Live Free in an Unfree World

from You Belong to Us by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. ~

“The issue has become especially important because Democratic nominee Barack Obama has embraced national service as a priority of his presidency should he win. Obama would not directly impose forced labor on young people, but would instead withhold educational funds from them and their institutions if they fail to comply. (Yes, they shouldn’t be taking these funds in the first place, but there is something sinister in Obama’s program all the same.) We should, he says, “set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year.”

I expect more from Barack Obama. For John McCain, I’m not surprised at any freedom ending idea that comes out of his mouth. National service? John F. Kennedy called for Peace Corps Volunteers and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA).

Woods makes these points:

1. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution states: “Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
2. The Thirteenth Amendment is clear and unambiguous.
3. A draft or forced national service is involuntary servitude.
4. In the Draft Law Cases of 1917, Chief Justice Edward White concluded that since the Congress has the power to raise armies, it could use any means possible to raise those armies, including force.
5. Daniel Webster argued the unconstitutionality of the draft over 50 years before the Thirteenth Amendment was passed:
   

   “Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?”

6. Conscription, no matter how pure the motives, cannot be reconciled with freedom.

Commentary:

1. Calling on high school students to “volunteer” so many hours or they cannot graduate from high school. They call it “Community Service”, just like someone might be sentenced to by the court. I guess it goes well with the other language used in our schools that sounds like prison - security, metal detectors, lockdowns, and release time.
2. My belief has always been that if the U.S. were ever invaded, you could not keep every able bodies man or woman from joining the defense of our country.
3. People who accept the notion that it is our duty to be drafted into the Army and give up our lives for someone’s political agenda do not know the difference between being a citizen and being a subject.
4. The possibility of drafting men and women when you do not have enough military recruits encourages politicians to rattle sabers and threaten violence in places around the world where our young men and women do not need to die or to kill others.
5. Politicians and the Supreme Court have shredded the Constitution so thoroughly no one remembers what it is like to have limited government.

Ron Paul stated the issue clearly: “Young people are not raw material to be employed by the political class on behalf of whatever fashionable political, military, or social cause catches its fancy. In a free society, their lives are not the playthings of government.”

Charles Lamm is a citizen and not a subject of the United States of America. To protect your property as well as your person, visit his Asset Protection Iron Triangle blog and learn how to use corporations, LLCs, and beneficiary controlled trusts to protect yourself from lawsuits, creditors, and even the IRS.

Here are just a few things the Federal Reserve, Congress, and the Bush (or next) administration could do to help this nation recover from the current recession - or prevent a larger depression - but are nearly 100% not likely to do:

1. require that each Member of Congress, under Penalty of Perjury, certify that he or she has read every word in every bill before voting on that piece of legislation
2. remove U.S. troops from every foreign country - we are a republic, not an empire
3. all future laws passed by Congress must have a sunset provision and be voted on again every 4 years
4. stop rescuing financial institutions that are about to fail just because they are large
5. stop the presses - the dollar has lost 96% of it’s value since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913
6. no deficit financing of government expenditures
7. have a group of researchers whose job is to ferret out unnecessary regulations and to recommend them for quick decertification and repeal of the underlying statutes
8. every government job (non-appointee) that becomes vacant due to retirement or resignation must be kept vacant for 6 months to see if the position can just be eliminated

This is just a start. More tomorrow.

“A nation of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.”

~ Bertrand de Jouvenal

High gas prices will cause some interesting results:

• more people will shop for bargains online, rather than traveling from store to store
• delivery charges will be reasonable compared to picking it up yourself
• home gardening and locally grown food will enjoy a resurgence
• people will think twice about drives to the beach or to the lake
• going for a Sunday drive is a sign of wealth
• if your neighbor fills up his SUV at one visit to the pump, he is probably doing better than you are
• you may see some unlikely people - bankers, lawyers, doctors - use the gas crunch to justify commuting by motorcycle
• some smart commuters will get their exercise by commuting by bicycle
• people will need second jobs to stay afloat - most will create new businesses online to earn extra income
• small restaurants will suffer first as more workers shift lunch money to gas tanks
• fast food places will suffer next as prices of oil run up food prices
• over the next few years, temporary dips in oil prices will not be long-lived enough to let Americans drive huge cars and trucks again - SUVs will be like Cadillacs with fins
• supply increases will be sopped up by China and India
• alternative sources of energy will be great businesses but will not dethrone big oil
• Florida will be unhappy when offshore oil wells appear near their coastline in the Gulf of Mexico
• placement of refineries will be hot political topics and push abortion and gay marriage off the table
• politicians, as usual, will screw things up then demand more tax revenue to fix the problems they created in the first place

Just a few of the issues I believe will dominate the economic and political landscape over the next 10 years. With any luck, it will bring back some of the lean, mean, fighting spirit of the American people - but only if the politicians are pushed out of the way.

—

Charles Lamm is a junkyard philosopher whose blogs include Live Free in an Unfree World, the Asset Protection Iron Triangle, and Virtual Joe Friday.

“What immediately follows is quoted from Paramahamsa Sri Nithyananda: Freedom is our true nature. We are totally and completely free from everything that binds us. Please understand this. When we express this freedom we enter the spiritual path. Rules and regulations are only superficial, artificial and imposed by the society. Societal and religious morality binds us. They limit our freedom. They do not lead to spirituality.”

from: The State Versus Self-Realization

by Jeff Knaebel

www.lewrockwell.com/knaebel/knaebel16.html

Our comments:

A good discussion of what happened in Texas with the taking of children from a polygamous community and how laws lead to a lack of rights and justice.

Charles Lamm is a retired attorney and advocate for privacy and asset protection. See his Asset Protection Iron Triangle for more info, and his blog - Virtual Joe Friday - for his take on a number of issues.