Gold Prevents Bubbles.  Gold’s scarcity is highly functional and serves as a governor on irrational growth.  In an economy based on a fully convertible gold standard, gold makes large credit-driven bubbles impossible.

Conversely, paper money structures make possible large surges of newly created inflationary capital that flow into reckless schemes such as the housing bubble of the last few years, the stock market of the late 1920s, the dotcom bubble, etc. These bubbles build to a state of frenzy and then crash. These cycles are created by the Central Bank/Fractional Reserve/Fiat Money complex that has been completely detethered from from gold and is a feature of all modern governments.

We are now nearing the end of the largest bubble creating credit expansion in world history, and the crash that is currently in the making will be monumental.

Gold Prevents Wasted Lives.

It is unlikely you would loan your hard-earned savings of gold bars to your pot-smoking neighbor so that he could get a degree in social science and then purchase a house three times bigger than he needs or can pay for, and yet, your government took your paper money savings and did just that.  Complexity is purposely built into the architecture of all paper money systems making it difficult for you to understand how they could do such a thing and, more importantly, how you will ultimately pay the price.

Without gold or some stabilizing hard asset, bubbles are blown and entire generations are misdirected by irrational thinking that leads to wasted biological time and energy.

Notice the current bubble in college education. Millions have obtained college degrees in areas that have no relationship to the marketplace. College graduates are working in retail stores as clerks or shelf stockers. Employers may need welders or programmers,  but the misdirection created by the fiat money credit expansion offers them sociologists.

In another example, paper money inflation created the housing bubble and the irrational thinking that misdirected millions into becoming real estate agents, mortgage brokers, landscapers and swimming pool tenders. Millions of other people bought houses they did not need and could not afford. A large percentage of these victims were forced into bankruptcy. These millions of victims, victims of fiat money scams, will never recover their wasted years.

Fiat money credit expansion creates a lemming mentality among the masses.  The masses move in herds toward the latest craze and the credit made available by the fiat money/fractional reserve system makes it all possible. These flights into irrational and delusional financial decisions are a hallmark of central bank exploitation of the public. Those who are savvy to the inflationary schemes are recipients of the inflationary bounty, while the general public is fleeced of their stored productivity.

Gold Prevents Unneeded War.

Governments spend far more on war than the public is willing to pay in direct taxes, so governments resort to hidden taxation via inflation.

To grow these war machines, you are taxed by a slight of hand trick. The Romans used coin clipping, metal debasement and other ploys; modern governments use paper money printing to accomplish the same dilution of savings.

This pilfered productivity is used for the construction of war machines that serve the psychopathic desires of the politicians in charge. The results are usually the same: Mass murder of millions upon millions of innocents. A gold standard blocks inflationary government deficit spending. Governments can borrow but must repay in gold collected from overt tax collection.  With paper as currency, government can print to repay the loans. This printing is where the thievery by covert inflation begins.

Gold Protects Your Biological Energy.  You can put away a gold bar and that gold is yours. It represents your stored biological energy, your work.   Hold paper money for a long period and it can taken by dilution. The government will steal your savings, that is, your stored biological energy, by just printing more paper.  This increased quantity of paper money will travel through the marketplace, drive up prices and make your stored labor less valuable.  Governments steal your biological energy, your stored labor, by paper money inflation.

Gold Enhances Mental Health.   Gold as money creates stability in that prices tend to stabilize and remain tied to gold for long periods. A hundred years ago, one could buy a house for 100 ounces of gold, and today, the same is true. Gold is possibly the most stable commodity in all of human history. This stability has a great mental health benefit in that one’s biological energy and outlook for the future is tied to an objective, unchanging entity in physical reality. Regardless of your mood or current condition, gold is there to stabilize your outlook on life.  Gold is bedrock, and you can count on it staying true when all else fails. In a free society, gold is an unwavering measure of one’s success. This stability creates a calmness and connection to the world.

Gold Develops Peace and Nonviolence. To the extent gold is used as money, peace, economic stability, individual independence and mental health will dominate.

It is no wonder dictators and sociopathic politicians hate gold and strain to propagandize falsehoods and hatred for the most stabilizing of all materials. For them to seize power, they need to destabilize society. To destabilize society, they need to annihilate gold.

© Hugh A. Thomas  2013  All Rights Reserved

The main problem with the stalling of the freedom movement is the fact that the rights concept as proposed by the Founding Fathers has been floundering for decades and is now dead.

This concept, the idea of “individual rights,” “natural rights,” or “unalienable rights” will never be revived. The reason for this is that the Leftists have found a way to defeat the idea in that they claim rights for everything. For example, animals now have rights, trees have rights, the entire ecosystem has rights. There are gay rights, women’s rights, and in a National Geographic Magazine a few years ago I found the “rights of indigenous insects.”

The Libertarian / Objectivist / and natural rights construct is dead and is NEVER COMING back, simply because none of these rights ever existed in the first place.  Rights are smoke and mirrors and we Libertarians must wake-up to this fact and argue freedom from a different perspective.

The unalienable rights construct of the Founding Fathers, the construct that came from Locke, was a response to the idea of “divine rights” that were claimed by Kings in order to enslave the population.  Rather than making the argument that Kings have no rights at all, the philosophers involved just made the claim, “we all have rights.”

Now, the Left has done the same.  They stopped making the argument that rights do not exist, and now have done to freedom exactly what the Founding Fathers did to the Kings.  The Left is now claiming, everything has rights.

In the meantime, we Libertarians are floundering about with little to say.  A few are still talking, “rights,” but they know damned well they have no power to change anyone’s mind.  Ayn Rand’s rights ideas have had 60 years to work, but the government is several times bigger than when she wrote Atlas Shrugged.

The Left has done a great job. They just gave everything that moves rights, and the unalienable rights of the Founding Fathers has now been diluted into oblivion. Now, nothing is left of the idea that was nothing but vapor in the first place.

To understand why the entire rights construct is delusional, read chapter two.

Chapter Two

© Hugh A. Thomas  2013  All Rights Reserved

You Against Yourself – Your Greatest Delusions

When faced with a highly complex existence, and when answers to the complexity of the universe are unavailable, humans often turn to emotional intuition, and delusional thinking is the likely outcome. These delusions oftentimes embed themselves in the population and become self-sustaining.

For example, until a few hundred years ago, it was believed that bloodletting was the best treatment for many diseases. Bloodletting was even practiced to treat loss of blood! What seems insane to us now was common practice for 2000 years. It is easy to see that delusions can be dangerous. Delusions can be stubborn and can persist in your mind for years or a lifetime and are most likely in the minds of everyone you know.

