An important purpose of this page is to persuade readers to smash any "Godologist or Governmentologist idols or icons" that may still infect their brains as "idea or meme parasites." However, some readers may not be interested in "clearing Godologist and Governmentologist crap from their minds." That's OK. You could just skim this page to look for strategy suggestions of potential use to you.

Another important purpose of this page is to persuade freedom activists to use humor and ridicule as a strategy to promote freedom. Most people like to be entertained. As suggested by the section Freud on Crowds, appealing to reason may not be an effective strategy for freedom activists. You can skim this page to look for sections on humor. You may even find something amusing!

It may be possible for freedom activists to become considerably more effective. It may even be possible to create profitable businesses, promoting freedom, and providing alternatives such as private currencies. More on this on PPFE Part #2.

It's possible that the massive 2008-2009 bailout will result in hyperinflation, and that some financial and political systems will be greatly weakened, or will even collapse -- see Some Important Statistics.

Stefan Molyneux:
Man, Family and State

"This is one of the most delightful things I've read in a while. Thanks." -- Robert Sterling (Editor, The Konformist)

Far, far away, on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy, there's a beautiful planet called Dumbtopia.

Dumbtopia's inhabitants are called Idiots.

They believe in a Supernatural creature they call Skybless.

Dumbtopia is divided into Dumbcountries -- at least, that's what the Idiots believe. They sporadically fight and slaughter each other over some skyblessforsaken patch of land -- "For Skybless and Dumbcountry."

Apparently, each Dumbcountry is ruled by a Plusidiot. Plusidiots are wiser than Idiots because they have blue blood -- or so they say. Common Idiots have red blood and believe that Plusidiots are their Superiors.

Apparently, each Plusidiot has a Dumbcouncil to help rule the common Idiots. Plusidiots have a secret magic drink called Etherwise. They give it to selected Idiots to drink. It makes their heads spin. After they've been drinking Etherwise for about a month, they experience Dumbliss, become Halfwits, and qualify to serve on Dumbcouncils.

Plusidiots and Halfwits pretend to have the ability to speak and write magic words called Pluswords -- Pluws for short. Common Idiots believe that Pluws are special holy, sacred words that must be obeyed. To make sure this dumb superstition sticks, Plusidiots employ Dumbcops to punish and kill Idiots who "disobey The Pluw."

Many common Idiots campaign to "Improve the holy, sacred Pluws."

Every hundred years or so, as a result of an unusual evolutionary mutation, some common Idiot wakes up and realizes that all the political systems on Dumbtopia are scams, hoaxes, and frauds. The woken-up Idiot then suggests that Plusidiots really have red blood, just like all common Idiots, and that there's nothing special about so-called "Plusidiots" and "Halfwits" -- they're really common Idiots like everybody else.

As soon as the Dumbcops discover a woken-up Idiot, they kill him or her. "Skybless help us if the Idiots ever discover that so-called "Plusidiots" and "Halfwits" are really impostors and liars -- common Idiots like all the rest -- and that their pretended "Pluws" are hoaxes... strings of dumb lies written by "clever" Pluwyer Idiots!"

Three Stages of Human Development:

1. Barbarism;
2. Civilization;
3. Individual Sovereignty (brought about through Personal Power & Freedom Engineering).

Barbarism

Although it may be a gross oversimplification, "barbarism" can be regarded as the "state of affairs" before humans became organized into so-called "nation states" with so-called "governments." Among many "pre-civilized" people, there was a great deal of tribal warfare. The following table is from Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. It depicts the percentage of male deaths resulting from tribal warfare for a number of primitive tribes.

The bottom item on the table is for "US & Europe -- 20th Century."

A most important "organizing principle" of Barbarism is the "Pecking Order Bully System" (POBS). You can observe POBS in action by watching wild-animal TV programs on baboons, lions, etc.

Civilization

Pinker basically argues that concentrating the use of violence in a so-called "government" is a good idea because it reduced warfare deaths by 95%. He gives a number of 100 million killed during the 20th Century by "government warfare." If it hadn't been for Civilization's so-called "nation states" and so-called "governments," the number of warfare deaths would have been 2 billion!

