Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve edited this…
http://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/the-united-states-constitution.pdf
Watching the eyes go cold…
I had to kill a rooster about an hour ago. He’d been attacking people, including me. We all agreed that, while he was a prize-winning-beautiful bird, we had too many roosters and this taloned terrorist had to go. So I finished my workday, and put on some gloves and safety glasses. My youngest son Hark locked the dogs inside to avoid undue excitement (you don’t want your dogs to develop a taste for your chickens), and he also put on gloves and safety glasses.
Yeah, the rooster was mean and could jump high. His spurs are sharp and his beak drew blood too. A few weeks ago, Hark accidentally blinded the rooster’s right eye while fighting him off, but that only made the rooster even more fearful and aggressive.
I think he knew what was coming, as Hark and I started across the field toward the free-ranging flock. Maybe the saddest part for me was when he ran behind his favorite hen; the one whose back he’d plucked completely bare. The cocky bully turned chicken in his final moments, and my heart sank. I almost called the whole thing off. Maybe I should have.
I don’t know.
Anyway, while my son and I both chased him down, I got the short straw as the one able to grab the rooster first. I scooped up the squawking chainsaw of beak, feathers and two-inch spurs, and swiftly broke his neck.
I suppose it was as quick a death as possible, but man, I hated doing that. It’s not as easy as it looks in movies; but worse, I took a life that was fighting for life. He wanted to live, and I killed him.
Damn.
Since moving to the farm, I’ve had to kill many animals, for many perfectly understandable reasons, but I’ve never gotten used to it. My hands shake and my spirit is heavy for a long time after strangling, shooting or twisting the life out of even the most vicious creature. If anything, it’s getting harder every time.
Do not take me for a saint. When I was very young, I had little trouble extinguishing the life of frogs, squirrels, or whatever else was on the wrong end of my shoe, slingshot, bow or gun.
But a more mature perspective has revealed to me the preciousness of life, and the horror of stealing life. I don’t kill from childish fear or flippancy. While I don’t at all begrudge hunters their sport, killing is never a sport to me. It’s just something that sometimes has to be done in the real world.
Yes, this is about politics. Damn it all, this is most definitely about politics.
What is politics, after all, but the delegation of reality to somebody else? Politics is about taking somebody else’s money for our convenience and comforts. It’s about risking somebody else’s life for our sense of security. It’s about blaming somebody else for our choices and making somebody else pay for our mistakes. Mostly, it seems these days, it’s about getting other people to do your violence for you.
Right?
Why else would we put up with it?
Anyway, the original societal design written into our state and federal constitutions is quite different from what we delude ourselves with today.
We citizens are supposed to take account for our own violence/killing…personally. We are still (the laws of the land haven’t been altered) to be citizen soldiers, trained in the use and accountability of deadly force. We are to consider what it means to look into another person’s eyes before snuffing out all his or her opportunities. We are to think long and hard before entering another person’s nation to serve some political whimsey. We are, in point of fact and fact of the point, to be responsible adults who treat others as we’d like to be treated.
It’s by no accident that we’ve laid most of the personal risks of war upon our young and ill-informed. We know the human brain’s ability to assess risk and benefit is undeveloped and fragile in today’s soldiering age-range of teens to thirty. It’s too easy to whip up the young into a Hatfield v McCoy, or Colts versus Bears tribalism. They are too brave, too fearless, too free of adult restraint, to be the antiviolent force that freedom requires.
It’s too easy for the fearful, selfish, greedy and foolish among us to direct these young bucks to do our evil for us in the name of patriotic duty.
Maybe this is a long way to come to my core point, but I didn’t want to just come out and directly state that I abhor that “…thank a soldier” mentality.
I have great respect for soldiers. I’ve seen the service to great things for people who serve. I’ve met very few rotten soldiers and plenty whom I admire. Pretty much everybody in my family forever has been in the military at some point; some for their whole careers. My dad was a decorated war pilot and POW.