You Need Clear Thinking

Before you can understand the nature of freedom you must correct any delusional thinking you might have concerning the nature of man. Progress is rejecting false ideas and building on that which is new and valid. You cannot understand your life and the idea of freedom if your knowledge base is built on delusions and contradictions. You need a knowledge base that is sound and consistent. You need a mental architecture that recognizes false assumptions and is willing to correct these false assumptions regardless of the emotional pain involved. You need the facts. You need the truth. Whatever this truth is, you need to be willing to let this truth be your guide.

Your Thought Experiment

Thought experiments have been used for centuries to tease out the truth in complex problems. For example, Albert Einstein used a thought experiment to discover his theory of relativity. Newton used thought experiments to arrive at his theory of gravity. Galileo and many others have shaped history by employing thought experiments in order to arrive at greater underlying truths.

Let us begin your first thought experiment by assuming there is a healthy newborn baby on a sandy beach. Assume this baby was just born to the last woman on Earth who happened to be the last human on Earth, and now this woman, the baby’s mother, has been vaporized along with the rest of the human race. The baby is therefore the last human in existence. Further suppose a few space aliens from across the galaxy land on this beach. Assume these aliens are the greatest scientific minds in the universe with a billion years of science behind them and they examine the baby. They scan every atom in the baby, they analyze every chemical and test every electrical current.

Now, a few questions.

1. Would the alien scientists find “The Rights of Man,” “Unalienable Rights?” or “Individual Rights” in the baby?

2. Would they find, “Original Sin?”

3. Would they find that the baby has a “Duty” or a “Social Contract?”

4. Would they find that the baby is unnatural to the planet Earth?

5. Would the scientists find something mysterious that is beyond the physical materials that make-up the baby?

The answer to the above questions is “no.”  If you believe otherwise, then the burden is on you to demonstrate the existence of these attributes in the baby.

Just as in our example of pink zebras on the dark side of the moon, the burden of proof ought to be held by those who make any extraordinary claim.

For example, it is the government’s burden to prove guilt in a criminal trial. It is the scientists burden to prove any theory before it is considered valid. Einstein’s theory of general relativity was considered oddball until validated by the measurable observations made in 1919 by Arthur Eddington. Until that time, many scientists were skeptical.

If you think the baby has rights as a part of its nature, then identify what gene in the baby’s DNA contains these rights. If you believe these attributes are not in the baby’s DNA but reside elsewhere, then identify exactly where they are. You can’t do so because these rights, and the imagined attributes of original sin, duty and unnaturalness do not exist as part of the baby. These things exist only in your mind and they are called delusions.

Look only at the facts that our independent alien scientists would discover. Rights, original sin, unnaturalness and duty are not attributes of the baby and the scientists would not find them. These non-attributes are nothing more than delusions.  The problems arise when these delusions are blindly swallowed by billions of humans and held for thousands of years. These delusions are the backbone of human misery and need to be tossed out of the human mind.

In our thought experiment we isolated the baby, removed other humans and their subjective beliefs, we brought in the best scientists in the universe that were not prone to fantasy, and then we imagined what the scientists concluded about the baby.  We want the scientists to tell us what they find by objective measurement and verifiable evidence.  We want reality.  We do not want unfounded suspicion, witchcraft, voodoo, mysticism, irrational feelings or smoke and mirrors.  We want the truth about the nature of man.  All of this truth is contained in the baby’s biology.

The baby is what he is and nothing more. The baby is made of atoms.  If you can’t get this in your head, and have it dominate your thinking, then you will never understand freedom.  The baby is made of atoms, his mind is receiving information about the external world via his senses, and this sensory data is processed by the electrical currents and chemistry in his brain.

You cannot rationally claim there is more to the baby than what can be observed and/or inferred by what exists within the baby. If you believe there is “something more” that supersedes the baby’s biology, for example, the “Spirit of Allah,” or “God’s wishes for peace,” a Voodoo curse, original sin, natural rights, or race superiority, then you have submitted to delusional thinking and the corresponding loss of freedom it always brings.

Freedom works only in a atmosphere of rational understanding. Freedom is not possible with everyone claiming the nature of man is whatever their feelings require at the moment.

Your Greatest Delusions

Rights

In our above thought experiment it is easy to see that natural rights, unalienable rights or individual rights are just not there. Rights are an emotional wish, a form of escapism that will put you in a state of denial.  They are pure fantasy and dangerously delusional.

Let us use another thought experiment to demonstrate the power of emotion to create delusional thinking. As an aside experiment, answer the question following the thought experiment as quickly as possible, that is, give a “snap” answer.

The experiment:  Now assume the baby is alone on the beach and a man suddenly appears.  He has a large club with spikes protruding from the end and he starts pounding on the baby’s head.  Answer quickly, does the baby have the right to his own life?

This writer’s quick answer is “yes,” even though I know better.  It took many tries at this thought experiment to overcome my emotional wish for the baby to be safe.  This is the power that emotion can bring to any situation involving our sense of empathy. We want the baby to be safe, we want the baby to be free of pain, we want him to have a good life. Because we care so much, our minds create rights for the baby, rights that are not there. Rights are an emotional wish. An emotional wish is not knowledge.

Consider the following emotional “rights” which are based on wishful thinking rather than reality:

1. Man has individual rights because he is a rational animal. He cannot be forced to think and needs reason in order to survive. (Ayn Rand)

2. A redwood tree in an old growth forest has individual rights because it is old.

3. The right of one person to kill another if there is a suspicion of witchcraft.

4. The right of a mother bird to feed a baby bird.

5. The right of one human to love another.

6. The right of a believer in one religion to kill another person that believes in a different religion.

7. The right of one race of people to kill another race of people based on race supremacy.

8. The divine right of a king to enslave you because of his claims of royal blood or a direct connection with God.

It is very easy to see that having a strong emotion can trigger an emotional rights construct that is completely false. Well-meaning people such as the Founding Fathers of the United States, will create rights to life and property, the narcissists will create divine rights, the mystics will create religious rights and race rights, and the communists who want to destroy capitalism as well as a large part of the human population, will create rights for animals, plants, and the “environment.”

Emotionally derived and irrationally created rights are the cause of much of the suffering in the human race.  Hitler’s claim that the Arian race had special rights to dominate others, led to the deaths of fifty million people. The belief that the rights of “the environment” have precedence over humans, the belief that animals and plants have “rights,” – these false claims to rights that don’t exist have resulted and will result in epic historical disasters.

Ayn Rand’s Rights Paradox

Let’s do a another thought experiment and discover how Ayn Rand’s “individual rights” theory holds up to reason.

