The Truth of the Matter

Freeman finds himself within the borders claimed by a government. This human being decides he does not want to participate in the government organization anymore, so he quits. He then finds a nice plot of "public" property and claims it as his own. He is quickly confronted with a government participant named Citizen, who informs him that the land belongs to the government, and he is trespassing.

Freeman points out that the land is not owned, and so he has claimed it from nature as his own. If this Mr. Government person indeed has first claim on it, then let him show up and prove his claim. Citizen then informs Freeman that there is no "Mr. Government person," and that the government is made up of all of its participants. These participants pay taxes, and so they are the rightful owners of this land, and they all (or at least most of them) say you are trespassing, so clear off.

But Freeman is not so easily moved. Citizen seems to believe that the imaginary organization called government (Yes, it is no more than an intangible, imaginary construct.) can actually claim the right to hold a piece of nature's resources as if it possessed the rights of an actual human being. Freeman points out, quite correctly, that imaginary creations cannot claim rights equal to that of an actual human being, and so if Citizen is actually saying that Freeman cannot stay here because an imaginary entity has already claimed this land, then Freeman is afraid that Citizen is the one who must leave, as he is the trespasser upon Freeman's justly acquired property.

But Citizen continues to insist that millions of tax-paying humans have decided that Freeman cannot just appropriate this land that has been declared public, because all those human beings are joint owners. Freeman points out that no human being, or group of human beings, can arbitrarily claim land that they are not using or have never seen as their own, or else the first person to lay claim to the entire planet would rule over all humanity. Every human being has the right to exist upon the Earth, and it is imperative that he be able to claim unused natural resources as his own in order to survive. This right cannot be logically overridden by the supposed rights of a fictional character, nor can it be justly overridden through the aggressive force of the many against the few.

Citizen wishes to convince Freeman that the edicts of government overrule the laws of nature. Citizen does not want to give credence to the idea of natural law. He wants to believe that government is an idea that rules human beings, and not the other way around. Citizen believes that whatever the majority holds to be just, is de facto just. Citizen is a very deluded individual, and Freeman is having none of it.

Citizen then points a gun at Freeman, and the truth of the matter is revealed.

http://www.strike-the-root.com/truth-of-matter

Self-defense but no initiation of force

Objectivists and Libertarians generally agree on the non-aggression principle (NAP), which asserts that, while man has a right to self-defense, no one has the right to initiate force against another man. Some refer to it as zero-aggression policy (ZAP), meaning taking a zero tolerance position on all violent acts. This applies to both individual and governments. Aggression in the sense of initiating violence is forbidden, but striking back, or retaliation, is permitted and is even a moral imperative.

The title is quite deceiving, I have not seen any truth here, just a story that for all we know now is just fiction. Where can we contact this masked marada?

Hmmmmmmm.

HOW MANY MORE CARL DREGAS?
By Vin Suprynowicz
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"A well-regulated population being necessary to the security of a police state, the right of the Government to seize and destroy arms shall not be infringed."

Go where the land meets the water, anywhere in New England, and you will begin to understand how deeply the region of my birth lies in bondage to the Cult of the Omnipotent State.

Town and state governments throughout New England traditionally buy and dump tons of sea sand -- or whatever will pass for it -- along the shorelines of their municipal beaches and parks. It doesn't matter whether the shoreline of the lake, river or ocean cove in question was originally a reeded marshland, naturally filtering away pollutants while offering pristine habitat to waterfowl and a hundred other creatures -- the kind of place in which I (for one) would far rather spend my time communing with nature during that nine months of the year when it's not "time to turn, so you won't burn."

No matter: what the majority of taxpayers want is a sandy beach for picnicking and sunbathing (in fact, precious little "swimming" ever transpires), and that is what they darned well get.

Actually, the institutionalized destruction goes much deeper than this. "Urban Renewal," in New England, often includes development of new office complexes and highways on "unused" or "blighted" land. For 40 years now, the larger New England cities have bulldozed interstate highways through the "seedy, decrepit" areas of docks and profitable but low-rent private businesses which used to line their waterfronts, throwing small business owners on the dole and erecting their new throughways atop impassable 20-foot concrete embankments, until two whole generations have grown up within a mile or two of the ocean or the navigable Connecticut River in Hartford, Springfield, New Haven or Boston, without so much as seeing the water that gave their cities birth, except as a distant glitter far below the highway bridge they take to work.

