The REAL “Free State Project?”

It seems to me that, increasingly these days, truth is not so much relative as it is democratic.  In other words, truth is exactly and only what the majority say it is.  Even in matters where the scientific method should cool judgments, “9 out of 10 doctors” or “most scientists agree” conclusively trumps the minority’s truth. 

This phenomenon goes double where right versus wrong, good versus bad is involved.

There are plenty of currently newsworthy examples, from “Climate Change” to the economy, in which wrong is somehow voted into truth, and people suffer as a result. 

But let us consider the Republic of Texas.  There is still a slim chance that, at least in a way, truth could prevail over majority madness.

Of course “everybody knows” that states have no right to secede.  The majority has concluded that the matter was settled conclusively with the Civil War – and States’ Rights lost.  Because the majority so strongly believes this, a sort of perverse “Tinker Bell Effect” makes it so. 

Legally, as far as written law goes, states do have the unambiguous right to secede.  Even after the Civil War, the federal constitution was never amended to prohibit it, and the Texas Constitution is both clear – and couldn’t be more up-front about it.  Here are the very first words of that contract:

(Article I, Sec. I)  Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the Union depend upon the preservation of the right of local self-government, unimpaired to all the States.

Then consider 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.

While it’s the longest of all state constitutions, the Texas Constitution has no “commerce clause” or other vague wording like “necessary and proper” that could be “interpreted” to authorize anything outside the black-and-white written words.

So, right off the bat, we see that Texas’ subservience to the Constitution for the United States of America depends upon the federal government’s obedience to that contract.  If the federal government breaks its side of the contract, we technically no longer even have a federal government, and even the contract, as written, is wholly void as far as Texas is concerned.

It’d be their duty as both Texans, and as citizens loyal to the US Constitution, to oppose such a rogue power.

Could there be any doubt that the federal leash has snapped?  Do any states have anything like “self-government” anymore?  What law, what action can’t be overturned by federal courts, federal legislation, or federal action?  

The real argument is not whether Texas should secede, but whether the federal government has already seceded from the USA.

The words in the federal and state constitutions are in this case quite plain.

OK, so y’all could vote on whether any of this matters or not.  Anything is equivocal if you really want it to be.  But consider this:

If the words that guarantee states’ rights don’t mean what they say, then neither do the words that guarantee any of your rights.

If constitutions don’t mean what they say, then pick a favorite part of the Bill of Rights…and then consider it gone.

Without constitutions, you have no legal rights to property, pursuit of happiness, liberty …or life. 

Are you ready to wave those legal words away?

Here’s the plan

It should now be apparent that for the past hundred years our own government, or, rather, the lobbyists, bundlers, partisan staffers, unelected bureaucrats, NGOs, INGOs, corporate cartels, puppet masters and kingmakers actually running our government (as we’d been amply warned), has advanced a campaign of theft and violence against us on the canard that it’s for “the common good,” and to assuage our many fears of bad guys both foreign, and domestic.  Flying in the face of this commonly believed fib is the easily observed fact that we have not solved any problems at all despite worsening taxation, prohibitions, loss of freedom, and of course, endless wars.  

We’ve not had a year’s peace since the War to End All Wars.  Surely the “war on…” drugs, poverty and homelessness have been busts.  With the FDA’s suppressive power we have more “snake oil” con men and dangerous, counterproductive drugs than ever…and that’s getting worse.  We are working longer hours, taking fewer vacations and spending less time with our children than just thirty years ago.  Shockingly, there are probably at least 150 thousand actual slaves (not tax serfs – actual chained-to-the-worktable, arrived-in-shipping-containers slaves) in the USA right now.  The CIA estimates that 50000 slaves travel into or through the USA each year.  Human trafficking is up several hundred to a thousand percent in just the past ten years!  …And politicians dangle “reparations” like a hypnotic charm over past slavery, when we’re doing nothing about the slavery TODAY!  …With the USA the world’s biggest market for child trafficking, even.  Mon Dieu!  

We are less secure and less free than ever.  We have immeasurably more crime and corruption, less access, less control over our lives, and even our health statistics are tipping downward at a time of marvelous medical technology.

Why do we so numbly submit our lives, wealth and rights to a protection racket that does not protect?

We should not need more motivation.  I assume that if you’re reading this, you already know that something must be done. 