Start with the assumption that you are a supporter of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. She states:

“Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times.”  And more: “A right cannot be violated except by physical force.”  link

Now suppose we have the baby on the beach, and further suppose another human appears. This human, a man, enters a box next to the baby. You can’t see the man in the box, he is hidden. On the side of the box next to the baby there is an opening with a spear sticking out of a hole. Now suppose you have seen this box previously and know that there is a machine inside that controls the spear. The spear can be set to operate automatically by the machine or can be operated manually by the person inside. Suddenly, the spear thrusts toward the baby and stabs his arm. Question: Were the baby’s rights violated?

Suppose the alien scientists examine the baby and measure and chart all the millions of cells that the spear damaged. Did they find violated rights?

You are then shown a movie. In this movie only the interior of the box is shown, nothing outside the box can be seen. You watch the movie and see the man inside manually thrusting the spear. Based on this, you conclude the baby’s right’s were violated by this man’s actions.

Next, you are shown another movie where the man inside the box does nothing. In this movie the machine operates and thrusts the spear. You are then told that the first movie you saw, where the man was working the spear, was made on a different day and did not involve the baby. You are then informed that, in the second movie, the machine actually speared the baby. Now you conclude the baby’s rights were not violated.

By using Rand’s theory of rights, the condition of the baby’s rights is dependent on the observer. This is to say, the status of the baby’s rights are dependent on your observation of what happened. When you believed the man speared the baby, the baby’s rights were violated. When you believed the machine speared the baby, the baby’s rights were not violated. In Ayn Rand’s philosophy, the baby’s condition changes with your observations and conclusions about human motive.

Notice that, to the aliens, the condition of the baby is independent of your thoughts and can only determined by observation of the baby. In Rand’s philosophy, the condition of the baby’s rights is dependent on your thoughts and observations and cannot be determined by observing the baby.

The reason the condition of the baby’s rights cannot be determined by observation of the baby is because the rights are not part of the baby, but are rather an attribute of you, the observer. This attribute is a mental attribute and it is called a delusion.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy holds that reality is independent of the observer, but when applying her rights theory, the status of the baby’s rights is dependent on your observation. This goes to show that the baby’s condition was the subject of your thoughts, which is the epistemological basis of subjectivism, according to Ayn Rand. For the aliens, reality was the object of their thoughts, and they are the true objectivists.

Rand claims that “rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times,” and yet these rights require other people thinking about them before they can exist. The truth about Rand’s rights is simple: The baby’s rights are not in the baby, but rather in your head.

Ayn Rand also stated that the concept of rights only applies when two or more people are involved. Note that she says a right can only be violated by physical force. Of course, she means physical force by another human. This is so because if a coconut fell from a tree and hit the baby there would be no violation of rights. However, if another human purposely dropped a coconut on the baby, that would be a violation.

In another scenario we can imagine the baby on the beach under a coconut tree.  Suppose the man strikes the tree with hammer while nailing up a sign that says, “Welcome Aliens.” Unknown to him, the vibration from the hammer blow dislodges a coconut from the tree, and this coconut falls and hits the baby in the head and kills the baby. Would this be a rights violation?  Probably not, according to Rand.  However, if the man knew that hitting the tree with a hammer would cause a coconut to fall and kill the baby, then this would constitute a violation of the baby’s rights.

It is instructive to know that, in a court of law, motive is a determining factor in assessing guilt.  However, notice with Ayn Rand’s view of rights, the man’s motive tells us about the condition of an essential aspect of the baby’s human nature, that is, the baby’s individual rights. How the man thinks determines the condition of the baby’s rights.

In American law, the man’s motive tells us about the man, with Rand, the man’s motive tells us about the baby.

Now, let’s go back to the baby on the beach. There is no other human, only the baby. The aliens have completed their studies and are about to leave when, suddenly, a second baby appears on the beach. Did the nature of the first baby change with the arrival of the second baby?

To Ayn Rand, the first baby’s nature would change with the arrival of the second baby in that both would now have rights. This is so because Rand’s rights construct requires a second human to observe rights violations.

This leads to the next point: The first baby’s fundamental nature changes when two or more people are collected together. In conclusion: Ayn Rand’s theory of rights are both subjective and collective in nature.

It is ironic that Ayn Rand’s fundamental reason, her only reason (according to her) for advocating capitalism was to protect individual rights. Philosophically, her biggest enemy was subjectivism. Her greastest political foe was collectivism. Moreover, to her, the greatest evil was the “wish.” With  ”individual rights,” she failed on all three. She wished for rights and, by using a subjectivist approach, she collectivized human nature to get them.

Ayn Rand also said that if any part of a philosophy is invalid, then the whole system is invalid. She was also wrong on that point. Many of her ideas are valid. One of those ideas is her advice to “check your premises.”

The problem with much of Ayn Rand’s philosophy is that she oftentimes makes claims without any observation of physical reality being offered. She also expends a huge amount of energy in emotional outbursts which she masks as high-tier morality.  For example, if the man’s actions in the above thought experiment were the causation of the baby’s wound, Ayn Rand would no doubt rant and rave about the “evil” involved, the “immoral” actions of the brute “Attila” with the “witch doctor’s” mentality who “violated the baby’s individual rights,” etc. Conversely, the rational aliens would conclude the baby had a wound, and would attempt to discover why the man took the harmful action.

All of these rights are completely delusional and have no connection to reality. Notice your “natural right” to live as you please can interfere with a king’s “divine right” to make you his slave.  What happens when your “individual right to life” interferes with the “rights of the collective?” How do you prove they are wrong and you are correct?  You can’t. You can march on City Hall, stomp your feet, become very emotional, accuse everyone of being irrational and immoral, but none of these things will change the facts.

You are your biology. If there are no rights in your biology, then you have no naturally occurring rights.

Intellectual honesty is accepting what is true. What is true is what exists.

Original Sin

It is easy to see that our alien scientists would find no original sin in their investigations.  If there is no original sin in the baby, then why do you hold to that idea so tightly?  Why is there an underpinning of guilt that the great majority of humans feel?

Let’s add to the thought experiment.  Assume that the alien scientists arrive on the beach and find not only the baby, but also find a baby bird and a baby rabbit.  Further assume that they perform an exhaustive investigation of these three animals.  They look at every atom in each of the animals, they map the genomes.  They examine the animals with the best scientific equipment in the universe.

Question:  What would they find different in the human baby’s structure that gives the human baby original sin, but not the bird?  Would they find original sin in the rabbit?

Note that original sin means sin from the origin, or the source.  From birth.  Now, what would be the motive for such a doctrine?  If you wanted power over people, would it not be smart of tell them they are guilty because they were born and that they need you to save their souls?

