Tag Archives: Independence Day

Fourth Note, by Eric Peters

Posted on July 3, 2016 | 7 comments

The US still celebrates its liberation from Great Britain on the Fourth of July as Independence Day, although it’s current government is far more oppressive than the one it broke free of 240 years ago. From Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

The Fourth of July has become like Christmas – a kind of ersatz celebration with forms but not much significance.

What is it we’re celebrating, exactly?

A historical event – the successful separation of the colonies from the British empire.

The secession of the colonies. Their rejection of the arbitrary authority of the British king and parliament.

Good for the colonists.

What about us?

Do we not also live under the authority of arbitrary government? A president and Congress?

An endless conga line of bureaucrats and apparatchiks?

Sometimes, we get to vote for some of them. Our vote made effectively meaningless by the thousands – the hundreds of thousands and tens of millions of other votes.

The king or parliament would issue an edict and the colonists were legally required to obey it. Are we not legally required to obey whatever edicts the Congress pass and president decrees?

Can anyone explain the difference?

Moral law no longer governs. Only the law. And that can be anything. There are no limits whatsoever on what may be done to us; only that a law be enacted (and not even that).

We are bound to obey, regardless.

The king’s men could simply take our things, search our persons on whim. The colonists objected to such treatment and cited such treatment among the reasons for their decision to secede.

Is it not a fact that the government’s men (and women) can simply take our things? Search us on whim? Have you traveled recently?

Can anyone explain the difference?

The colonists under the king and parliament could own property. Meaning really own it. They were not required to send annual/regular payments in to the king in order to be permitted to remain in homes for which they’d paid or carriages they’d purchased.

We are.

The colonists – under the king and parliament – had an unquestioned right to own and bear (carry on their persons) firearms. Without permission.

Are we allowed such freedom?

The king and parliament did not concern themselves with the colonists’ “safety.” If a colonists wished, he could ride his horse as fast as he liked, eat what he liked, smoke what he liked. No authority pestered him about his choices. He was not told with whom he must do business, or forced to build his house a certain way or forbidden from planting a vegetable garden on his property. He was not compelled to purchase insurance of any kind whatsoever.

How about today?

In most parts of the Land of the Free, you and I are not even free to purchase fireworks to celebrate our supposed freedom. We’re allowed “safe” sparklers and such. But nothing that flies or explodes. To possess or use such constitutes a crime in most states.

The irony of this is lost on most people.

So, celebrating our freedoms strikes me as hollow and pathetic. Like holiday greetings instead of merry Christmas!

I plan to stay home and read a book.

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/07/03/fourth-note/

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Celebrating this Land of Absurdity, by MN Gordon

Posted on July 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

The America whose independence we honor on July 4th no longer exists. From MN Gordon at economicprism.com:

“Myths and legends die hard in America,” remarked Hunter S. Thompson in The Great Shark Hunt, nearly 40-years ago. Thompson didn’t likely have U.S. Treasury bonds in mind when he made this observation. Though, if he were still alive, he may find the present state of the great Treasury bond bubble to be an amusing anecdote.

On Monday the yield on the 10-Year Treasury note touched down at 1.45 percent. This is but a scant distance from the 1.39 percent yield reached in July 2012. What compels someone of sound mind and honest convictions to give their hard earned money to the government for 10-years for just a 1.45 percent yield?

Is it the myth that U.S. Treasuries are the safest – default-free – investment in the world? Is it the legend of American exceptionalism? Maybe it’s both…or maybe it’s neither.

As far as we can tell, U.S. Treasury investors suffer the same cognitive dissonance that the broad U.S. populace takes with them to the shore each July 4th as they celebrate Independence. These freedom lovers, descendants of none less than Davey Crockett, eat hotdogs and revel in their illusions of what America is. Their zeal is impressive.

They believe they live in the greatest country ever conceived. They believe they experience more freedom, opportunity, and prosperity than their cohorts in other nations. They believe their system of government provides for their representation.

Yet at the same time they sense that something’s off. That somehow the facts don’t jive with the narrative. If they contemplate it at all, they find they’re unable to reconcile that their fundamental rights have been trampled on by their own government.

Money Sucking Vortex

Uncompromising independence, rugged individualism, and unbounded personal freedom were once ideals essential to the American character. According to popular American folklore, they still are. We have some reservations.

In practice, the principles that gave rise to the great myths and legends of America died long ago. Freedom. Liberty. Independence. Limited representative government. Sound money. Private property rights. A humble and esteemable populace. Avoidance of foreign entanglements. Rafting down the Mississippi River.

These concepts, in reality, faded away from daily life over the last century like stars in the morning. Over the last 100 years Washington has become a sort of money sucking vortex. At the Capitol Building sits a cadre of legislatures and an army of staffers working up new laws to take your money.

