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? BAD CITIZENS AND GOOD FREEDOM ?
? ?
? by ?
? Jefferson Mack ?
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"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to
govern. Every class is unfit to govern." --Lord Acton
If every class is unfit to govern, then who will lead
us? The answer is obvious. No one!
Free, independent, competent people don't need leaders.
A truly free society is disorganized. Nobody is in charge.
Nobody takes orders. Everyone does exactly what he or she
wants to do, taking orders from nobody else. If you want
something from someone else, you make a voluntary trade or
exchange in which both of you are happy with the deal.
The people who preach the need to organize don't want
you to be free. What they want is for you to pay their
bills and do their dirty work so they can be free to do what
they want to do.
The last thing someone who wants to boss others wants
around are independent, competent people who want to left
alone to live their own lives. Such people never make good
citizens, not the way a politician talks about good citizens.
A political leader will tell you a good citizen obeys
the law--every law. A good citizen works hard--at whatever
job the government tells him he is suppose to work at. A
good citizen pays his taxes--even if he doesn't have enough
left over to feed his kids. A good citizen volunteers his or
her time to work on civic projects the leader designs. A
good citizen goes off to fight and die in wars with people he
doesn't know so that the leader can win a place in the
history books. The good citizen never complains--no matter
how stupid or crude a government official treats him nor how
much a leader asks him to sacrifice.
Give a politician enough good citizens and he will rule
forever, fat and happy, while the good citizens sweat and
suffer and die to make sure the political leader keeps the
good life.
Politicians and bureaucrats spend a great deal of time
and effort trying to convince the people they rule that a
moral person must be a good citizen. Back in the dark ages
they called it the "Divine Right of Kings". Now days it's
called patriotic duty, or civic responsibility, but it all
adds up to the argument that every decent, honorable person
must put the interests of the state and the government above
their own personal interests.
BAD CITIZENS HAVE MORE FUN BECAUSE THEY ARE MORE FREE.
A free society is supposed to have free citizens, not
good citizens. The day you wake up and realize you don't
have all the freedom you want, the first thing you want to do
is bad citizen.
A bad citizen may love the place where he lives. He may
love his country and respect his neighbors. But a bad
citizen won't love or respect the people who run the
government. A bad citizen will always put his own interest
and the interest of his family and friends above the interest
of some common good as described by the people who hold
political power.
We are not talking here about violent criminals or
rebels. Political leaders love those kinds of people. They
love pulling their guns, arresting people and putting down
riots. If you don't think the politicians loved the recent
events in Los Angeles, you haven't been watching the TV news.
Every single politician in the country has jumped on the band
wagon by promising us they'll solve the problem if we'll just
give them some more of our money and a little more of our
freedom.
Political leaders love big trials with lots of newspaper
space. It gives them a chance to show how powerful they can
really be. They are expecting open confrontation and they
will be prepared to deal with it. They have detention camps,
secret police, riot control equipment, and the army ready to
go after all those who dare openly confront the government.
But any political leader who's got a country full of
peaceful bad citizens has got a serious problem. Bad
citizens work hard to support themselves, they treat their
neighbors with respect, they won't cheat others for their own
gain, and they don't do violent acts that hurt innocent
people.
What bad citizens won't do is help the government make
his or her life miserable. They continually try to maximize
the freedom they have, even if they have to break or ignore a
few laws to do it.
Too many bad citizens make government almost impossible.
That's one big reason why the Soviet Union didn't work. Too
many Soviet citizens realized they were never going to get a
fair share out of socialism and they stopped being good
citizens. They looked out for themselves rather than the
good of the State.
GOOD CITIZENS MAKE TYRANTS POSSIBLE.
Nazi Germany wasn't filled with people who wanted to
throw Jews into bonfires, make slaves of eastern Europeans,
or rule the world from Berlin. Nazi Germany was filled with
good citizens and Hitler did everything he could to make all
those good citizens think they were better off with him in
charge, even if they did have to give up a few freedoms.
Hitler was more frightened that all those good citizens might
stop being good citizens than he was of the allied armies.
North Korea, Viet Nam, Cuba, Iran, and Iraq are filled
with good citizens, all of them hoping that by being good
citizens, they will help things get better. Only things keep
getting worse. The good citizen works harder but gets less
to eat, has less fun, enjoys life less, and has less hope for
a better future.