If you swallow the doctrine of original sin, your psychology of life will be forever undermined.  You will have no solid rock on which you can stand.  If life is like crossing a fast moving stream, original sin will be the slimy bottom that forever diminishes your moral traction. You will feel guilt, and you will have a bias towards the hatred of your fellow man. Original sin doctrine is an arbitrary construct designed to rob you of happiness and make you dependent on religion.  After all, you need the church because you are evil from birth and need to be saved from your own evil nature.  You are commanded to give the church your money and live your life in undeserved shame because of a delusional claim.

If religions were truthful, they would clearly spell out the facts on original sin. They would make it very clear, so clear that any eight-year-old child could understand it. However, even though original sin is the foundation of Christian doctrine, the idea is cloaked in obscurity and confusion. Ask any preacher or priest what original sin actually is, and they will be confused themselves. Demand they write it down. Demand they make it very clear why you must live your life with self-hatred and suspect everyone in your family and everyone in the human race.  If you have a newborn baby, ask your minister why you ought to view this baby as evil.

Conviction in a court of law for petty theft or a traffic violation requires more evidence.  There is no evidence for original sin, and yet billions believe humans are basically evil. They morally condemn all humans without objective, measureable evidence.  It is no wonder war has dominated human history. Since they view human beings as basically evil, why not just kill a few million?

Original sin is not only a weight around your neck, but it has huge political implications and makes possible much of the violence that has dominated human history, as we will see later.

Duty

Returning to the alien scientists in our thought experiment, imagine they arrive on Earth to find two newborn babies.  The babies are minutes old and the last human beings on earth.  The scientists examine them extensively.  Would they find that one baby has a duty to the other?

Further assume a newborn Reese’s monkey appears along with the two babies.  Would the scientists find “duty” in the monkey?  If not, what is different about the monkey that he has no duty but the babies do?  Consider that Reese’s monkeys share 99% of DNA with humans.  What is different about the 1%?

If you still believe in rights, original sin and duty, I suggest you examine that 1% of human DNA and find those attributes in that DNA and report your findings to the world.

Humans are Unnatural

Suppose in their examination of the Earth our alien scientists also tested not only the baby, the rabbit and Reese’s monkey, but also tested thousands of other animals and plants.  Suppose they examined elephants, bears, tuna fish, birds and insects.  Suppose that in all, they examined 50,000 different species.

Questions:  What would they find in the baby’s DNA, the baby’s genome or anywhere in the baby’s body that would make them believe all the 50,000 species they examined were natural, but the baby was “unnatural?”

The answer is of course, nothing!  There is absolutely no evidence that humans and therefore human action is unnatural.  Zero. No evidence what-so-ever.

Notice the effect achieved when the delusion of original sin is combined with the delusion that holds the products of human action are not natural. In other words, you are evil at birth and what you create is not natural.  Another way to say it would be: You are not good and you are not normal, and you never will be.

If evil exists, then surely, this is it. These delusional doctrines create a sense of disconnection to one’s own life, they are alienating and are likely a prime source of great mental distress. No doubt they have led to the failure of millions to achieve their potential in life. Any child that is fed these delusions is being abused.

The major and defining attribute the alien scientists would discover within the human baby is a very large brain with a large capacity for critical thinking. They would also find this capacity and attribute in porpoises or dolphins.  In fact, they might conclude that the human baby has the greatest mind of all animals on the land, and the porpoise the greatest mind of all the animals in the sea.  Would they then conclude that the porpoise is “unnatural?”

If the alien scientists were to examine a beaver colony and discover that beavers cut down trees in order to build dams and lodges, would they conclude the beaver dam and lodge were “unnatural?”  If not, then why do you think when a human cuts down trees in order to build a house that this structure is artificial?  Why do you think the Hoover Dam is artificial and a beaver dam natural? The answer is:  Because you are delusional!

Vague Thoughts are Valid Evidence

You have the ability to introspect and think about how you are thinking.  This introspection can take you into endless journeys of the mind. We can say that the mind is the thinking and conscious part of the brain.

The mind also includes our memories.  You do not hold all of your memories in your consciousness, but only hold a few at the time, and many memories are buried and difficult to access.

It has been said that the human brain is the most complex machine known.   A famous neurosurgeon once said that a mosquito’s brain has a thousand times the computing power of a desktop computer. Your brain is a million times larger than a mosquito’s. Now, imagine the power of your brain.

The mind is a feature of the brain, but the brain does much more than give us our mind.  The brain is also involved with very complex actions to which you have no access.  For example, your brain keeps you breathing while you sleep, but you can will yourself to stop breathing for a minute while you are awake.  However, you have no access to that part of the brain that controls your hearing, you cannot will your brain to cancel your hearing.

Your brain is working without your permission twenty-four hours a day performing complex actions that keep you alive.  Imagine the complexity of just taking a walk through the woods.  Your brain must make a huge amount of calculations to just walk over uneven ground.  Each of your eyes has over 100 million light-sensitive nerve cells in the retina, and these cells will be sending signals to your brain and your brain must quickly process and interpret these millions of signals to determine what is happening on the outside.  Combine this with your inner ear’s balancing function, where the brain must control balance and integrate this data with your vision and leg and arm muscles, and the complexity is enormous. This example is only a minuscule view of the brain’s complexity.

The point is:  You are only conscious of a very small portion of what your brain is doing.

Sometimes, the brain’s enormous complexity will show itself to us. You have dreams, many of which make little sense, and you have feelings and emotions, and oftentimes you may not know their origins. You might have a sense of déjà vu at times. Because of this complexity, it is easy to get a feeling that there is something deeper. After all, you might be aware of one percent or less of your brain’s activity, and this vague feeling is normal.  However, vague feelings and a sense that something else is there are not proof of anything.  For example, these vague feelings are what give you your nebulous sense that you have a soul.  Would our alien scientists find a soul in the baby?  If you think they would, would they also find a soul in a monkey? In a dog? In a fish? In a bacterium?

Your sense that there is something else there is correct.  However, your belief that this leakage of stray data into your sub-consciousness has a “Grand Meaning” is delusional. Vague feelings do not equal soul, connection with the collective, mystic cosmos connections, voodoo, or Mother Nature’s Vibes. It is this very leakage that lays the path for scam artists to trick you into their religions, cults and other phony endeavors.

Some Results of Human Delusion

When environmentalists want to control everything you do, how you travel, what you eat and what you say (they have proposed the death penality for those who question global warming theory) they cite animal rights, the rights of the environment and the rights of “Mother Earth.”

When the Catholic Church sought to enslave and murder thousands in the Spanish Inquisition, underpinning their hatred and violence was the concept of original sin.

For seventy-five years, the Left kept busy by mass murdering 200,000,000 people while holding to the delusion that all people had a duty to the state and the communist collective.

The mental architecture you must develop in order to think clearly is the same architecture used by scientists during the golden age of science. You need to understand that reality is determined by what is there, and only by, what is there.