According to R.J. Rummel, DEMOCIDE = MURDER BY GOVERNMENT: "Just to give perspective on this incredible murder by government [262,000,000 from 1900 to 1999], if all these bodies were laid head to toe, with the average height being 5', then they would circle the earth ten times. Also, this democide murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century."

If you add Rummels' number for the people who died in combat to his 262 million number, you get over 300 million -- about three times Pinker's number.

"All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
-- Voltaire

Humans in Civilizations are called "Citizens."

A most important "organizing principle" of Civilization is the "Pecking Order Bully System" (POBS). You can observe POBS in action by watching wild-animal TV programs on baboons, lions, etc. -- and by observing Citizens engaged in political elections. The 2008 election campaign between Obama and McCain was essentially the same as two (civilized) baboons beating their chests and shouting insults at each other to prove who was the "best bully."

At the end of the election, millions of Obama supporters hooted and hollered like (civilized) baboons because their favorite bully had been elected to the top of the "Pecking Order Bully System" (POBS), called the "US Federal Government." All these Citizens were completely unaware that they were unconsciously acting out their primitive and deep-seated POBS programs.

Headline in the Arizona Republic of 12/1/08: "Citizens are new slaves to government masters."

Citizens in Civilizations are partial slaves. Their bullies tell them what they may or may not eat and drink. Their bullies force them to send their children to "concentration campuses for brainwashing" -- see Dumbed Down by "Education! Their bullies force them to pay a percentage of their earnings to their bullies. If this is 50%, then the Citizens are essentially "50% slaves."

From the Preface to Foundations of Psychohistory by Lloyd DeMause: "The "psychogenic theory of history" which I set out in this book is simple to understand, though often difficult to believe. It can be summarized as the theory that history involves the acting-out by adults of group-fantasies which are based on motivations initially produced by the evolution of childhood."

It may be difficult for many (civilized) grown-ups to confront the proposition that much of what they regard as "rational life activities" could be better described as "adults acting-out group-fantasies rooted in maltreatment and abuse during childhood, as well as stemming from primitive animal programs in their brains!"

"...[R]eligions are best envisioned as a socially constructed haven for delusions that are not diagnosed as insanity due to majority acceptance. Those same beliefs would, however, receive the diagnosis of insanity if they were to appear outside of a religious framework." -- John F. Schumaker (The Corruption of Reality: A Unified Theory of Religion, Hypnosis, and Psychopathology)

Consider the proposition that 100% of "human religious belief and behavior" constitutes the pathological acting-out of group-fantasies!

Book: Wings of Illusion: The Origin, Nature and Future of Paranormal Belief by John F. Schumaker. Review on Amazon.com by Charles D. Hayes: "Understanding the nature of human belief systems is one of my principal preoccupations. I've read scores of books on this subject, and find John F. Schumaker to be in a league of his own in this discipline. He writes about beliefs with as much insight and clarity as Bryan Magee does with the complexities of philosophy. This book is timeless."

Book: The Corruption of Reality: A Unified Theory of Religion, Hypnosis, and Psychopathology by John F. Schumaker. Review on Amazon.com by Yahzi:

"This book is the most important book of the entire 20th century. Like Freud, it will define the next 100 years of psychological thinking. Unlike Freud, it will last beyond that, becuase it is more than visionary, it is also grounded in hard science.

If you ever wanted to understand how educated, rational adults can believe in the stupidist things imaginable, this book explains it.

The only weak point of the book is the final chapter, where Schumaker suggests we create a false religion to safely guide people's evolutionarily inescapable stupidity. This is John's own corruption of reality: thinking that we can actually find a painless solution. But he presents it half-heartedly enough that I think even he understands it will never work.

The only solution is expecting people to grow up and act like adults. Life isn't what you wanted it to be -- tough. Deal.

To put it another way: when you think about it long enough, this book explains 9/11, why we are in Iraq, and the current flap over Intelligent Design. That's a heck of an accomplishment for a book written many years ago."