But not just any action will do, since history shows us nothing if not that humans mostly fail and rarely succeed; and that both success and failure is by invariable patterns set at least several thousand years ago.

So here is my summary of the problem and what’s to be done about it:

Problem: Politicians and their agents act in violation of all of the laws that protect us from them.

Solution: We must stop that.  Remember, they’ve also nullified the laws that protect them, from us.  Of course, our elections were intended as our Power of Peaceful Revolution, so that we don’t need to have that other kind.  

It really is that simple, and we have not even tried it.  Our attempts to strategize and pick apart our social disease into only marginally-related “pragmatic” bits have been counterproductive to the effect that we have so far divided and conquered …ourselves.  Democrats and Republicans who should ally against their common foe are instead locked in a battle over idolatry, deceit and ignorance.  We do not even expect our leaders to obey their oaths of office; nor, in most cases, do we have any idea what the oaths say, what they mean, or to what laws these oaths pledge obedience.  We must converge upon this solution- to demand Rule of Law under our existing state and federal constitutions…as written. 

Here is how, I am convinced, we must solve our problem.

1. Read and completely understand your state and federal constitutions.  If you have questions about what you’re reading, I volunteer to help.  You should become confused when you first read these contracts.  I did.  I thought, “what the heck do these have to do with the way our government works today?”  Bingo.
2. Do NOT bother to write letters, call your congresscritter, protest or hold press conferences about tax policy, the Fed, drug laws, public schooling or any other distraction or delegation of accountability.  Our problems are our problems.  Concentrate.  Think.  Every millimeter we give to our leaders becomes a mile.  We must not any longer allow them to divide us against ourselves with equivocal sub-issues and dubious solutions.  As long as politicians violate every law that protects us, we have no issue other than this: we cannot tolerate this anarchy, this ungoverned government.  We have one issue only: wrestle our lawbreakers down to the law…or fire them and all their supporting network of cronies and powerbrokers.
3. Do employ every strategy, medium and means you can think of to address this problem: we must have Rule of Law under existing constitutions …as written.  If you have no idea what to do, ask, and I’d be happy to help.  But I’m betting you’ve already been doing things for lesser goals that’d be enormously helpful if directed toward Rule of Law under existing constitutions as written.  Go to meetings, talk to friends, whatever…use your mind and body and time in any ways that seem useful.
4. DO NOT allow yourself to be divided against your allies and dragged into an argument about details when we must first address the basics.  Don’t even give the Second Amendment or Gay Marriage as an example of anything.  No matter how well-intended, it only allows people to pigeonhole and dismiss you.  STAY ON POINT: our politicians even admit that, in the words of Henry Hyde, the US constitution is “…inappropriate, anachronistic; it isn’t done anymore.”  You don’t need examples other than the admitted lawlessness of our politicians.  They arrogantly declare that they’ve snapped their leash!  This is unacceptable, and it’s time we say so.  Loudly, repetitively, and with pitchforks and flaming torches.
5. Report back any observations, suggestions or whatnot that you think would help.  Report to all allies and friends in this cause.  Share ideas and experiences.  Let’s talk.  A lot.  It may not be so easy to communicate for much longer.  The CIA paid journalists to lie decades ago (Operation Mockingbird), and technology, under their control, will make it much easier to control what you hear and read.  Share truth now, while there’s still some visible.
6. I have proposed various constitutional compliance timetables over the years.  Nine years ago, when I predicted we’d have ten years before The Big Trouble hits (and no, The Big Trouble hasn’t hit us yet because we bailed out the banksters.  We’d have been on the road to recovery after a smaller crash if we hadn’t done that; and you’d better hope I’m wrong about what’s coming in another ten or fifteen years) I’d said that we could offer ten years.  I don’t think we can do that now.  I’d love to hear discussion on this, but I now suggest that in our current crisis, with so many people hurting, that we demand government strips down to its constitutional skivvies within two years.  That means full by-the-written-word constitutional compliance.  No decoder keys, no fudge words from the bench, no cheating.
7. Do you want a leader?  I’ll not shy away, but don’t miss my point: we have too many leaders, too many organizations, too much wasted money and time without converging on any common goal.  We must converge all our energies, passions and talents upon a single goal.  There are too few of us, and we have too little time to do anything else.