If a rational doctor is confronted with an unknown disease, he looks for pathogens or abnormal cells, and he studies blood or heartbeat to determine what is wrong. He looks at physical reality to collect his evidence.  Doctors in primitive societies entrenched and soaked with delusion might assume evil spirits, spells, etc., and correspondingly produce a treatment with disastrous results.

In New Guinea, there is a process of putting someone on trial where a opossum is placed in a cage and offered a sweet potato.  If the opossum takes a bite of the sweet potato, then the person on trial is found guilty.  This is the danger of delusional thinking.

In a modern court of law ruled by reason, the attempt to introduce speculation about an opossum eating a sweet potato during a trial would not be permitted and would be ruled “inadmissible.”  The New Guinea tribesmen are assuming the opossum’s appetite is linked to the guilt or innocence of a human. How could they assume such a crazy idea?  Well, if you were to live in a culture that believes facts are created by feelings, then this dangerous and delusional thinking would be normal.

As in a court of law, You must never assume facts that are not in evidence. There is no evidence for natural rights. There is no evidence for duty. There is no evidence for you being unnatural to this Earth. There is no evidence for original sin.

Do you think it is about time that you dump these false ideas and live a real life?  Do you think your freedom might have a better chance if you and everyone else believed that:

*No one has a right to your life, and you have no right to theirs.

*You have no duty to them, and they have no duty to you.

*You are innocent at birth and remain so until rationally proven otherwise.

*That you and your actions are just as natural as all other animals, and that you belong on Earth with the same stature as a dolphin or porpoise, a beaver or bird?

A word about the above thought experiment. When we imagined the alien scientists with their high level of objectivity, and when we imagined that other humans and their delusions were not present, we were actually cleaning the rubbish out of our own minds so that we could see and think more clearly.  We set our delusions and emotions aside and gave our rational minds free reign. Human delusion is so powerful that we needed to get outside ourselves and pretend we were space aliens in order to think clearly!

If you cannot separate your delusions from the facts of reality, then you will never be free psychologically, and you will never be a potent advocate of freedom for yourself and others.

© Hugh A. Thomas  2013  All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”  A Hindu saying

The main driving forces that destroy freedom and underpin many dictatorships are two desires created by statist propaganda and fed to the masses: the desire to be free from “exploitative” work, and the desire to be free from envy.

Basically, the pattern is this: You don’t like to work for greedy businesses and you envy the guy who has more than you do, so you support politicians who promise to strip wealth from the rich then give some of the stolen proceeds to you. The promised result: You can work less and envy less.

There is another driving force, the desire to be free of guilt. This emotion is not generally held by a large number of people but rather by those who secretly believe and oftentimes know damned well they do not fully deserve their good fortune. Among these are the actors and entertainers who make it with little more than good looks and questionable talent and those who inherit great fortunes, for example, the Kennedys and Rockefellers.

Other sources of guilt are created by government jobs. A government worker who moves paper around in an air conditioned building while making triple the wages of a sweating laborer in the private economy will naturally feel guilty when he realizes his easy life is made possible by a government that obtains his salary by robbing the laborer through taxation. Rather than advocate for less government so that this disparity is eased, the government worker will vote for more government programs and higher taxation in order to “fix” the problem.

A construction contractor that started with little capital while using a shovel in the summer heat and a pickax in the winter cold, who has built his wealth from hard labor and hard learning, who has suffered years of fierce competition, is not likely to experience the guilt of a Hollywood actress who was born with a nice face and alluring body and has made her millions by sleeping around to get the highest-paying movie roles.

If you possess inherited wealth, wealth earned by a shallow entertainment gimmick or wealth that was just too easy for your conscience to bear, your guilt might move you to muddy the conceptual waters by advocating a government solution that is visible to everyone.  After all, you could give to charity or donate extra to the government and achieve the same ends, but then everyone wouldn’t know about your altruistic goodness. Publicly asking to be taxed, Warren Buffett’s advocacy for example, is a far more effective display of contrived sainthood.

Many politicians are savvy to the human traits of envy in the masses and the guilt of the undeserving.  They encourage the development of these mindsets and seize power when the delusional thinking has reached its high point.

If you desire freedom from work, freedom from envy, and freedom from life’s struggles, then what you really want is: freedom from human nature.  Of course, this is not possible. Problems are inherent in all life. In fact, one definition of life could be:   “Entities that have problems.”  A rock does not have problems.  Only living things face problems.

You cannot expect the government to alleviate all of your problems because government cannot change your nature.

The Current Situation

America is on its last legs. The philosophy of Locke, Jefferson, Paine, Madison and the other Founding Fathers is dead. The philosophy longer works. In fact, the philosophy was never valid in the first place.

Note the floundering of modern Libertarians such as Ron Paul. He seems confused and at a loss to articulate a coherent vision of freedom. In congressional hearings, his vague questions and mental confusion are clear indicators that he is swimming in a sea of ambiguous ideas. No doubt Ron Paul is likely the only honest and well meaning politician in America. He just needs new ideas.

Listen to the conservative talk shows on radio and watch the conservatives on television.  They are intellectually empty. They rant and they plead with the listeners and viewers, but they never express ideas that have the power to sway people away from the allure of dictatorship and all the misery and murder it brings.

Others, such as Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises, are either hyper-emotional and irrational (Rand) or so hyper-intellectual (von Mises) that the meaning is contradictory or unavailable to a normal person.

This book will outline a new idea of freedom that is not dependent on emotion or hyper-intellectual ideas. It will clear the Founding Fathers’ murky vision for America and give you a definitive choice between freedom and slavery.

You

“A theory is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different the kind of things it relates and the more extended its range of applicability.”  Albert Einstein

This book is about you, the reader. You are the only audience that matters because only the individual brain has understanding. Human brains do not work together, they are separated by physical space. Ask any neurologist or read a textbook on brain science:  There is no evidence of minds or brains converging to create a collective consciousness.  Your brain chemicals and your brain’s physical processes are separate from other people’s brain processes. To claim otherwise is only a vacant claim with no supporting evidence. If one were to make the extraordinary claim that there are herds of pink zebras on the dark side of the moon, you would ask for evidence. Why not do the same for the extraordinary claim that there is a “collective mind?”

All human thought and understanding takes place in the individual human brain. If one were to make an address by radio to a million people, a million brains would receive the information and a million individual brains would process the information independently.  Your brain is alone and not networked with other brains. Your brain chemistry and electrical impulses are independent of other people’s brain chemistry and electrical impulses.  These processes are physical and are isolated and contained by the bone that is your skull. There is no evidence that your brain chemistry and electrical currents can penetrate this bone barrier, magically travel around in space, penetrate other people’s skulls and integrate with their brain chemistry and neurons and become meaningful knowledge. This is why this book is directed at you, and you alone. You are the only one that counts.