But let a private citizen try to turn a slice of his own private, rocky shoreline into a boat dock, a sliver of sandy beach, or even a well-intentioned but "unpermitted" refuge for turtles and wood ducks (yes, I know of just such cases, in Connecticut and New Jersey) -- let him try to similarly adjust nature to his needs or wishes -- and suddenly the state authorities descend like locusts, seizing and destroying the privately-held turtles, demanding to see all the required permits, showering liens and injunctions like a freak April snow shower.

What's more, the very populace who blithely speed along on the shore-destroying freeways, who consider it their civic right to lie in pure white sand where geese and fox and a hundred other creatures used to raise their young, cheer with glee as these "greedy" private "despoilers of nature" are brought low, for daring to offend against the state-enforced religion of Environmentalism ... on their own property.

How dare such troglodytes tamper with sacred resources belonging to all the people, doing whatever they please with no more justification than the fact they happen to hold some bogus "private deed"?

Of course, the notion that one need only "apply for a permit" is nothing but misdirection, equivalent to telling the Jews as they boarded the trains to the East that they should be careful to "label your luggage carefully for when you return."

Big commercial developers who make big campaign contributions may well get some kind of hypocritical "certificate of environmental compliance" for their plans to pave and channelize the local waterfront ... requiring yet more government seizure of private property for another big "flood control project" upstream ... but the little guy faces years of hoop-jumping as his permit applications are lost, or returned for re-filing on updated forms, before they're finally denied.

At which point, the poor sad sack will learn to his dismay that it's too late to declare, "Well then, your whole permitting process is bogus, and I'm going ahead anyway."

At that point, the long-suffering citizen will be advised by a stern-voiced judge that he waived his right to appeal the validity of the permitting process when he filed his application (way back in the days when he was told "That's all there is to it,") thus tacitly acknowledging the right of the state to either grant or withhold its permission for the project in question!

Just ask 67-year-old carpenter Carl Drega, of Columbia, N.H.



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LAUGHED OUT OF COURT


In 1981, 80 feet of the riverbank along Drega's property collapsed during a rainstorm. Drega decided to dump and pack enough dirt to repair the erosion damage, restoring his lot along the Connecticut River to its original size.

A state conservation officer, Sergeant Eric Stohl, claimed to have spotted the project from the river while passing the Drega property on a fish-stocking operation. (The river's natural ecology harbored huge runs of shad and Atlantic salmon, as well as native pike, pickerel, and brook trout. So most New England states -- these devoted acolytes of environmental purity -- now routinely stock bass, and brown and rainbow trout, none of which is native and few of which survive long enough to reproduce.)

The state hauled Drega into court, attempting to block his tiny "project."

This was piled atop earlier actions by the town of Columbia, some dating back more than 20 years, and starting when the town hauled Drega into court and threatened him with liens, judgments and (ultimately) property seizure over a "zoning violation" which was comprised of his failure to finish a house covered with tarpaper within a time-frame which the town considered reasonable, former selectman Kenneth Parkhurst told the Boston Globe.

Drega tried for years to fight the authorities on their own terms, in court. Needless to say, as a quasi-literate product of the government schools, and no lawyer, his filings became a laughing stock both in the courts and in the newspapers to which he sent copies, begging for help.

"The dispute, punctuated by years of hearings and court orders, became an obsession for Drega," wrote reporters Matthew Brelis and Kathleen Burge in an Aug. 20 follow-up in the Boston Globe. Drega "filed personal lawsuits against the state officials involved and contacted newspapers, including the Globe, imploring them to write about the injustice being done to him."

In court in 1995, the Globe reports that Drega explained, "The reason I'm like this on this case, when I started my project 10 years ago I was issued permits and everything I needed. When I reapplied 10 years later, that's when Eric Stohl came in and the Wetlands Board had absolutely no records ... I am liable for everything that's done there. In the New Hampshire Wetlands Board, if it's not done according to the plan, they can take it out. And if I don't have the money to take it out, they'll take it out. And if I can't pay for it, they'll take my property."

I sort the incoming letters-to-the-editor for a major metropolitan newspaper. The receipt of such sheafs of heartfelt, illiterate pleadings from folks at their wits' end (child custody leads the list, though property rights also feature prominently), pleading for help from someone, has become an almost daily occurrence.

Since such tirades are too long, rambling, and "not of general public interest" to run as letters, I diligently forward them to the city desk, in hopes an editor there may occasionally assign a reporter to check them out.

They never do ... unless the author shoots somebody, at which point there ensues a mad scramble through the wastebaskets.

In newsrooms around the country, the running joke when a large number of such missives or phone calls come in on the same day is that "It must be a full moon."

