White House re…

White House responds to secession petitions

Apparently eight of the petitions filed on behalf of each state got enough signatures to require a response. I said before that this idea of petitioning the feds for permission to secede is pathetic for many reasons. First, as the power of the state to govern is derived from the people, the power of an institution that governs states is derived from the people, and by proxy from the states. It isn’t up to any government to allow you to not be governed by it. If the people withdraw their consent the government must then dissolve. If the people of a state really want to secede, they don’t petition the union for permission, they INFORM the uber government that they HAVE seceded. Nevertheless, just to show that I favor the idea of secession, and, in fact abolition, not just of the union, but of all government. I signed two of them. One from Louisiana and the one for my state.

Today I got this email from the White House. Notice that Carson doesn’t even talk about the idea of secession as a possibility. He doesn’t say “Well not enough of the people of your state want to secede. If you can get more than two thirds, I guess you’ll have a case.”, or anything like that. He talks about the Constitution as if all rights that the People have are derived from, and enumerated in it, as if it weren’t the other way around, that all the powers the federal government has are enumerated in it. No, he quotes the constitution violator and mass murdering tyrant Abe Lincoln, as if to suggest that they will resort to any measures to which they are able, and preserve their power at any cost. After all, it isn’t the legislators who have to pay when they declare war on someone or something, it’s we.

Petition Response: Our States Remain United

By Jon Carson, Director of the Office of Public Engagement

Thank you for using the White House’s online petitions platform to participate in your government.

In a nation of 300 million people — each with their own set of deeply-held beliefs — democracy can be noisy and controversial. And that’s a good thing. Free and open debate is what makes this country work, and many people around the world risk their lives every day for the liberties we often take for granted.

But as much as we value a healthy debate, we don’t let that debate tear us apart.

Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States “in order to form a more perfect union” through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot — a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it. As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address in 1861, “in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.” In the years that followed, more than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States. And shortly after the Civil War ended, the Supreme Court confirmed that “[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”

Although the founders established a perpetual union, they also provided for a government that is, as President Lincoln would later describe it, “of the people, by the people, and for the people” — all of the people. Participation in, and engagement with, government is the cornerstone of our democracy. And because every American who wants to participate deserves a government that is accessible and responsive, the Obama Administration has created a host of new tools and channels to connect concerned citizens with White House. In fact, one of the most exciting aspects of the We the People platform is a chance to engage directly with our most outspoken critics.

So let’s be clear: No one disputes that our country faces big challenges, and the recent election followed a vigorous debate about how they should be addressed. As President Obama said the night he won re-election, “We may have battled fiercely, but it’s only because we love this country deeply and we care so strongly about its future.”

Whether it’s figuring out how to strengthen our economy, reduce our deficit in a responsible way, or protect our country, we will need to work together — and hear from one another — in order to find the best way to move forward. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to learn more about the President’s ideas and share more of your own.
What did you think they would say, “we’ll consider it”?

Natural Law and Legislators

Law is something most people suppose must be written, either by man, by god, or by some governing body. I would like to show that it is impossible for law to be constructed by any person or body of people. When I say law, here, I mean rules that should justly govern human conduct.

A law is something that a person has amoral obligation to obey. It is distinguished from a mere rule by the moral aspect which is carried by the law, but not necessarily by a rule. A rule can be imposed for the purpose of achieving a desired end, but not necessarily an end which is necessarily morally good. At a party, for example guests may be required to come wearing certain kinds of clothing in order to achieve the end of a desired aesthetic theme at the party. In a game rules are imposed in order to make the game interesting, challenging and fair. There may be no moral aspect to these rules, but they do serve a purpose.

Law, on the other hand, serves a purpose which is not merely desired by some particular person, but its violation will necessarily result in a undesirable and potentially tragic state of affairs for some person, the end to which a law is aimed is one that is greater than just a coincidental or capricious desire. A rule can be said to be directed to an end that is deemed by some person or group of people to be good. A law is directed to an end that is, in fact, good.

It could be said that this idea of what is, in fact, good is ineffable or, perhaps, illusory. It may be the case that it isn’t possible outline or fully describe what is the good, but, on a practical level, when we need to know whether or not a particular thing is good or not, we usually have little trouble,although there certainly are the difficult exceptions. And when an act is evil, we rarely have trouble recognizing it as such,especially when the act is performed on us.

Legislation has been justified by enough philosophers by its supposed necessity. It has been asserted that, without it, lawlessness would prevail and all would suffer as a result. This is where I will part with the common wisdom, because the common wisdom, here, is tragically flawed. If it is the case that, in the absence of legislation, people cannot do what is right, then the first piece of legislation could never be right. If the first piece of legislation is right, then it must not be the case that, in the absence of legislation, people should be expected to do wrong.

How can just legislation come about unless people, by and large, understand and favor justice? Who can write just legislation? Anyone? Everyone? Certain wise ones? If it is only certain wise people who are capable of writing just legislation,how can we be sure that those people do, in fact, write it? By a vote? But is it everyone who can recognize who these certain wise people are? If so, then why suppose that everyone is not wise enough to write the legislation themselves? Are we to believe that only certain wise ones among us are qualified to write legislation and that they will necessarily emerge and write it for us, or that we are all qualified to select the proper legislators, yet unqualified to write it ourselves? If we are qualified to write our own legislation,then what need is there for it to be written?