But exactly who is it that ever takes away liberty? Who is able to oppress, enslave and steal on a large scale? Was it Stalin or Mao themselves who killed so many millions of their own citizens?
…Or did they have professional help?
Isn’t it obvious from even the most brief examination of humanity’s historical record that the permanent, professional standing armies that our founders warned us against are still our greatest threat?
Yes, it’s a bloody horrible thing to take a life with your own hands. We should hate it. We should avoid it as though it’s a stain upon our soul. It is a taste of hell.
But it is a far worse, insane and wicked thing to delegate our killing to others and act as though it is some hallmark of civility.
Horrible, evil things happen. Horrible, evil things must be opposed; sometimes by force. Deadly force is very rarely necessary, but it does happen that it is necessary to kill.
But shouldn’t we bring that force into the light and make it both accountable, and personal?
Yes, taking life is ugly. It is hellish horrid. We really should own up to that. We should personally weigh that evil against the comforts we claim from it.
It is a shame that’d make our founders shudder that we have turned this abhorrent thing into a career for so many, for so long.
Looking for a few good voters
I plan to place a series of large-format ads in the Indianapolis Star and a few other key newspapers around the state (donations made out to Horning For Senate, if you’re so inclined). It will be a simple ad, with a simple logo, maybe a picture of me, some contact information, and something like this:
Looking for a few good voters
If you think this nation can keep going the same direction we’re going, then, please, read no further and have a nice day.
If, however, you’re concerned about our future, then please, read on. We may need you.
OK, the bad news is that we have nobody but ourselves to blame for the cronyism, the violence, the injustice and self-destruction of our culture. We The People have exactly and only what We The People have chosen with our wallets, our actions, our voices (and/or silence) and our votes. We certainly cannot blame the politicians and political abstractions we’ve chosen over and over again. They’re just doing what comes natural, what they can get away with, and what we ask them to do.
The good news, however, is that We The People can have exactly and only what We The People choose. We don’t have to turn to anybody else to fix our problems. It is not too late to clean up our messes and choose the life we want to live. It’s never too late; and there is currently no need for a “revolution” anywhere but in our own minds and voting arms.
Of course, the bad news with that is that we don’t get what we want, we get only what we choose…and we’ve felt as though there are no choices but that two-headed crony network we call the “two party system.” We have been betrayed and deceived. It’s understandable that your trust in any politician, even ones you’ve never given a chance, is very low.
Then again, the good news with that is that there never really has been a “two party system;” that’s just an abstraction of some pretty bad choices on our part. We can fix that with just a little information.
Alright, so the bad news is that most people can’t even imagine how this country could work better. Trained in government schools and suckled on government handouts, surrounded by government actions and always aware of our wars, nobody alive remembers how life worked before we had all the “programs,” taxation, regulation and litigation that are now sucking us dry. Nobody alive remembers how “national security” worked before we began endless games of international “whack a mole” with our children’s lives. Nobody alive can remember how we could have schools, roads, jobs or healthcare without giving everything unto our new Caesars. We are all caught in the monkey traps of Social Security, Medicare, “national security,” “education” and “welfare.”
Ahh, but there is more good news. The good news that outweighs all the bad is that it’d take only a little more than a third of Hoosier voters to set this nation to a better direction, a proven direction. It’d take only slightly more than a third to crack the cronies’ pedestals and govern our government by rules that are few enough that everyone can know them; simple enough that everyone can understand them; and important enough that every single one of them is to be obeyed by everyone (even the rich and mighty) equally, without exception, all the time.
And my fellow Hoosiers, those rules exist; they are proven to work better than anything else humans have ever tried; and they are already the Law of The Land. They can be ours again as soon as we choose them.
This is not fantasy. The fantasy, though a very bad one, is what we’ve been doing. The dreamers are those who think we even can preserve the authoritarian, lawless status quo. The fools are those who keep voting for it.
We all make decisions every day that impact our families, our careers, our children’s future. I’m asking only that you give more thought to your vote than you have ever dedicated to it before. I’m asking that you read your state and federal constitutions to see what you have been missing, how you have been misled, and how you can fix it all on Election Day.