Reporters cover the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is adept at putting out its version of events in reasonable-sounding, easy-to-quote form. Those who can't get with the program are generally ridiculed by reporters as "gadflies," "malcontents," and (more recently) "black helicopter conspiracy nuts." Their rambling, disjointed stories don't tend to fit well into the standard 12 inches.

By 1995, it was obvious that Carl Drega was running out of patience. Town selectman Vickie Bunnell, 42 (since appointed a part-time state judge) accompanied a town tax assessor to Drega's property in a dispute over an assessment. Drega fired shots into the air to drive them away.

(In New England, special property tax assessments are common, and especially cruel to old folks. The courts have ruled that if the town decides to run a municipal water or sewer line along a street fronting one's property, the property owner can be assessed the amount by which the town figures the property's value has been enhanced -- usually in the thousands of dollars -- even if the property owner has a perfectly good well and septic system, and opts not to tie into the new municipal lines. Failure to pay can eventually lead to eviction and auction.)

Carl Drega could see what was coming. He couldn't have been ignorant of the government tactics used to ambush and murder harmless civilians at Waco and Ruby Ridge. He bought a $575 AR-15 -- the legal, semi-auto version of the standard military M-16 -- in a gun store in Waltham, Massachusetts, a state with some of the most restrictive gun laws in America. He also began equipping his property with early-warning electronic noise and motion detectors against the inevitable government assault.
TOO LIGHT A ROUND


But they didn't come for Carl Drega at home. On Tuesday Aug. 19, at about 2:30 on a warm summer afternoon, New Hampshire State Troopers Leslie Lord, 45 (a former police chief of nearby Pittsburg) and Scott Phillips, 32, arrested Drega in the parking lot of LaPerle's IGA supermarket in neighboring Colebrook, N.H.

("Arrest" comes from the French word for "stop." Whenever agents of the state brace a citizen, stop him, and demand to see his papers, he has been "arrested," no matter whether he has been "read his rights," no matter what niceties the court may apply to the various steps of the process.)

Why was Carl Drega arrested that day? New Hampshire Attorney General Phillip McLaughlin pulls out his best weasel words, reporting the troopers had stopped Drega's pickup because of a "perception of defects." Earlier wire accounts reported they were preparing to ticket him for having "rust holes in the bed of his pickup truck."

But Carl Drega had had enough. He walked back to Trooper Lord's cruiser and shot the uniformed government agent seven times. Then he shot Trooper Philips, as the brave officer attempted to run away. Both died.

Drega then commandeered Lord's cruiser and drove to the office of former selectman -- now lawyer and part-time Judge -- Vickie Bunnell. Bunnell reportedly carried a handgun in her purse out of fear of Drega. But if so, she evidently had no well-thought-out plan to use it. Bunnell ran out the back door. Drega calmly walked to the rear of the building and shot her in the back from a range of about 30 feet. Bunnell died.

Dennis Joos, 50, editor of the local Colebrook News and Sentinel, worked in the office next door. Unarmed, he ran out and tackled Drega. Drega walked about 15 feet with Joos still clutching him around the legs, advising the editor to "Mind your own (expletive) business," according to reporter Claire Knapper of the local weekly. Joos did not let go. Drega shot Joos in the spine. He died.

Drega then drove across the state line to Bloomfield, Vt., where he fired at New Hampshire Fish and Game Warden Wayne Saunders, sending his car off the road. Saunders was struck on the badge and in the arm, but his injuries were not considered life-threatening.

Police from various agencies soon spotted the abandoned police cruiser Drega had been driving ... still in Vermont. As they approached the vehicle, they began taking fire from a nearby hilltop where Drega had positioned himself, apparently still armed with the AR-15 and about 150 rounds of ammunition. Although he managed to wound two more New Hampshire state troopers and a U.S. Border Patrol agent before he himself was killed by police gunfire, none of those injuries were life-threatening, either.

(Those preparing to defend themselves against assaults by armed government agents on their own property should take note that these failures do not appear attributable to Drega's marksmanship -- after all, he scored plenty of hits -- but rather to his dependence on the now-military-standard .223 cartridge, which has nowhere near the stopping power of the previous NATO standard .308, or the even earlier U.S. standard 30.06. Some states won't even allow deer to be hunted with the .223, due to its low likelihood of producing a "clean kill" with one hit.)
FERTILIZER AND TRACTOR FUEL


Immediately, the demonization of Carl Drega began. A neighbor told the Globe about seeing a police cruiser pull up to the Drega house at 2:50 p.m., and leave at 3:10 p.m., minutes before smoke began to pour from the house. Ignoring the likelihood that a uniformed officer might have been sent to see if Drega had gone home, "Authorities believe the fire was set by Drega," the Globe reported on Aug. 20, thereafter reporting as a matter of established fact that Drega burned down his own home.

