Revolution? No. Disobey Dictators? Yes.

by Scott Lazarowitz
Jun. 15, 2011

As a result of the Federal Reserve’s inflation and the intrusions inflicted against others by Washington’s reactionary statists, we are seeing mass protests and riots across Europe, revolutions in the Middle East, and, in the U.S., the makings for a new extended period of civil unrest. Sadly, some people in the U.S. have been calling for "revolution," and they don’t mean a revolution of ideas and principles, as Ron Paul has been communicating. Unfortunately, many of the people who call for "revolution" in America are referring to the use of violence, either directly by mobs and rioting or indirectly by way of government-imposed and police-enforced legislation and regulations. Some are calling for the strengthening of the government’s armed power to take more from the "haves" to give more to the "have-nots."

These modern revolutionary wannabes do not seem to understand the morality of the individual’s right to own one’s own life, labor, property and contracts. The revolutionaries of the Left love the redistribution extremism of their beloved Obama, but need to be educated in the ideas of Rothbardian ethics and liberty. Then they might better understand that the real, honest and effective revolution will be one of ideas, nullification and secession, and should also include making the criminals of government accountable under the rule of law.

Now, by "disobeying dictators," I am not advocating violence, but only that people live their lives as they see fit, as long as they do not intrude on anyone else’s equal right to do the same with their lives. So there comes a time when civil disobedience is in order. By civil disobedience, I mean acting in defiance of government-imposed rules and dictates that have nothing to do with protecting life, liberty and property. This includes individual- or state-nullification of federal orders. I believe in the Non-Aggression Principle and oppose the use of aggression as an initiated means toward an end.

Now, there has been a lot of talk about how America is quickly becoming a police state and a dictatorship. The Federal Reserve continues to cause price and food inflation. The federal military bureaucracy continues to provoke foreigners to act against innocent Americans and other Westerners. Various government-monopolized police agencies – federal, state, and local – are out of control, as many agents now are murdering, wounding, trespassing and searching innocent people and criminally breaking into and destroying their property. There has been too much Nazi-like zeal to "enforce" the very bad laws and policies that ignorant, corrupt public officials are ramming down our throats. These politicians and bureaucrats, and their armed agents, are criminally ruining America, and it has to stop.

Like in the old Soviet Union, Obama’s government-controlled medical scheme will not only be harmful medically, but the increasing police state we are experiencing will be used to enforce the controls, and also will be used against individuals who show dissent from the government’s authoritarian dictates.

We The People don’t need all that, and we don’t want it. We want freedom and peace. (At least I do.)

Now, what would happen if doctor’s offices, hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers, drug and supplement makers, and insurers just decided to do their business with their consumers – honestly and peacefully, and without aggression or fraud – and totally ignore federal regulations, mandates, fees, licensure laws and other intrusions? Frankly, those intrusions’ only real purpose is to protect established physicians and businesses’ profits from prospective competitors and start-ups. (The medical establishment was already corrupt well before ObamaCare.)

The contracts involved in the relationships between doctors or other medical providers and patients, or between insurers and patients, are private contracts, and third parties such as government bureaucrats sticking their big noses into those private contracts are committing acts of criminality, of trespassing, in my opinion.

Acts of nullification are necessary for Americans to be better served in their medical needs. With freedom, the consumers would determine what is needed, not the government, and the producers would serve the consumers – quality of medical care would then rise and the prices would fall.

And what would happen if, by chance, Ron Paul were elected president and immediately ordered closed all U.S. military bases that have been trespassing on foreign lands, and ordered U.S. government and military personnel to return to the U.S. and to that dreaded private sector? This, of course, would also coincide with individual and corporate income taxes being eliminated, thus incentivizing U.S. businesses to expand and invest considerably, and inspiring and encouraging Americans to start new businesses without fear of being punished by the feds. Such huge economic expansion would create new real jobs, including for those returning military personnel. (Perhaps the U.S. ought to do this anyway, whether or not Dr. Paul is elected, and despite the objections of the parasitic defense contractors and their socialist, central planning elitist neocons in Washington.)

For those who are worried about America’s access to all that important oil from the Middle East, people in the various American states need to nullify and ignore federal energy-related and environmental regulations and restrictions, and explore their own lands and drill for and make use of any oil and gas that they have a God-given right to make use of. If the federal bureaucrats don’t like it, we can provide a suggestion box for them somewhere near the local bar, where many of them tend to frequent.