Some animals such as bees and ants do seem to have a collective structure.  This phenomenon has been documented by science.  These insects communicate by body movements, pheromones and other physical and chemical signals to achieve one goal.  However, you are a human and not an insect.  To claim that human society ought to function like a bee hive is just as irrational as supposing all humans must take to the air and pollinate flowers.

For the nitpickers among us, one could say that there are chemical signals passed from one human to another. For example, some human pheromones are thought to play a role in sexual signaling.  Notice however, that these signals are outside the brain, they are not knowledge, and are fundamentally no different than a signal sent by a urinating dog to mark territory.

Before you can understand anything about society or the proper role of government, you must first understand a few things about yourself.  You will never be successful in musing about these things if you have incorrect ideas regarding your nature and the nature of human beings in general.

Only individuals exist in the real world, and you are one of them. This idea we have, the concept, “society” is mental vapor, an arbitrary mental construct. Society is a word that exists inside your head, individual human beings exist outside your head. You and other individuals are real, society is a mental abstraction that is only useful in discussion. This is easy, think about it.

Since there is no such thing as a collective human brain, since you are not a termite or bee, then we must look at you, the individual human, and ask questions that concern your basic nature and then offer understandable answers. This is the honest way to do it, is it not?

You are a living organism, a biological organism. This makes you unique in that, on planet Earth, living organisms comprise a minute percentage of the total mass of the planet, and, as far as it is known, a minuscule amount of the universe as a whole. You are also unique in that your human brain has the greatest conceptual computing power of all known organisms.  There are well over fifteen million species of life on Earth and you stand above all the rest with your mental powers. It has been estimated that the human brain can make ten million billion computations per second. This is a gigantic achievement.  You ought to be very proud to be a human!

You are fragile. Just falling a few feet can mean death. Going without water for a few days can mean death, and being in the wrong place can be fatal. Your life is precarious and fleeting; your life duration is only a flicker in time in context to the age of the Earth and universe.

Your life has requirements. You have needs. The idea of needs is a feature of all life.   From bacteria to elephants, from algae to redwood trees, all species have specific needs. A rock has no needs, only living things have needs.  Now you might think, ‘my automobile has needs, the need to have air in its tires or oil in the engine.’  True, however, notice your automobile has needs only in context to you or other people.  If every human were to die, your automobile would no longer have needs. The needs of your automobile are your needs.

You are a living organism that faces conscious choices every day. A bacterium does not face these conscious choices. Only higher animals have conscious choices they must make. Most animals have strong instincts that guide them along in their decisions.  Humans have little if any instincts, and as far as it is known, humans are born basically “tabula rasa,” that is, with a blank slate.  Based on this model, you have no automated knowledge, and you need and ought to find the best knowledge available in order to have a successful life. More knowledge results in fewer mistakes.

All of your attributes are biological attributes. There is nothing about your life that is not biological.  All of your property has a biological function. Your clothes have a biological function in that they protect your body, your car and bicycle have biological functions that replace the efforts of walking. Your house has a biological function in that is a shelter for your life.

If some thought is applied to this idea, the idea that you are a living biological organism and everything significant in your life has a biological function, it becomes evident that biology is what you ought to be concerned about.

To live a life of understanding, you need to be a biologist of the most basic kind. You need to ask and find answers to many questions about how the rest of nature effects your biology. You need to understand the biological functions of production, the storage of your production, its trade, and politics. You need to understand that money, for example, is actually an attribute of your biology.

You face a hostile nature every day. You face hostile people and hostile governments. You also face your own ignorance of these things, an ignorance that is not a moral fault of your own, but rather an ignorance that is the lack of knowledge. Much of the knowledge you need has never been defined or has been denied to you by public schools and by parents that suffer the same problems as you do. Bad philosophy and ignorance is carried forth from generation to generation. This fact requires no proof other than the observation that war, suffering and murder has dominated all of human history.

Because you are a living organism born with little or no instincts that tell you how to live, you need to take the effort to learn some of these basic facts.  This learning is a neurological function. Remember, your neurological functions are isolated from others so it is your responsibility to do the conceptual work yourself. Building your knowledge takes effort.  It is work, and not always enjoyable.  You will need to turn off your television, put away your game controller, get off the internet and think on your own. No one else can do this for you.

Your brain is a collection of atoms. These atoms are arranged in ways that can be described by physical law and are the building blocks of the molecules that make up your brain’s cells. These cells create chemicals and generate electrical currents that control your thinking and bodily functions. When you think about how you think, when you engage in introspection, realize that these trillions of atoms have merged together in such a complex way that they can actually think about themselves. This fact alone is possibly the most amazing feature of human existence.

You are a sack of chemical compounds that is self-propelled and self-conscious. You are made of atoms and these atoms have formed into a biological organism that is self-aware.  This is who you are; it is everything you are, there is nothing else, and you have no measurable or testable evidence to the contrary.

You have a psychology. This psychology is an attribute of higher animals. Monkeys, dogs, cats and many other animals have a psychology. If you own a cat or a dog you know this is true. They are not machines, they have feelings. These feelings are what make life worth living. They give us the joy and desire to keep going. You seek pleasure, you want to be free, and freedom is the greatest pleasure.

All biological organisms have challenges. Your challenge is to gain the knowledge about your biology and how it relates to other people, how it relates to the economy, government and freedom. When you gain this knowledge, you will be free psychologically and have the information you need to advocate physical freedom for yourself and the rest of mankind.

© Hugh A. Thomas  2013  All Rights Reserved

If you want to cripple the economy and make millions of people dependent on government handouts, if you want more political power so you can grow a socialist government and bring a great country and capitalism to its knees, then you need to destroy jobs by government action.  Afterwards, you can blame the free market and gain even more votes from those who meandered through the government run public school system. Five easy steps:

1. Raise the minimum wage.  Doing so will prompt many employers to find alternatives to their employees who have the lowest value to the company.  For example, if Bob makes $8 per hour sweeping the floors at night and the minimum wage is raised to $9, his boss might buy a new power sweeper that can sweep the floors in two hours rather than eight.  Bob will be replaced by a smarter worker who can operate the sweeper more safely.  The new worker might make $14 per hour but will not need to work nights.  This will save the company $36 per day minus the equipment depreciation.  In time, the new arrangement will be more profitable for the company.  Now, Bob is unemployed.  He can’t easily find anyone that will hire him for the new minimum wage.  He collects unemployment.

2. Weaken the incentive to work.  Bob knows he could get a job at the local sewage plant cleaning the holding tanks.  This job pays the new minimum wage and then some.  The problem is that the job is dirty, hot and smelly.  Cleaning sewage tanks is not the way for Bob.  He avoids that job, after all, the employment benefits have been increased and extended recently. Why scrape turds when the government will pay you to watch game shows on TV?