We can fix this country. We can live in peace, prosperity, security and freedom if only we choose to. That choice will be at least in part represented as Andrew Horning (L) for US Senate. But the choice is yours.
Who’s been bought off?
It makes news when some foreigner (like Henrique Capriles Radonski) challenges a foreign, long-entrenched murderous thug (like Hugo Chavez). Such news makes headlines and waves all over the world. In foreign politics, sports, and even in real life, we love a “come from behind” “Cinderella Story” of bravery challenging the odds.
But what do we hear about those who’d challenge the world’s longest-running and most-corrupt crony network operating here in the USA? Do we admire the underdogs who’d offer an alternative to a machine of war, theft and deceit that’s been left alone with near-total power in the USA since 1913?
From personal experience, I must say, no. In fact, we call them “fringe,” “lunatic,” or at best, when we don’t want to come out and say, “loser,” we call each of them a “wasted vote” with “no chance” in that entrenched, violent, stinking-rotten and generally disliked two-faced regime we’ve come to call (because we’ve been told to) “the Two Party System.”
Why is that? Why do we voluntarily choose to live in a downward-spiraling, robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul cronyism, lawless and brutish debt bomb?
Well, I think it’s because we’ve been bought off with our own money, that’s why.
Who among us doesn’t at least at some point in the day feel a part of some arbitrary abstract “class” of citizen that has a “special interest” in our adversarial system of politics? Whether it’s the struggle of men versus women, gay versus straight, black versus white, or something even more abstract like activated Reserve, beneficiary, incorporated businessman or taxpayer, we all seem forced to “take a side” in a system that is now entirely based upon taking something from somebody, and sometimes, giving it to somebody else.
Sometimes it’s just taking; and we hope to keep a little more than the next guy gets to keep. Sometimes we’re on the receiving end (Medicare, Social Security are the biggest, broadest examples), and we have come up with all manner of justification for what we take from our neighbors.
Always, it seems, one half of the “two party system” is “on your side;” while the other half is “against you.”
It’s hard for me to imagine why we’ve not demanded at least a year’s military peace since the War to End All War, but we’ve been told that our whole system will crash down like dominoes unless we keep ferreting out and smacking down the hobgoblins and demons always lurking somewhere overseas.
Anyway, you have invested, and you feel stuck. You’ve witnessed “rope a dope.”
That it is immoral in the extreme as well as very clearly illegal doesn’t matter. It is, we’re always told, and so we always say, “The Way Things Are.”
Well, life is what you make it. We The People have exactly and only what we choose. It’s in your power to keep “The Way Things Are” the way things are; or change it to whatever you want.
I have a proposal. I offer rules that apply to everybody equally – written rules that are few enough that everybody can know them; simple enough that everybody can understand them; and important/useful/critical enough that everybody must obey all of them without exception, all the time. The rules are proven to work if obeyed, and they’ve been called brilliant and exemplary by people all over the world. They are also the law, right now.
I’m not holding my breath that my quixotic campaign will do any better than ever before. I’m not even saying that I’m a brave person to offer such a challenge to our corrupt status quo. And please don’t call me Cinderella.
I’m just putting rule of law under existing state and federal constitutions on the ballot under the name Andrew Horning (L).
Whatever happens next isn’t my decision at all.
It’s all yours. You’re the one who must decide if you want to keep doing what you’ve been doing, or something else for a change. A real change. It’s up to you, and the time to choose is just around the corner.
Calling all Antiestablishmentarianists!
If you’ve been looking for a wholesome, constructive way to thumb your nose at the entrenched, corrupt, violent and stupid “Two Party System,” I’ve a suggestion…
Join my campaign team for US Senate!
This will be a practically zero-dollar campaign that I mean to run with mostly newbies. I’m looking for people who love life …and mistrust politics enough to track it down, beat it down with a club and keep it hungry on a short leash.