Regarding the bureaucrats’ regressive attacks on domestic natural resource exploration – supposedly based on "environmental protection" – during the Gulf oil spill last year, President Obama used the force of the federal government to prevent Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal from building berms to protect his state’s coast from the oil spill. In my opinion, the Obama Administration was acting criminally obstructive of Louisiana’s right to be protected from an imminent environmental disaster, and I believe that officials, including Obama, should have been criminally charged and prosecuted.

The same goes for those congressmen and senators who impose their ignorant, anti-progress extremism on people, such as by banning certain light bulbs and forcing everyone to use more dangerous, hazardous, poisonous light bulbs. These public officials are committing far worse crimes than just those of public nuisance or even trespass. These public officials imposing dangerous health hazards on the rest of us, either with light bulbs or by degrading the quality of medical care, should be criminally charged with reckless endangerment. I think it may be the only way for the people to fight back against these hooligans and racketeers.

Further, what would happen if local communities de-monopolized the work of community policing, and started their own competitive policing agencies, all required to be accountable under the rule of law? Currently, the people of American cities and towns obediently and passively allow their government-monopolized police force to be above the law, and thus have paved the way toward the current situation of criminal violence committed by police against innocent people. And, rather than the people having the right and the freedom to videotape police actions, they are punished for it, while it is the monopolized police who have the power to keep surveillance on the people and invade their privacy and trespass on their property with impunity.

As Judge Napolitano says, of course we have a right to videotape police in public places. One very important purpose of cell phone cameras and YouTube is to show the reality of what happens when a society allows community policing to be monopolized by the government: the inevitable lawbreaking and abuse by the police themselves.

Communities need to reverse this Nazi-style police state and decentralize and de-monopolize community policing with open and free competition.

The people need to start such enterprises whether or not they get approval from any local, state or federal bureaucrat. If such bureaucrats and government-monopolists don’t like it, tell them to put a note in the suggestion box in the local Dunkin’ Donuts, and we’ll get back to them.

Incidentally, by "rule of law," I mean a structure of society in which no one is above the law, no acts of theft or fraud are permitted, no trespassing and no acts of initiated physical aggression are allowed. And that means no police may be above the law or have any authority over anyone else! And the right of the individual to self-defense, including the right to possess the means of self-defense, shall NOT be infringed.

As Hans-Hermann Hoppe has noted, security firms and insurers would reward armed clients.

Current government restrictions on these rights to self-defense are a threat to everyone’s safety. For example, the people of Chicago have a right to defend themselves against the "wilding" youths, and they really had better start protecting themselves, because their government-monopolized police agents sure as hell aren’t going to protect them. (Not when they’re too busy policing Dunkin’ Donuts, they’re not.)

Also, the people need to start private schools and home schools, and ignore government regulations and restrictions in that area, too. The government-controlled schools and colleges are now the statists’ places of socializing experimentation and political indoctrination centers. We are now seeing the education Gestapo breaking into people’s homes and kidnapping them, because of student loan default or fraud. Because of the indoctrination of state-worship now in America, education is a much more totalitarian enterprise, to enrich the government employees and to strengthen the power of the government bureaucrat. Soon, we should expect S.W.A.T. teams enforcing local truancy laws.

No, it is time that the people ignore the State and just educate their kids as they see fit. If the government’s education Nazis don’t like the people taking control of their kids’ own education, tell them to put a note in the suggestion box located in the local school’s air-conditioned television studio and media center complex (or the school’s air-conditioned health spa).

All the laws, regulations, intrusive policies and Nazi police procedures we have now in America, including in medical care, energy, the totalitarian PATRIOT Act, and so forth, are acts of positive legislative law, and not of natural law, or the rule of law that coincides with our inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. These government and police intrusions undermine the rule of law, and are the basis for how government bureaucrats and their hired guns, the police, have become criminals.

And as we have seen with so many court decisions approving of police violence and striking down inalienable rights to life, liberty and property, the Constitution and the government-monopolized judicial system do not protect us.

Rather than a revolution of violence, the only real way to restore freedom in America is by disobeying the dictators, through nullification and civil disobedience, and criminally charging public officials who are committing the real crimes of society.
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Scott Lazarowitz [send him mail] is a commentator and cartoonist at Reasonandjest.com.

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