Does the Schumaker quote on religion also apply to politics?: "Politics is best envisioned as a socially constructed haven for delusions that are not diagnosed as insanity due to majority acceptance. Those same beliefs would, however, receive the diagnosis of insanity if they were to appear outside of a political framework."

Consider the possibility that Citizens in Civilizations tend to suffer from religious and/or political delusions that result in some unpleasant consequences... including over 300 million violent deaths during the 20th Century.

Consider the proposition that 100% of "human coercive political behavior" constitutes the pathological acting-out of group-fantasies!

Individual Sovereignty (brought about through Personal Power & Freedom Engineering)

One of the purposes of this page is to persuade individuals to become "Personal Power & Freedom Engineers" (PPFEs). This may involve several steps. It is up to each prospective PPFE to decide which steps he or she needs to take to become a PPFE:

1. Increase level of personal success as suggested by the GRSS;
2. Raise your Mood Level and Improve Health;
3. Develop Online Moneymaking Skills (or any other moneymaking skills largely or completely free from the savage shackles of Civilization);
4. Improve thinking skills, starting with Project Learn to Think;
5. Clear all religious nonsense, superstitions, and delusions from own mind;
6. Clear all political nonsense, superstitions, and delusions from own mind (note that this may be 10-100 times as challenging as the previous item);
7. Develop "practical freedom skills" -- how to live free in an unfree (civilized) world;
8. Develop the kind of Champion Mindset that Jack Johnson had;
9. Become More Conscious, following the example of Steve Biko;
10. Team up with other Personal Power & Freedom Engineers to implement PPFE Actions (what these actions might be is open for PPFEs to decide).

Scientologists, Godologists & Governmentologists

A distinction can be made between "Mild Cults" -- involved with the killing of maybe fewer than 1,000 people -- and "Major-Killer-Cults" -- involved with killing tens of millions of people or more.

Under "Mild Cults" could be included Scientology and Scientologists (killed maybe about 100 people in 50 years) and Jonestown or "People's Temple" (killed about 900 people).

A PPFE may regard Scientology and Scientologists as at least mildly crazy.

Under "Major-Killer-Cults" could be included Godology and Godologists (killed at least tens of millions of people) and Governmentology and Governmentologists (killed over 300 million people during the 20th Cntury). The picture is complicated by the fact that many Governmentologists are also Godologists.

Because of the violent deaths resulting from their beliefs and behavior, a PPFE may regard Godology and Godologists as much crazier than Scientology and Scientologists.

For the same reason, a PPFE may regard Governmentology and Governmentologists as about ten times crazier than Godology and Godologists.

On Dr. Arthur Janov's Primal Healing website under "Books" and Beyond Belief! could be found on 11/11/08 (minor edits):

"This book examines what forces in us drive us to believe in mystics, healers and gurus. What unconscious impulses lead us to join cults, and reveals how feelings become beliefs in the brain. Dr. Janov discusses all of this through the autobiographies of patients who have lived it. He also examines how the government functions as a cult with the same dynamics as any cult leader from Jim Jones to Rajneesh and to Bin Laden.

There is a chapter on the born again, conversion experience and why that happens. Another on what makes a leader or healer and what makes a follower. He cites many research studies on how thinking something will kill pain actually does, and why that happens. He analyzes belief systems and how they function to keep us comfortable. That the brain doesn't care if it is Islam, the Republican Party or "the secret," it all works the same in the brain. What he points out is that the thought of a deity makes us believe in it whereas it is the thought itself that relieves and soothes us.

This is the first thorough account of how beliefs work in the brain to bring us comfort and calm. But it is a spurious calm since there is a seething cauldron of pain that lies below beliefs that will make us sick and shorten our lives."