Isn't it funny how they always do that?

Searching the barn and the remaining property later that week, "Authorities found 450 pounds of ammonium nitrate, the substance used in the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings, as well as cans of diesel fuel," came the breathless Aug. 31 report by Boston Globe reporter Royal Ford.

Trenches on the property held PVC pipe carrying wires to remote noise and motion detectors. No remote booby-traps were discovered, though the barn and a hillside bunker contained ammunition, parts for AK-47s and the AR-15, "and a few boxes of silver dollars," as well as "homemade blasting caps, guns, night scopes, a bullet-proof helmet (sic) and books on bombs and booby traps," as well as "the makings of 86 pipe bombs."

"The makings," eh? I wonder how many wholesale hardware outlets in this country currently stock "the makings" of 860 pipe bombs? Or 8,600?

The FBI was johnny on the spot, of course, helping New Hampshire State Police Sgt. John McMaster search the three-story barn, with its "concrete bunkers" containing not only ammunition, but also "canned food, soda, and a refrigerator."

(I wonder if my basement would suddenly become a "concrete bunker" if I had a run-in with the law? How about yours?)

But it was the 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate (the estimate kept dropping during the week) and the 61 gallons of diesel fuel in five-gallon containers that gave authorities the willies.

"Realizing the he had walked into the most dangerous private arsenal he had ever seen, McMaster began climbing the stairs to the second floor," reported Brian MacQuarrie and Judy Rakowsky of the Boston Globe on Aug. 22. "Halfway up, (State Trooper Jack) Meaney shouted for him to stop: he had just picked up a bomb-making manual opened to a chapter on how to booby-trap stairs ...

"The large stores of dangerous materials, combined with the discovery of three instruction manuals on explosives and booby traps, helped persuade N.H. authorities that they should destroy the barn with a controlled burn and explosion," which they promptly did.

"Some federal agents initially questioned the plan to destroy the huge cache of evidence that may have shown whether Drega had links to militia groups or criminals," the Globe also breathlessly reports, though the paper at least had the decency to note no such affiliations were ever established.

(One wonders whether the newspaper would have given equal play to someone lamenting that they thus lost the chance to search for hypothetical links between Drega and the Irish Republic Army, Drega and the Ted Kennedy campaign staff, or Drega and the Buddhist nuns who laundered campaign contributions for Al Gore.)

Ammonium nitrate is, of course, a common fertilizer, sold in 50-pound bags to anyone who wants it -- no questions asked -- in garden stores in all 50 states.

Farmers all over the nation store more than 60 gallons of diesel fuel at a time, and even know how to combine the diesel fuel with the ammonium nitrate to make a relatively weak explosive, useful in blowing up tree stumps. Purchase of blasting caps for this purpose is also perfectly legal. If this and a few hundred rounds of military surplus ammo constituted "the most dangerous private arsenal" the head of the New Hampshire state police bomb squad had ever seen, he must not get out much.

Anyway, the buildings are all burned to the ground now -- just like at Waco -- and the newspaper reporters -- trained to just report the facts and never express opinions -- had ruled within days that Carl Drega was "diabolical and paranoid."

The remaining question is, did government agents Vickie Bunnell, Leslie Lord, and Scott Phillips deserve to die? Did Carl Drega pick the right time and place to say "That's as many of my rights as you're going to take; it stops right here?"

Or is that the right question? The problem with the question is that the oppressor state and its ant-like agents are both devious and clever: except when faced with overt resistance and a chance to make an example of some social outcasts on TV, they rarely send black-clad agents to pour out of cattle trailers in our front yards, guns ablaze.

No, they generally see to it that our chemical castration is so gradual that there can never be a majority consensus that this is finally the right time to respond in force. In this death of a thousand cuts we're always confronted with some harmless old functionary who obviously loves his grandkids, some pleasant young bureaucrat who doubtless loves her cat and bakes cookies for her co-workers and smilingly assures us she's "just doing her job" as she requests our Social Security number here ... our thumbprint there ... the signed permission slip from your kid's elementary school principal for possessing a gun within a quarter-mile of the school ... and a urine sample, please, if you'll just follow the matron into the little room ...

"Those are the rules," after all. "Everybody has to do it; I just do what they tell me; if you don't like it you can write your congressman."