New rules, proposed rules, and notices are published daily in the Federal Register. A quick read of the daily publication – presently about 80,000 pages – will enlighten and alarm you to the vast array of agencies, departments, and commissions and their vast array of daily nonsense.

With all these rules, it’s become near impossible to earn an honest living, and set aside a few bucks, without the IRS making a federal case out of it. Was overtime pay properly reported? Were company sponsored parking lot fees disclosed as taxable benefits?

To continue reading: Celebrating this Land of Absurdity

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Annual Irony Day, by Eric Peters

Posted on June 21, 2016 | Leave a comment

Why do we celebrate Independence Day when Americans are no longer within field goal range of being either independent or free? From Eric Peters on a guest post by Eric Peters.

We’re just weeks away from the Annual Irony – the day devoted to celebrating a revolt against the authority of a red, white and blue bully (George III) while living under the thumb of … a red, white and blue bully (Uncle).

We’re supposed to celebrate the former – because it benefitted the latter.

The American colonists were not unsaddled. They simply got a new rider. Why celebrate this?

Does it make any sense to you?

The colonists, we were all told as schoolchildren, objected to being taxed by a far-away king and parliament that did not “represent” them. And which taxed them without their “consent.”

How many of you feel represented by the president and Congress in far-away Washington? Do you recall consenting to being taxed?

And what is it about being “represented” that’s so fabulous?

Are we, really?

How, exactly, can a single individual “represent” thousands – let alone tens (and hundreds of) thousands?

The mechanics of it seem dubious.

Your congressman or senator can only represent himself, while claiming to represent thousands of people, most of whom he’s never even met and many of which manifestly oppose what he does in their name and without their consent.

He does as he thinks ought to be done – but gets moral traction by getting the yokels to accept (or at least, never examine too closely) the idea that he is a kind of magic action figure puppet who somehow transmutes the will of an entity called “the people” – which catchphrase has the same effect on some people as a walkie-talkie or cell phone has upon the aborigines of the rainforest.

The god speaks!

Obey… obey… obey…

“The people” is a noble sounding but oily marketing con. Like the detergent that works “up to” 10 times better than the competition (but probably works about the same and quite possibly worse).

Who are “the people,” exactly?

Go ahead, try to find them. All you’ll find are persons. Who very rarely agree on anything – let alone all things.

Of course admitting this presents logistical and moral problems for those who claim to “represent” us … (“us” – aka “the people” – being a kind of undifferentiated mass with congealed interests).

The fact is if you haven’t specifically given some other person your consent to act on your behalf, you are not represented.

The fact that some person claims to “represent” you (and thousands of other people) doesn’t – presto! – make it so.

Think for a minute about the effrontery of it, this business of some guy claiming to be your “representative,” even if you never asked him.

Let alone him asking you.

And then this person threatens to do you harm if you dispute his claims, if you object to him taking your things and ordering you about.

It brings to mind a statement supposedly made by Lenin: “You may not be interested in government, but government is interested in you.”

To continue reading: Annual Irony Day

 

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Changing of Our Guards, by eric

Posted on July 4, 2015 | Leave a comment

Don’t call it Independence Day. From eric at theburningplatform.com:

This weekend we celebrate the changing of our guard.

Which, when you stop to think about it, is more than a little odd. Do the inmates of Rikers Island throw a party when they get a new warden? To celebrate the changing of the color of the uniforms worn by their cagers?

And yet, we do.

This coming weekend, Americans will celebrate not being free to – among other things:

Buy and display fireworks themselves.

Choose whether to wear a seat belt.

Say “no thanks” to the health insurance mafia.

Travel without permission (and decline to produce your “papers” on demand).

Smoke in a privately owned bar or pool hall.
Freely associate – or not.

Ever truly own a home or land outright, free from yearly rent payments (in the form of real estate taxes) to the government.

Educate your children as you (rather than strangers in a distant capital city) see fit.

Consume substances decreed (arbitrarily) to be “illegal.”
Possess “contraband” items (including firearms, without which the right to self-defense is a nullity).

Open a business without permission.

Contract your labor without permission – and under “terms and conditions” decreed by the government.

Elect not to provide the government with evidence (the income tax form) that can and will be used against you, despite the Fifth Amendment.

Produce and sell milk and other farm products that haven’t been “inspected” by the government and without the permission of the government.

Defend oneself against even the most egregious violation of the law by the law’s enforcers.

Rent a room or apartment you own to whom you wish.

Fish (or hunt) without a license… even on your own land.

Use your car to provide taxi service.

Collect rainwater for personal use.

Opt not to have your home connected to “grid” electricity.

Have your young daughters set up a curbside lemonade stand on a hot July afternoon.

The “long train of abuses” (as Jefferson described them 239 years ago this Saturday) is extensive. Far more so today than it was back then. And yet, we – most Americans – continue to play their part in the annual July Fourth kabuki theater. We pretend we’re “free” – and the government pretends it has the “consent of the governed.”

To continue reading: Changing of Our Guards

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