Why would someone run for office? Why would you want them to?

They seem to be as ubiquitous as cockroaches - people wanting you, to want them, to steal your hard earned money, and run your life. That's right, it's those evil little trolls called political candidates. You can't get away from them. Their smiling faces and their lies are on billboards, in your mailbox, on your TV, on your computer. And God knows, once we elect one of them, there really is no escape. You can't politely decline their offer. Refusal to pay tribute or follow their rules can and will result in penalties which increase with the degree of your desire to simply be left alone.

The next time you see an ad asking for your consent to become one of their slaves, stop and ask yourself, why. Why does this person want to run for office? Does he really believe that he's smarter, or more moral, or more ethical than you? Is he somehow better equipped to know how to spend your money better than you? Is he clairvoyant, somehow knowing what is best for you and your family, even though every individual on this planet has different likes, dislikes, dreams, goals and abilities?

Or, is it really that he's just a parasite that wants to feed from the tax trough and control your life?

If his concern is really for others, (as they all claim), then why doesn't he just get a productive job which actually serves the community without holding a gun to our heads to force us to pay for said services. Folks, the country is going broke. The fact is we've been consuming more than we've been producing for a long time. We fell for the biggest scam there is - politics. Politicians promise everything, prosperity, security, fairness, (That one's a real hoot, ain't it?), justice, and we actually believe that politicians can grant us those things. We fall for the same gag every time. It's like Lucy promising to hold the football while Charlie Brown kicks it. Good ends cannot be produced by evil means. Remember folks, the government cannot provide anything from the one hand which it doesn't first steal from the other, (plus a substantial handling fee.) Consider that the only four tools government has are theft, violence, slavery, and fraud. The rest of us produce goods and services for others which they voluntarily buy from us. Most of us treat our neighbors well, we don't threaten them with violence even if they don't give is a percentage of their paychecks. We don't invade their privacy or tell them what they can or cannot peacefully do. We don't fine or arrest them for selling their property for more than the market price, (what the government calls gouging), or less than the market price, (what the government calls flooding) or even for selling at the market price, (what the government calls price fixing.) No, quite the contrary, most of us are happy to let our neighbors live their lives as long as they do the same to us. It's not until you get the politicians involved that things get ugly. Why? Because only the government has the monopoly on the use of violence against others with impunity. If anyone else steals from you, you may exercise your right to defend yourself. When it's the government, you better not. When anyone else forces you to act against your will, again, you may exercise your right to defend yourself and again, if it's the government, you'd better not. There's one to think about for those who believe in equal rights. Why are the rights of the government class greater than the rest of us? If I don't have the right to steal, commit violence or fraud, why should they?

The question that needs to be asked most is, "What type of person desires that kind power over others?" Even with the best of intentions, they must realize the immorality of the political means to their ends.

The next time someone who lacks the humility to understand that he's NOT better than you asks you to vote for him, ask him why you'd be better off as his slave than you would be as a free man.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." CS Lewis

The Treasure Coast Friends of Freedom

I thought it would be nice to have a place for liberty minded folks on and around Florida's Treasure Coast to get together on an informal basis. Sign up to the group, we'll have you over one evening, throw some dead animal on the grill and crack open a few cold ones. It'll be a great opportunity to hang out with people that won't look at you like you're a Martian when you say what you believe.

Rights 101

I believe the most important tool for any task is knowledge. Without knowledge, the ability to successfully complete any task is only guesswork, trial and error, and luck. This includes the arduous task of defending rights.

There are two main factors responsible for the constant struggle of defending rights. One is human nature. Mankind has a built in inclination to obtain that which he wants and needs for the least possible amount of personal effort. This attitude is generally negatively referred to as laziness, however the inclination is morally neutral and produces both positive and negative consequences depending on the actions employed as the means to those ends. To some, this means fitting their concept of rights to suit their needs. The second factor is the nebulous and subjective definitions which people have in regard to rights. People will purposely or subconsciously make their definition of rights elastic to suit their desires. Others, without an objective, consistent concept of rights, are simply easily misled.

I have three dictionaries in the house. My favorite is the oldest one. (I would suggest that every home be equipped with a dictionary that is at least thirty years old.) In them, they attribute several meanings to the noun "right" but as it would be used pertaining to the concept of rights, they tend beat around the bush and don't get around to the meat of the word and the attributes which would separate it from "privilege."

Coming to an understanding of a correct and consistent concept of rights took time for most of us. And it's easier to have such an understanding than it is to relate that understanding to others in a concise manner.

That said, I'd like you to consider taking the time and effort to formulate a definition of rights which is correct, objective, consistently applicable and concise.

The question is, "What are rights?" I believe the following questions will assist in formulating the answer.


From whence do rights come?


To whom do rights belong?


What human actions can be applied to rights? (Or what can one human do in regard to rights, such as respect, violate, waive, transfer, defend...)


What human actions cannot be applied to rights?

