LIBERTY: Essay One

by Frank Ragoczy

Have you ever tried to make sense of the fact that it is observably true that most people are not evil in intention or design unless they have been grievously harmed or terrified in early childhood, and yet our human history is chock full of murders, betrayals, deceptions and genocide? I think I can put my finger on the source of the problem so that it becomes clear.

Humans have shown remarkable intelligence and ability to adapt and shape themselves and their circumstances, except in one particular area: in general, humans are despicably lousy at being able to govern, to rule and to represent.

You have undoubtedly heard the saying, “Power corrupts.” The fact is there are many kinds of power that do not corrupt a person. The one form of power that always corrupts those who use it is the power to control other people’s lives. Without exception, this always eventually drives the possessor insane.

A human tends to worry about the opinions of others, since the normal human method of operation is to use these “outside” opinions as mirrors of the social truth, to see if one “looks good” in the local collective social reality. This gives rise to hypocrisy, insincerity, and eventually to abandonment or betrayal when the account is called due and the liar will not serve as promised, having had no intentions of doing so.

The esteem of others, even if gained through deception, usually suffices to protect a person from being consciously aware of shame or guilt, since the person will not review the contents of the conscience, where the view is ugly, but will rather consult the mirror of popularity and social esteem. After countless generations of humans who have found it expeditious to take advantage of this method, it has finally come to this: we have begun to select and judge ourselves and others ONLY by the amount of recognition or esteem or popularity we/they can command, ignoring character, integrity, honesty and honor in the process.

In the social climate I was born into, in 1937, having money was a VERY important thing to people, since that was toward the end of the Great Depression. Then, about the time I graduated from High School, in 1955, having money became the MOST important thing. I look around me now and I see that now, having money is the ONLY thing. Lots of money will easily purchase either “Justice” or Injustice, therefore everything now has a price, even things that were formerly held to be priceless, like loyalty, ones personal word, ones integrity.

Now, when you take our inability to sanely deal with too much admiration from others or power over others and add this whole new attitude that since literally anything can be bought, money is the only thing, what you get is a formula for worldwide insanity and violence. Until the disturbing factor is removed, neutralized or controlled, the situation will get worse, with a distinct possibility that mankind, as a viable species, will fade away, a ghost ship on the stormy seas of survival, fatally broken on the rocks of our own greed and consciencelessness, the winner of a Species Darwin Award.

The Most Dangerous Thing In The World

The human inability to remain sane and benign while holding great power or popularity is made far worse when it partakes of the power to initiate force against others, the ability to forbid others to do their own will, and/or to force them to instead do ones will. The sad truth is that humans not only tend to become power-mad when they hold this power, but other humans also tend to flock to and follow the commands of those who have been driven mad in this way. This certainly looks like the atavistic remains of former pack behavior to me. If so, it’s hard-wired in and near-impossible to change. However, that which will not change can sometimes be worked around.

In the light of this information, I submit that the experiment called “The United States of America” was a sincere attempt to create a human government that would be as free from this failure as was possible to design in those days. The method attempted was to deny the elected representatives from holding the sort of power that was known to drive the holders insane. The method depended on a Sacred Contract between the elected representatives and the government they formed, on the one hand, and the citizens on the other, limiting the power of the government to meddle in the private affairs of the citizens. The idea was that the Constitution would not allow Americans in high office to wield the kind of power that corrupts.

This experiment has failed, and the failure will become more apparent as time passes, since the members of the federal government have ignored the Sacred Contract, the Constitution, abrogating and betraying their Sacred Oaths of Office, for many decades now. The breakdown is now almost complete. It is also becoming very apparent that not only will illegal powers continue to be grasped and used, but that they will be used in ways that are patently and clearly unjust, to further the aims of those in possession of the power. This is how tyranny manifests in human affairs.