BAD CITIZENS HAVE KEPT THE UNITED STATES FREE.
Back in 1917 a majority of the voters in the United
States decided they knew what was best for everyone and
passed the Eighteenth Amendment, taking away the freedom of a
man to relax with a beer after an honest day's work. Hundred
of thousands in this great country suddenly turned into bad
citizens. They didn't organize into a let's-bring-back-the-
booze political party or start blowing up police stations.
All they did was to keep on drinking. Some bad citizens were
more than willing to smuggle, distill, or brew the booze and
sell it for a profit.
In 1933, the social manipulators and the do-gooders
finally gave up, agreed to throw out the great experiment and
a tens of thousands of people went back to being good
citizens.
These kind of things keep happening all over this
country. Have you tried driving a fixed fifty-five along our
highways? A whole industry has gotten rich selling us radar
detectors to give us a chance against the modern technology
of the Highway Patrol. Eventually, the wizards in Washington
had no choice but to up the speed limit to 65, at least in a
few places.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, and every State and
local police department spend billions each year to try and
stamp out the use of recreational drugs. Yet every year, the
price of the drugs go down, while availability go up.
Anybody who wants to smoke pot, can, any place in the United
States.
Other freedoms are under constant attack. Take the
issue of gun control. The people who tout this totalitarian
principle keep telling us that the majority of Americans want
some kind of gun control. So what? No majority in a free
country has the right to take away the freedoms of any
minority. That's what freedom is all about, and owning a gun
is a damn good way to help make sure nobody starts
interfering with your personal freedom. As long as the
people who understand and believe that principle insist on
keeping their guns, we are going to be able to keep them.
In California the state government outlawed a whole
collection of different kinds of semi-automatic weapons and
demanded that every citizen register those weapons and turn
them in. Non-compliance has been almost total.
Americans used to be pretty good tax payers, way back in
the forties and fifties. But one day we woke up and realized
that the fat cat friends of Congress had all been given
special privileges and were paying less than their fair
share.
So a whole lot of good taxpayers have turned into bad
citizens. We are now a nation of tax evaders. We figure
every angle, both legal and illegal to bring down our own
taxes. Every increase in the tax structure is matched or
exceeded by losses as more ordinary middle class citizens
figure out ways to cheat on their taxes or join the
underground economy. We've now got the politicians against
the ropes. They are bankrupting the treasury, but they can't
raise taxes any farther because the know all us bad citizens
aren't going to take it any more.
If we keep protesting and evading new tax increases,
eventually the politicians will have no choice but to start
cutting the waste if they want to leave enough money in the
treasury to keep paying them their fat salaries.
Each of the above examples shows just how much we are a
nation of bad citizens. That's why we have as much freedom
as we do. That's why in recent years, this country has been
moving in the direction of more freedom, not less. The
politicians are finally beginning to understand that you
can't take an American's freedom away and make it stick.
There are two many bad citizens in this country.
HOW TO SURVIVE AS A BAD CITIZEN
Once you realize that you are not living in a free
country and that there is no go reason why you should be a
good citizen, there are a few rules you need to learn so you
can get the most benefit out of being a bad citizen without
suffering more loss of personal freedom or even going to
jail.
A smart bad citizen won't let himself get caught being
bad. He won't brag to his friends and neighbors about what a
bad citizen he is. He won't tell the local newspaper how
proud he is of being a bad citizen. He will not deliberately
confront the government, and he will avoid doing anything in
public that will warn any government official that he is not
a good citizen.
The bad citizen tries to be the invisible man or woman,
the person the government official would never expect is
denying the government his help and cooperation.
That means if you want to be a bad citizen, you don't
want to stand on any street corners making speeches demanding
revolution and you don't want to run with a mob throwing
rocks at police vehicles. You just want to live your own
life, doing everything in private you want to do, exactly the
way you want to do it.
You want to look like a good citizen. You will even
want to do some things that all good citizens do, like vote.
Only once you are in the voting booth, you vote against
every bond issue, every politician who's in office, and every
new initiative that will increase government power or raise
your taxes. If the only choice is between two common thieves
then a bad citizen writes in someone else's name, or even his
own.
