Re: The course of human events

Every so often I scan the Declaration of Independence to see how we're doing about avoiding a repeat of the "repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states" that led our forebears to cut the chains forged by King George III.

I have to say we seem to be locked in not-knowing-history-doomed-to-repeat-it mode.

Check this one out:

"He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."

Is that our modern federal government in a nutshell or what?

Among the truths those folks found to be self-evident was: "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

The bad news here? I really get the feeling that that's exactly what happened: People exercised their right to alter or abolish their constitutional government, and they instituted new government, organizing its powers in such form as to them seemed most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

They just overlooked essentials like principles and, of course, independence.

Successful capitalist Michael Moore: 'Capitalism did nothing for me'

The irony of film entrepreneur Michael Moore is that he seems to have trouble recognizing that his skills at playing the game of capitalism would be useless in the heavy-handed totalitarian system he advocates.

In this interview with CNSNews.com, Moore talks about how his fellow capitalists tried to fight his previous works ...

“In fact, in Fahrenheit 9/11 if you remember, capitalism, the Disney Corporation, tried to kill that film--tried to make it so that people couldn’t see it,” said Moore. “My book Stupid White Men--Harper Collins tried to kill that book so that people couldn’t see it. It's only because I put the light of day on it and told people what was going on did people get the chance to see these things.”

Does he understand that there is no light of day to shine in systems where something resembling the free market and capitalism don't exist? There, if the Powers That Be want to kill a film or a book, it gets killed and that's the end of it.

The system Moore detests, of course, is not a free market; we live under more of an amalgam of capitalism and government force, where political and corporate types do favors for each other with our cash. To that extent Moore does a service by shining his light. It's just a shame his proposed solutions all seem to end with the government types crushing the corporate types and taking full control.

In Michael Moore's perfect world, Michael Moore doesn't exist. He misses the point.

'All government of every stripe'

I'm not that familiar with Glenn Beck the radio/TV host, but if the stuff he's quoted as writing in here is any indication, not wonder TPTB are working to destroy him.

Our collective experience since the Founding has taught us that all governments of every stripe are fascist in nature. They will gobble up as much money, resources, and people as possible unless adequately checked. Governments are never static; they always grow. Communism, fascism, socialism, imperialism, and statism are all different ends accomplished through the same means: totalitarian, absolute government control over the individual. All these 'isms' simply reflect the mistaken belief that progressively larger governments are needed to address our problems.

Thoughtful insights.

A better dream of freedom

It's amazing how often you'll hear an idea for a new law from someone who claims to be in favor of freedom. Of course, usually these self-proclaimed sons and daughters of liberty have already been elected to office, so they've already made some adjustments to their views of what freedom is.

It's still true that the US of A is a place where you can criticize The Powers That Be without being shot or imprisoned — most of the time. Of course, you can't do it in the presence of the Big Boss. Yikes, shouting "You lie!" to the emperor while he was giving a speech. That sort of thing just isn't done.

America is the place where your rights are fully protected as long as you don't infringe on other people's rights — like the right to smoke-free air, the right to free health care, and the right not to be exposed to someone else's religious beliefs. Your property is your own to do as you please with it — as long as you get the proper permits and inspections and pay the property tax. You can travel at will all over this great nation — after your person and luggage have been examined and ransacked. Unlike past empires, we have no ambitions to impose our will on conquered territories — pay no attention to the hundreds of military bases established all over the world.

Some of us have a better dream of freedom: "No one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being for any reason whatever; nor ... advocate the initiation of force, or delegate it to anyone else." I know, good luck with that. I still think a society based on that principle would be a lovely one to live in. The tricky part? By definition no one can be forced to live that way.

For some time I've been working, in fits and starts, on a novel about the creation of such a society — even put out a couple of chapters I have since set aside. The novel is starting to come together at last. No promises, though — I've done that before and missed the target.

That's not my main point today, anyway. Rather, it's just a reminder to beware of anyone who proclaims a devotion to liberty while advocating for a new restriction on liberty. Yes, I know I'm reminding you to beware of people you encounter pretty much every day. That's how pervasive the assault on freedom is. That stuff about "eternal vigilance" isn't far from the truth.

But in the end, the Zero Aggression Principle is about a very personal kind of freedom. You don't have to wait until some utopian society is created. You simply live it. And no one can take that away from you.

The consent of the enslaved

The only way you can become a slave is with your permission.

"All men are created equal ... endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights ... among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ... to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Those are carefully chosen words, and today I'm thinking about the last 10. Governments tend to claim as much power as they can, but their just powers — those that are appropriate and (dare we say) legal — those powers can only be exercised when "the governed" approve or consent.