The fact is that any adult who is of sound mind, that is to say mature, not ill, and capable of experiencing empathy, is capable of recognizing justice and injustice when it is seen. We all know this, and we act on the knowledge. We appeal to the counsel of friends when we are involved in a dispute;we appoint juries, as a matter of practice, as the ultimate decision makers when we need to know if crime has been committed. We know injustice when we see it, and we know right form wrong. What are we doing, then, when we write legislation? Are we making law? If the law is something that ought to be enforced, then it can’t be something that we can make. For that to be possible it would need to be the case that it is possible for us to bring about moral obligation by fiat. Moral obligation, however, seems to be something we recognize,not something we can create on a whim. Surely we can all imagine legislation that does not create a moral obligation. Does legislation requiring strangers to apprehend a suspected slave impose some moral obligation on those strangers? Law, if the concept of law is to have any meaning, cannot be the same as legislation. Legislation has more in common with a rule then with a law.

So natural law is the ever present moral imperative which compels one to honor the sovereignty that all other people enjoy over their own person and property. Natural law is known by all rational adults. There’s no need to discuss it’s source here. We can leave that to other philosophers. What we do need to know is that it is real. No rational adult would deny that it is wrong to murder another person, or to rob another person. To do so would be to betray one’s own psychopathy. No rational adult would deny that it is wrong to take something, by force or by stealth from another person. Even something so subtle as to take another person’s place in a line is understood by all rational adults, in every culture, to be wrong. To do these things is not a mere failure.Murder, theft, robbery, rape, torture, fraud, these things are understood as violations of what we know to be law. Laws against these things no more need to be written than laws requiring us to breathe and eat need to be written. Law must be enforced. But the idea that it must be written is as absurd as the idea that we must be told not to sleep in fire.

Since law is understood by all, what is legislation? Why do some people propose to write rules, and call them law? Do they suppose that people can’t perceive law? Why then,should they suppose that they can? Is it that they find natural law insufficient? Once we consider the fact that, among the first legislation to be written for any society involve a requirement to give money to the ones who write the legislation, we should suppose that they must find natural law insufficient. Is there some natural moral principal that would require every one or most people in a society to routinely give some portion of their earnings to one person, or one group of people? Surly not.

Since natural law is sufficient for maintaining peace and order in any society, the purpose of legislation must be to enforce, as if they were law, the rules, or desires of one person or group. Since such rules are not law, there is no good reason to believe that those rules will always be in accord with law. If they were always to be in accord with law, there would be no need for them. Since the authors of legislation seek to establish the legitimacy of legislation in the good, the right, that is, real law they must know that real law, that is, natural law is sufficient to establish the legitimacy of legislation, they must also understand that natural law is sufficient to establish the legitimacy of anything that is good. And so, they must understand that all legislation is superfluous. Yet they persist with it.

They must also know that to enforce something other than law as law must confuse and confound what law in fact is. Yet they persist with legislation.

If law is enforced, order and peace will abound. If something other than law is enforced, something other than order and peace will abound. It must be the case, then, that those who enforce something other than law prefer that something other than order and peace abound. The fact that enforcing something other than law serves to confuse and confound what law is must be a convenient fact for anyone who seeks to advance something other than order and peace.

For more on natural law, emergent law, and voluntary governance, visit: http://voluntarycompact.com

Stateless Societies: Ancient Ireland

Stateless Societies: Ancient Ireland.

Voluntarist

No posts under the topic “Voluntarist”? You gotta be kidding. Fine. Here’s one:

A voluntarist is one who believes that all interactions between people should be voluntary, that it is wrong for one person to force another person to do anything above or beyond the obligations we have, one to another, according to the demands of natural law. We eat, drink, breathe, sleep, live and die by the non aggression principal, which is that it is a crime to cause an uninvited change in the person or property of another, that the initiation of force is always wrong, for EVERYONE, including government. We believe that natural law is sufficient for governing the actions of people, that natural law cannot be improved upon, and that legislation can only pervert law, or confound our ability to perceive natural law.

The voluntarist is often confused with the pacifist. This is a mistake. This confusion is due to a misunderstanding of the non aggression principal, which states that it is a crime to INITIATE  force. Some people read over the word initiate, sometimes even when it is written in all caps. Initiate means to begin to use force even though the other party has not begun to use force or threatened any force. Violations of the NAP should never be tolerated. When the NAP is violated, society has an obligation, not only to resist the offender with any force necessary to stop the violation, but also to cause the victim to be restored, insofar as it is possible, to whatever state that victim was in before the violation, by the offender; that is to require that the offender make it right.

The voluntarist is also sometimes called an anarchist. That’s fine as long as anarchy is understood as the absence of any unilaterally coercive ruler. Sometimes the anarchist is confused for one who opposes any hierarchy. While there are some who think that way and also call themselves anarchists, it should be understood that that understanding of the word “anarchy” is due to a misunderstanding of the etymology of the word “anarchy”, which is from the French, Latin and Greek words for “ruler”, understood as a governor, and not just any person in charge.

It should also be understood that the voluntarist doesn’t really care if there is a governor or not, as long as that governor doesn’t have a monopoly on the use of force, and the no exception is made to the NAP or any other natural law for the sake of that governor.

There’s a lot more to be said about this, but I need to go to bed.

Max

Life Without Government

life without government