government Archives - Free-Man's Perspective

The Gospel of Radicalism

As I was writing A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, I felt an overwhelming need to put everything I had into the book. (That’s the way you feel when you’re very serious about such things and you’re not sure you’ll ever write another book like it.) So, I included several essays that I cared a great deal about.

Now, however, as I’m getting ready for a second edition of the book, I’m pulling the essays back out. A novel is best standing on its own, in my opinion. And so, I’ll publish the essays here from time to time, starting with “The Gospel of Radicalism,” which was the first of them.

– PR

Just a few hundred years ago it was a standard medical practice to bleed sick people, to make cuts in various parts of their bodies and to drain blood from them. Most people submitted to this useless and frequently harmful treatment without question.

Would you have been one of them?

What do you think of the bleeders? Does it seem to you that they were from a primitive and ignorant age? Well, guess how your descendants are going to think about our generation in a few hundred years! Unless you can break from the clamor of popular opinions, you are doomed to that fate.

All of the social, sexual, and political norms that people now hold dear will someday be gone and will look as archaic as praying to the gods of wind and rain. Rationalize anything you want, but most people are living in ways that will be pitied by future generations. The fashion of this world will pass away. And it will not be missed.

Look at our history: 6,000 years of wars, famines, epidemics, and nonstop emotional misery. Dear God, isn’t it time to question the rules we’ve been living under?

At some point, shouldn’t it become obvious? How much misery do you need before you start to ask hard questions? Shall I recite statistics to you of how many millions of people were violently killed in the past century? How many millions were starved to death by the authorities that ruled them? How many people – probably billions – who are emotionally damaged to the point of reduced function? What will it take? Are you in so deep a fog that you will never question whether something is fundamentally wrong?

Humanity in our time remains in infancy. We are essentially unlimited creatures, yet we have been wallowing in abject poverty – physically, mentally, and spiritually.

We have natures that are suited to high adventure, yet we remain stagnant. Why? Because we’ve been conditioned only to exist, not to live. That conditioning was imposed upon us as weak children, then reinforced during many years of compulsory training. After a while, we learned not to buck the system and eventually to find a safe place within the social order. We are afraid to venture too far out. The powers that be make sport of ruining people who venture too far out of bounds, so we stay safe and ignore our selves in the process.

Safety is a fine thing to choose when you are five years old but not when you are grown!

Your life is too valuable not to be lived. By virtue of being a healthy human, you have what seems to be unlimited potential. Why the urge to sit quietly? Why the fear of movement and expressiveness? Why the paralyzing fear of being different?

Wake up! Don’t be satisfied to merely exist. Live!

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

To the College Student Drowning in Debt and the Single Mother Who Can’t Afford Insurance

You’re in a bad situation; you’re depressed, frightened, and need a solution. I’ll do my best to give you one. But first, please believe me that I know what it’s like to be in desperate circumstances.

I’m offering you advice, earned the hard way. What you do with it will be your choice, but unlike politicians, I’m not trying to get anything from you and my plan actually works.

Step #1

You’re in a hard place. Job number one is to solve your immediate problems… to survive into another day.

So, if you’re so deep in debt that you can’t afford a safe place to live, just stop paying the debt. The government will chase you and punish you, but while that’s unpleasant, it’s survivable. Living where you could be shot may not be.

Being unable to afford medical care for your child is a harder problem. In that situation, you’ll have to come up with something. Finding a decent free hospital is probably your best bet. The free hospital is far better than no hospital at all and probably better than any hospital was a generation or two ago. Move to a different area if you must, but get your kids access to basic care.

You must also work to keep those kids healthy. If you’re living a corrupt lifestyle, your kids will suffer, and it will be your fault. No one can save you from that except you. Live like a fool and you’ll get the results of a fool… and all your complaints will mean nothing.

If you feel you must go to a government program, okay, but don’t ever let yourself think of them as your saviors. That’s the crew that put you into this situation.

Step #2

Your next step is to figure out how you got into such a bad situation and fix it.

With student debt, this is easy: You were told all your life that not going to college would brand you as a loser, with a capital L. Skipping college, you were made to believe, meant a second-rate spouse, a second-rate life, and second-rate children.

So, when they put insane loan papers in front of you, you caved in and signed… just as you were conditioned to do. You probably did a few other stupid things along the way, but they wouldn’t have been horrific on their own. The loan scam amplified them.