A great deal has been written about the characteristics of cults. The following apply for our purposes:

• Messianic, possibly maniacal, authoritarian bully-leaders who regard themselves as "popes," "presidents," "great deciders," (and/or other similar terms) and who claim that they "represent god," "consult with god," "have unique keys to higher knwledge," "are authorized by the constitution," "have a mandate from the people," etc. (Sometimes the same bully-leader is both a Godologist and a Governmentologist!)
• Hierarchical, coercive control structures -- Pecking Order Bully Systems (POBSs).
• Top cult staff members are selected primarily for their loyalty, and from whom very little dissent is tolerated. (Obama's first appoinment was Emanuel, generally regarded as "hard-nosed" and "sharp-elbowed," i.e., an effective bully!)
• Some specially selected cult staff members perform all kinds of secret activities (often criminal), not communicated to the general membership.
• Dissenting cult staff members are usually kicked out.
• Cult leaders lie about their agendas and actions. (Governmentologist leaders are often controlled by Big Business interestes. Obama and his buddies paid hundreds of billions to insurance giant A.I.G. and to other Big Businesses.)
• Deception and/or force is used by Governmentologists to gain new recruits -- also called "compulsory education" -- the deception includes not revealing to the victims that the purposes of their "education" include turning the victims into compliant factory or office workers, subservient "citizens of their cult," and/or obedient soldiers brainwashed to kill and be killed in wars organized for phoney reasons to benefit the businesses of cult leaders and their friends. Typically, Godologists use deception by making absurd promises of "eternal salvation." In some cases, they don't reveal that one of their purposes is to gain new recruits to ensure the availability of children for sexual abuse.
• New recruits are removed from their families for long hours, kept confined in artificial environments ("schools"), where they are systematically dumbed down and brainwashed to "believe and obey authority."
• Recruits are also brainwashed to become dependent and to believe that Governmentologists have "Godlike" powers to make a wide range of decisions for them and to "do for people what they can't do for themselves." Godologists use similar brainwashing techniques to make people dependent by using fear tactics, e.g., "eternal damnation," "burning in hell," etc.
• Members are compelled (at the point of a gun if necessary) by Governmentologists to pay large portions of their earnings to cult leaders. Godologists typically use less violent methods, but still fraudelent, to obtain unearned money from their victims.
• Some Governmentologists don't allow their members to leave their cult, in that they have to continue paying large amounts to the cult leaders, no matter where the members go. Godologists typically use fear tactics to prevent their cult members from leaving.

PPFEs involved in promoting freedom may be able to use strategies suggested by the above to good effect. They could condemn Scientology as a crazy cult... and then condemn Godology as and even crazier cult... and then condemn Governmentology as the craziest cult of all!

See also: Project Lord Reincarnated Hubbard (LRH).

Word-Controlled Humans

Following are extracts from the book Word Controlled Humans by John Harland:

THE FORK IN THE ROAD

"Words can be used to tell others what an individual perceives; they can also be used to override perception, condition or destroy thought, and control humans. When the first word trails were being made in the expanding growth of conscious ideas, there was a fork in the road of possibilities. The majority of humans turned off in a direction that has now been made into a broad highway. Nature's method of making individual perception a major factor affecting survival was the way rejected; acceptance of the individual by a word-conditioned group was made the dominant requirement affecting the individual's survival. As I see it, the fork we have taken can lead only to human extinction or biological regression; the other could have led to further evolutionary advance. I want to contrast the two directions, recommend the other fork, and set forth a procedure for getting over to it..."

"The idea implied by "authority" triggers action in those who have been word-conditioned to set aside their own innate will and accept the word-control of someone in "authority." As I see it, "authority," implying the "right" of individuals or groups to control or exercise power over others, has no meaning in the world of reality. I want to identify it as highly suspect by always enclosing it in quotation marks...."

"When orders were obeyed because coming from someone having "authority," mass warfare between groups of word-controlled people became the standard practice..."

"When humans create words that do not refer to a perceivable reality, there is likely to be confusion between the man-conceived fictional entity and something clearly perceived which is real..."

The fork taken by PPFEs is to primarily use their senses to discern reality. The other fork is to primarily use "subjective social agreement" to discern reality. PPFEs are very interested in words with physical referents that can be perceived by using their senses. Godologists and Governmentologists typically use words with no physical referents to control, subjugate, dominate, and exploit their victims.

"Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic." -- Dostoevsky

Following are extracts from the book From Freedom to Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America by Gerry Spence:

"The breathing dead witness the murder of themselves. The breathing dead live within their own corpses, a horror beyond description, a horror that bears the agony of both murderer and victim and suffers the indescribable pain of the last rejection, of the self against the self..."

