“Your silence gives consent. ” Plato
Just because you live in a country does that mean you’ve consented to everything the Government of that country has done or is doing? When you say the pledge of Allegiance are you pledging to uphold the ideals of Liberty, Peace and Free Trade or are you pledging your loyalty to an entity that Lies, Steals and Kills on a regular basis?
Consent.(Synonym: Acquiesce): To give assent or approval
I’m sure you’ve heard of Government resting on the “consent of the Governed”. I think that is a theory created to justify the existence of tyrants in the past and our current over bloated, over regulating, war machine of a Federal Government in the present. I like the phrase “acquiescence of the governed” to more accurately describe what is happening in this country. Most individuals including myself acquiesce to the power of the State and more accurately the power of the shifting majority whose only purpose is to extract wealth from some individuals and give it to others. If there was no government force or just extremely limited government force which adhered to the Constitutional limits based upon the principles of Natural Rights, then everyone who believed in Liberty would “Consent” to that type of Government. But why would anyone who loves freedom give his consent or pledge his allegiance to the current Federal Government which flaunts the Constitution and denies even the existence of the concept of Natural Rights?
“No attempt or pretence, that was ever carried into practical operation amongst civilized men — unless possibly the pretence of a “Divine Right,” on the part of some, to govern and enslave others — embodied so much of shameless absurdity, falsehood, impudence, robbery, usurpation, tyranny, and villany of every kind, as the attempt or pretence of establishing a government by consent, and getting the actual consent of only so many as may be necessary to keep the rest in subjection by force. Such a government is a mere conspiracy of the strong against the weak. It no more rests on consent than does the worst government on earth” Lysander Spooner
Now if you still feel that you haven’t given your consent to the State , it reminds you that you have an obligation to be loyal to the it because it protects you from other Governments around the world. This is by the way the basis for the “Social Contract” theory that is bandied about by liberal pundits across the airwaves and college campuses. It states that individuals freely give up certain rights in order to be protected and taken care of by the state. This is not a new idea. It’s as old as Feudalism. And today that ancient concept of Feudalism is mixed with a healthy dose of “patriotism”.
Allegiance: The obligation of a feudal vassal to his feudal leige.
(or) The fidelity owed by a subject or a citizen to a sovereign or state.
Now, when you say the pledge of Allegiance do you know who the authored the words you are mindlessly repeating? It was written by a Socialist Flag salesman looking to gin up flag sales to schools. And by the way the “Under God” part was added decades later. Did you also know that the original salute while people said the Pledge not a hand over their heart but an outstreched arm. You maybe familiar with this gesture, it’s not because you have done it but because it was the salute adopted by the Nazis as back in the 1930′s. There is actually a picture of Woodrow Wilson giving what would today be described as a “Nazi Salute” while saying the pledge with school children. My refusal to say the pledge is not because of its origins but for the words that constitute it. I don’t say the pledge because my allegiance is not to a Flag or to a Non-existent Republic, my allegiance is to the Natural Law. Stated differently I belive that I have the God-given right to pursue my definition of happiness as long as I don’t interfere with the equal liberty of others. Why would I “pledge” my allegiance to the State which violates my Natural Rights and limits my peaceful pursuit of happiness and those of millions of others here at home and around the world?
Government is meant to protect all individuals life, liberty and property and no one man or collection of men should be able to violate the Natural Rights of a single individual even if the entire population is against him. That is what Government is meant to be, a night-watchman, instituted to carry out the Natural Right of Each individual to protect his life and property. But what we have today is not a protector of our Natural Rights but a violator of them. I myself look forward to the day when everyone pledges their allegiance not to nations or States but to themselves and the upholding of the principles of Natural Rights as inalienable for every individual on Earth.
“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed.” Ayn Rand
I don’t think we are doomed. I am an optimist and everything that man has done was done because of his thoughts. Our job is to educate ourselves about the blessings of Liberty, incorporate that into our thoughts, words and deeds and share with others the slice of the truth that we’ve discovered.