To what do rights apply?


What is the difference between a right and a privilege?


Why is a concept of rights necessary?



right(s): n,

My own thoughts on these are;

From whence do rights come? I am a Christian, therefore my answer is theistic in nature. God granted mankind individual rights and is also the only one who can take them away. They are part of His gift of grace which sustains our every breath of life. They exist as part of nature and act in harmony with the laws of nature just as surely as the laws of physics. For the non-theist, consider them as part and parcel of the equilibrium of the natural world.

To whom do rights belong? Rights belong to individual human beings. They do not belong to groups of human beings or plants or animals or society or the Earth.

What human actions can be applied to rights? People can own rights, exercise them, defend them, respect them, transfer them, waive them, abdicate them or violate them, just to name a few.

What human actions cannot be applied to rights? This question is, in my opinion, more important than the last. People cannot grant rights or take them away. They are the inherent property of each individual regardless of his ability to exercise them due to natural limitations or the degree to which they are violated. I believe this is essential to rights for if they can be granted or taken away by men then they are not rights at all, rather they are privileges.

To what do rights apply? Rights are applicable to every form of human interaction. They have to do with what individuals may and may not do, not with what they can and cannot. They do not apply to God who, as creator of all, can snuff out the whole lot of us and justly so. They do not apply to nature. plants and animals do not have rights, nor can they violate your rights, neither can gravity, lightening, hurricanes, floods, or any other natural circumstances which deprive us of our ability to exercise our rights. We are at the mercy of God and nature. The loss of ones rights due to thirst, drowning, starvation, cancer, lightening strike, etc., does not constitute a violation thereof. Only human beings can have rights. Only human beings can violate them.

This brings us to the very important distinction between rights and privileges. Privileges can be granted and taken away by human beings. Privilege is a transfer of the exercise of a right from one individual to another and can also be granted to groups of individuals from the individual members of another. However, legitimate privilege can only be granted by the owner of the right associated with that privilege. Illegitimate privilege is when a third party, such as government by granting privileges, thus violating the rights of one individual, or group, for the benefit of others. A second important distinction is that privilege can be conditional. You may give me the privilege of using your pencil, so long as I don't write dirty words with it and I bring it back sharp. You may use the government's parks, schools and roads so long as you don't bring alcohol or glass containers, don't paint your name on the buildings, wear your seat belts, don't exceed the posted limits, pick up your pet waste, don't bring your defensive weapons and be home before curfew. Rights are absolute and never conditional. Conditions placed on the exercise of rights are violations of those rights regardless of their extent or good intentions.

What are rights? They are the fulcrum of equal justice, the balance of each individual's life, liberty and property against violations by all other individuals. I may not steal from you because you may not steal from me. I may not take your life, because you may not take mine. You may not enslave me, because I may not enslave you. You may not defraud me, because I may not defraud you. All the good intentions in the world, regardless of the number of individuals or governments you can get to back these violations of rights will never legitimize them.

See also this article by Robert Higgs:
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=1088

Please send your replies to:

http://bryandmorton.blogspot.com/2008/03/rights-101.html

Peace, freedom, justice and prosperity,

Bryan Morton

Putting God in His Place

If God was all powerful, He could make a stone so big that He Himself couldn't lift it, but if He can't lift it then He can't be all powerful. Gee, that was original. How many times have we heard people try to describe God in our limited little human terms? The logic problem above is a matter of physics, having to do with gravitational forces on mass and the energy required to increase the the altitude of said mass, blah, blah, blah... So, is God lifting this stone from the Earth, the moon, Pluto??? What if the stone's so big that when God flexes, the stone remains stationary and the place where God is standing moves? Does that still count? It's all rather silly if you think about it. Before any human ever even considered the laws of physics, God had created them. Physics and the laws of nature simply did not exist before God called them into being. And yet, we think we can think God out of existence with our applied ignorance.

Our concept of eternity seems pretty limited as well. As human beings, our experience teaches us that everything has a start and an end. Therefore, the concept of eternity can be difficult to comprehend. Here again, we must understand that time, as we know it, was also a creation of God. Eternity isn't an unending continuation of time, but a complete lack of time altogether. We must be able to imagine existing in a state where the progression of time as we know it, simply doesn't exist.

I wouldn't say that using logic is a bad thing, but that trying to bind God and His abilities to the laws of physics, human logic or understanding can lead to an inability to know God.

What started me on this post was this article;

http://www.newwest.net/citjo/article/strange_bedfellows_libertarians_and_conservative_christians/C33/L33/

Putting it in a nutshell with apologies to the author if I mutilate it, his perspective is that libertarian Christian is an oxymoron. His assertion is that to be libertarian one must believe in free will and that to be a Christian one must believe that everything is preordained by God which means we can't have free will. This "either, or" requirement is human logic which simply cannot be used as a yardstick for determining what is or isn't possible for God. Can God know everything that will happen for eternity and/or even be directing those actions while still allowing for those actions to be performed by each individual's conscience choices? Absolutely. I don't understand how, but my lack of understanding doesn't automatically negate the possibility.