The reason government can only function with the consent of the governed is that we are created equal: No one can enslave you without your permission.

This idea is a radical departure from the status quo of 1776, which held that George III was in charge because the fact of his birth into the royal family made him more suited to govern than the rest of us commoners. From the Declaration of Independence onward, the caretakers of government were to be hired by all of us as equals, wielding only the powers we allow them to wield.

Ever since then, a large percentage of those hired caretakers have desired to seize the reins that George III once held. But they can't claim that authority by divine right; they have to obtain consent.

And that's where the concept of the political advertisement came from.

By the time a well-crafted campaign is done, you are so full of fear about what may become of you as a free man or woman that you're practically begging for a particular man, woman or program to take the liberty you've had since birth. How can you, an educated man or woman, make decisions for yourself about your own life? You must elect someone to handle the controls of your life.

It's all for the noblest of purposes: To feed the poor, to protect the land, to provide for the common good. Slavery is safe and secure and easy. Liberty is hard work. Next thing you know, you're ensnared.

Listen carefully when these charlatans promise to make life better for you — ask yourself, at what cost? What are they asking you to surrender in exchange for better health care, safer borders, energy independence, a full belly, cleaner air and water? There's always a price.

Concerned about our increasingly totalitarian world? It's happening because the architects of the police state have your permission — the consent of the governed. Solution? Start acting like you're free.

The blood of patriots and tyrants

... the people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

We have had 13 states independant 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion?

& what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them.

what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it's natural manure.

— Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Smith, Nov. 13, 1787

I've thought about Jefferson's words a lot lately, as it dawns on more and more liberty lovers that tyranny is taking hold in the land of Jefferson. It's been developing slowly for more than a decade, this bipartisan cloud of tyranny, and pushback seems inevitable.

But I absolutely believe watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants in these times would not be healthy for freedom. Violent revolution against a brutal regime can only result in more violence and more brutality, and a revolution on those terms would require greater brutishness to be victorious, the ultimate "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

No, the revolution must be grounded in the Zero Aggression Principle and the principles of nonviolence espoused by Gandhi and others. Yes, ZAP does not prohibit the use of force; it prohibits the initiation of the use of force. Sufficient force defend one's self is acceptable under ZAP. But I believe forswearing violence is likely the most effective means of ensuring that whatever replaces this brutal regime is itself nonviolent.

Easy for me to say that in the abstract. It would get much harder as the tyrants begin to spill the blood of patriots in greater quantities, especially if it happens to be my blood. But there has to be a difference between the oppressors and the oppressed. When Gandhi's forces of peace allowed themselves to be beaten by British troops, doing nothing more than keep trying to exercise their freedom, they spoke volumes about who were the soldiers of liberty and who were the uncivilized thugs.

I suspect the time is not far off when living free, as most people conceive of liberty, will be illlegal and dangerous. We will need to make some decisions at that time. My choice is to live free in peace.

You are where you are

It's not at all unusual for people to have a sense of dissatisfaction about their circumstances. "I really don't have a peace that I'm where God wants me to be." Or: "This is not where I envisioned being at this stage in my life." Or worse: "I don't know what I want to do with my life, but I know it's not this."

I think the question to ask is: What can you do where you are, while you're there?

A small bit that is good news and bad news: I suspect every life ends with something left unfinished. If you're living life to the fullest, you'll always be doing something until you can't anymore. So if you have a nagging feeling or a firm conviction that your life's mission is something else, don't fret too much about it, just start working on getting to that something (or somewhere) else. And if you're not too sure what your purpose is, well, start thinking (and, if you're so inclined, praying) — with a little self-examination, you'll find that mission, or you may discover you're already doing it.

And for better or for worse, you are where you are now. See what's possible under these circumstances because, for the moment, this is what you have to work with.

What I'm saying is not the old cliché "Bloom where you're planted." You have a huge advantage over a plant: You're mobile. You don't stay planted. You're on a journey. Not only are you not required to stay in one place, that's completely opposite of who and what you are.

To a huge extent the journey is the reward. The downside is if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. OK, those are both clichés, but they're better clichés and more to the point than "Bloom where you're planted."

And even more to the point, you won't make any progress if you spend too much time moping about being at this particular spot on your journey. Much is made in Christian theology about how Jesus worked with people where they were — he mingled with people his society despised, even (gasp!) tax collectors. If he worked miracles with those folks in their circumstances, he can work miracles with you in yours.