When ... when is it finally the right moment to respond, "I'll tell you what; why don't you take this steel-cored round of .223 to my congressman? In fact, take him a whole handful, and tell him to have a nice day ... when you see him in hell!"?

Carl Drega decided the day to finally say that, was the day they came to arrest him on the private property of a supermarket parking lot, supposedly for having rust holes in the bed of his pickup.

Does anyone believe that's really why they stopped Carl Drega?


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LOTS MORE COMING


I am not -- repeat, not -- advising anyone to go forth and start shooting cops and bureaucrats. To start with, one's own life expectancy at that point grows quite short, limiting one's options to continue fighting for freedom on other fronts. Most of us -- unlike Carl Drega -- also have families to think of.

Third, there may be other solutions. Just as much of the farmland near Rome sat vacant by the fall of the Roman Empire -- it simply proved cheaper to move on than to endure the confiscatory Roman taxes -- so do James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg predict in their new book, The Sovereign Individual, that internet encryption may allow many to spirit their hard-earned assets beyond the reach of this newer, oppressive slave state, making "the tax man in search of someone to audit" the laughing stock of the 21st century.

And finally, such a course invites obvious risks of mistaken identity, collateral damage to relatively innocent bystanders (witness newspaperman Coos), and an end to due process ... a concept for which I still harbor some respect, even if our government oppressors do not.

What I do know is, in little more than 30 years, we have gone from a nation where the "quiet enjoyment" of one's private property was a sacred right, to a day when the so-called property "owner" faces a hovering hoard of taxmen and regulators threatening to lien, foreclose, and "go to auction" at the first sign of private defiance of their collective will ... a relationship between government and private property rights which my dictionary defines as "fascism."

Carl Drega tried to fight them, for years, on their own terms and in their own courts. We know how far that got him.

What I do know is that this is why the tyrants are moving so quickly to take away our guns. Because they know in their hearts that if they continue the way they've been going, boxing Americans into smaller and smaller corners, leaving us no freedom to decide how to raise and school and discipline our kids, no freedom to purchase (or do without) the medical care we want on the open market, no freedom to withdraw $2,500 from our own bank accounts (let alone move it out of the country) without federal permission, no freedom even to arrange the dirt and trees on our own property to please ourselves ... if they keep going down this road, there are going to be a lot more Carl Dregas, hundreds of them, thousands of them, fed up and not taking it any more, a lot more pools of blood drawing flies in the municipal parking lots, a lot more self-righteous government weasels who were "only doing their jobs" twitching their death-dances in the warm afternoon sun ... and soon.

When is it the right time to say, "Enough, no more. On this spot I stand, and fight, and die"? When they're stacking our luggage and loading us on the box cars? A fat lot of good it will do us, then.

Mr. Jefferson declared for us that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People, to alter or abolish it."

Was Mr. Jefferson only saying we have a right to vote in a new crop of statist politicians every couple of years, as the pro-government extremists will insist?

No. The Declaration fearlessly declared that the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord had been right to shoot down Redcoats who were "only doing their jobs" in Massachusetts the year before. And it put the nations of the world on notice that Gen. Washington was planning to shoot himself a whole lot more.

"You must be kidding!" come the outraged cries. "This guy shot a fleeing woman in the back."

Oh, pardon me. Did Judge Bunnell propose to fight a straightforward duel with Mr. Drega, one on one, mano a mano, to determine who should have a right to decide whether he could build a tarpaper shack on his own property?

Of course not. The top bureaucrats generally manage to be sipping lemonade on the porch when the process they put in motion "reaches its final conclusion," with padlocks and police tape and furniture on the sidewalk ... or the incinerated resister buried in the ashes.

Go watch "Escape from Sobibor." When the Jewish concentration camp inmates finally start to kill their German oppressors, tell me how long you spend worrying that they "didn't give the poor, jackbooted fellows a fair, sporting chance."

Each and every one of us must decide for him - or herself - when the day has come to stand fast, raise our weapons to our shoulders, and (quoting President Jefferson, this time) water the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots, and of tyrants. Give up the right to make that decision, and we become nothing better than the beasts in the field, waiting to be milked until we can give no more, and then shuffling off without objection, heads bowed, to the soap factory.

Carl Drega was a resident of New Hampshire. On the day Carl Drega decided was a good day to die -- on the day they towed it away -- the license plates on his rusty pickup still bore the New Hampshire state motto: "Live Free or Die."

Carl Drega was different from most of us, all right. He believed it still meant something.