And who set you up for this? The school systems, the universities, the governments that control them, and the bankers who gave you those abusive loans. They all worked together to create your mess, so don’t ever pretend they didn’t realize what they were doing. They knew all too well.

As a single mom you got into trouble in more complex ways. Either you made a baby with an unfit guy, an accident happened, or something. In any case it sucks, but you have to face it.

Get clear on this: You have a child depending upon you. You owe it to this child to face what went wrong and fix it so it won’t go wrong again. It doesn’t matter how that makes you feel, you have to do it.

Step #3

Now, you must decide what you want your life to be like. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been avoiding that decision for a decade or more, afraid that you’ll fail. You have to pick something, and now. Pick something good.

Step #4

Define a path to that goal. Again, you have to do this whether you like it or not. Grow up and get to it.

And yes, you will fail along the way, probably several times. It doesn’t matter; you’ll have to pick yourself up, revise your plan, and get moving again.

This is hard for everyone, but we still have to do it.

Step #5

Get busy on your plan. Let people criticize you for it. Let them call you a traitor. Just move toward your destination.

Nothing can ever replace action. And you’ll never really feel good about yourself until you do this.

Mission Accomplished?

No, not accomplished; mission started.

More importantly, it’s your mission, not one that was thrust upon you.

**What Not to Do**

First, don’t look for someone to save you. That keeps you powerless. Understand this: The politicians who play savior are using you as a tool. They want you to accept the role of the victim. Do you really want that? Is that how you want your children to live?

You see, “saving the 99%” sounds good, but it requires you to join a victim class, so politicians can pretend to save you. And this is crucial:

Look hard at the people whose families have been on welfare for decades. Those are “the saved.” They’re the past generation’s “99%.”

Second, understand this: It’s the system that screwed you over. With school loans this is obvious, especially when you consider that the entire political establishment wrote laws so you can never escape those loans.

And it’s true for the single mom too. Have you noticed that insurance isn’t sold nationwide? They can sell only in certain areas. And why? Because the insurance companies (who fund the law-makers) don’t like competition; they get rid of as much of it as they can.

And why can’t you and your friends create your own insurance fund? Because it’s outlawed of course… for your safety.

Third, if you jump into battle against rich people (“we’re going to make you pay”), you’ll lose every time. They can bribe the politicians much better than you can, and no one gets elected without those… um… donations.

Finally, get clear on this: The system is designed to screw you over. It screws everyone over, except for the people who feed on it.

In the End…

In the end, you have to decide what you want your life to look like. And you’ll have to build it yourself.

Is that hard? Yeah, it is. Is it scary? Yes. But it remains the only thing that works.

So start doing it.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

You’ve Been Robbed

You work long, hard days, but you never have enough to be secure. Your husband or wife probably works too, and yet you still never get ahead. Now think about this: Your great-grandparents worked hard, and they did get ahead. You work just as hard, but you don’t make the same progress.

Was great-grandpa really that much better than you? Not likely. So, how was it that he could get ahead on one income, but you can’t?

Take a good look at this graph:

The top line shows how many years of living expenses your great-grandfather would have accumulated as a hard-working young man. The bottom line shows what you can save.

After working for five years, great-gramps had seven years of living expenses in the bank.

Doing the same things, you’d have less than two.

You’ve probably avoided this comparison((The graph was generated as follows: $725 per year is the income in about 1903, based upon discussions with men who lived through the time. A figure of $325 per year for living expenses is taken from a New York Times article, dated September 29, 1907. Assets were presumed to appreciate at 10% per year. For 2008 {the year the graph was generated} the annual income is $45,000 and monthly expenses were $2,000. This young man pays 30% income taxes and investment return is calculated at a reduced rate of 8.5% because of taxes upon interest. {That rate of return is ridiculously high for 2017, but I’m leaving it in anyway.} The young man of 1905 is investing $400/year after living expenses of $325. His modern descendent is investing $7500/year after living expenses of $24,000.)) , because it makes you feel bad. If so, that was your big mistake, because it was never your fault.

When great-gramps worked hard, he kept the money. There was no income tax and no sales tax. (The government survived anyway.) There was no Social Security tax either, and the streets weren’t full of starving old people. Families were able to take care of their own.

In your great-grandparents’ day, it was very common for mechanics, carpenters, and shop-owners to make private business loans. Now you shuffle into banks with piles of the most personal documents and beg for loans. (As the banks create your loan money with a keystroke.)