Be prepared that we may have to inviolate international treaties that, admittedly, are constitutional.  Such treaties have been increasingly used by the nefarious to destroy the constitutional design, and Obama is going gangbusters against us right now.  But other than these treaties, our leaders have no legal authority to fight back.  And by usurping our rights, stealing our property, shortening our lives and destroying our nation, they’ve relinquished all moral authority.  We’re right, they’re no more than criminals.

That is all.  Any questions? 

The media were right to dismiss our “Tea Parties”

I shouldn’t say “I told you so.”  So I’ll just say, instead, that being right has never done me any good at all.  In fact, it’s been a costly annoyance to both me, and to all my loved ones.  Being right is no advantage in the voting booth; it seems absolutely detrimental in electoral politics.  It’s no advantage in any way I can think of.  And it’s downright dangerous to be right when the government and its media are wrong.

I hope, in fact, that I’m desperately, completely and astoundingly wrong about what’s coming next.  I pray that I am very, very wrong.

So I’ll not say “I told you so” about all the warnings, predictions, admonitions and sermons I’ve written, spoken and kinetically harangued upon my friends in the ongoing battle for liberty and justice.  No, I will restrain myself by means of superhuman humility and magnanimous spirit…

But we should admit that the media got it right.  They have correctly portrayed the “tea party” hubbub, and the liberty movement in general as undirected, vague, and ultimately, pointless blather.

It pains me to say so, but my allies in liberty and justice are not just wasting their own time and money.  Rather they are destroying our combined credibility.  They discredit truth, and are, in effect, stealing from us all by spoiling the opportunity for those who’d do the right thing.

What is the right thing?  I’ve said it many times on these pages, but maybe it’s just too simple to comprehend.  Maybe it’s too basic to seem like a clever tactic or even a pragmatic first step.

We all have to agree to what it is that we want.  And there is only one thing that I am aware of that all of us actually want…Rule of Law under existing state and federal constitutions as written.

We’re out of time for all this fooling around.  We must stop thinking of tactics and games.  We must stop thinking of others as our enemies when we need no enemy other than ourselves.  We will never convince others of anything as long as we are ourselves such doddering fools that we can’t articulate for the media just what the heck it is that we want.

Before I go and say again what it is that we should be doing, here’s the setup:

“The media” are not anything other than people.  While these particular people tend very strongly toward soviet-style authoritarianism, it’s not their ideology that causes us problems.  It’s the usual human laziness, mental weakness and idolatry that plagues us all.  Like us, they worship celebrities and disparage those who attempt to become one, and fall back to earth.  They kick such people.  Trust me. 

They love excitement, but see it in all the wrong places (sports, celebrities…and weather).  And like the rest of us, it takes the firm administration of a baseball bat to make them change their ways. 

So when you get a microphone in your face, “the media” will try to label you as quickly and dismissively as possible.  If you offer ten minutes of Patrick Henry-like rhetorical brilliance, they’ll air the one point at which you stumble and say, “ummm…”  If you speak convincingly about something they don’t understand or don’t like (Rule of Law under existing constitutions as written), and offer, for example, income tax, you’ll be dismissed as a “tax protester,” and nobody will ever hear what you said about the constitutions, or the sweetness of politics on a leash.

This last point is my whole point.

We must, immediately and without any waffling, converge on a single message and deliver it without any side trips, divergence, hesitancy or missteps.  We must simply, firmly, passionately yet reasonably present the demand that politicians, policemen and soldiers keep their oaths to the laws that protect us from them.  They must obey the written constitutions, as written.  No “interpretation” from the bench, no caveats, provisos, ifs, ands or buts.

You must not protest government spending, taxation, or even overt oppression.  Do not mention Ron Paul, though this is his cause too.  Don’t talk about central banking or “The Fed.”  You must not write letters, campaign or speak to neighbors about the myriad symptoms presented by our collective social disease.  We must address only the disease.  Quit nibbling at branches; it’s time to strike the root.

What’s the root that we can all agree upon?

The existing state and federal constitutions are still the best, most practical, most proven, most fair and just social contracts ever signed into law.  So let’s agree that these are exactly, and only, what we want.

We have easy communication now.  We can still move freely.

Do not assume that this will last much longer.  And most definitely do not assume that a “revolution” will get you what you want if you can’t even agree now what it is that you hope to accomplish with violence.  The hour is late, and our side is losing.  Your choice is not up to your enemies.  It’s all up to you.  Personally.  Right now.

