by Michael S. Rozeff

Wednesday morning the 25^th at 9:45 a.m. meant a visit to Dr. Nick, the ophthalmologist. The office was peopled predominantly by seniors who looked near 80. Two in conversation admitted to being 78 and 79. I felt young. Still, that’s your future and not too far off. Make the most of your remaining time, I thought.

A sign was placed prominently on the desk in front of the receptionist:

“Red Flag Identity Theft Rule. We are now required by law to ask for a Photo ID at the time of each visit. Please have your Photo ID ready for the receptionist to scan.”

Minimizing the intersection of government with one’s life is not always possible. Here was a new and unwelcome intrusion.

“What’s your name?” the receptionist asked.

I handed over my driver’s license and said “Rozeff.” She scanned it. There was a beeping sound.

“Do you have your insurance cards?”

Another reminder of the unwelcome intersection.

“No, I don’t carry the Medicare card. It’s paper and it will shred up. I need to get it plasticized.”

This is true. Medicare doesn’t even provide a plastic card. I never carry it. Carrying the thing around irks me. Do we need collars like dogs? Do we need dog tags like soldiers in the army?

Why is presenting that card necessary at every visit, I wondered? Am I not already on the computer?

As parent to child: “You really need to have it. Medicare’s your primary provider, you know.”

Somehow the receptionist became a syrupy and maternal stand-in for the government. She couldn’t earn her pay without becoming a parrot even if she herself didn’t want to be. She took the card from my private insurer.

“Is this a federal rule or a state rule?”

“Federal,” she replied.

“They can go jump in the lake.”

How much static must this cheerful woman endure from old codgers like me? There is no other frontline between the government and us. We may as well be talking to the wall.

“We have to go along with it,” she said.

“No we don’t,” I shot back. I sounded like my feisty mother. “There’s going to be a revolution, some day.”

Revolution was on my mind because of a bit of e-mail correspondence earlier that morning in which revolution came up. She was finishing up her paperwork. I took the opportunity to conduct a survey.

“Has anyone else ever said that to you? Has anyone used the word ‘revolution’?”

“Not that direct,” she replied, smiling. “I hear rumblings, though, grumbling.”

“Discontent?”

“Yes.”

Why is there discontent? Too many stupid and dysfunctional rules and regulations. Too many taxes. Too many subsidies. Too many obstacles to getting ahead. Too many intrusions. Too much interference. Too many injustices. Too many forced inequities. Too many people getting fat on the work of others. Too many people taking unfair advantage. Too little headway against problems. Too much control by others. Too much compulsion. Too much government. Too much bureaucratization. Too much compulsory centralization. Do this, do that. Don’t do this, don’t do that.

My newspaper subscription has expired, and I won’t renew it for a while. More than ever, theWall Street Journal is a daily compendium of the latest socialist news, or call it what you will. President Barack Obama has something called “Race to the Top.” It’s part of $100 billion for “education,” which in turn is part of the near-trillion dollar legislation pushed through in his early days. The idea is to reverse the embarrassing decline in public school education. Its sponsors say that one-third of public school children fail to graduate.

Obama’s spending includes billions upon billions for “science.” After a bill like this has passed, the newspapers dutifully report each drip of the money faucet into each rivulet of “stimulus.” The politicians get the maximum voter mileage from each such announcement. The stimulus provides continual socialist propaganda.

The establishment keeps scooping up the nation’s wealth which it then pumps out to its favorites. It keeps borrowing more wealth and dispersing that. It keeps printing dollars on top of all that.

Obama is the establishment’s attempt to put a new face on its old, tired, and worn out nostrums. Fewer and fewer people are buying, but the compulsion machine just keeps on centralizing the money flows. It knows no better. Top-down government centralization doesn’t work, but the machine keeps running. Obama’s cachet is evaporating after less than one year. He’s now under 50 percent approval.

Americans need to turn the tables. Instead of being identified so that they can be taxed, controlled, and herded about, they need to identify the source of their discontent. Iris scanners, whole body imagers, pat downs, photo IDs, social security numbers, tax forms, and Medicare cards all issue from the machinery of compulsion arranged by top-down methods of control. They don’t work. Discomfort and discontent are the emotional reactions that herald this truth. Compulsory centralization is a loser.

In 1978, Howard Beale’s voice symbolized the discontent rising in the land. Dough takes time to rise, and revolutions take time to brew. Years. Decades. Recognition of the source of discontent is necessary. Conversation about it is necessary.