You are where you are. What can you accomplish while you're there? And if you're dissatisfied with where you are, what can you do — now — to get where you'd rather be? There's enough time in every day to do what you're doing and work on the things that will get you elsewhere, even if you can only find time for just one tiny step.

If you're sure you want to be somewhere else, taking those steps will make you feel better. And even if you're not sure, taking steps in one direction will help you clarify if it is, indeed, the direction you want to go. Sometimes exploration reveals you actually are where you were "meant" to be. More likely the uneasiness is a signal to get moving.

But you are where you are. This is what you have to work with. "What next?" is a decent question. A better question: What now?

Suggested reading: 48 Days to the Work You Love, Dan Miller; Do It! Let's Get Off Our Buts, Peter McWilliams.

'peace, moderate taxes and mild government'

Being as woefully ignorant as most of my fellow citizens of the history of the country where I've spent all but a few days of my entire life, I was fascinated reading Thomas Paine's eight Letters to the Citizens of the United States, and particularly to the leaders of the Federal faction.

I was vaguely aware of the onerous Alien & Sedition Acts that were passed to suppress free speech, or more specifically the free speech of the Adams administration's political adversaries, but wasn't aware that some folks (like Paine) continued to call for investigation and prosecution of Adams for years after he left office — or that Adams snuck out of the White House early in the morning of March 4, 1800, not waiting to witness the inauguration of new president Thomas Jefferson.

And it seems that many debates we occasionally hear today already were raging when Paine wrote these epistles, in 1802 and 1803 (the eighth letter is dated 1805, but the first seven came in a November-to-April flurry).

Paine accuses Adams of wishing to dissolve the new republic and replace it with a monarchy-style system of succession much like Britain's, where the king's sons or daughters were destined to reign. (That may explain why John Quincy Adams later felt motivated to run for the office his father once held.) A Quasi-War against France was ginned up and Adams' Federalists clamored for the raising of an army of 50,000 men, ostensibly to defend against the inevitable French invasion. Paine felt this standing army was more likely to be used for some other, more sinister purpose.

The suspicion against the late Administration is, that it was plotting to overturn the representative system of government, and that it spread alarms of invasions that had no foundation, as a pretence for raising and establishing a military force as the means of accomplishing that object ...

Of the Sedition Law, which levied a $2,000 fine and two years in prison for anyone who dared write or publish "any libel (without defining what a libel is) against the Government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or against the president ..."

... it is a much greater crime for a president to plot against a Constitution and the liberties of the people, than for an individual to plot against a President; and consequently, John Adams is accountable to the public for his conduct, as the individuals under his administration were to the sedition law.

The object, however, of an enquiry, in this case, is not to punish, but to satisfy; and to shew, by example, to future administrations, that an abuse of power and trust, however disguised by appearances, or rendered plausible by pretence, is one time or other to be accounted for. (from letter VI)

Except for the changes in names and language use, Paine could have been writing after any recent administrations had been put to bed, for it appears the federalists eventually won the argument. It is now common "for a president to plot against a Constitution and the liberties of the people" and to keep the populace generally alarmed over the threat of invasion and all sorts of other alarming notions.

The Revolution had been fought to secure liberty and separate from the violent world and machinations of the British Empire.

It requires only a prudent and honest administration to preserve America always at peace. Her distance from the European world frees her from its intrigues. But when men get into power, whose heads, like the head of John Adams, are filled with "strange notions" and counter revolutionary principles and projects, things will be sure to go wrong ...

The independence of America would have added but little to her own happiness, and been of no benefit to the world, if her government had been formed on the corrupt models of the old world. It was the opportunity of beginning the world anew, as it were; and of bringing forward a new system of government in which the rights of all men should be preserved that gave value to independence. (from letter VIII; Paine's emphases)

It's fascinating to read the thoughts, 27 years later, of the man whose Common Sense framed the intellectual basis for cutting ties with old England, to see how he thought the young nation was fulfilling the dream. He clearly believed that the United States had dodged a bullet and that the election of Jefferson had preserved and re-established the principles of the Revolution.

The characters of the late ad of the present Administrations are now sufficiently marked, and the adherents of each keep up the distinction. The former Administration rendered itself notorious by outrage, coxcombical parade, false alarms, a continual increase of taxes and an unceasing clamor for war; and as every vice has a virtue opposed to it the present Administration moves on the direct contrary line.

