I haven’t read this blog, The Art of Not Being Governed, very extensively so if it turns out to be a neonazi or everytown front, don’t blame me, okay? But so far I’m enjoying it.
It’s got a recurring feature called Statist Fallacies, basic stuff but pretty good so far. Here’s a lovely take-down on the mossy old “social contract,” which TUAK readers probably know is a particular bugaboo of mine.
Enjoy. I’m going out to play now.
They say that Louis XIV had the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum cast into all the cannon of the French Army. It means “The Ultimate Argument of Kings,” and that always struck me as one of the most honest and up-front things any ruler or would-be ruler ever said. “We can dress it up prettier than this, but when it comes down to the unvarnished truth this is what it’s about: You’ll do as I say or I’ll send my goons to kill you.”
I thought about that for a long time. If there’s an ultimate argument, it seems only logical that there must be an ultimate answer. For years I thought the ultimate answer must be the bullets in my rifle, but it never seemed quite right. I’ve got bullets – he’s got frigging Cannon Balls. I mean, if there were three hundred million rifles throwing bullets at him, then maybe. But we all know that’s not going to happen. So if there’s an ultimate answer to his ultimate argument, it sure as hell ain’t bullets.
It finally came to me – and that’s when I abandoned the city and most of my stuff, and gave all that was behind me a good stiff Randian Shrug.
The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.
Little Bear 2009-2018
Laddie the Amazing Torso Boy 2011-2020
"Freedom Outlaw. It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it. It’s an attitude — from which actions always follow. It’s a do-it-yourself occupation. And a lifetime vocation."
- Claire Wolfe, Backwoods Home Companion, 6-07-10
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
- G. K. Chesterton
"If every Jewish and anti-Nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic."
- Aaron Zelman
"Authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force."
- Barbie
"Never underestimate the ability of shit to find a fan."
- F. Paul Wilson
"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." The sophistry of villains - Bah!
- Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star
“Truth is, I’m not specifically interested in an armed society. What I want is a free society.”
- George Potter
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
- D. H. Lawrence
Aristippus passed Diogenes as he was washing lentils.
He said, “If you could but learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on lentils.”
Diogenes said, “And if you could learn to live on lentils, you would not have to flatter the king.”
Sandy Hook was a Gun Free Zone. So was the Westroads Mall. And the Aurora Theater. And Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Should I go on? They were all Gun Free Zones.
– Reality
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
- Robert A. Heinlein
"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand
If ever a man should ask you
For your business or your name
Tell him to go and fuck himself
Tell his friends to do the same.
For a man who'd trade his liberty
For a safe and dreamless sleep
Doesn't deserve the both of them
And neither shall he keep.
- Frank Turner
Don't be afraid to try something big, just because you're an amateur. The Ark was built by amateurs. The Titanic was built by professionals.
- Anon
"Nothing scares a police officer more than the threat of being treated the way that they treat people every day."
- Anon
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."
- Gen. James Mattis
"Lust for power is the most flagrant of all the passions."
- Tacitus
"The man who knows what freedom means will find a way to be free."
- F.A. "Baldy" Harper
"The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude."
- William James
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
- Viktor Frankl
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
- Milton Friedman
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
- William Faulkner
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
- Ernest Hemingway
"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
John Moses Browning - The most badass Mormon who ever lived.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"
- Ronald Reagan
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
- James A. Baldwin
"It is better to be a warrior in a garden than to be a gardener in a war."
- Anon
“I tried to live in such a way that, when dying, I would rather feel happy than scared.”
– Witold Pilecki
Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.
- Sallust
"Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark."
- Lazarus Long
Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
– Christopher Morley
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”
-Frederick Douglass
ESSE QUAM VIDERI –
To be, rather than to seem
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
“A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
– Ida B. Wells
Do what thy manhood bid thee do; from none but self expect applause.
He noblest lives and noblest dies, who makes and keeps his self made laws
– Sir Richard Burton
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
– Winston Churchill
“Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Dance as though no one is watching you. Love as though you have never been hurt before. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth.”
― Father Alfred d’Souza
Thanks for the link. We’d like to confirm that we aren’t neo-nazis, and honestly we don’t know what an everytown front is. We promote agorism, free association, voluntary anarchism and cryptocurrency. If you like content in that vein, we hope to be your go-to source.
Did I really need a smiley on that? Because I thought the joke was clear, but I’ve been wrong before.
I’m left wondering what I slept through in school, cuz I don’t know what most of NBG’s terms mean. I’m not bragging about my ignorance, just annoyed about my so-called education. Sigh. Now I gotta go google a buncha stuff.
Agorism? Off to Google we go!!! Tallyhoe!
Fear not, fair reader, I have returned subsequent to my visitation with the oracle of the Googles, and have discovered that Agorism is sort of, pretty much, just about, maybe pretty much just like, anarcho-capitalism.
It’s sort of, maybe, kind of another term for it, although it isn’t exactly JUST LIKE it in some way or another.
I fear my ignorance is showing.
I shall learn more. Perhaps from this Web-Blog which Joel suggests.
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Not-Being-Governed/dp/0300169175
“For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states.”
Good read. Not exactly fun, but it made my head hurt in a good way, and shed some light on why the pernicious con called government has persisted for so long.
It also made me think about whether I would be willing to make the sacrifices that the peoples of Zomia have been making for two thousand years.
I didn’t spend a lot of time at the blog, but I did search for some attribution to the 5-year old book whose name heads the blog, and didn’t see it.
I’m not very impressed by people who don’t give proper credit. Given the subject matter, I’m not inclined to accept ignorance as a defense.
Beware the BS. I worked with a guy who spouted the same belief. He willingly gave up his drivers license and other “artifacts” of the state and refused to pay taxes. He spent his spare time writing letters to congressmen and lawyers. Our company was forced to withhold his taxes and also take some of his pay to pay his back taxes that he was disputing. I moved on to a different city and different job and lost touch with him. Until, that is, I read in the paper he was sentenced to three years in federal prision for tax evasion. So there may be no “social contract” and you are free to make believe it doesn’t exist I can assure the people with the power will have the last word. Probably the stupidist thing any human on earth can do is refuse to pay their taxes. I hate taxes but I hate prison too so I will pay my taxes and live on what’s left.
“Probably the stupidist thing any human on earth can do is refuse to pay their taxes.”
I don’t know, but paying taxes sounds even more stupid to me. Just because half the population does it, does not transform it into intelligence.
But much easier is simply to not earn enough in the above-ground economy to be a taxpayer. Aren’t the other half of the population in that condition? 150 million Americans can’t be wrong, can they?
Here is a letter I wrote to my Congresscritters a while back, asking about that social contract:
http://strike-the-root.com/wheres-my-contract
Never got any answer from them, for some reason.