Notes From Gordon: Vassals Upon The Land

Happy Monday, Dear Ones…

Ah, yes, the weekend has come and gone. Did you head to the dump? Maybe do a little bass fishing?

Here I am at the age of 10, with a bass caught from a fresh water lake near Franklin, New Hampshire.

Today at the age off 77 when I go fishing, it is for insights into the nature of our existence. How was that for a smooth literary transition? Ha!

Like a catchy pop tune, every fisherman needs a hook. Let me hook you today with something sharp and pointed.

WARNING: You may find this hook difficult to remove. I’d throw you back if I could. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you to flop around on the shores of civilization.

Other than amongst uncontacted tribes in the Amazon and a few other spots on our once pristine little planet, there is not a place that calls itself civilized without a government to feed.

We certainly do have a government here in America, and it’s a whopper. If you live under this government, that must make you an American, right? Not so fast, taxpayer.

What does it mean to be American? That you personally signed the Constitution and agree to the rules that were laid down before you were even born on the land mass called America?

Here is what Lysander Spooner had to say on this subject in 1870 in his essay titled, “No Treason. No. VI. The Constitution of No Authority.”

SAFETY ADVISORY: You may want to sit back a little farther or your hair could catch on fire.

“The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago.

“And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts.

“Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the Constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them.

“They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them.

“That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but “the people” then existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind any body but themselves.“

Now that we’ve established the illegitimacy of assuming that your ancestors could bind you to do anything, let’s revisit the subject of government.

You pay taxes to the overlords who rule America today. And who are these special humans? Divine creatures of love and light? Wise elders who sit at the pinnacle of power to dispense justice and liberty for all? I think not.

Rulers of old would require the vassals on their land to turn over as much as one-third of their crop to the court. But at least these peasants got to keep the majority share for themselves.

The Social Security Administration is located along Security Boulevard in Washington, D.C. and is the largest wealth redistribution factory in recorded history.

The nice folks who run this doomed Ponzi scheme inform us that today’s average retiree has less than $500 in the bank and can’t afford even a minor financial emergency.

Many of these modern—and now impecunious—peasants paid the IRS as much as $5,000 a year in taxes during their 40 working years, effectively feeding their criminal overlords a whopping total of $200,000.

Let’s do the math. It looks like they paid 400 times more in taxes than they have remaining for themselves. Keep in mind that they did this willingly.

And they were not alone. Well over 95% of the populace did likewise. Otherwise Rome 2.0 couldn’t maintain military outposts in over 200 other nations.

It is a sad fact that our modern culture is subsidized by the labors of taxpayers who have so little self-respect that they would put the care and feeding of criminals and psychopaths ahead of their own families.

Apologies, but I told you this hook would be difficult to remove.

And what of the other 5%? The remnant who choose not to participate in the modern scheme of cultural self-imprisonment?

These people are free.

Some live in the middle of nowhere, off the grid. Some operate ice cream wagons along the nation’s beaches and run out of places to stuff all that cash.

Others are nomads who, while appearing normal in every other way, wander America in RVs, following the sun, working online and earning just under the amount necessary to qualify to file a 1040 form.

When Henry David Thoreau was imprisoned by the Lincoln administration for refusal to pay a poll tax, he was visited by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

A concerned Emerson asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?”

To which Hank smoothly replied, “Why, Ralph, what are you doing out there?”