Widespread government compulsion in all matters great and small is the order of the day. It is accepted, with growing grumbling. Compulsion as a general rule and way of life is something that has to be seen and rejected asunacceptable. When that happens, the revolution will be upon us.

by Amanda Terkel

Fired Up! Missouri points out that the Lafayette County Republican Central Committeeis highlighting a new billboard in the state with steps for a “citizens guide to revolution of a corrupt government“:

This billboard replaces one that warned that the socialist “Obama-Nation” is “coming for you.” It’s unclear who the owner of the billboard is, but the first one was the work of a “Missouri businessman.”

by Larken Rose

Whenever I speak of forcible resistance against “government,” some people respond with things like, “How can you be for violence?” And almost everyone who says that is both delusional and hypocritical.

I admit, compared to almost everyone else, my political views are very extreme. For example, I don’t advocate that anyone ever be forced to fund something that they don’t want to fund. I don’t support robbery, even when the stolen loot is to be used for something supposedly noble or beneficial. No Democrat or Republican can honestly say that. Though they differ on how the politicians should spend the loot, every single one of them advocates that I be robbed, under threat of violence, to pay for things that I don’t want. And, of course, they also advocate that you be robbed to pay for things that you don’t want.

I don’t. Ain’t I extreme?

The trouble is, even though every Republican and Democrat advocates theinitiation of violence against millions of people who haven’t harmed anyone, the way people see reality is so warped by the “authority” myth that they can’t see that what they advocate is coercion. They think that calling it “law” or “taxation” somehow makes it legitimate and disqualifies it as violence. And yet they know that anyone who doesn’t pay the federal Mafia’s extortion fees will be punished, with either extra robbery or imprisonment (or death if they continue to resist). It’s not that they are unaware of the violence behind all “laws”; it’s that they think it’s automatically righteous when “government” does it, and so they don’t call it violence.

The most bizarre example is the people who say, “I abhor violence, so I’m for gun control.” Oh, really? And how, exactly, will this “gun control” be imposed? By friendly suggestion? By rational argument? By a group hug? Or by men with guns forcibly disarming the general public? “Gun control” is violence. Even worse, it is the initiation of violence against people whose only sin is having theability to defend themselves. And using violence against someone merely because that person possessed the means to protect himself is violent, evil, hypocritical and insane.

And such lunacy is the direct result of the belief in “authority.” If, for example, a burglar broke into someone’s house, and the homeowner pulled out a knife and threatened to attack the crook if he didn’t leave, how would most people judge that? Most would obviously see the invader as the bad guy, and the guy trying to chase him away as the good guy. But if the burglar happens to be called a “tax collector,” and tries to forcibly rob someone, and his intended victim resists, nearly everyone would loudly condemn the victim of the extortion as being a nasty, “violent” criminal.

That is why, when I say that using force to defend against those who initiate violence–even when that violence is called “law” or “taxes,” and even when the attackers call themselves “government” or “law-enforcement”–most people view me as the violent one. This is because almost everyone truly believes that when you make an actual crime (trespassing, robbery, extortion, assault, kidnapping, murder, etc.) “legal,” it ceases to be a crime. They further believe that resisting a crime, when the crime has been “legalized,” is a horrible thing to do.

Almost everyone in this country advocates constant, widespread violence, but they are too deluded to know it. Often the violence is fairly hidden, because the mere threat of authoritarian retaliation (for not paying “taxes,” for building something without a “permit,” for possessing an “illegal” weapon or an “illegal” substance, and so on) is often enough to coerce compliance. In those cases, statists can pretend that people obey “voluntarily,” though that makes about as much sense as saying that someone “voluntarily” gave his car to a carjacker, in order to avoid being shot. But even when the government violence is overt and bloody, as with the “war on drugs,” or foreign wars, or even some traffic stops these days, statists are still unable to see that what they are advocating is BRUTAL, BLOODY VIOLENCE. Worse yet, when I suggest that it would be justified to use whatever force it takes to stop such aggressive force, the statists see me as the “violent” one.

To illustrate this hypocrisy, I like to make the following offer, to anyone and everyone who considers himself peaceful and civilized: “I will never initiate violence against you myself, nor advocate that anyone else do so.” When I ask if someone will do the same for me, he always says “yes.” And almost no one who says that means it, as a simple follow-up question easily illustrates: “So you don’t advocate that I be forced, via ‘taxes,’ to fund anything that I don’t want to fund?” That’s when they start to backpedal, make excuses, start to use vague euphemisms about one’s “fair share,” and so on. “Okay, so you won’tpromise to refrain from advocating the initiation of violence against me. That’s good to know.”