Read It…Now.

It may be oddly written, and I’ve learned that it’s not the best office-party icebreaker.  But every Hoosier should read, understand and memorize Article I, Section 25 of the Indiana Constitution.  It is short, unambiguous, and very, very important right now.

“No law shall be passed, the taking effect of which shall be made to depend upon any authority, except as provided in this Constitution.”

What could these words mean, but that even legislation does not create authority; laws depend upon authority.

It’s not only the Indiana Constitution that expresses this.  All throughout our constitutional republic, all political authority comes from our constitutions.

In other words, here in Indiana, as elsewhere under the Rule of Law established by our state and federal constitutions, politicians are not allowed to authorize themselves.  All of their power is written into constitutions, or that power is denied.

Just as you mustn’t allow a bad dog to hold his own leash, we mustn’t allow politicians to “interpret” the constitutions that restrain them.  “Legal precedent” and “case law” do not exist in our constitutions and have no legitimate power over constitutions.  Therefore, for example, no federal official can interpret away any first amendment rights because federal authority over religion, speech, press, assembly and petition is very plainly prohibited (see the First Amendment to the US Constitution).  All of our constitutions say this many times and in many ways; and constitutions were agreed upon and signed as solemn contracts (see the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1799).

Yet most politicians are routinely violating all of the laws that protect us from their historically demonstrated tendencies.  They have thus abrogated their legal authority, and rule by force alone.  Dick Cheney’s “nation of men, and not laws” is not just scary, it’s literally criminal.  This affects you more than you’ve been told.

Perhaps the most every-daily-relevant example is in your wallet.  State and federal constitutions mandate the use of gold and silver coin as money; and they’re clear that only our legislative assemblies have authority over this money.

But that’s not how your money works now.  And the way your money works today, is to rob you right into your grave.

With all our record-breaking taxation, regulation and litigation, there is only one private enterprise in America that has never been regulated, audited, taxed or brought to justice.  It is the so-called “Federal Reserve” Bank that’s been printing Monopoly money and charging you plenty for it since 1913.  It’s not federal, there’s no reserve, and it’s most definitely unconstitutional!

Frustratingly, many of even my political friends and allies tell me that “we’re too far from the constitutions now; we can’t demand compliance.”  But that’s like saying that once a criminal has done his deed, we, as a culture have failed, and that the criminal must therefore go free.

That is not sane.  That is self-flagellating madness.

Others claim that this is a democracy (why minorities want majority rule is beyond me), and voters can choose anything – even self-destruction.

I concede that this is pretty much what is happening.  But that’s both unconstitutional, and suicidal.

In each of my political races, and through all the years since 1995, I’ve proposed various plans to sunset all unconstitutional laws, agencies, powers and practices, and make the armed thug we call government go legit.  That is the law, it is morally right, it is proven to work…

…and our current path has proven to fail every time.

The Russian Revolution dreamed of liberty, justice and equality for all, but produced Stalinist nightmares and social collapse.  The French Revolution wielded the rhetoric but not the laws of our founders, so it was more about beheadings than freedom.  Even our own nation’s not-so-distant history illustrates oppression, slavery, genocide and war.  How can we think that now, with our government more powerful, secretive and intrusive than ever, we have put our ugly past behind us?

If you were to get curious and take the couple of hours necessary to read both the state and federal constitutions (yes, you really can read them without a federal judge telling you what they mean), you’d see that all of our biggest problems are unconstitutional.

Most taxation and government spending is unconstitutional.  All military engagements since WWII have been unconstitutional.  Pork, corruption, spiraling healthcare and education costs and tumbling dollars are all unconstitutional.

And every American constitution, both state and federal, codifies our right to alter or reform our government.  The Texas constitution couldn’t be more clear that should the federal government break its side of the constitutional contract, then Texas is specifically free and sovereign.  And that’s in the document’s very first paragraph.

You ought to read it!

Say what you will about our constitutions.  Call them outdated, call them “agrarian.”  But then read them.  We have nothing better, and we’re headed toward a truly ancient and horrible default state without them.

…You think TAXES are a problem?

Before all the “Tea Party” events swirl through the news, there’s something I have to get off my chest.

Despite what you’ve been told about the cause of our Revolutionary War, you’ll be half-way through our Declaration of Independence before you see taxation mentioned, and then only in regard to imposing taxes on us without our consent.