3. Increase regulation and taxes.  Bob’s former boss, Jim, likes Bob and was sorry that he had to let him go.  However, Jim sees a chance to rehire Bob at the new $9 minimum wage.  He needs someone to work the night shift assembling orders.  Bob could do this job with no problem, and the work does have a value to the company that is equal or better than the new minimum wage.  Jim looks into it and finds there is a new law that was just passed, The Night Shift Safety Act.  In this law every employer must provide a supervisor on site for any employee who is not wearing a GPS Vital Signs Monitor. The fine for non-compliance is $10,000 and up to 2 years in jail. The monitor costs $5500 and must be linked to a service that runs $300 per month.  The monitor must be certified by the government and inspected by the government every six months. Jim drops the idea.

4. Raise the minimum working age.  Raise the working age and combine that with numbers one, two and three and you will have created unemployment for millions of young people.  These kids need the work badly, not only because of the money, but because of the experience.  It is embarrassing to watch a twenty year-old man who can’t stock a shelf or use a shovel but that is exactly what is happening in America. Less teenagers are working, they have less practical skills and they are degrading the American workforce and therefore American competitive energy. Most of these teenagers are experts at video games but know nothing about how to chop firewood or plant seed corn.  Many of them are pathetic idiots. This culture of incompetence creates a generalized laziness in the workforce. This imbedded ethos further increases unemployment, in that businesses depending on a competent workforce will be less competitive in world markets.

5. Increase the age for compulsory education.   Keep them in school and out of the workplace. The longer they stay in school, the more government propaganda they can be taught.  This propaganda includes a large amount of false information concerning how government regulations and the minimum wage will create a better world.

Jim has had to comply with many new regulations and new taxes over the years.  The regulations are over 10,000 pages.  Many of them are contradictory and almost unknowable. He knows he is probably breaking hundreds of laws. Many of these laws carry thousands of dollars in fines or prison time. He has also experienced a decline in the quality of his new workers. He asks himself a question that thousands of others like him have asked: Why not have his product manufactured in China and just import it?  He finds a manufacturer in China, signs a contract with them, and closes his plant for good.

Twenty-five more people are then added to the unemployed rolls. Some of these spend a year or more gaming the system for unemployment benefits.  When the benefits expire, and when they have no further chance of employment, some will resort to crime.  They sell drugs or turn to home invasions.  The crime rate goes up, other businesses in the area are impacted, and the unemployment snowball grows. This is how it’s done.

© Hugh A. Thomas  2013  All Rights Reserved

Open the National Rifle association’s website and you will see a fancy graphic of the American bald eagle superimposed over the flag.  Other NRA symbolic attempts over the years have been images reminiscent of an old and wise grandfather holding his grandson on his lap.  Behind them on the wall is an oil painting of the American flag waving over the fireplace and a stuffed duck on the mantle.  The grandfather is showing his grandson an expensive side-by-side 12 gauge with a burled walnut stock and fine engravings on the metal work.  All of this is of course rendered in a warm hue and soft focus.

This escape by the NRA into corn-ball symbolism is an obvious signature of intellectual bankruptcy. They have nothing.

The NRA has failed in doing anything of essential importance in regards to educating the public on the real reason the Founding Fathers were concerned about an unarmed citizenry:  the tendency of governments to drift towards dictatorship.

The bottom line is that the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment so that the public could shoot back at the government if it resorts to violence against its own citizens.  There is no other significant reason.  The NRA has wasted valuable time and spent hundreds of millions of dollars corrupting the message that the Founders left for us.  What the NRA has created is a soft-focus ideological tapestry void of any meaning.

The NRA is very similar to the Republican party in that neither can formulate a meaningful, thoughtful and essential argument against intrusive government.

Moreover, the NRA opposed the lawsuit Parker v. District of Columbia.  The NRA wanted to derail the suit or dilute its meaning. This suit was eventually settled in favor of gun owners. Cato

In that case, two judges of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals divisively spelled-out the essentials of the Founders’ intent:

“To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government…”

See the decision in total:  decision

Your dictionary will show that the word “depredation,” means “plundering attack.”  The same dictionary will show that tyrannical means:  dictatorial, totalitarian, domineering, etc.

The court is saying the public has the right to bear arms so that when the government attacks, one can shoot back.  It is that clear.

You need to understand this simple fact:  The Founders wrote the Second Amendment so that one could shoot back when the government becomes tyrannical.

Question: Why hasn’t the NRA spent some of its millions in scholarly legal work to tease out the same meaning the DC court concluded and present these founding concepts to the public?

Note that 30 years ago most households concerned about self-defense kept a 12 gauge or a revolver at home.  In the last few decades, police forces around the country have been militarized and carry semi-auto rifles and pistols.  In response, the public has, and quite rightly, armed themselves in a similar fashion.  It is an arms race between the government and the people.  If the police would go back to revolvers, many citizens would feel perfectly safe with revolvers.

Another question:  Why has the NRA not used images of disarmed Jews being shot in the back of the head while kneeling on the edge of a death trench full of bodies? Where are the images of the Cambodian killing fields and the thousands of skulls of the disarmed and murdered victims?  Why do they not have video testimony of some of those who survived and witnessed these murders by government?

Why have they not gotten down to the basics of showing the public needs guns to protect their lives against government violence?

After decades of media saturation with an impotent message by the NRA, the public has been intellectually disarmed.

Many in the government want to take away your guns; the NRA already took away your brain.  I suggest you work on reacquiring it.

©  Hugh A. Thomas   All Rights Reserved

You hold or entertain at least some of the following ideas and traits.  It all started when you were young.

You heard your parents repeating the same things again and again.  “The big corporations are ripping us off.  If it weren’t for the union, we would be slaves.  The young, the old, the Mexicans, the homosexuals and the blacks are being discriminated against.  The government ought to give us healthcare.  Europe has the best system.  The greedy businessmen caused all the problems. We have chemicals in our food, the earth is being destroyed, they are cutting down all the trees…”

Throughout the culture, on the television, in magazines, in the newspapers, at school, everywhere you went America was despised.  “America is a rotten system,”  - you heard it a thousand times.  You absorbed all the propaganda.  You believed them when they said, “chemicals are bad,” but you never realized that your brain chemicals allow you to think in the first place.

You heard a lot about how bad parents are, how they wrecked your life in one way or the other.  They gave you mental problems, mental “hang-ups,” because they are of the old system, like America used to be.  ”It all has to be changed,” was the theme running through the culture.