The question, therefore, at elections is not properly a question upon persons, but upon principles. Those who are for peace, moderate taxes and mild government will vote for the Administration that conducts itself by those principles, in whatever hands that Administration might be. (from Letter VII)

Peace, moderate taxes and mild government continue to be ideals Americans believe in, judging from the campaign rhetoric that accompanies every election. Although Paine clearly believed Jefferson had delivered the goods in that respect, I can't think of a single modern president of whom the same could be said. Oh yes, peace and moderate taxes and mild government are promised — but the purpose of campaign rhetoric is to get elected, not to deliver the goods, especially not those particular goods.

If freedom were something granted by government, or a constitution, we would be in a heap of trouble. Fortunately we were born free. Governments can and often do obstruct freedom, but they are powerless to absolutely extinguish it. As long as liberty exists in a corner of a free man or woman's mind — and it always will — there's a glimmer of hope that common sense will prevail at last.

Rinse. Repeat.

Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself. Dream.

Rinse. Repeat.

I've found the little three-step exhortation at the top of this page has multiple applications. Longtime readers know that I started saying "Refuse to be afraid" because so much of modern communication seems to be about raising fears. Terrorists are lurking in every dark corner of the land, most of the food you eat may give you cancer or make you obese or both, and termites may eat the foundation of your house unless you treat it with a certain product.

My advice was simply not to fall for it. Refuse to be afraid. OK, you're nervous and/or scared, but don't let it control you. Refuse to be controlled by your fear.

Then I realized not being afraid was only the first step. You're not afraid, fine. Now what? "Free yourself." Get loose of what you were afraid of. Resist the solutions offered by the politicians and the salesmen and create your own answers. Fly.

But free yourself to do what? Fly where? That's where the dreaming starts.

Releasing the fear makes you free — free to dream — dream of doing something amazing.

How do you apply this advice? It depends on what you're afraid of, or what someone else is trying to frighten you with. But it seems to me the process is the same in most cases. Refuse to be afraid. Now that your fear is under control, you can free yourself to consider many options or take the action you feared. Once free, you can set goals, objectives, dreams ... and go for it! (Whatever "It" may be.)

And then move on to the next fear ... rinse, repeat.

Delighting in serenity

Another gem from Letter III of Tom Paine's Letters to the Citizens of the United States, in which the great freedom advocate sounded the alarm about those who wanted to convert the US of A into an Old World monarchy/dictatorship in 1802-03 (and later, some might say, succeeded beyond their wildest dreams):

There is a general and striking difference between the genuine effects of truth itself, and the effects of falsehood believed to be truth. Truth is naturally benign; but false-hood believed to be truth is always furious. The former delights in serenity, is mild and persuasive, and seeks not the auxiliary aid of invention. The latter sticks at nothing.

It has naturally no morals. Every lie is welcome that suits its purpose. It is the innate character of the thing to act in this manner, and the criterion by which it may be known, whether in politics or religion. When any thing is attempted to be supported by lying, it is presumptive evidence that the thing so supported is a lie also. The stock on which a lie can be grafted must be of the same species as the graft.

What's especially striking about Paine's letters is that, although the specific circumstances are different, the tactics of those who would assault individual freedoms haven't changed a whit. This is another example.

It seems to me that when you've touched on the basic truth of a thing, you experience the serenity Paine mentions. Any anxiety you might feel is more like an excitement of wanting or needing to share the truth. Truth does indeed have a "mild and persuasive" nature to it.

"Falsehood believed to be truth" is a different beast altogether. An intensity and even rage accompanies the demeanor of those who know they're right but maintain a sliver (or even a plank or two) of doubt. In its extreme, this is the anger of "We gotta round up them illegals and ship 'em back to Mexico before they finish ruinin' our country" or "That smoker over there in the corner is poisoning my air" and "The fight against climate change requires you to submit to the state, and how can you even doubt?"

Self-evident truth settles into the heart and takes up residence. Falsehood believed to be truth is the proverbial resounding gong or clanging cymbal. Again, it's Malcolm Reynolds and "I got no need to beat you; I just want to go my way."

The holder of truth knows that at some point, the truth will become self-evident even to the hardest to convince. The holder of the falsehood-believed-to-be-truth needs to convince, because maybe if he can find enough other people to believe the falsehood it really will be true. But a falsehood believed to be true by a vast majority is still false; that's the underlying frustration and the root of the fervor.

The truth "delights in serenity." What a wonderful phrase!

