It's been my very great pleasure, these last six years, to write this commentary every week. This is the 300th such Edition, and is the last I will write with that frequency. More will appear, so it's always worth clicking on "Latest Edition" to check, but from here on (March 1999) I'll write only "on occasion." When some especially outrageous action of some highly obnoxious politician, for example, rattles my keyboard until I hand him his deserts.
In England, where I grew up, one of the great national religions is the game of cricket. It is to Brits (and West Indians, Indians, Pakistanis, South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders) what baseball is to Americans: it's "what to do" in Summer. It's a slow, gentlemanly game played on every village green by anyone who lives there; the squire is on a level with his laborer, for the few hours it takes to play. There are worse ways to spend a quiet, balmy afternoon.
The game is played with two teams of 11 players, which take turns to "bat" and "field". A fielder has the object of hurling a ball at a set of stumps so that they fall down. The batsman tries to prevent that by knocking the ball well clear, giving him and his partner time to "run" to the opposite end of the "wicket", where there are duplicate stumps. Each time he succeeds he scores one for his team; if the stumps fall, or if his clout is caught, he is "out" and when ten of his team are "out", that's the end of its innings and the teams change places. Now, why is all this relevant?
Just this: that if one team is doing so well that its captain is very confident of victory, it may volunteer to end its innings early. That's because there is always a time constraint; if he checks the church clock tower and sees the opposing team has no hope of catching his team's score, he does the apparently gentlemanly and sporting thing and "declares" at whatever the score is at that moment. It's not really gentlemanly or sporting, because what he's really doing is to rub their noses in the ugly fact that they have lost and lost big, but it looks that way and illusion is often just as important as reality.
So, I have now "declared at 300". I have said, in these last 300 Editions, all I have in mind to say, at least for now. I have shown overwhelming reason, I hope, for preferring liberty to tyranny. I hope that no reader of them all, led by reason rather than prejudice, can fail to be convinced. Indexed on this Site are some 130 of my favorites, and I invite a reason-based exploration of them all.
The case for individual freedom is overwhelming, and yet it's everwhere suppressed. The very first of these commentaries expressed outrage at what government had done to some 84 innocent people in Waco, TX and the most recent Edition explored the possibility of replacing its alleged "justice" system with the radical alternative of private justice. In between, I have shown all manner of authoritarian obscenity, with examples drawn from the news of the month.
The news of next month will provide plenty more, alas. Anyone with eyes to see them will find them there. Here is a question to ask, about any event, any proposal, any human action: does it involve the inititation of force? That very simple test will show the observer who is morally right, and who is morally wrong. There's very little that is really complex, despite the ceaseless attempts of the regular media to suggest the opposite. Right and wrong are not hard to tell apart, for even a young child can tell the difference: who is starting the conflict? - he is the villain.
Government, of course, never ever does anything other than to start conflicts, to initiate force. That is its intrinsic, unalterable, defining characteristic. That's why I'm an anarchist, unalterably opposed to government in its every manifestation. Even when it does something perceptibly useful (like plowing the roads) it is exercising unaccountable force, denying the right of others to own, operate and maintain those roads and denying their customers a choice. And that's about the least offensive example that comes to mind.
So much grotesque violence, misery and poverty are caused by the machinery of government that the only hard task is to know where to start, to dismantle the whole. Shall we attempt a separation of school and state? - petition for private banking? - for and end to the minimum wage? - plead for lower taxes? - call for and end to offensive war, burning the next set of draft cards? - work to extend the already considerable private-justice alternative?
Yes! All these and many, many more are good and productive ideas. But ultimately they will all fail, unless each individual is willing to withdraw his or her own, personal "consent to be governed." The sheep may bleat as loudly as they wish, but the dogs will not lose control until and unless a decent number of individuals run off in different directions. As an unusually frank US Senator once said of the Income Tax, it "operates on 90% bluff". He was (as usual) lying, for it operates on 100% bluff; but his basic point was valid. So with the sheepdog. If an individual sheep decides to disobey the barker, and if a few others do likewise, the dog will be wholly incapable of coralling the flock to the shearing or slaughter house.
Accordingly, I pick as my favorite of all these 300, "Ways to Break Free." It isn't the best-written or most profound or the most passionate, but it is the most important from the practical standpoint of "what's to be done?" That's my best shot, at how to liberate oneself.
I'll end with a book-pick. I've commended many wonderful books during these last six years, but one bears more upon that practical issue than any other. It's Harry Browne's 1972 masterpiece, "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World." It demonstrates how any of us can find personal liberty, but only by taking the hard decisions needed to do so; not by expecting someone else to hand it to us, nor by supposing that a majority will ever vote for it. Order it here. It's a life-changing read.
Liberty will be ours, in good measure, when we each reach out and take it, one by one; and not before. So stand tall, and Take your Life Back.
| © Copyright Jim Davies 1999 |
Jim Davies lives in New Hampshire,
and enjoys contemplating which way is up.
The above is Edition # 300
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