You learned to envy those who have more than you.  Your parents never warned you about this emotion, they just let you run with it.  After all, they envied others as well.  You envied the neighbor next door because he had richer parents.  You envied a classmate in high school because he had better clothes.  You learned to envy at a young age and never gave it a second thought.  In fact, you were pushed to develop an envious personality by those who complained about the rich businessmen who “cared nothing about poor people.”

You slowly developed a resentment against your own country.  You came to believe America was the biggest problem in the world, that America spewed chemicals into the atmosphere and was killing Mother Nature.  You are now a victim of this America and live in a cesspool of self-imposed victimhood.  Your brain chemicals are twisted into a distorted mass of animosity towards the system, the world.

You developed a laziness.  If you visited your uncle’s farm or you grandfather’s store, and the thought of using a shovel, bucking hay, digging a post hole or stocking shelves was repulsive to you.   Mowing your own parent’s lawn was revolting.  You hate physical work in general.  You are lazy.  You live with self pity.

You spent a great deal of your life watching television, surfing the web or playing video games.  In your mind, the importance of high school was equal to going to the mall where you could hang out with your friends.  Your mind became sloth-like.  You listen to mind numbing music hours upon hours everyday.

Your ideas became a soup of confusion.  You hold contradictory views of the world.  You want to be free from self-responsibility, intrusion and violence but you want others to be robbed by the government so that you can get the “free stuff.”

You drifted through high school and go to collage.  Your liberal professors subtly push you in the direction of magical thinking and the avoidance of critical thought.  You most likely major in a fluff subject.  Photography, history, English, social studies, art history, anthropology, social work, counseling.  You get a degree that has nothing to do with the real world of farming, manufacturing, engineering, accounting or science.  What you do get is a college education that deals with getting a job as a teacher in public school so that the propaganda can be perpetuated.  You look for a teaching job but can’t find one.  You go to work in a coffee shop. You resent the coffee shop manager because he only has a high school diploma and worked his way to the top. He is an asshole who constantly worries about making the company money.

You now have huge student loan payments but the real world that produces the things you consume and the products that keep you alive, the free market place, sees zero value in your education.  You are again a victim of the rotten American system.  You have a majestic sense of self-worth because you have a great education, you know the real facts about America.  You believe that your education is top quality.  It ought to be top quality, you have spent 19 of your 28 years being taught by the government.

You now have your magical thinking cap on at all times.  You have a super grandiose sense of self-worth but you are a victim that most people just don’t understand – they can’t see your real value.  You look down on the guy who digs post holes, the guy who dropped out of high school or college.  After all, you have a Master’s degree in Art History from Intergalactic University and you really have the knowledge and sophistication that counts.  In the landscape of an America that perpetuates the ills of the world, your education matters.

You spend a good deal of time thinking about how you appear to others. You worry about your image.  You probably get tattoos or wear the clothes that make you look alternative.  Alternative to what?  Well, the alternative to the real world of production, the world of the free market and self-responsibility. You get a nose ring and think from time to how stupid your uncle the framer is.  You play the part of the victimized, highly educated art historian while you steam the milk in the coffee shop.

Your uncle knows you better than you know yourself.  He sees your sullen attitude and the earphones that never come out of your ears.  He sees your slackness and mental laziness.  He knows you are incompetent to function in the real world.  He sees through your false sense of self.  He knows art history is bullshit.  He knows you have never learned to grow a tomato or dig a potato.  He notices you never asked him how his tractor works.  He knows men like himself and tractors like his feed the world and keep you alive on a daily basis but he knows you don’t give a shit about all of that.   He has a vague feeling that someday you will come to him for food or help.  He stares at your nose ring.

You have evolved.  Just a few years ago you were a lazy kid with liberal ideas.  Now, you are a radical leftist.  You have been a victim so long that it is becoming intolerable.   Your envy is racking your brain.   Everything is unjust.  You are tormented by the system around you.  You want a revolution.  You secretly want blood in the streets.  You want the greedy businessmen to pay with their lives.  You want your slice of the pie, the pie you never produced and the pie you know nothing about.

The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, The New Science and Philosophy of Freedom   © Hugh A. Thomas  All Rights Reserved

Let us put the recent school shootings in context and in a larger historical perspective.  From 1917 till 1990, Communist dictatorships mass murdered over 120,000,000 people. These murders were not deaths by war, but rather political murders driven by left wing communist ideology.

Mao killed 50-70 million.  His techniques often involved sending the army into villages and slaughtering thousands of people on a daily basis.  Babies, women, children – everyone was suspect.  Children were forced to kill their own parents.  There was forced cannibalism in the villages, where villagers were compelled by the threat of death to eat their neighbors and family members.

There were forced famines.  The Chinese army looted thousands of villages, took the food supplies and left the people to starve. The disarmed farmers fought the Chinese army with rakes and shovels. Millions of peaceful farmers were murdered.

Upwards of 30,000 public executions were held in Beijing alone.  People were shot in the streets and their brains sprayed into the crowds.

Over 50,000,000 were murdered by similar means in communist Russia and the Soviet Union.

On the Nazi side of murder, Hitler came into power promising equality, preaching egalitarianism, and proposing retaliation against the ‘greedy business class,’ many of which were Jews.  His death toll is well over 10,000,000.  These are not the deaths caused by his war, but rather the deaths caused by his political sociopathy.

In all of these dictatorships, guns were taken from the public.

Suppose there were 100 of these school shootings per day, everyday, seven days per week for 100 years.   Assuming 26 deaths per school, this would equate 2600 deaths per day.  After 100 years, 95,000,000 people would be murdered.  This is a massive number and surely a horrific thought.  However, this number is about 35,000,000 less murders than the communist and Nazi governments committed during the twentieth century!

Given that the founding fathers deemed it wise to give the people the means of self-defense against dictatorship, does tampering with the public’s means of defense against a possible brutal dictatorship seem prudent?  Not hardly.  The facts are that these school shootings are just a grain of sand when placed in context to the mountains of mass murders of the unarmed public by pathological governments.

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel

In compulsory education, children are taken prisoner for 7-8 hours per day, fed government designed propaganda, held by law in concentrated groups and stuffed into rooms with only one way out.  Here they can be easily gunned down by any sociopath.

Notice too, that in these public schools, little is taught about the real mass murders in history, that is, murder by leftist governments.   

Possibly the greatest news story in the history of the human race was the horrific murders committed by the twentieth century dictators.  Public schools teach little of this history.  After all, public schools are government schools and to teach that government is capable of such atrocities would counter their propaganda, propaganda that implies:  ”A government’s role is to enhance your life.”

The Founders put the second amendment in the Constitution for a good reason.  Notice there is nothing in the Constitution about “the right to a public education.”

If school shootings are a problem, then we should think about ending forced public education.  The free market can protect and educate children far better.