Letters to the Citizens of the United States

The Jerome L. Wright essay to which I linked yesterday sent me scurrying first to my search engine and then to my library and a work I didn't realize I already possessed: Thomas Paine's Letters to the Citizens of the United States and Particularly to the Leaders of the Federal Faction. These are on pages 908-957 of The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume 2, which I obtained through the wonderful online archive of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

This morning I read carefully and joyously through the first two letters, the joy a result of the encounter with an unapologetically free mind. Paine wrote to remind the citizens of the new United States of the principles behind their revolution 26 years earlier, and to call out the faction that he saw as turning back those principles in the name of "federalism."

One of Paine's observations gave me a small modicum of hope:

There is in America, more than in any other country, a large body of people who attend quietly to their farms, or follow their several occupations; who pay no regard to the clamours of anonymous scribblers, who think for themselves, and judge of government, not by the fury of newspaper writers, but by the prudent frugality of its measures, and the encouragement it gives to the improvement and prosperity of the country; and who, acting on their own judgment, never come forward in an election but on some important occasion.

When this body moves, all the little barkings of scribbling and witless curs pass for nothing.

Do these people still exist, and are they "a large body"? It's difficult to say, given the results of the last several elections — indeed, given the results of most elections — although much may be concluded by examining how many people don't participate in most elections.

Our days are filled with "little barkings of scribblings and witless curs" who advocate chains for all but their anointed rulers — scribblings, and their electronic equivalent in this modern age. Do those who think for themselves still exist in sufficient numbers to make a difference?

And by "make a difference," I mean nothing more than to make the witless curs and anointed ones irrelevant. Freedom means the ability to say, as the great fictional Independent Malcolm Reynolds once said, "I got no need to beat you; I just want to go my way." Reynolds was a great example of Paine's people "who attend quietly to their farms, or to their several occupations."

Two hundred and seven years have passed since Paine wrote his letters, and the barkings have continued unceasingly. The embers of the flame he started with Common Sense still glow, often just barely.

The halls of government are filled with men and women anxious to extinguish those embers. They have grown fat and sassy on the backs of those willing to allow them to hold the reins of power; a little more Thomas Paine in our intellectual diets may be the cure.

But you are free after all

There are a few ways to react when you read suggestions like "The Dark Years Are Here," which predicts: "Starting in the next 6 months and culminating in 2011-12 the world will experience a series of tumultuous events which will be life changing for most people in the world. But 2011-12 will not be the beginning of an upturn in the world economy but instead the start of a long period of economic, political and social upheaval that could last for a couple of decades."

And it would be easy to fall into dismay when you find a historical review that says, essentially, that if the words of the Declaration of Independence light a fire in your heart, the flame was extinguished when the Articles of Confederation were abandoned in 1789: "The assertion that Americans gained their freedom through the War for Independence (War for Sovereignty) is a myth, one that is highly useful to the federal State. The assertion that Americans have remained free is one of the bigger frauds in history."

The main things to avoid are discouragement and fear. As George Herbert eloquently put it when he wrote his Dune books, "Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration." And if we are indeed at the beginning of a long period of upheaval, if we have indeed bought into an illusion of freedom, the first thing we need is our wits about us going forward.

Herbert's Bene Gesserit chanted a litany against fear, of which the quote above is part:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

It's a sound process for cleansing the mind of fear's effects. Of course the future is scary; the unknown always is. But get your mind clear in this moment, and ideas about how to prepare will present themselves.

The rulers of this country have not been especially interested in maintaining citizens' political freedom — certainly not in recent years, by some accounts not for a couple of centuries and by this account not ever. And yet hearts and souls continue to jump at the idea of freedom, and millions of people have come to these shores over the years in pursuit of the relative political freedom afforded here.

I use the qualifier "political" freedom above, because the Declaration was correct: We each were born free. Free will and expression are the default settings of the human soul. Governments may be formed with an idealistic goal to "secure" those freedoms, but what governments do best is inhibit and crush free spirits.

But no government can change your mind. No government can make you afraid without your permission. Yes, a government has few qualms about interfering with your life, your liberty and your peaceful pursuit of happiness.

But you are free.

B.W.'s Book Report: They Thought They Were Free

Milton Mayer's book subtitled "The Germans 1933-45" is a remarkable bit of work. Mayer lived in Germany for a few years after the close of World War II and wanted to know how ordinary folks could have allowed the oppressive regime led by Adolf Hitler to seize control of their country and their lives.

The title of the book says it all: They thought they were free.

Mayer writes about his friendship with 10 men and his conversations about their everyday lives in a relatively small town. He paints a plausible portrait of people only tangentially aware that their government was descending into totalitarianism and tyranny — because they were busy living their lives and it usually didn't affect them directly.