He Told Them
IF YOU COME ON MY LAND,
I"LL KILL YOU

by Vin Suprynowicz



In San Leandro, California -- about 20 miles southeast of San Francisco -- the mostly Portuguese clientele of the 78-year-old Santos Linguisa factory had grown used to the kind of signs recently displayed outside the shop by proprietor Stuart Alexander, great-grandson of the factory’s founder.

“To all our great customers,” read the most prominent one last June, “the USDA is coming into our plant harassing my employees and me, making it impossible to make our great product. Gee, if all meat plants could be in business for 79 years without one complaint, the meat inspectors would not have jobs. Therefore, we are taking legal action against them.”

In fact, on June 22 of last year the facility had just reopened after being closed for alleged health violations, when two state and two federal food inspectors -- two men and two women, all between the ages of 30 and 50 -- decided to pay Mr. Alexander another visit, ABC News reports.

Alexander, 39, surrendered without incident or attempt to flee when located less than a block from his factory. Police had been led there by the sole surviving food inspector. Police had to break a window and climb inside the factory, where they found the other three inspectors on the floor, dead of multiple gunshot wounds.

Danny Gomes, a friend of Alexander’s who waited outside the police tape at the factory for news, told a reporter for the Daily Hayward Review that Alexander was upset because inspectors wanted him to raise the temperature of his meat while preparing sausage.

“He was a good man, but pressure, pressure -- everybody blows up under pressure,” said Michael Smith, another friend of Alexander’s.

In 1997, the California state Legislature had named San Leandro -- home of a locally famous annual sausage festival, the “Sausage Capital of California.”

For years, Garry Watson, 49, of little Bunker, Missouri (population 390) had been squabbling with town officials over the sewage line easement, which ran across his property to the adjoining, town-operated sewage lagoon.

Clarence Rosemann, whose family runs the local Handi Mart in the deeply wooded community 100 miles southwest of St. Louis, told reporters for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he and his son dug up sewer lines on Watson’s property about a year back, when Watson couldn’t get the city to consider fixing them. After Watson paid Rosemann to dig up the pipes, Rosemann found that the clog was, indeed, on the city’s right of way, as Watson had contended.

Later, the city demanded permission to go on Watson’s property to fix other sewer problems. Town residents say officials grew dissatisfied with their existing easement, and announced they were going to excavate a new sewer line across the landowner’s property. Capt. Chris Ricks of the Missouri State Highway Patrol reports Watson’s wife, Linda, was served with “easement right-of-way papers” on Wednesday evening, Sept. 6, 2000. His wife gave Watson the papers when he got home at 5 a.m. the next morning from his job at a car battery recycling plant northeast of Bunker. Watson -- described as “white, 5 feet 11 inches, weighing 200 pounds with gray hair and blue eyes,” reportedly went to bed for a short time, but arose about 7 a.m. when the city work crew arrived.



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“He told them ‘If you come on my land, I’ll kill you,’” Bunker resident Gregg Tivnan told me this week. “When he came home in the morning, his wife gave him the papers. Then the three city workers showed up with a backhoe, plus a police officer. They’d sent along a cop in a cop car to guard the workers, because they were afraid there might be trouble. Watson had gone inside for a little while, but then he came out and pulled his SKS (semi-automatic rifle) out of his truck, steadied it against the truck, and he shot them.”

Killed in the Sept. 7 incident, from a range of about 85 yards, were Rocky B. Gordon, 34, a city maintenance man, and David Thompson, 44, an alderman who supervised public works. City maintenance worker Delmar Eugene Dunn, 51, remained in serious but stable condition at St. John’s Regional Health Center in Springfield the following weekend. Bunker police Officer Steve Stoops, who drove away from the scene after being shot, was treated and released from a hospital in Salem, Missouri, for a bullet wound to his arm and a graze to the neck.

Watson thereupon kissed his wife goodbye, took his rifle, and disappeared into the woods, where his body was found two days later -- dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

In the meantime, Garry Watson had gained a middle name, being thereafter referred to in all press accounts as Garry DeWayne Watson.

“Before this, nobody in town even knew he had a middle name, let alone what it was,” says Tivnan. “All of a sudden he had this middle name, like John Wilkes Booth or Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Following such incidents, the local papers are inevitably filled with well-meaning but mawkish boilerplate about the townsfolk “pulling together” and attempting to “heal” following the “tragedy.” There are endless expressions of frustration by those who pretend to have no idea how such a thing could happen, pretending to ask how such an otherwise peaceful member of the community could “just snap like that.”

In fact, the supposedly elusive explanation is right before our eyes. “He was pushed,” Clarence Rosemann told the big-city reporters from St. Louis.