The greater the concentration of the power to use force and fear and murder to control others, the greater the potential for terrible widespread harm and crimes against humanity. The most dangerous thing in the world is government. Government is by definition the concentration of the power to initiate and use force. It is therefore the power to do evil and should be used with great trepidation and care, like fire or explosives or poisonous chemicals. Government sends bright young men and women into harm’s way, wielding weapons of fire and steel and lead and plutonium against the bodies of enemy soldiers, as well as babies, children and old people who have no part in the battles. This also does grievous harm to the young men and women who carry out these orders, even if they never receive a physical wound. Without the concentration of the power to do harm, this would be unthinkable and impossible. The awful anomaly of “terrorism,” where humans become deluded into imagining that the Holy Creator requires that they murder strangers, is merely an attempt to respond in kind to what governments do as a habit, and have always done, historically.

An Attempt To Find A Workable Solution

The people who created the American Republic were well aware of this human failing and did the best they could to guard against it. It wasn’t enough. The modern phenomenon of “Marketing and Advertising” (skillful lying) has become the tool of choice for the major political parties (Note that the Constitution does not have even one mention of political parties). Democracy is based on the observation that a well-informed electorate will tend toward making valid decisions. Knowledge of this fact has devolved into the elected representatives’ tendency to try to carefully misinform the electorate in order to further their private aims and those of the rich and powerful who bribe them with “campaign contributions.”

Why America Is Failing Its Promise

The modern practice of misinforming the voters is nowhere so dire or dangerous as when it is used to explain away the meaning of the Articles of the Bill of Rights and hide the treason of the United States Supreme Court and elected representatives. Every single example of abuse and every single serious problem facing Americans is the result of the progressive nullification of the Bill of Rights in the hands of the apostate United States Government and Supreme Court. If treason and apostasy seem to be extreme accusations, I submit that it is now fashionable to describe the founding documents of our republic as "living documents," which means, in today's doublespeak, that they are open to change and divergent interpretation. Previously it was understood that it took ratification by a certain number of States to change these documents; now it seems they can be changed by the whims of less than a dozen humans who almost always disagree with each other.

A Revolution Or A New Beginning

The original idea of the American Patriots was that the public must remain able to mount a successful revolution when the government eventually tipped over into tyranny, which they saw as an inevitable eventuality. The almost inconceivable military power of the evolving American Police State has made revolution completely impossible. Attempts are still being made to reverse the present national stampede toward fascism, but it remains to be seen if they are capable of any real success. The latest attempt, and perhaps the one with the best chance of some success, is the Free State Project, the members of which plan to move en masse to New Hampshire over the next five years in order to try to redeem an area where the original Constitutional guarantees will be honored and abided by. What sort of response this will bring from the federal forces is not known.

Liberty Or Lip Service

The battle is now drawn between those who desire personal liberty for themselves and all others and those who profit from and enjoy having an all-powerful federal government dictate personal behavior to those of differing lifestyles and philosophies. Both groups claim to be loyal Americans. The question of loyalty to the highest law of the land, the Constitution, is largely ignored in the debate.

The Possible Futures Of Mankind

We are at the turning point, possibly the last chance to turn the present headlong rush toward Totalitarian Tyranny as the New American Way. Many of the issues and questions have been befuddled and confused by a massive propaganda campaign, funded and sponsored by members of the apostate National American Government, pandering to and following the dictates of the people and organizations that paid for their election victories and continue to bribe and reward them. The violent and counterproductive War On Drugs is a case in point. The effort does not curb or prevent drug use at all and makes every single issue surrounding the use of drugs much worse and it absolutely guarantees that the very worst, most evil and corrupt humans on the planet will have massive wealth and political power. It stays in place, causing untold harm and tragedy, because it serves the financial designs of those in power who own the House, the Senate, the Presidency and the Supreme Court.

Unless this slide into ever-more-powerful government is somehow countered, Mankind, as a species, will pay the terrible price by either dying out from reduced viability or from the weapons of modern warfare. We have had many terribly evil regimes in our history, but we now have the added factor of modern technology, as we begin to crack the human genetic code and develop nanotechnology. These abilities, controlled by government, along with all the new surveillance and computing methods, may well create a Tyranny that will make Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot look like naughty boys.


-Frank Ragoczy
e-mail = frankr@liberty-in-our-time.com