Day 30 - The Nature of Government

As I had hoped, my reference to Roger Young’s article “The Blinding Fog of War” did elicit reader feedback. However, I’m now convinced that before I can address the platitude that “you only get to say what you do because someone else served and died so you could,” I must first establish precisely what I believe the nature of government to be.

Below I have quoted an email I received in response to Mr. Young’s article. It was this excerpt that specifically sparked the reply that follows it. My hope is that by presenting this in the same conversational format in which it was originally written, it will be more enjoyable and easy to read. At the same time I aim to provide a clear and thorough overview of what I understand to be the nature of government.

"First, I take issue with the label of "subject". I am not a voiceless, powerless serf but an armed (well, not yet, but soon) citizen who, with his fellow citizens, chooses people to represent him in government."

I definitely resonate with your sentiment, but I also believe that this is the exact idea that those in government wish to perpetuate. However, despite having felt a similar and wholehearted zeal for this perspective in times past, I now believe that these are not the true dynamics of the situation. I’m glad that you take issue with the label of “subject,” but I think your focus on the word distracts you from realizing that you’re being treated as a subject, even if you’re more often described as a citizen.

First you address the fact (or soon to be fact) that you are armed. I believe that this is (or will be) absolutely true, albeit practically irrelevant. Although I believe that the framers of the Constitution made an obvious and honest attempt to check the power of government via the 2nd Amendment, it little matters for multiple reasons. I imagine that you will agree that what is said in the Constitution does not now, and has not historically, restricted the actions of those called government. I believe that the possible examples of this are so numerous that even entire organizations of liberty-minded individuals such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation are unable to fully exhaust the list of abuses.

Of more practical importance is the reality that even if you’re armed with a handgun, shotgun, or at best a semi-automatic rifle, your ability to either defend yourself or forcefully attempt to stop those in government from doing what they choose is effectively non-existent in comparison with the physical force that government is viewed as being able to legitimately level against you. Again, examples abound of how even the collective physical force exercised by modern day militias or even other state militaries are inconsequential compared with the deadly weaponry utilized by those who are collectively known as the government of the United States.

What consequence does your ownership of a firearm have on the dealings of the State? The State commands millions of individuals who daily walk around with such weapons at their waist. If anything, your having a gun poses a greater risk to your safety than if you didn’t. This is because those in power would find it easier to justify your death if you ever choose to use your gun in defense of your freedoms, as compared to the slightly more complicated task that would be involved in legitimizing your death if you were unarmed. If you think I’m exaggerating, tell me what you honestly think would happen if you didn’t pay your federal income tax, and then attempted to use your firearm to defend your freedom when men with guns came to try and physically apprehend you, as they eventually and undoubtedly would.

Ironically, while I’m here highlighting the absolute power of life and death over the entire world that is at the immediate disposal of those who are the American government (i.e. nuclear weapons), I actually think that their most effective means of subjecting the populace is the perception of legitimacy that you so candidly exemplified in your opening statement.

Now we get into the true nature of our subjugation to those who label themselves as government. This relationship, if that is even an appropriate use of the word, can best be characterized as that of master and slave. While this choice of words may strike you as extremely inflammatory I ask that you stick with me because I have a very logical and rational explanation for this assertion.

Before I say more, I wish to make absolutely clear that I’m neither implying nor stating that those people who currently live within the purported jurisdiction of the United States are more or less restricted in exercising their natural (or as you see them, God-given) rights. However, having fewer restrictions on one’s freedom than are imposed on others doesn’t mean that there is no cause for objection to the injustices of one’s own reality.

Simply put, the master-slave relationship, despite always being unjust, is not uniform in the degree of its abuses. This can easily be seen from America’s own brief history. Some masters, arguably a few of the “Founding Fathers,” are remembered as comparatively benign in exercising their claims to legitimately own other human beings, whereas the torturous artifacts that remain from other slaveholders speak to an entirely different level of inhumanity. That there are drastically different extents to which one can act immorally doesn’t make the less immoral act justified.