He is at his best when he compares the slow, insidious progress of the Nazi regime with everyday events of the early 1950s in the United States, when he wrote the book — always with the caveat that "not that we're as bad as Germany was getting in the 1930s, of course." For example, introducing the question of how millions of Jews could be spirited away without most people understanding what was happening:

When people you don't know, people in whom you have no interest, people whose affairs you have never discussed, move away from your community, you don't notice that they are going or that they are gone. When, in addition, public opinion (and the government itself) has depreciated them, it is still likelier that you won't notice their departure or, if you do, that you will forget about it. How many of us whites, in a white neighborhood, are interested in the destination of a Negro neighbor whom we know only by sight and who has moved away?

After a spellbinding couple of hundred pages in which Mayer outlines precisely how it may have happened — and writing around the edges of the similarities to, say, McCarthyism — he then spends the last portions of the book theorizing about how something in the German character made that country more susceptible than other cultures to the emergence of a Hitler. The writer is less convincing at that stage of the book.

But it's interesting to hear the Kronenbergers' descriptions and explanations of what life was like in the 1930s and early '40s, and to imagine how a free people could be drained of their freedoms without losing the sense that they were still free.

Standing in line to have their persons and property searched before they can proceed, answering questions they are forbidden by law to refuse to answer, applying for permits that will allow them to build on their own land, and standing in the rain smoking a cigarette, Americans can be heard to proclaim their country is the symbol of freedom around the world.

Someday, perhaps, a Milton Mayer will befriend 10 of us and write a book about everyday life in these times.

The power of the to-do list

Not long ago I put myself on a daily schedule, more or less. Frustrated by the frequency with which I allowed myself to divert from the routine ("Holy cow, I forgot to clean the kitty litter" and even "Doh! I was going to make myself breakfast"), I made myself a checklist of the things I want or need to get done every day.

I also availed myself of the calendar that came with my computer, mapping out my day in increments of time. I print out these two lists and keep them on a clipboard with me at all times.

Job one is to stay in the moment and keep focused on what the needs of Now are, and so I don't begin to panic when something distracts me from the task I set for, say, 8:30. But because that 8:30 task is on the list, I have a reminder in front of me to ensure my distracted mind is brought back to that particular thing to do. Except for those times when I'm scheduled to meet with someone else, the numbers are simply numbers anyway. As I write this and the clock says 6:09, 8:30 does not exist. The times I attach to the tasks are not as important as the reminder of the tasks themselves.

Yep, it's nothing but a daily to-do list, but checking off a list does add to a positive attitude. Making the list, and conquering it on a daily basis, puts me in control of the quotidian, not the opposite.

Modern conveniences, especially our powerful computers, do a marvelous job of fissioning our attention span. The ability to multitask is considered an admirable trait; indeed, we even invented that word, multitask. Sinking one's full attention into a single task, devoting all of the mind and soul and heart to one thing even for a little while, seems to be a lost art.

Keeping a list of the day's required tasks helps to screen out the unnecessary and bring the mind back to the important — especially when the important is not always the urgent. I have written down reading, prayer and meditation at the start of the day simply because my awakening mind cannot always remember exactly how I wanted to start every day, even when I have been doing it daily for some period of time. There are tasks that ought to be tended daily at the office, but I left them untended in favor of tasks that had to be done — and the less urgent but still important tasks piled up until they became urgent.

The list is a tool, a guide to focus my mind. Each check is a little success, a little mission accomplished, a little bit of the quotidian conquered. I am not a slave to the list, but neither am I free to ignore it. The mind needs a clear vision to keep moving forward, onward and upward, and the day so assails the senses that it's easy to get off the path. The list is a little roadmap made when the vision was foremost in my mind, and regular consultation with those two pieces of paper keeps the vision clear.

And I prefer the paper list to having it in electronic form. When I'm reviewing the list, it won't beep and remind me of something else that needs tending. Sometimes you need to pay attention. In fact, let me revise that thought: At all times, you need to pay attention. For me, for now, the list keeps me in the Now. You may find a tool that works better for you — but my humble advice is to find that tool.

Free yourself: Be a puppy

The puppy to whom I introduced you briefly a couple of months ago has three times the mass she did on that day, and all of this mass is in her legs. She is a 25-pound bundle of energy on her way to the 70-ish pounds of a typical golden retriever.

Dogs are intelligent creatures, and they can teach us some things about living with limits on freedom. Most of all, especially as pups, they live to test their limits.