Another area resident, who didn’t want to be identified, told the visiting newsmen, “Most people are understanding why Garry Watson was upset. They are wishing he didn’t do it, but they are understanding why he did it.”

You see, to most of the people who work in government and the media these days -- especially in our urban centers -- “private property” is a concept out of some 18th century history book. Oh, sure, “property owners” are allowed to live on their land, so long as they pay rent to the state in the form of “property taxes” -- just as they’re allowed to keep custody of their own children, until such time as the state decides to reclaim the custody it initially established in the maternity ward (where the infant was assigned a “voluntary” nine-digit federal ID number, with or without the parents’ permission) based on any number of pretexts, from “medical neglect” (parental refusal to expose the child to the federally acknowledged risk of death or brain damage from required pertussis shots) to “mandatory public education.”

But an actual “right” to be left alone on our land to do whatever we please -- always providing we don’t actually endanger the lives or health of our neighbors?

Heavens! If we allowed that, how would we enforce all our wonderful new “environmental protection” laws, or the “zoning codes,” or the laws against growing hemp or tobacco or distilling whisky without a license, or any of the endless parade of other malum prohibitum decrees which have multiplied like swarms of flying ants in this nation over the past 87 years?

There is no “mystery” about why Carl Drega and Stuart Alexander and Garry Watson did what they did.

What does it mean to say we have any “rights” or “freedoms” at all, if we cannot peacefully enjoy that property which we buy with the fruits of our labors? In his 1985 book Takings, University of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein wrote that “Private property gives the right to exclude others without the need for any justification.

“Indeed, it is the ability to act at will and without need for justification within some domain which is the essence of freedom, be it of speech or of property.”

# # #
“Unfortunately,” replies James Bovard, author of the book Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen, “federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors are making private property much less private. In 1984 the Supreme Court ruled in Oliver vs. United States -- a case involving Kentucky law enforcement agents who ignored several ‘No Trespassing’ signs, climbed over a fence, tramped a mile and a half onto a person’s land and found marijuana plants -- that ‘open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the (Fourth) Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance’ (466 U.S. 170, 179 [1984].) ...

“The core of the ‘open fields’ decision,” Bovard wrote in the September, 2000 edition of Ideas on Liberty, published by the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y., “is that the government cannot wrongfully invade a person’s land, because government agents have a right to go wherever they damn well please. ...And for those areas that are sufficiently fenced in, the Supreme Court had blessed low-level helicopter flights to search for any illicit plants on the ground. (Florida vs. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 [1989].)

“The Supreme Court decision, which has been cited in over 600 subsequent federal and state court decisions, nullified hundreds of years of common-law precedents limiting the power of government agents. The ruling was a green light for warrantless raids by federal immigration agents; in 1997 the New York Times reported cases of upstate New York farmers’ complaining that ‘immigration agents... barged into packing sheds like gang busters, handcuffing all workers who might be Hispanic and asking questions later. ...’ In a raid outside Elba, N.Y., at least one INS agent opened fire on fleeing farm workers. Many harvests subsequently rotted in the fields because of the shortage of farm workers. ...

“Police also possess the right to destroy property they search. Santa Clara, Calif., police served search and arrest warrants by firing smoke grenades, tear-gas canisters, and flash grenades into a rental home; not surprisingly, the house caught fire and burned down. When the homeowner sued for damages, a federal court rejected the plea, declaring that the police force ‘only ... carelessly conducted its routine and regular duty of pursuing criminals and obtaining evidence of criminal activity. The damage resulted from a single, isolated incidence of alleged negligence.’ (Patel vs. U.S., 823 F. Supp. 696. 698 [1993].)”

Renters fare even worse. “Park Forest, Ill. in 1994 enacted an ordinance that authorizes warrantless searches of every single-family rental home by a city inspector or police officer,” Mr. Bovard continues, “who are authorized to invade rental units ‘at all reasonable times.’ No limit was placed on the power of the inspectors to search through people’s homes, and tenants were prohibited from denying entry to government agents. Federal Judge Joan Gottschall struck down the searches as unconstitutional in February 1998, but her decision will have little or no effect on the numerous other localities that authorize similar invasions of privacy.”

We are now involved in a war in this nation, a last-ditch struggle in which the other side contends only the king’s men are allowed to use force or the threat of force, and that any uppity peasant finally rendered so desperate as to employ the same kind of armed force routinely employed by our oppressors must surely be a “lone madman” who “snapped for no reason.”