Returning to the present, I assert that you and I are both mere slaves to those who call themselves government. Even in this situation, the yoke is not equal, as I am less free to act without having my natural (or God-given) rights violated than you are. My answer to the likely retort that I am voluntarily more limited in my freedom, since I chose to be a member of the military, became an invalid argument the day I no longer wished to remain employed by the Navy but was still forced to labor under threat of imprisonment. Note that in this instance the common use of language accurately signifies that my action was done in the past tense. I “chose” to be in the military, that action is done; I no longer willingly choose to be in the military.

These specific delineations aside, I believe we’re both slaves according to the top definition result given by Google as “the state of being under the control of another person.” The extent of this control is not what is at issue in determining slavery. Whether or not we’re under the most lenient master-slave relationship could be rightfully debated, however, the fact that we are slaves, is to me, quite clear. If you think we’re not slaves by this or other similar definitions of the term, I would be eager to hear why you don’t think so.

No master can ever exercise total dominion over a slave; therefore, there exist only differing constraints that define such relationships. What follows is only a small selection of the many ways in which the people calling themselves government have made me a slave by controlling some of the most significant portions of my life through the threat of physical force.

I don’t deny that others have been treated worse and controlled to a greater degree; however, that truth does not make either of our present situations less restrictive. I have intentionally limited my examples to that which would be true even if I weren’t labeled an “Active Duty Sailor.” If you’re not controlled in these ways as well, I’m curious to hear how you have avoided such mistreatment.

As regards the individuals who call themselves government:

1. They control what substances I ingest into my body through drug regulation – legal and illegal, and food restrictions like those restricting access to raw milk

2. They control how much of my income I get to keep as per income tax laws

3. They control what property I own, how I can use it, and how much of it I can keep as evidenced by eminent domain, grass-cutting laws, property taxes, gun laws, automobile regulation, firecracker laws, aluminum bat laws and the regulation of almost any other piece of property imaginable

4. They control if and how I can labor, by requiring licenses as absurd as those regulating if I can cut someone else’s hair

5. They control whether or not I can cross the geographic boundaries in which they claim jurisdiction - thus if I don’t like it here, it’s a fallacy to say that I can freely leave and go elsewhere due to the exit tax among other reasons

Bear in mind that if I ever resist their control by exercising my own volition against their wishes, they will violate my natural (or God-given) rights by initiating physical force against me even if I have done nothing to infringe upon their natural (or God-given) rights or the natural (or God-given) rights of others. I understand that we disagree about whether humans are “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” or if they possess them naturally, but I ask you, how could a just God that views humans as equal to each other ever desire for them to relate to each other in any form of a master-slave relationship?

I recognize that this response doesn’t address many of the other statements you made in your email, but I felt that it was more important to first establish what I believe is the true nature of any group (government or not) that uses force to impose its will on anyone else without the continuous consent of every individual involved. Perhaps you would consent to live under the current U.S. government, or maybe you would only acquiesce to a government that continuously abides by the Constitution. I hope you agree that whatever your preference, it wouldn’t make it right to force others to do the same.

The sad reality is that nobody alive in “America” today has been presented the option to consent to be governed by those who currently do so anyway. As I understand you to be a fan of John Locke, I hope that when presented in this manner, you now see that there does not exist the “consent of the governed” in America today, and therefore, at the very least, those claiming to be the United States government are illegitimate and should rightfully be ignored.

*ADDENDUM (8:36 PM): My wife, Heather Lakemacher, made the following statement in regard to what she viewed as my possibly errant attribution to John Locke of an alternative concept of the consent of the governed.

"I think that Locke's idea of the consent of the governed still has collectivist roots. He understands it to be the consent of the majority. He doesn't carry his own ideas about the origin of property to their logical conclusion, that is, that only continuous individual consent could justify government."

Although it may be true that Locke conceptualized the consent of the governed only to be the consent of a majority, this concept provides no more legitimacy to the idea that any one individual or group of individuals can be justified in ruling anyone else. Therefore, if this was Locke's view, it inherently contradicts itself.