You’ve Not Only Been Robbed, You’ve Been Demoralized

Why did this happen? Because Americans accepted a lie: that they were bad people.

Think this through: Your money is taken from you before it can accumulate (think “payroll deductions”), leaving you with barely enough to live a reasonable life. You have nothing left to help those who suffer unjustly – not because you don’t work, but because your surplus is continuously skimmed away to Washington.

And then those same politicians have the audacity to call you a bad person for not wanting to help the poor! Not only do they make it almost impossible for you to give, but they insult you for it!

Then of course they spend the money they took from you on armies of government employees who end up delivering a fraction of your money to the poor. (The vast majority of whom are dependent , rather than unable to work.) The rest is eaten up in bureaus, frauds, wars, handouts to foreign dictators, and other forms of crony-capitalist corruption.

Your great-grandparents were proud to help their friends and neighbors. They felt good about themselves, they felt compassion for others, and they were proud to make the world a better place. Being robbed of this heritage is the worst crime of all.

So…?

This is the point where people ask, “What do we do about this?” And the answer is simple: Stop playing their game!

The system is rigged and the abusers make the rules. All the news channels are in on the game with them. Everything big is in on the game. You’ll never actually reform it, and so long as you stay inside, you’ll keep suffering and you’ll keep it going.

People have been trying to reform this for a long time, and have accomplished next to nothing.

The only rational choice is to withdraw from the game and to start building something better .

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Is This Really the Best Way Possible?

I was taught in school that our modern governance was the best thing ever, and I suppose that you were too. But do any of us really believe that the way of life we now have is the best possible? I dare say (and hope!) that few of us are that intellectually barren.

And yet, the systems of the West are treated as gods: No thought of changing them is permitted. Working inside the system is acceptable; anything else brands you a “domestic terrorist.”

How then shall we improve? The system we have is despised on all sides, and yet to suggest anything outside of it terrifies the servile citizen and incites the security complex to violence.

It would be a disgrace to human nature if we didn’t try to improve our situations; our descendants could and should condemn us for such a failure. And so, here lies the social problem of the age:

New ways of living are prohibited; they are ridiculed at their outset and punished if continued.

If you’re tempted to think that I’m overstating this, please give it a try sometime. You’ll find the experience educational.

Going More than Halfway

The streets are full of people who complain about the political systems that rule them. And millions more have been recognizing their abuse recently. I welcome this enthusiastically. Facing the truth is a crucial virtue.

The holdup in this process is usually at the halfway point, where angry people blame factions rather than structures. In the US, for example, half the country blames the Reds for everything; the other half blames the Blues for everything. But they both stop short of seeing that the system itself is the problem. And so, they get more and more polarized, to the point where it’s starting to bleed over into violence.

So, yes, Mr. Blue, you are being abused, and yes, Mr. Red, you’re being abused. But your abuser is the system itself, not the slimy parties that slither through its belly. If all the parties vanished tomorrow, your abuse – at the hands of a hundred government agencies and their partners in crime – would continue unabated.

And this really should be obvious: The Reds have had their turn with control of the full Congress and the presidency; the Blues have had their turn with the same advantages. And yet the abuse continues unabated. It doesn’t take a genius to draw a lesson from that.

Blame the Structure

As I’ve explained before and no doubt will again, the system we now “enjoy” is primitive and barbaric. It’s really a relic of the Bronze Age.

Think about it this way: If you weren’t taught all your life that ours was the best possible organization for the world, would you seriously choose to give one small group of men all the weapons and full power to control and punish everyone else? And if you knew that this ruling group would be morally inferior to nearly everyone else, would you still think it was a great idea?

Only if you were deranged.

My message, and one that I suppose I’ll keep repeating so long as I have breath, is that we are better than this. Humanity is far better than their barbaric ruling systems. We are better than manipulative elites and perpetually false politicians. We just need to stop believing them, that we’re all vile and weak. If we did that, we’d never put up with the abuse they heap upon us year after year.

The Bottom Line

If you take an argument like this to political obsessives, they’ll take you on an hours-long tour of confusion, throwing authority and intimidation at you and all the while and warring against your personal judgment. Truth, on the other hand, is simple and clear. And the question that cuts through all the BS is this:

Are we free to experiment, or not?

If you can withdraw from the ruling system and experiment with new ways of living, then you’re a free man or woman.