I plan to fill all key positions in the next month or so. I’ll need people to update lists, blast emails, coordinate volunteers, make movies, chalk sidewalks, perform street art, and so on.
For those who couldn’t make it today…
Today was Step #1. I think it’d be great to do pretty much the same thing again on Constitution Day, Saturday, September 17. We had a good band of patriots in attendance today, but hopefully, Constitution Day will be much, much better.
Here’s pretty much what I’d said today:
Eleven score and fifteen years ago, our founding fathers waged war against their own government.
Yet it seems that to many Americans today, Independence Day is about flags, fireworks, and a day off work.
Let us humbly recognize that because of our founders’ sacrifices, We The People have what We The People have chosen. Our votes and our daily actions leave us nobody else to blame for any of the injustice, corruption and violence around us.
Indeed if the so-called “Arab Spring” of uprisings in the middle east teaches us anything, it’s that ALL government, even the most oppressive, is by consent of the governed.
Here in the USA, we can simply choose how we’d like to live; and we can do it in safe, air-conditioned, button-pushing comfort.
After generations of choices, it’s obvious that the life we have chosen is not at all what our founders sacrificed, fought and died to bequeath us.
Out of the 27 specific complaints listed in the Declaration of Independence, there is only one, rather minor mention of taxation. Obviously there were no complaints about healthcare or Social Security. The colonists weren’t mad about working conditions or Daylight Saving Time. They weren’t asking for anything special or even new.
Our nation’s founders’ first and underlying complaint was that they’d been denied what was due all English people: They were denied English Law.
The very first-listed complaint against the king was that “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
That’s important; let me repeat that. “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
Now, to those who don’t know anything about Libertarians, it may seem odd that I would stress that our libertarian founders wanted laws.
But what we have instead of laws today is an endless stream of contradictory words, spit out like machine gun bullets by bureaucrats, judges, lawmakers and executives that produce the effect of power without authority; politics without any restraint …ungoverned government. Rules change daily, corruption is everywhere, and the violence is incessant.
This lawless, politicized anarchy is just not working.
It’s a basic human need that we must know the rules by which we must live. It’s the most basic justice that these rules should be applied in a way that’s fair, or at least predictable.
So here’s what we’re asking for:
We want rules that are few enough that everybody can know them; simple enough that everyone can understand them, and important enough that every one of them is to be obeyed by everybody without exception, all the time. We want these rules to stay put for long enough to plan a business or a retirement; or better yet, to raise a child to see that law and order is a thing to be desired, and chosen.
OK, so we’ve all had reasons to oppose such simple order and justice. Maybe our fear of foreigners, our political tribal loyalties and hatreds, the past sins of slavery or our greed and ignorance made us use the constitutions as tug-of-war ropes. We’d grab onto our favorite rights to yank away somebody else’s.
But those of us here today have learned our lesson. We will sacrifice our pet violations, or even the degree of freedom we think the constitutions deny us, in order to gain some measure of liberty and justice, for all.
We want to know the rules. And we’re all fine with what is already the proven, signed and once-revered Law of the Land.
Bottom line: We want our constitutions, state and federal, as written, back.
Do you really want to live like this?
According to our Declaration of Independence, governments derive “…their just powers from the consent of the governed.” But as demonstrated in the Middle East today, all government powers, just or unjust, are by consent of the governed; and that consent can be withdrawn from even the most oppressive dictators.
So the problem with despotism is never really the despot. The problem is that for every despot there is a majority of citizens who empowered that despot. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Caligula and countless others didn’t kill hundreds of millions by themselves, you know. Do not fool yourself; people like Kim Jong Il, Charles Taylor, Hirohito, Mugabe, Quadhafi, Nebuchadnezzar II, Nero or even Vlad the Impaler are everywhere and always among us. They are nobody special by themselves.
Here in the USA, we can conveniently, painlessly choose how we are to live. Deny it or not, we have exactly what the majority of us have freely chosen. We may say we want change, but we vote for mostly elites and incumbents. We may say we don’t like the corruption and money in politics, but less than 10% of us ever vote for anything else. Many dictators of the past century, including Benito Mussolini, were elected by people just like us.