She will run at breakneck speed as far as she can across the yard until Sweetie or I calls her name. This is how she learns it is that far, and no farther, before the property line is breached. A cat would not stop at that line: That is why the cats stay indoors 24/7, but we have given the dog the freedom to explore the property with us. (Gotta admire the cats' attitude, though.)

Much is made of dogs' desire to please their masters, but I detect a mischievous streak. All of the sitting and staying and coming when she's called seems to have a purpose — to win back more freedom, to expand the territory she can explore when she's not required to sit or stay or come. In the end, then, the ultimate goal is not to please me but to secure as much liberty as she can.

Of course, keeping me pleased also preserves her regular supply of that tasty and nourishing alternative to munching grass and sticks — I'm her main food source. But the default setting on her soul is freedom — just as it is with humans and every other creature.

Some consider the goal is to "break her spirit." Oh, no. What joy does a being possess or offer whose free spirit has been broken down and suppressed? Better that we reach an agreement where we respect each other's property ("Don't chew that, girl!") and follow our own needs and desires, cooperating when they intersect.

So while I am teaching her to sit and stay and come, she is teaching me something about living as free as possible in an unfree environment: Be a puppy. I pant with giddiness.

Preserve the embers; stoke the fire

The beginning of the wage-slave week often brings a fresh fire and a sense of resolve. The past two days have been filled with quiet moments, away-from-the-quotidian moments, active moments, refreshment of personal goals, and thoughts of reinvention and renewal. Then one enters the quotidian pace, and the clock must be tended. ("Or must it?" your soul cries from its rapidly diminishing quiet place.)

The trick, often not accomplished, is to maintain a hold on that fresh resolve. Too often it's abandoned by noon Monday. There are deadlines to make, papers to push, soil to be turned, clock hands to turn. During the course of the day, the resolution becomes a quaint memory; what began as a confident shout of joy becomes a faint, desperate whisper. Morning triumph leads to evening defeat. No wonder so many medicate themselves to sleep.

Essential to success in living, then, must be finding that Monday morning optimism and drive on Tuesday morning. I find mild success by posting little reminders on the face of my computer, brief sayings from two of my favorite outlaws.

One is a resolution I have written about before: "Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: I shall not fear anyone on Earth. I shall fear only God. I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering."

The other is from an outlaw I haven't quoted often because I don't claim or desire to be an evangelist and don't want to be confused with one; however, it's foolish for me to pretend I am not influenced by these words, so take them simply as an explanation of my motivations: "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

Renewal is an everyday task. Stoking the fire requires a constant vigil. Life is an endless struggle against forces that will beat you down, but only if you let them. Your greatest power is control over your own personal actions and reactions.

These two writers spent their share of time in prison cells for holding beliefs that transcended the politics of the day, and for putting those beliefs into action. Perhaps the memory of those cells helped them maintain that Monday-morning confidence; no doubt it also left them sometimes in despair. But they maintained long enough to make a difference for the ages.

Preserve the embers of resolutions you made when you had a clear vision of your dreams. Some nights the embers are all that's left, but they contain the seeds of an ongoing fire.

Freedom's more than just another word

As our rulers huddle behind closed doors, hammering out their plans to confiscate more of our money and set down more rules they expect us to follow, it's incumbent on us to remind ourselves that freedom is the default position of human beings.

One of the most electrifying documents in human history asserts that it is "self-evident" — true beyond any reasonable doubt — that we are all "created equal ... endowed ... with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," and that governments derive their powers "from the consent of the governed."

Governments do not grant freedom; they can only restrict the freedom we have from birth.

To be continued ...

'If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want.' And your point is ...?

Movie star Jackie Chan has raised some eyebrows with comments he's supposed to have made during a speech to Hainan business leaders the other day.

To be precise:

I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not. I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also very chaotic.

I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want.

Let's be real: Freedom indeed is a chaotic thing. Anytime you have free will and billions of people, things can get messy. That's why it's helpful to have something in place along the lines of the Zero Aggression Principle.

But control, along the lines Chan seems to be advocating, is aggression. I read elsewhere that Chan opposed the brutal crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989, but he seems to have made peace with his inner tyrant. That's unfortunate.

Jackie Chan has enjoyed the benefits of freedom and free markets. But like all fools and tyrants, he expresses sincere concern whether other people can be trusted to handle such bounty.

Here is where such fools and tyrants stumble: In truth, we were all born free. The Zero Aggression Principle — "No human being has the right - under any circumstances - to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation" — speaks to our instincts that we are each entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The troubles begin when fools and tyrants attempt to impose external controls. For someone like Chan, who commands respect and admiration, to advocate for tyranny is tragic.