If the system won’t let you out – if they won’t release you to try something better – then you are enslaved, and no amount of confusing talk will ever change that.

We are better, and we can become much better. Archaic structures of dominance stand in our way.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

We Don’t Really Know What’s Happening

And, believe it or not, this is rather good news. I’ll explain.

We all like to know what’s happening in the world, and for good reason… understanding our surroundings is essential to survival. We instinctively seek information… we need information. There is, however, a problem that we face:

No matter how much “news” you consume, you won’t really know what’s going on in the world.

We can’t know, because ‘the news’ is half illusion, provided by government-dependent corporations that are paid to keep you watching and to keep you joined to the status quo.

Granted, they are quite good at providing pictures from disaster areas, but when it comes to explaining why the disaster happened, they mislead almost every time. Yes, some truth makes its way through the news machine, but most of it is wrapped in layers of manipulation. If, for example, you watch the news feeds all day, you’ll find a good deal of truth, but you’ll find it amongst a pile of half-truths. Do you really have enough time to analyze them all?

One Piece of Truth

The truth about public reporting comes out from time to time, but usually well after the fact. So, here’s one piece of truth that’s worth remembering:

For those who don’t recall the 1970s, Daniel Ellsberg was a man who worked as an analyst at the RAND Corp., moved from there to the Pentagon, spent two years in Vietnam working for the State Department, and then went back to RAND. He is the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. These were the documents that revealed that three US presidential administrations had been plainly, knowingly, and openly lying to the public.

Here’s what Ellsberg thought the New York Times was good for:

… to see what the rubes and the yokels are thinking about and what they think is going on and what they think the policy is….

Later, in 1998, he said this in an interview:

The public is lied to every day by the president, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can’t handle the thought that the president lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn’t stay in the government at that level….

And here’s what Michael Deaver, a top aide to President Ronald Reagan, said about the press:

The media I’ve had a lot to do with is lazy. We fed them and they ate it every day.

That’s the truth about news, my friends. The newspapers are where the yokels get informed, presidents flatly lie, and legislatures are massively corrupt. The TV stations recycle opinions from the leading newspapers. And Internet news sites primarily recycle TV and newspaper stories.

Yes, some truth does slide through, but it looks almost the same as the other stuff. The only places we get anything close to refined truth is on a few Internet sites… and many of them have a particular axe to grind.

And the Internet news sites that really dig through the pile (like Mike Krieger’s) are in jeopardy. The Internet is being funneled into Google, Facebook, and a few other friends of the state. If things continue as they’ve been going, the independents will be cut off soon enough, under the guise of copyright or some such.

Sad to say, we shouldn’t accept the news as true. In my personal experience, I’ve been close enough to a few news stories to know the truth, and the networks got it wrong every time.

More Truth

This is what William Colby, former director of the CIA, is quoted as saying in Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don’t Want You to See:

The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.

Now, since people have disputed that quotation, let’s back it up: Please consider Operation Mockingbird.

Beginning in 1948, a CIA agent named Frank Wisner started gathering journalists and broadcasters… and started using them to ‘inform’ the public. The operation soon got so elaborate that other agents called it “Wisner’s Wurlitzer.” (Wurlitzer being the brand of organ that was played in churches.) In other words, Wisner played the media like a musical instrument.

While the real situation is more complex than this short description, rest assured that every major news organization in every major country is manipulated by intelligence groups. Where do you think they get all those “unnamed sources”?

If you were an intel operator, wouldn’t you do precisely that? You’d be considered derelict not to. So, you can rely upon this fact. And see here for a minor example.

And So…

I could continue listing facts, but there’s no real point. The crucial thing is to accept the truth:

The news is worked over before it reaches us.

We do know some facts, of course, and a generation from now we may learn nearly the whole truth about some of these events, but only if we wait and then go out of our way to find it.

The good news in all of this comes when we accept the facts and stop running our brains on bad information. Yes, it would be nice to know what’s really going on, but we don’t, and there isn’t much we can do about it. So, it’s time to stop treating the news seriously.

So long as the guv-megacorp-intel structure remains, it will enforce our ignorance. That’s what such organizations do, by their very nature. To expect differently is like expecting a dog to sprout wings and fly.

But once we accept that fact, we stop being spun around by the talking heads and their handlers.

After that, we can find truth in books and in other serious publications.