Here is a very simple principle that almost everyone understands: “Don’t ever start a fight, but if someone attacks you, you have the right to defend yourself.” And yet, because of the cult belief in “government,” that simple rule sometimes turns completely upside-down: “It’s okay to start a fight with everyone in the country (via ‘taxes’ and other ‘laws’), and okay to violently crush anyone who tries to defend himself against your attack.” Well, if such lunacy is considered to be an acceptable, civilized, mainstream attitude–which it is in this country, and throughout most of the world–then I’m happy to be “extreme.”

by Michael Gaddy

As a government grows more and more intrusive on individual liberties, that government’s fear of the armed citizen increases exponentially, just as an armed robber fears a well-armed potential victim. Here in America in the last seventy plus years, our government and their stooges in the media have sought to relegate the right of a free people to keep and bear arms into a privilege, subject to government approval, rather than an inalienable right. Sadly, many gun owners have agreed to participate in this madness.

I have been consistent in my objections to asking permission and paying for the privilege to carry a weapon on my person, if and when I chose to do so. Yet, the majority of objections I receive to my position come from people who currently own guns and have jumped at the opportunity for government approval to do what they already have the right to do. Is this not an open acknowledgement to those in power the Second Amendment, and the remainder of the Bill of Rights, mean nothing and are subject to the whim of some elected criminal, bureaucrat, or an agenda wearing a black robe?

When I decided to write this article, I did not contact the government, submit to a background check, submit fingerprints, take a government endorsed writing class and pay for permission. What is the difference in the exercise of my inalienable right to free speech and my inalienable right to keep and bear arms? The difference is: the state currently fears my ability to resist tyranny with a firearm more than with words, but as we can see from the reaction of the government and its media lackeys to the spoken objections to the tyranny of socialized medicine, that is about to change.

In today’s political climate, if one dares to speak out about the intrusion of the state into every crevice of liberty and freedom, they are compared by the socialist mouth organ to Nazis, Hamas and Hezbollah.

If the First Amendment rights follow the pattern of the Second Amendment, only those who have been vetted by the state will be allowed to speak or write publicly, and then only after passing the prerequisite courses, state scrutiny, and of course, pay the required amount for the privilege.

I can see the stooges proudly proclaiming their newly paid-for right to speak and write, just as they do now with their permits to carry a concealed weapon. Then, many will lobby for reciprocity from other states the right to speak or publish, or perhaps even campaign for a national permit to exercise their First Amendment rights.

An American, exercising his inalienable right to keep and bear arms, recently became the focus of the state and the media in New Hampshire near where Obama was to appear. Chris Matthews and other members of the propaganda ministry were apoplectic. How dare anyone other than a government bottom feeder be allowed near the Messiah with a firearm? What would have happened had this man decided to exercise his First Amendment rights at the same time he was exercising his Second?

What did the state and the media fear most about this man with a gun? Was it the man, the gun, the spirit of the man, or perhaps it might have been his ethnicity? After all, according to the media, if he were there to object to the socialist plans of Obama that would reveal his latent racism. We all know, white people concerned about government taking over their health care want to shoot anyone who is only half white.

What a masterstroke it was for the state to get Boobus to admit the only rights he has are those subject to the“reasonable” restrictions of his masters. The precedent has been set and we have agreed; you must submit yourself before the god called government, pass their background checks, take their approved qualification course, submit the required monies and wait for your ID card certifying you have permission from the state to exercise at least one of your former inalienable rights!

If you, and/or a member of your family, are assaulted by a madman with a weapon while in a restaurant, on a school campus, in church, at the mall, in a bank, in the parking lot where you shop or work, in a carjacking or a mugging, or visiting Obama’s home town, you must remember, the only people allowed to defend their lives and those of their loved ones are those who have been sanctioned by the state to do so. That is freedom in America today, granted by the state, bought and paid for.

Through our inactions and apathy we have acknowledged the state to be the masters of our lives; perhaps we can apply for the privilege of having our own health care, the right not to be forcibly injected by some vaccine whose side effects are worse than the disease or the right not to be imprisoned in a FEMA camp. Remember, we traded our rights for security. It is turning out to be one heck of a bad bargain.

Resistance, anyone?