Lysander Spooner in his essay “No Treason” does a beautiful job eliminating any pretense to the idea of consent of the minority being ruled by the majority. His take is that not no “contract” is valid unless two parties agree to it VOLUNTARILY. And this alone is what destroys the statists’ idea of “Social Contract Theory”. That is because I can not forego my end of the “Social Contract” by refusing to pay my taxes or more accurately defend my property as its being stolen every two weeks out of my paycheck, without the Police Power of the State being used to punish me until I submit. This is the Concept of not “Consent of the Governed” but “Acquiescence of the Governed”.
http://lysanderspooner.org/node/44
“In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot — which is a mere substitute for a bullet — because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency, into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him. ” Lysander Spooner
The idea that we consent to the government we live under because of our “silence” is ridiculous. Social Contract theory and the idea of the ”Consent of the Governed” are used to enshrine and protect Politicians, Bureaucrats and those who suckle at the Government’s teats, while at the same time enslaving individuals whose property is seized against their will to fund the very Government largess used to enslave them. My ultimate goal is to see the idea of Government disappear and in its stead to have everyone live in a “Free Market Society”, where the production of defense as well as policing would be done by individuals freely contracting with one another. But until that happens I want to see the Federal Government chained down to the (2nd) Constitution or even go back to the first Constitution, The Articles of Confederation.
If any law is passed that takes a person’s life, liberty or property away from them without them first committing a crime against another’s person or property is fundamentally flawed and violates what Gustave Molinari referred to as “Natural Law”. The current Constitution and the Articles of Confederation are the first 13 original states’ constitutions were the first and in my opinion the closest man has ever come basing his law upon the Natural Law. But how many of the laws of man since those heady revolutionary days have violated the “Natural Law” ? And how many of these laws, regulations and executive orders that have violated the “Natural Law” have you yourself “consented” to?
http://library.mises.org/books/Gustave%20de%20Molinari/The%20Production%20of%20Security.pdf (Production of Security -Gustave Molinari)
Let me ask you this: Did you consent to the drones flying hundreds of missions over IRAN? Did you consent to the assassination of the American Citizen the suspected terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki or his 16 year son by U.S. drone attacks in Yemen? Did you consent to the use of unmanned drones over the skies of South Dakota to catch a suspected cattle thief who was by the way a “Sovereign Citizen”. Did you consent to Home Land Security buying 450,000,000 .40 pistol rounds?
(To put that last figure into perspective imagine a four mile stretch of highway. Now imagine that stretch of highway with 383 semi trailers, not with a tractor attached end to end for those four miles. Now imagine that each is slam full of .40 pistol rounds not destined for a war overseas put for your own backyard which by the way has been deemed by several Senators now as a battlefield with the war on terror.)
Did you consent to the GSA throwing a lavish $820,000 party in Vegas? Did you consent to the Federal Reserve and the trillions of secret bailouts to Foreign CEntral Banks? DId you consent to the Fractional Reserve Banking System or FDIC? Did you consent to the ever-increasing inflation? Did you consent to the prohibition of Marijuana? Did you consent to the DEA given carte blanche to basically infiltrate and militarize the entire police force of Latin and South America? Did you consent to the 900 military bases overseas? Did you consent to the Korean War or the Vietnam War? Do you currently consent to the continued war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia?
Did you consent to the establishment of the United Nations? Did you consent to the billions of dollars given to the Uber-Collectivists in the United Nations to carry out their plans for a one world government? Did you give your consent for the founding and funding of the World Bank, the IMF, and Bank of International Settlement? Did you consent to FDR confiscating all the gold in the thirties or Nixon taking us off the last vestige of the gold standard in the 70′s? Did you consent to any of this?
I could go on and on but my point is that the idea of our current government resting upon the ”Consent of the governed” is false. Those who support the government and are in turn supported by the growth of government point to two things why you give your “tacit” support and consent to the government everyday.
1. You don’t move to another country. (Which is a losing proposition because there is no place on Earth where there is no government. This maybe changing though with the idea of Seasteading and offshore independent communities)
2. You are not openly rebelling against the government. So unless you are trying to violently overthrow the government somehow you are “consenting” to everything that is done in the Halls of Congress, the White House and the thousands of Bureaucratic offices around the country.