So, I suggest that you start ignoring the news. Rather, use all that time and energy to start building the kind of world you’d like to live in.

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Golden Disobedience

This week, we’d like to post a fun article by our friend, Sandy Sandfort. Sandy is a wealth of interesting stories, and he has a new website in the works. If you’d like to be notified when it goes live, send a note to: sandy@privilegedcommunications.net.

Inertia is a human frailty. Too often, we go along to get along. We conform. Because of this, those who claim authority can get most of us to do their bidding if it comes with a plausible justification and is only incremental. We get nickel-and-dimed to death, the death of a thousand cuts.

Back on April 5, 1933, His Majesty, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), had a pen and a telephone. So he issued Executive Order 6102, which made it a federal crime for Americans to own or trade gold anywhere in the world. There were some minor exceptions for some jewelry, industrial uses, collectors’ coins, and dental gold, but the vast majority of the gold had to be turned in.

My father instantly understood what was going on and he didn’t like it. “They’re going to devalue the dollar!” he predicted.

Roosevelt didn’t give much time to comply either. The deadline was May 1. And if Americans did not comply, they faced criminal prosecution under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917. Scofflaws were looking at a fine of up to $10,000 (1933 dollars, about a third of a million dollars today) and up to ten years in prison.

My parents made the conscious decision to become outlaws.

At every possible opportunity for the next three weeks (and substantially longer), my parents followed Gresham’s law (“Bad money drives out good.”), not federal law. They spent paper and collected gold. My father was a dentist, so he could own some dental gold, but that wasn’t enough. He wanted to covert as much paper into gold as possible. So he gave his patients discounts for payment in gold. “Sam,” a neighbor who was a banker, also helped collect gold for himself and my parents. They would repay his help later when they periodically ‘laundered’ gold for him and themselves.

Even after the deadline, gold still kept coming in. Mostly it was from people who didn’t have the time or the inclination to turn in their gold to the government. However, many feared prosecution and were happy to deal with my parents instead of FDR. Plus they got a better deal.

So where did they launder their tidy little nest egg? Why, “South of the Border, Down Mexico Way,” of course. Mexico had no Executive Order 6102.

My mother was born in the mountains above Albuquerque, New Mexico, and spoke fluent Spanish. She and my father loved traveling though the backwaters of Mexico. At first, they traveled alone, and later, after my brother and I came along, the whole family (including the dog) would go exploring in the land of mañana. (Somewhere there is a picture of me, age one, sitting on a portable potty, experiencing my first-ever bout with “Montezuma’s revenge.”)

My parents carried whatever gold they intended to sell, stashed in the car or on their person. The usual routine was to go to the section of town where casas de cambio were found. (Think of it as the “Street of the Money Changers.”) My mother – all 5’1” of her – would go down the street and show a gold double eagle to every money changer at every kiosk and storefront. In Spanish, she would ask, “How much will you pay for these?” When she found the best price, she would give my father the high sign. He would join her and they would conclude the deal. Sometimes the gold was theirs, sometimes, Sam’s. Sometimes they got pesos and sometimes dollars, depending on what they needed at the time.

So, the ‘illicit’ gold paid for a fun trip and got converted to ‘clean’ funds for themselves and Sam. What’s the crime in that?

And the Beat Goes On…

My family never showed much respect for government laws, per se. No victim, no crime, even if the government disagreed. The general ethical belief of the Sandfort family was pretty much in harmony with the Golden Rule. It had worked for cultures and religions for thousands of years and it worked for us. That was our law. Man-made laws either adhere to the Golden Rule (don’t murder people, duh) and so are unnecessary, or they violate it, such as “The War on (Some) Drugs,” so they were nominally complied with, ignored, or circumvented.

So, when wartime laws said that a seller had to follow certain rationing rules to sell his own products, many buyers and sellers simply conspired to make their own decisions. When my parents needed and could afford a new car for business, the local Chevy dealer was happy to ‘cook the books,’ take their money, and give them a new sedan.

Later, when my family traveled in that car and others, my mother would prepare food for us to eat as we drove. We stopped only for gas… and the agricultural inspection station at the California state line. Of course, we had items that we were required by law to declare, but if you hide them in your backpack or under the car seat and lie, you can save a lot of time and keep from having to throw away perfectly good food.

And then there was the time we smuggled a live Mexican iguana in a cigar box, but don’t get me started…

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com