After that, guess what?

Taxation doesn’t appear again.

Even “taxation without representation” (not in the Declaration, and the phrase was popularized later in the conflict) isn’t so much about taxation, as it is about colonists’ right to proxies in the seat of power.

Taxes are a symptom, not the disease.

You see, the real reason our founders declared independence from England was King George’s “refusal to assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” The Declaration cites the King for 27 violations of rights that Englishmen were due by English law. It was Rule of Law instead of rule of tyrants that our founders wanted — not anything unreasonable or even new.

Of course, from the moment the US Constitution was made law, politicians resisted its limitations on their power, such that by 1799, just ten years after ratification, both Madison and Jefferson wrote the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions to reassert federalism …or face annulment and dissolution of the union!  

They demanded Rule of Law under existing constitutions as written…and they meant it.

Right now, we do not operate under Rule of Law by the constitutions as written.  We are, at best, under Common Law, or law by judicial decree.  There is a good place for Common Law.  It’s not a bad thing.  But where legislation and constitutions apply, what’s in play is Civil Law and Statutory Law.

The difference in practice is huge.  And as predicted by our founders, if the borders are breached, the mistake is ultimately fatal.  Our Rubicon has been crossed, and we’ve lost our republic to a plenary power ruled by NGOs, INGOs, corporate cartels and Malthusian eugenicists bent on global domination.

But what’s worse is that We The People have voluntarily and repetitiously reelected this state of lawless power.  Unelected bureaucrats write most of our laws, and have the power to judge and execute them.  Police, who can’t possibly know all the rules anymore, have been made increasingly militarized, empowered, unaccountable and adversarial.  And the aforementioned people and corporate entities really running our government aren’t on any ballot, or even employed in any legitimate agency of our government.

Right now as you read this, no political power is any longer bound by any written laws.  As the courts are servants of the greater political/finance and military-industrial machines under a practically invisible ruling class, there are no real limits on political power at all.

So you have no rights as you’d have in a republic.  You have only conditional privileges, with increasing conditions, and decreasing privileges.

Forget the laws plainly written down, the rules are what is enforced by guns and jails and spies and drones and fines.  And that’s all ad-hoc, arbitrary and ever-changing.

You have no second amendment because you have no constitution.  You have no first amendment because you have no Rule of Law.  You’ve got nothing that can’t be taken away from you.  Not your property, your rights, or your life.

I’m scratching my head wondering why we think we have any other issues?

But no. We divide and conquer…ourselves.

Second Amendment advocates campaign against our constitutional right to sin (drugs, prostitution, etc.) without civil punishment.

Those who call themselves “First Amendment Champions” typically oppose the very first right mentioned in the First Amendment’s five enumerated rights…and increasingly want to limit speech, too.

We each have our favorite rights, but we doggedly, stupidly, deny others theirs.  And while every Election Day is essentially a tug of war over which of our two-faced, inherently divisive tribal scheme loses the fewest rights, we never, ever leash the POWER to take away rights.

And so we have no rights at all.  We have almighty rulers instead…and the (D) and (R) – branded people on the ballot are only their proxies.  So what we have is a dictatorship made more pleasant by a puppet show that We The People voluntarily reelect every chance we get.

And we think, on Tax Day, that how much of the Fed’s monopoly notes we feed the out-of-control spending meter is, in itself, a problem?

Taxation out of control is only a minor symptom of a fatal disease of debilitating, wasting corruption, and we’re running out of time.  The very existence of the unregulated “Fed” ensures that at some point, and I’m betting very soon (within 10-15 years), we’ll be facing massive inflation, unpayable transgenerational debts, and a criminal transfer of wealth from the bottom and middle, to the top of our partisan pecking order.  The monetary system itself will be so degraded that as our government attempts to inflate its way out of debt, the dollar will have to be replaced by something no doubt more advantageous to the powers that be.

Right now we can communicate with amazing ease and very little censorship.  We can travel unimpeded.  We can form groups and meet.  But because we won’t even ask for constitutional Rule of Law, these are not rights, and they won’t last.

Soon, we will lose these privileges to the degree that opposition to our oppressors will be very, very difficult.

You think I’m kidding?  You think I’m in mouth-breathing hysteria mode beyond any reason?  You think that happy days are, as the experts tell us, just around the corner?