"The concrete boxes in which children are imprisoned will explode..."

"These Earthlings are insane according to their own definition -- dissociation from reality. Existing in nearly total fantasy, they murder each other over imaginary icons and destroy entire segments of their societies over beliefs founded in myth. Nowhere in the universe have we encountered such an abdication of reason than among the natives on Earth..."

"However, Earth provides a valuable laboratory by which to study the phenomenon of "teachable psychosis." Earthlings instruct their offspring that various myths are fact, that certain fables are historically true, that divers fictions and fairy tales must be believed, thereby rendering entire populations, by definition, mad. Heretofore we had believed insanity to be the product of informities of the central nervous system, but our observations of these Eathlings have demonstrated that insanity can be taught, that the psychosis that predominates the Earth is, in major part, a phenomenon of programming, a process the Earthlings themselves understand metaphorically as "brainwashing."..."

"Although the term "freedom" eludes precise definition, for what seems freedom for some becomes tyranny for others, yet quite inexplicably these Earthlings fight for freedom, die for it, make speeches about it and even celebrate a day in its honor, all the while understanding little if anything about this elusive notion. Moreover, many believe they are free when, in fact, they are bound in the most abject servitude imaginable..."

"In the end, the most deadly trap of all is a brainwashed mind, for the brain, washed against itself, is powerless..."

"Religions! Ah, what religions do to us! How they supplant thought! How they fence out reason! How they render us impotent! How they poison us..."

"I remember when I began to feel my own power. Somehow I had discovered the King within -- the King of self. I was fearful of the King, in awe of him. Yet in his presence I felt no servitude... I felt as if I could conquer any obstacle... I shudder to think what might occur if all of the earth's people awakened their own inner Kings. This much I can predict: Magically, overnight, the world would be free."

"When we acknowledge the kingdom of the self, we will no longer accept slavery either for ourselves or for others, no matter how it is disguised, for the King cannot tolerate slavery. When we acknowledge the kingdom of the self, we will no longer tolerate untruths, for the King cannot to;erate manipulations and lies. When we acknowledge the kingdom of the self, we will no longer permit the children of the world to be tarred with fear and feathered with guilt, for the King cannot tolerate such abuse of the world's children. And when we stop abusing our children we will finally enjoy peace..."

It may be more appropriate to replace the word "King" above with "Sovereign Individual."

In Chapter 8 -- "Keeping It All in Place" --of his book Restoring the American Dream, Robert J. Ringer refers to "The Arsenal" of words and phrases used by Governtologists to keep their Pecking Order Bully Systems (POBSs) in place. He analyses the following: "The people," "the public," "society," "government," "country," "taxation," "conscription" (the draft), "loophole," "windfall," "inflation," "patriotic," "apathetic," "obligation," "duty," "decent," "fair," "justice," "public morals," "public good," "public property," "public justice," "public interest," "good of society," "well-being of society," "welfare of society," "duty to society," "obligation to society," "good of the people," "welfare of the people," "rights of the people," "the people have chosen," "fair pay," "decent living," "your fair share," "moral duty," "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," "love it or leave it," and "all power to the people."

For a general analysis of words used by Governtologists to keep their Pecking Order Bully Systems (POBSs) in place, see The Anatomy of Slavespeak.

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz has written a great deal about the use of words by Governtologist "mental-heath" pratitioners to establish, maintain, and strengthen their Pecking Order Bully Systems (POBSs) -- Thomas Szasz and Slavespeak.

Several authors -- including Peter Breggin (Medication Madness) and Peter Schrag (Mind Control) -- have written extensively on the use of words and drugs by Governtologist psychiatrists and psychologists to achieve mind control over their victims.

The Concept Factor
-- Breaking the Spell

Extracted and adapted from the original article -- © Robert Fritz 2006 -- that used to be on his website.