So consider what we’ve chosen. We’ve not had even a year’s peace since the War to End All Wars. The Home of The Brave has sacrificed freedom for empty promises of security. The Land of The Free has the world’s highest percentage of citizens in prison. We really do tax people out of their homes to pay for homelessness programs; and we tax, regulate and litigate away businesses to stimulate the economy. We guard borders everywhere in the world except at home. For the first time ever, we’re working longer hours, taking fewer vacations, spending less time with our kids, and living more poorly than the previous generation. The rules we must live by are unknowable and ever-changing – law has now become little more than incantations, as high priests of law in grand courts decree, apparently on whim, how things are to be.
Are you happy with this? Is this how you want to live?
Humans can learn. When we want something, we know all about our choices of color, flavor, engine size, craftsmanship, price or caliber. We spend crazy amounts of time on sports, or romance novels. I know people who can tell you the vertical jump height of their favorite basketball stars, or can detail Oprah’s diet ups and downs.
But by what I’ve personally seen in tens of thousands of average voters, We The People apparently don’t care about the injustice and madness we’ve chosen to make of our lives. We know less about those we’ve chosen to lord over us than we know about movie stars. We certainly don’t know anything about our state and federal constitutions.
Despite what we may say, our votes say that we want unaccountable people of status and money to tell us what to do. Our behavior in the voting booth is beckoning a dictator. I believe we’re going to get one soon.
May I make a request? I’d like for you to read your state and federal constitutions and see what we’ve thrown away…and could have back anytime we choose. They are still law, though we act otherwise. They would still work better than anything else ever tried, if we’d only try them.
If you’ve taken the hour or so it takes to read the federal constitution, you already know that federal government should be invisible to almost all of us almost all the time. The Indiana constitution is the contract most relevant to Hoosier life. It’s a longer read, but still not terribly long or complicated. Both comprise rules of life that are few enough to know, simple enough to understand, and important enough that everybody should obey them without exception, all the time. The free life these contracts describe is simpler, safer, and in every way better than the politicized lives we’re living now.
You can read these constitutions (with my annotations)here:
http://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/the-united-states-constitution.pdf
http://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/indiana-constitution-book.pdf
Please ask other people to read them too. If you know somebody who wants to read them, and has no internet access, and you’re too cheap to print them out yourself, then contact me at thefreedomfarm@gmail.com, and I’ll get you copies.
Yes; it’s that important to me. I have to live here too…
Andy’s Annotated US Constitution
With all the disinformation and historical revisionism buzzing like flies on politics (even with the “Tea Party” as much as anywhere else), I just had to present what I believe to be the facts.
So here’s an annotated USA constitution again: http://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/the-united-states-constitution.pdf
Deckchairs on the Titanic
In years past I’ve had personal reasons to dislike what happens on Election Day. But today my name wasn’t on any ballot and I’m more disgusted than ever. Why?
Well, because, in spite of all the blustery “Tea Party” rhetoric, we did it again. We swapped betwixt McCoy and Hatfield without changing a single thing of consequence.
The bankster/moneychangers who control both entrenched parties are still in charge. The impending constitutional amendment proves that we still have no idea what constitutions are for or what they say. Party leaders are still safely ensconced, and the ungoverned monster we call “government” is still all about robbing Peter to pay Paul; where lawyers, lobbyists, politicians and soldiers determine who must be Peter, and who, for a while anyway, gets to be Paul.
If I see a bright spot in our march into parched oblivion, it comes down to one question that, more often than ever, I’ve been asked in earnest: “What is a Libertarian?”
To me that’s easy. There are just two principles:
1. Only you are payable for your own actions. Nobody else gets credit, money or blame for your work, your plans, your mistakes, or your crimes.
2. Nonviolence. The only tolerable use of force is against force initiated directly against you.
Following these two principles to their natural conclusions would lead to all sorts of wonderful things. But so what?