I hope you’re right, and I’m very wrong.

But what I see is that our government is blowing the great bubble even bigger for one huge, stinking, bloody pop.

Read any history book.  Then look at current events and see that those who’ve been wrong every time before are today called “pundits,” “experts” and “leaders,” while those who’ve always been right are called “fringe” and “losers.” Our language and culture is increasingly debased, perverted.  We’re turning the excelsian hope of 1776 into the dystopian muck of 1984.

Look at all the fallen nations before us and imagine what they must have been thinking in their final days.

I’m betting they all thought, “surely not! That could never happen to us!”  “Surely,” they thought, “we’re much more sophisticated and intelligent than the 100% of civilizations that fell in the past.”

Well, on a happier note, God is in control.

He knows that we’re not!

In that, I find some comfort.

But, ummm…  God Judges nations as well as people, so…
Sigh…

I’m picking up your gauntlett, Paul

It was April 1, but it was no joke.  My friend and feisty fellow constitutionalist Paul Caudell had died.  I had talked with him just a few hours previously, and I didn’t even know he was ill.  When Jerry Titus called me the next day with the news, I was jarred, as if from sleep.  Yes, I was sad.  But I was also angry with myself and feeling inconsolably stupid.  Sure, mortality is a problem.  But wasting life and opportunity and talent is an inexcusable crime. 

You see, here’s the scoop:  I’d given up.  I was flat disgusted with voters, non-voters, citizens and even my allies.  I was feeling hurt and betrayed by people who’d made and broken promises, by all the work and all the expense and all the failure…I was feeling sorry for myself that I lost my political races, lost my social campaigns, and, dang it, lost my business.  I thought it was time for me to not just leave Indiana, but leave behind all the failed hopes. 

Paul spent time in his final hours trying his best to bring me back; not just to Indiana, but to what I’d become all about for the past fifteen years.  I listened to him impatiently.  I was at work and feeling as though I was listening to futility.  I hope I wasn’t rude.  I pray to God that I wasn’t rude…

But then he went and died.  And I was slapped again with a most important and casually dismissed lesson.  Life is precious, and short.

My friends, what are we doing with our lives?

I spent half of my years in the “education system” before starting my life, and my life is probably a little more than half over (I’ve got longevity in my family profile).  Given all our marvelous “time saving” devices and the world’s highest productivity per worker, we should be working two-day weeks on a pleasure cruise through life.  And yet, the long hours away from home, little time spent with kids, and worsening statistics in physical and mental health make me wonder what the heck we think we’re doing to ourselves?  And why?

Why waste so much time and wait so long to start living life?  Why is that life and youth spent in such feverish pursuit of retirement and death?

Well, you should know. 

It’s Tax Time again. 

You know who you’re working for. 

I still want to know, why? 

Our lives are too short and life is such a sweet gift to waste it on politics and the sick pursuit of power over others.  We should get our hands out of our fellows’ wallets and off of their lives and rights, and just enjoy short, sweet life. 

OK, so we admit we’re all socialists now.  The media have been working hard to paint a rosy face on this so you don’t recall the history of Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, et al.  They’ve been telling us that the best “right” (fascists) are much worse than the worst “left” (socialists), and that we can thank the elite for having saved us from the clutches of those like Hitler, Mussolini, and Tito.

Ours is a culture based and steeped in debt and violence.  The violent taking of taxes, property and rights is how we get nice little park benches and politically-run car companies.  Our debt-based currency/central banking model is why consumerism is good, and saving for your own retirement is bad.  Our debts lead to desperation, the violence leads to more violence, and claiming that it’s all for the greater good of some abstraction like “state” is cave-man ignorant.  It’s all failure, death, pain, and waste of irreplaceable, fleeting life.

Authoritarianism, whether you call it socialism, fascism, serfdom or just Standard Operating Procedure, is stinking foul and self-destructive-dumb.  I’m sick and stupid for thinking I could just give in to it while I still have the breath of life in me.

I am sorry, Paul.  Not that you died, really; I know you’re in a much better place than I am.  But I’m sorry that I wasted time, and you had to call me on it.  I’m sorry that I was hardly there when you called.  I’m sorry that I had given up.

I may not be able to stay in Indiana as you’d wished.  But I now promise that you did not call in vain.  I will not give up.