying a bowl, buying that stupid "spice" chemical mess that actually makes people sick, and lighting up right in front of a cop. I mean like, literally, right in front. If I'm in a public street where smoking is allowed, he can't really do anything. But even that is so insubstantial. It serves only to highlight an absurdity rather than to take a stand on personal freedom.
Why don't we just smoke in public? I mean, honestly, if all the people smoking weed in their homes or cars went and smoked on the sidewalk instead, the cops couldn't handle it. It's the magic of collective action.
Now I don't mean to focus on weed - it's just because it's really late, and I'm really high (ARREST ME!) - because the underlying message is the same.
Why don't we all just own up to our legitimate beliefs? Why do we follow laws that we all know are wrong and know perfectly well we had no say in making. How do I know? Because no lawmaker, even an elected lawmaker, has the authority to violate my rights, endowed by my Creator, and secured to me as a citizen under the Constitution of the United States of America. Have I "the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant"? I'm afraid Thomas Paine would think so. And every other great man I've respected since I can first remember.
I truly believe that the time has come, and that Americans must express, forcefully, though not with force, that we will no longer surrender our rights, nor submit to any government that wishes to subvert them.
All we have to do is stop. We do not have to be violent. We do not even have to protest. All we have to do is stop following stupid/illegitimate/unconstitutional laws.
Do we have it rough? Are our leaders so cruel, so omnipotent, so nefarious as to completely overwhelm any resistance?
No! The truth is in fact far worse - we supply our oppressors with all the power and influence they supposedly hold. Our complicity is their strength. All we need to do is withdraw it,
"To see an endless multitude of people not merely obeying, but driven to servility? Not ruled, but tyrannized over? These wretches have no wealth, no kin, nor wife nor children, not even life itself that they can call their own. They suffer plundering, wantonness, cruelty, not from an army, not from a barbarian horde, on account of whom they must shed their blood and sacrifice their lives, but from a single man; not from a Hercules nor from a Samson, but from a single little man. Too frequently this same little man is the most cowardly and effeminate in the nation, a stranger to the powder of battle and hesitant on the sands of the tournament; not only without energy to direct men by force, but with hardly enough virility to bed with a common woman! Shall we call subjection to such a leader cowardice? Shall we say that those who serve him are cowardly and faint-hearted? If two, if three, if four, do not defend themselves from the one, we might call that circumstance surprising but nevertheless conceivable. In such a case one might be justified in suspecting a lack of courage. But if a hundred, if a thousand endure the caprice of a single man, should we not rather say that they lack not the courage but the desire to rise against him, and that such an attitude indicates indifference rather than cowardice? When not a hundred, not a thousand men, but a hundred provinces, a thousand cities, a million men, refuse to assail a single man from whom the kindest treatment received is the infliction of serfdom and slavery, what shall we call that? Is it cowardice? Of course there is in every vice inevitably some limit beyond which one cannot go. Two, possibly ten, may fear one; but when a thousand, a million men, a thousand cities, fail to protect themselves against the domination of one man, this cannot be called cowardly, for cowardice does not sink to such a depth, any more than valor can be termed the effort of one individual to scale a fortress, to attack an army, or to conquer a kingdom. What monstrous vice, then, is this which does not even deserve to be called cowardice, a vice for which no term can be found vile enough, which nature herself disavows and our tongues refuse to name?
Place on one side fifty thousand armed men, and on the other the same number; let them join in battle, one side fighting to retain its liberty, the other to take it away; to which would you, at a guess, promise victory? Which men do you think would march more gallantly to combat---those who anticipate as a reward for their suffering the maintenance of their freedom, or those who cannot expect any other prize for the blows exchanged than the enslavement of others? One side will have before its eyes the blessings of the past and the hope of similar joy in the future; their thoughts will dwell less on the comparatively brief pain of battle than on what they may have to endure forever, they, their children, and all their posterity. The other side has nothing to inspire it with courage except the weak urge of greed, which fades before danger and which can never be so keen, it seems to me, that it will not be dismayed by the least drop of blood from wounds."
- Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de La Boetie (1550s)