My humble advice; Don't limit your understanding of God by limiting Him to your understanding.

War Movies

I don't watch war movies much. I never was a big fan of them, but since I've grown older and hopefully wiser, they've seemed to have lost all appeal except to provide a visual reference for the insanity of war.

Liz and Fletcher went to visit "Papa" for a few days and I've been relegated to the life of a bachelor. That includes the boredom which comes with not having them around. So, I watched Saving Private Ryan . We don't watch war movies when Fletcher's around. I don't know why we watch them at all but maybe to reinforce how we feel about war. Like any good movie, (and it is), it draws you into the lives of the characters. You are given the opportunity to see what they see and, for as much as it can be done on film, you get to feel what they feel.

I'm a forty-seven year old, testosterone filled male and at the end of the movie, I cried, but not for the reason that many who watched it might have. Many, I'm sure, felt the swell of nationalistic pride, and the sacrifices made, but I cried for the lives lost on all sides - the innocent men and women who have been pulled into wars to be fodder for the lies of government. How many of them drew their last breath at the hand of "the enemy" and believed that they were sacrificing their life for some noble cause? How many believed that life, liberty and property were at risk by "the enemy" and sacrificed their lives on that alter? When will we ever learn?

Government - Size matters. So does power and selfishness.

I sometimes feel like the faerie tale cobbler and wish that elves would sneak in by night and write my blog. Away from the computer, I can think the most beautifully eloquent thoughts, but upon sitting in front of it those thoughts seem to turn into incomprehensible primitive grunts bearing little resemblance to my original line of thinking. One of the subjects of which I have a great many convictions is government. I express myself so poorly in this area that most people who know me might even say I'm anti-government. Nothing could be further from the truth. I can place some of the blame for this on word usage. Government is a very general term which has become synonymous with "The State." I've read many anti-state articles where the word government is substituted in places where The State would be much more appropriate. Attempting to establish a definition of government can be a daunting task. Dictionary.com renders the definitions listed here;

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/government

and thesaurus.com gives us all of these;

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/government

So what is it anyway? Boiled down, it's the act of governing. Oh, thanks Einstein. How 'bout something we don't know. OK, then, what does it mean to govern?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/govern

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/govern

Something in that first definition is very interesting. "to rule over by right of authority." So the first thing to establish might be whether or not the "government" in question even has the right of authority. What is a right? Where do you get one? Rights can be as difficult to explain as gravity. Hard to point to and say, "There it is," but if it's taken away you recognize that it's gone pretty dang quickly. I was trying to explain to someone last week the objectiveness of the existence of rights. He wasn't going to accept my argument until I could tell him where they came from. He didn't acknowledge the existence of a creator nor would he listen long enough for me to explain rights as they exist in nature. It was his contention that rights only exist because some human granted them. Of course, if people give people rights then people can take people's rights away just as quickly and if rights can be given and taken then they are subjective and cease to be rights at all. Rights must be inherent. They must be part of the state of nature or else they do not exist at all. In fact, so called rights which can be granted and taken away by people are actually not rights at all. They are privileges, sometimes referred to as "positive rights" because they require positive action on the part of someone else for their existence. As opposed to actual rights or "negative rights" which require nothing to exist except that no other person violates them. Human beings or groups of human beings cannot give or taken away rights. Humans can exercise, ignore, respect, defend, violate, subjugate, and voluntarily transfer rights but can not call them into or out of existence. So where does that leave us with respect to government? The exercise of the right to govern must only exist in the individual except that he grant someone else the privilege to govern him voluntarily and also retain the right to withdraw that privilege. At times government comes as the result of an exercise of privilege. (You may use my pencil, but you may not write dirty words with it.)

Legitimate governance can be granted through various routes. Self governance is the simplest example. Some governance comes as the result of one family member's dependency on another. If I have the privilege of living under Daddy's roof and consuming the fruit of his labor, then he has the right, within reason, to govern my actions. Some governance is by mutual agreement. An employer/employee has the right to dictate guidelines. I will work for you as long as you pay me an ounce of gold per week. You may work for me as long as you wear a clean shirt and don't spit on the customers. Voluntary association is very important. I remember asking an old friend, "What's the difference between a cult and a religion?" He replied, "The difference lies in the degree of difficulty involved in leaving." Friendship, church, the Moose Lodge, all have aspects of governance, sometimes articulated, sometimes just understood, but when violated, one must retain the right to disassociate.

It becomes obvious that the larger the entity, the more difficult it becomes to simply walk away. Sometimes it's not even an option. As the circle widens the association between the governor and the governed must, by nature become less voluntary and the degree of force used to maintain that association increase, and enter what we call, "The State."

Watch this and I'll continue this later...

http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf

Peace,
Bryan