Standard of Living – Madison, Wisconsin

despite a lot of inaccurate and misleading wording in the Boston Globe.  Such is the conundrum with major media outlets.  They have large audiences for now, and can get the word out about events such as the Free State Project, but they are also in the business to skew data and tell a story that they think will garner the paper more attention.  The Boston Globe uses the term “Anti-government” to describe the Free State Project even though that is false.  If you read the Free State Project goals, it explicitly states that it seeks to construct a society wherein the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property.  Despite the Globe’s false rhetoric, the project is picking up major momentum and looks to be accomplishing its objectives.  I wish them best of luck and plan to join when possible.

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Another productive member of Wisconsin society pledges to move to New Hampshire to join the Free State Project.  I’m getting mighty tempted to do the same as the Wisconsin state government steeps further into social slavery and makes life miserable for all its citizens.

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Video

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Here is the press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 6, 2008
Contact: James Andrew Carroll
Phone: (562) 505-1289

DRUG LAW PROTEST
Young Man to Possess Marijuana as a Protest Against Current Drug Laws

KEENE, NEW HAMPSHIRE – A young, 18 year old man will purposefully possess marijuana to incite his own arrest. At 1:00 PM on January 10, at 82 Main Street in Keene, New Hampshire, J. Andrew Carroll will illegally be in possession of marijuana as a protest against the drug laws of the country.

Echoing the thoughts of other liberty-loving people, Carroll says, “The drug war is an unconstitutional and inhumane breach of individual liberties which claims many victims, and dollars, each year.” Carroll claims he wants to “demonstrate the absurdity of putting a human being in jail for a crime with no victim.” He says the point is further demonstrated by the fact that he does not, personally, smoke marijuana, and only intends to possess it.

The war on drugs has garnered much public interest, as more and more people are becoming directly affected by it each day; and Carroll says that protesting the drug war in such a manner will bring even more attention to an already press-worthy issue. He also says the protest will “change some minds, somewhere” about the American government’s War on Drugs.

As a member of the Free State Project (FSP), an organization which is attempting to get liberty-minded people to move to New Hampshire to aid in reducing the size and power of government, Carroll moved to the Granite State from California only a few months ago.

Discussion forum thread:
http://forum.freekeene.com/index.php?topic=302.0

My best wishes go out to Mr. Carroll from my world here in Madison, WI.  Obviously, men in black and blue costumes—members of the Keene, NH police gang—will arrest Mr. Carroll or rob him of his money.  This is what happens in a coercive society such as ours where government workers violate an individual’s right to possess private property (cannabis) that poses no threat to anyone else.  Mr. Carroll will hurt no one, but will be hurt—by a government worker.  I suspect, however, that Mr. Carroll’s actions will not go without reward.  Government workers cannot long continue their coercive violence when you video record and expose their actions that hurt people.  I am guessing that the Ridley Report will be there to record it all.  Tomorrow should prove to be very interesting in Keene, NH.

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Thanks goes to the great people at Anarchy in your Head for the above cartoon.  This refers to the story I previously covered regarding District Court Judge Edward Burke in Keene, NH.  The great news is that Ian Freeman has been released from jail already.  Well, it was just a couch on a lawn anyways that started this whole fiasco but quickly turned into a subsequent arrest and jail sentence for Ian Freeman.  I was reading the Free Keene website and came across some more details.  Turns out that Ian was not just simply arrested and then thrown into jail.  According to 93days, District Court Judge Edward Burke sentenced Ian to “30 days for contempt of court, moved him to a back room, sentenced him for another 60 days and, finally, 3 days for refusing to pay the couch-related fine.”  Another detail was that a woman named Mikaela was the one who secretly turned Ian Freeman’s name in to the police.  But Mikaela was also a central planning bureaucrat that worked for the monopolistic apparatus know as the City of Keene government.  I am currently reading Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice (published by The Independent Institute) and came across the following and thought it applies well to the mindset of bureaucrats and those citizens that love government and believe in the myth of an impersonal body of just laws otherwise known as the “rule of law”.  The book states:

But the myth of the rule of law does more than render the people submissive to state authority; it also turns them into the state’s accomplices in the exercise of its power.  For people who would ordinarily consider it a great evil to deprive individuals of their rights or oppress politically powerless minority groups will respond with patriotic fervor when these same actions are described as upholding the rule of law.

[...]The reason why the myth of the rule of law has survived for 100 years despite the knowledge of its falsity is that it is too valuable of a tool to relinquish.  The myth of impersonal government is simply the most effective means of social control available to the state.

Then their is another myth prevalent in society which the book touches on:

As long as the public identifies order with law, it will believe that an orderly society is impossible without the law the state provides.  And as long as the public believes this, it will continue to support the state almost without regard to how oppressive it may become.

[...]The identification of order with law eliminates from the public consciousness the very concept of the decentralized provision of order.  With regard to legal services, it renders the classical liberal idea of a market-generated, spontaneous order incomprehensible.

The author then sums up later in the chapter with these wonderful words of wisdom:

The time has come for those committed to individual liberty to realize that the establishment of a truly free society requires the abandonment of the myth of the rule of law.

A free marketplace for law allows for the discovery of better laws that create actual order.  Citizens like Mikaela become accomplices of the state when they believe that only government can create order.  They believe it is their patriotic duty to utilize the police-state to control others if they erroneously believe in the so-called “rule of law”.  However, with the progress of the Free State Project I believe that the times they are a changin’ and so are individuals’ misconceptions of what truly brings about an orderly society.

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Tags: 93days, anarchy and the law, anarchy in your head, couch, couch-related fine, district court judge edward burke, free keene, free society, free state project, ian freaman, keene nh, law and order, mikaela, orderly society, rule of law