But fame and notoriety do not make one wise. Jackie Chan is not the first respected and admired person to speak utter falsehood, and he will not be the last. The truth is still the truth.

Thankfully, Chan at least confessed the obvious: He is really confused.

Make something

Something in the human soul makes us creative. We make things, for ourselves and for others. Created things are the basic unit in the massive, unwieldy structure that has been dubbed The Economy.

I remember a comforting detail about the belovedly strange television program The X-Files: At the close of the program, a very young voice proclaiming with pride, "I made this." Little boys and girls have an inherent understanding of the joy of creation, the satisfaction that comes from building or making something.

I remember a chill going through my soul when I heard they were closing the last Zenith plant in the US of A, and no Americans anywhere were to be building television sets anymore. It is a little more than 15 years later now, but it was about then that I started to believe the U.S. economy might reach the precarious stage where it now seems to be perched.

The key to success in the marketplace is to make something other people need or want. I'm all for the things produced by a service economy — I'm a wordsmith by trade, for God's sake — but I have always had an uneasy feeling about moving the facilities to create things far, far away. Steel factory closings, automobile factory closings, television factory closings, shoe factory closings — labels that say Made in China, Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Japan — I'm not declaring patriotic platitudes here; I'm simply asking the question: What is left for my neighbors to make? Where does the steelmaker or the shoemaker get her next meal?

This is not intended to be an appeal to your fears, although these words and phrases are often cobbled together by fear mongers to make you afraid. But I am saddened and troubled by words attributed to Barack Obama from Tuesday night's audience with journalists: "... with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life."

"... the only entity left ..."? I suspect many people will not recognize in Obama's words the fulfillment of Mencken's ancient prophecy, the one I have quoted here more than once: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

It is always false that "only" the federal government can lead an alarmed populace to safety. You certainly understand this in your soul, or you wouldn't be attracted to writings like this one. If you want resources to jolt the economy back to life, look at the ends of your arms. Peer into the mirror and consider the resources between your ears.

What we call an economy is the cumulative product of billions of exchanges among folks like you and folks like me. You have created something I want or need, and I have created something you want or need, and we exchange them. It doesn't all begin with the federal government. It begins with your hands and your head.

The president or Congress do not have the power to feed you or clothe you or shelter you. Arguably they can only get in your way. Again, I am not saying this to scare you. I am saying this to empower you.

If you want to jolt the economy, learn how to make something, and make it. The rest will follow.

Now I'm better

Thanks to Wally for the shout-out. He's been on folks' mind of late — notice that Uncle Warren gave him a shout-out for recommending the fun B-movie Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD with its immortal exchange:

"Thank God, I thought you were dead!"

"I was — but now I'm better."

These past 2-3 years I have made "refuse to be afraid" my personal coda, my rallying cry, along with its corollaries: Free yourself. Dream. From time to time, however, I neglect to take my own advice. My Sunday night post was my little way of declaring, I thought I was dead, but now I'm better.

As someone with more money and influence than I once said, in our present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem — government is the problem. The struggle in this world does not really boil down to liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican, capitalist versus socialist — it's about the state versus the individual, or if you will, any collective versus the individual.

I would expand the definition beyond simply "the state" to "any collective" because joining any group — or viewing other human beings in terms of groups — tends to suppress the power of the individual. The whole purpose of the state, or the corporation, or any larger organization, eventually becomes to collectivize thought and behavior, which relieves members of the responsibility to think or act for themselves. The whole purpose of lumping people into groups is to relieve one's self of the responsibility to see individuals for themselves.

It's much easier to believe "That's just the way white people act" or "Those damn liberals, they're all like that" or "Women!" — but you miss so much by adopting prejudices (pre-judgments). Even if every person in a particular category has thought and acted a certain way, the next individual who qualifies for that category could be completely different and wildly better (or worse) than you've ever experienced from other members of that group. Draw no preconceived conclusions and you'll catch a lot more of the wide variety that individuals can contribute to your life — even the occasional government employee, fer cryin out loud.

I'm not sure at one what point a partnership, or an alliance of friends, or any small group of people cooperating becomes a collective. I suppose even a couple could qualify if one partner allows herself/himself to follow the other's lead mindlessly. The larger the organization, though, the more likely the individual will become less important and eventually lost. That's why Big Government, Big Business, Big Anything is anti-human.

The key to freedom is accepting my own autonomy as an individual, and respecting the autonomy of other individuals, with all of what that means — whatever that means.

Update: Edited to fix the "I'm not sure at one point" hiccup.