No, we should not and do not endorse or approve the individual choices of Carl Drega, or Stuart Alexander, or Garry Watson. It would not be right to actively encourage anyone else to pick up a gun and shoot the next government agent who barges his or her way onto private property.

But we are obliged to honor their memories and the personal courage it takes to fight and die for a principle, even as we lament both their desperate, misguided actions ... and the systematic erosion of our liberties which gave them rise.

“Just because one government agent has a piece of paper that’s signed by another government agent, does that mean there’s no more right to private property?” asks my friend Gregg Tivnan.

“If statists fear popular resistance,” replies Jim Bovard, “perhaps government should violate fewer rights.”

There remain in America -- especially in rural America, where many have now made their final retreat, backs to the wall in hopes of no more than being allowed to “peacefully enjoy” life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- millions of Americans for whom “private property” is not some dried and dusty phrase out of a long-discarded history book, at all.

To many Americans, “property rights” remain something worth fighting -- and dying -- for.

Want to find out how many? Keep pushing.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (subscribe by calling Lance at 612-895-8757.) His book, Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998, is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site

“When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.” -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” -- H.L. Mencken

DarkCrusade, Please get to the point why your posting this here. This is a freaken book, why not put this in a document file and share access to download it all at one time?

Thank you.

Really, DarkCrusade --> an attempt to incite here is fruitless......you'd be better off posting this on craigslists across the country

Sorry,sometimes i get carried away. I thought it was something of interest we could learn from,as no one else had posted in the 'taxation' cat.uptill than.

When 68 had challenged the op i had considered going to walden> http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html
but had come upon the aforementioned article which was posted as it was of a more recent date.

Also,not intended to incite as i do not have that low of an opinon of the members here,much to the contrary.
That is to say,i do not think that their are many teenagers on this fine forum. Nor do i believe that posting some verbage on craigs would incite.

Darkcrusade

Thanks for the interesting stories. I little long winded but I think you got your point across. I think most of us have felt frustrated in dealing with the LAW, I still have hopes that there is a peaceful alternative to the scenario's you outlined above. Frederick Burrell

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Originally Posted by motla68

DarkCrusade, Please get to the point why your posting this here. This is a freaken book, why not put this in a document file and share access to download it all at one time?

Thank you.

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I don't mind at all, in fact I like it.

I hate downloading docs from forums, so I would much rather
read it here.

How is this infringing on anyone else? I say keep going.

If you don't like it, don't read it. Jeesh.

Funny, those requests seem to me very similar to the
very kind of behavior we are here to find remedy for.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darkcrusade

“Unfortunately,” replies James Bovard, author of the book Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen, “federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors are making private property much less private. In 1984 the Supreme Court ruled in Oliver vs. United States -- a case involving Kentucky law enforcement agents who ignored several ‘No Trespassing’ signs, climbed over a fence, tramped a mile and a half onto a person’s land and found marijuana plants -- that ‘open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the (Fourth) Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance’ (466 U.S. 170, 179 [1984].)

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100% chance the property was (and still is) registered with the county of the respective U.S. State. Possibly also a mortgage in place with the property under a deed of trust with a bank.

http://freeinhabitant.info/travel-ri...to-tow-why.htm
I, Paul John Hansen, also have been parked for 2 years and they refuse to tow with a similar plate / notice. They use to tow me all the time, then I gave them legal notice and it all stopped. 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1WW4PwNV5w#t=37

The income taxation can be categorized under progressive, proportional or regressive. Individual income tax is charged on the total income of the individual, while corporate income tax is on the net income.

Welcome Paula!

That is a very interesting post. I am hoping you will show us more at the IRS Code.

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Originally Posted by Darkcrusade

http://freeinhabitant.info/travel-ri...to-tow-why.htm
I, Paul John Hansen, also have been parked for 2 years and they refuse to tow with a similar plate / notice. They use to tow me all the time, then I gave them legal notice and it all stopped. 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1WW4PwNV5w#t=37

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I know of a similar situation where someone had USDOT # decals on a car with "PRIVATE" and "NOT FOR HIRE" stickers on the back bumper. It had no "regular plate" and went untowed after weeks of sitting in the same spot on the street. Eventually it was parked on private property.

...

They say that progressive tax (and progressive liberals) are hurting the budgets of U.S. States like the State of California. As in: Inside job? But the progressive tax paradigm has been raising red flags. Judy Baar TOPINKA even published a glossy warning about economic dangers ahead for the State of Illinois--the legislature members know this.

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federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors are making private property much less private

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It might be worth noting that "residential" is not synonymous with "private".