You insist on getting every possible government benefit
you are eligible for and demand every government service the
law says you are entitled to receive. If you are eligible,
you'll collect social security, unemployment benefits, use
food stamps, dip into Medicare, claim farm subsidies, and try
to get the government to pay you for drawing obscene art or
writing nasty stories.
You may even decide to take a government job, if you can
make more money doing that than working for some private
firm. But a bad citizen who's got a government job takes all
his sick leave, goofs off every chance he gets, and does
everything he can to minimize the damage the government can
do to other bad citizens.
But don't cooperate with the bastards when it's not to
your advantage to do so. Except when it's in your direct,
economic advantage, you ignore the government. Never
voluntarily do anything that will help the government in any
way.
If bad citizens know someone who is cheating on their
taxes, violating a business license law, working in a job
paying less than the minimum wage, or selling a little dope,
they don't call the authorities.
A bad citizen files his income tax return but cheats in
ways that take advantage of IRS incompetence. Bad citizens
work off the books and don't declare the income. They'll
drive one hundred and fifty miles to buy a truck load of
groceries in another state that charges less sales tax.
A bad citizen loses his census form, or fills it in
wrong. Bad citizens don't provide the government any kind of
information unless they get an immediate benefit or there is
a government official standing there insisting that they do
it.
Bad citizens don't sacrifice their own pleasures or
happiness just because the government tells them such
sacrifices are in the common good. They don't volunteer
their services for anything the government is trying to do,
no matter how worthwhile the project appears to be. If the
politicians tell them there is an energy crisis, they don't
turn the heat down and the lights off if they can afford the
electricity.
Bad citizens enjoy the freedom of driving their own
personal cars instead of riding tax-subsidized mass transit
systems or subjecting their personal schedules to the demands
of car pooling. Bad citizens don't waste time sorting
garbage unless there is a direct economic benefit for doing
so. They don't man a voting booth, support the local
sheriff, waste time in town meetings, donate to political
parties, report poachers, nor contribute to the Community
Chest and United Fund. They recognize that a government that
steals freedom shouldn't get any voluntary help.
Of course, there is a chance that someone will show up
at your door pointing a gun to make you volunteer for some
civic duty like jury duty. When that happens, don't argue,
go. But a bad citizen won't do anything more than what is
absolutely necessary. On something like jury duty, it may
even be possible to help screw up the system even while
pretending to act like a good citizen.
It the person on trial is accused of tax evasion, drug
offenses, bootlegging, pornography, non-violent sex offenses,
a failure to obtain a business license, or any other crime
that shouldn't be a crime in a free society, a bad citizen
can always find some justification for voting not guilty,
even if every other member of the jury is convinced he's
guilty.
Such a bad citizen is exercising the right of jury
nulification, that is, the right to set a person free because
the juror thinks the law is not constitutional. But the bad
citizen won't admit that to the judge, the jury, nor the
press. Instead, he or she will insist that he or she was not
convinced by the prosecutor's evidence.
When the government confronts a bad citizen, the bad
citizen will insist that the government official respect
every right that the Constitution and the law gives every
citizen. The bad citizen makes sure he knows what rights the
law gives him, and then he demands they be respected. The
bad citizen will be polite, he will fight the urge to get
angry, he will never, ever, initiate violence against a
government official, but he will insist on his rights.
Unless he is presented with a warrant, he won't let a
government official into his house, he won't give permission
to any officer of the law to search any of his belongings,
and he won't answer any questions, even apparently innocent
questions without first checking with a lawyer.
Even in the United States with all the protections
against self-incrimination, most of the people in jails are
there because they talked too much.
When questioned by a government official, the smart
person in such a situation becomes the dumbest citizen in the
county. He hasn't been reading the newspapers, doesn't
listen to the radio, doesn't know a thing about what is going
on, but he loves the government, and loves doing his civic
duty, and he knows his rights.
If bad citizens are asked a direct question, they won't
lie, but they give as little information as possible. They
never gives any information that they are not required by law
to give. But the do it all courteously, never suggesting by
tone or attitude that they are being anything but totally
cooperative.
All you have to do is say, "I don't want to answer that
question." If the government official insists you answer
the question, then you say, "I want to speak to my lawyer
before I answer that question."
But most of the time, the bad citizen will never be
bothered by some government thug because he will learn how to
maximize his own happiness without having to have any
dealings with the politician or the bureaucrat.
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