All the preceding about political parties and labels amounts to allegiance to abstractions, or more accurately, idolatry.
It’s harmless to treat the San Francisco/New York Giants as some living thing that spans new owners, new players and new home states. It’s just a game. But where liberty and justice versus oppression, slavery, genocide and war is concerned, we should be wary and sober.
Despite the horse race rhetoric, politics is no game, and there are no winners. The end of nations is as certain as the end of our mortal lives. And the end almost always comes by making government an idol. Political party loyalty is, to my eyes, a body-painted tribal war dance around this idol. Some do enjoy the spectacle, the strategies and the apparent glamour; but it’s ultimately a major cause of large scale violence, needless suffering, theft and death.
It’s not harmless sport that we tax people out of homes to pay for homeless programs, destroy businesses to “stimulate the economy,” or wage endless, innumerable wars for peace.
I cannot believe we humans don’t share a vision for a better life than the taxation, litigation, regulation and war that always creates enemies and unjust winners. I can only conclude that we don’t promote or even talk about this shared vision because we don’t believe it’s possible to achieve. Perhaps the numbing realities we’ve created for ourselves make us believe that there’s no point in dreaming of better…even when we could simply vote for it.
Perhaps nobody alive has any memory of how American life worked when only churches and voluntary associations like Kiwanis and Scouts comprised the departments of health, education and welfare. Maybe we can’t imagine the actual process of looking out for our neighbors or caring for our own elderly because that involves something other than money. Perhaps some of us concentrate on foreign charities because that seems easier and safer than dealing with what you can see on your way to work. Maybe we so muddle the benefits of modern technology with the handicap of modern politics that we think that resurrecting constitutional Rule of Law means the surrender of flushing toilets.
Whatever the case, I wish we’d put down the tribal flags, cross the chasm between politics and reality, and talk plainly with each other about how we want to live our too-short lives.
Instead of “Tea Party” saber rattling, how about we calmly stroll toward la dolce vita, “the sweet life;” in which peace, prosperity, liberty and justice for all doesn’t mean ganging up on poor Peter?
A Constitutional Convention Can Do …What?
Would a Constitutional Convention fix our constitutional problems?
The tiny percentage of us who’ve actually read any constitution, federal or state, know very well that all levels of our government operate in violation of these proven, fundamental, once-cherished and now-ignored laws.
So it’s no surprise that most of us sense a problem with the state of our union. It’s similarly predictable that most of us misdiagnose the problem and then promote bad ideas as a cure.
But this problem of ungoverned government (a.k.a., anarchy) isn’t that our politicians are “out of touch.” Far from it. The problem is that our politicians represent us perfectly.
We The People have completely violated “the supreme Law of the Land” at every level – federal, state, local and personal. A constitutional convention now would only muddle matters with more laws written by lawbreakers in a society that has no respect for law.
The real cure is to snap out of this madness, read the law and obey it as written:
The federal constitution’s tenth amendment decrees that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” So whatever power isn’t specifically delegated in the constitution is completely denied.
All state constitutions say something similar. The Indiana constitution’s Article I, Section 25 says, “No law shall be passed, the taking effect of which shall be made to depend upon any authority, except as provided in this Constitution.” In other words, not even legislation can create authority; only constitutions do that.
No constitution was ever amended to authorize most of what governments now do to citizens.
Even the Texas Constitution, the longest and worst (due to “runaway” amendments and usurpations some claim never happened and couldn’t happen in a new constitutional convention), obviates the need of any new laws in its Article I, Sec. 29: “To guard against transgressions of the high powers herein delegated, we declare that everything in this ‘Bill of Rights’ is excepted out of the general powers of government, and shall forever remain inviolate, and all laws contrary thereto, or to the following provisions, shall be void.”
Nullification of anything unconstitutional is already law in every state of the union.
Let us pray that we do this soon, before somebody invokes Article 10 of the New Hampshire constitution: “…whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.”