That is your consent. That is the “Social Contract” theory you acquiesce to the force of government which rests upon the force of the majority who “Do consent” because they are living off the stolen property off the minority who do not “consent” to the theft of their property. But it doesn’t matter what they want because the majority has spoken through the god of “Democracy”.
Government is built upon the decisions of the past. Social Security and the other entitlements are so engrained into the minds and lives of most Americans they are afraid to voice their “discontent” about the programs for fear of losing the benefit that is keeping their mother in the nursing home or the Social Security Check they get coming into their bank account each month. This is why Frank Chodorov wrote “Individuals can vote themselves into Socialism but they can’t vote themselves out.”
If you are still not on board with big government at home then the propagandists have an answer for that. They tap into the fear that people have of those who live in other countries. And they gin up the “Terrorists” or other “threats” to The United States of America so that a large portion of the population being loyal subjects as they are okay with the killing of thousands of individuals overseas because the bad guys want to “Attack the good ole ”USofA.” But the politicians and bureaucrats know that the fear mongering and endless wars eventually wear thin so they must institutionalize this “Allegiance mentality” and not leave it to mere chance. They do this by inculcating our kids in public schools by making them recite a loyalty oath every morning.
The loyalty oath I’m talking about is the “Pledge of Allegiance”. Most Americans hold it almost as sacrilegious for an individual not to say the pledge. But what are you pledging your allegiance to and who benefits from your loyalty to “The Flag” and “to the Republic for which it stands”?
Every time you see the flag it engenders these feeling of fidelity. But where do these flags fly? Over Federal Building’s at home and military bases around the world. And then we fly them on our houses. I think that’s insane. Why doesn’t every family have a family flag? Why doesn’t every individual have an individual flag? Why isn’t there a Natural Rights Flag? The closet thing I’ve seen is the “Don’t Tread on Me” Flag”.
The Terrorists and civilians being killed overseas are being killed because the “Patriotic Allegiance Individuals” in this country believe the propaganda and believe that when if the United States Federal Government is threatened that means they are as well. This is simply not true. If the Federal Government was dramatically shrunk down to pre-1900 levels there wouldn’t be anyone on Earth who would want to retaliate against the United States Government because all it would do is protect the borders of the country and have a limited court role to adjudicate cases arising between the 50 states. That is what the Federal Government should be doing. That’s it.
Allegiance can also mean : “Devotion or Loyalty to a person, cause or group”. I like this definition better because it is not predicated on the force of government or the will of the majority. And that is the allegiance I talk about when I say I “Pledge my Allegiance to the principles of Natural Rights, the golden rule, non-aggression, giving each man his due (in regards to voluntarily agreed upon contracts) and treating everyone honestly.
If each of us pledges to do that and only give our consent to contracts that we voluntarily agree upon then government would be less and less necessary, thus becoming the limited night-watchman State that those who love liberty are working for. And for those like me who advocate for “Anarcho-Captialism” or a purely “Free Market Society”, would welcome a night-watchman state as a giant leaps towards a stateless future.
The State is built upon the fact that human beings are adaptable creatures and it uses subtle means to gain the “consent” and “allegiance” of millions everyday. It is our job who love liberty to point out the truth about what is going on and give an alternative to the out of control Government we live under today. What advice would we give to those who are desperately seeking an alternative to the Leviathan and its unending coils? I would give them the advice that Leonard Read offered in a speech he gave down in Argentina back in the 1950′s
“…everything else has been tried…Why Not Try Freedom?”
I advocate for a peaceful revolution. One in which the external political revolution we seek first takes place in the minds of individuals. I believe that once a third of the population has had what I call a “personal revolution” in which they have embraced their individuality, their and everyone elses’ God-given right to their Life, Liberty and Property and the responsibility that comes along with those rights; true individual freedom will spread around the world. Once a third of a population believes in these principles there will be such a “gravitational pull” others will see that there is a much better alternative to “consenting” to an oppressive Government and that their only “pledge of allegiance”will be to the ideas Liberty, Peace and Free Trade.
Brad Miller
AdvocateofLiberty and Anything Peaceful