In his new book, philosopher and co-director of Tufts Center for Cognitive Studies Daniel C. Dennett describes an ant climbing up a blade of grass, but then falling, climbing up again, falling, and so the cycle continues. Dennett asks: "What benefit is the ant seeking for himself?" As it turns out, there is no biological benefit for the ant. Rather, its brain has been commandeered by a tiny parasite, a lancet fluke (Dicrocelium Dendriticum) that needs to get itself into the stomach of a sheep or cow in order to complete its reproductive cycle. The parasite is driving the ant into position to benefit its own offspring, not the ant's. Dennett points out that similar manipulative "hitchhiker" parasites infect many species, all for the benefit of the guest, not the host.

"Does anything like this ever happen with human beings?" Dennett asks. "Yes indeed," he answers. According to Dennett, concepts can act like parasites. "The comparison with which I began, between a parasitic worm invading an ant's brain and an idea invading a human brain, probably seems both far-fetched and outrageous. Unlike worms, ideas aren't alive, and don't invade brains; they are created by minds." Dennett goes on to show how "ideas and parasites have remarkable commonalities, including that ideas are spread from mind to mind, surviving translation between different languages, hitchhiking on songs and icons and statues and rituals, coming together in unlikely combinations in particular people's heads, where they give rise to yet further new 'creations,' bearing family resemblances to the ideas that inspired them but adding new features, new powers as they go." These parasitic ideas have their own agendas, ones that are independent from the health and well-being of the person. Some ideas obsess the brain, and their own cause can become more important than that of the individual host.

Entitled Breaking The Spell -- Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, the book is gutsy in that Dennett puts the phenomenon of religion under a scientific microscope. While his basic question is why do human beings have the instinct to adhere to religious doctrines, he is not attacking religion -- although some might think that asking questions about religion itself is an attack. His exploration is fair, open, and challenging. And his subject is timely in this day and age in which, in the name of religion, people prove themselves to be capable of the most repugnant behavior.

Dennett's subject is... about how and why people adopt religious dogmas, particularly when they may be harmful to the person who holds them...

What is of so much interest to me is Dennett's thesis that concepts can function as parasites that have their own agendas, their own aims, their own motivations -- ones that are independent from the benefits of "the host." This insight is consistent with some of the structural phenomena we have seen over the years, and why people can have patterns in which hard won success is eventually reversed to the detriment of the person him or herself.

Structural Dynamics [See Organize Your Life to Create Structural Tension so the Path of Least Resistance Leads You Where You Want to Go.]

A person's underlying structural dynamics determine his or her behavioral tendencies. One way that I have described this is by pointing out that energy moves along the path of least resistance, and that underlying structures will determine that path. Water flows where it most easily goes, and the riverbed -- the underlying structure -- determines that path. If the underlying structure remains the same, and if you are in an oscillating structure, your successes eventually will be neutralized. With a change of underlying structure, new possibilities emerge, and success does succeed both short and long-term. Life takes on a new direction and you experience momentum rather than inertia.

What Do Concepts Have To Do With Structure?

Oscillating structures are made up of three elements; advancing structures are made of only two. Advancing structures consists of the desired outcome in relationship to the current state: in other words -- structural tension. But oscillating structures have a third element: the various concepts the person holds.

These concepts fall into three major categories: fear of imagined (not real) danger; personal, social, or existential ideals; worldviews that explain the true mysteries in life, such as religious and metaphysical concepts that demand belief and compel certain behaviors. This third category is the one that concerns Dennett. Yet his notion of parasitic ideas might be extended to also include the other areas of concepts, such as ideals and conceptualized fears. These concepts do, indeed, have their own agendas that are independent of the "host" and do not advance the health and well-being of the person who holds them.

What we have discovered through structural consulting is that it is not the actual content of the concept itself that causes an oscillating structure. It is the way the concept is held, the way the concept takes hold of the mind, the dynamic of the concept in relationship to a person's aspirations, values, and reality. Dennett's focus on "belief in belief" seems to point to why a concept can function as a type of parasite.

A Change of Underlying Structure

Over the years, we have seen the remarkable, almost miraculous change of a person's life's possibilities when there is a change of underlying structure. The change invariably comes when a concept that was once built into a person's underlying structure is no longer part of that structure. the belief in the belief is gone. The "spell is broken." This is not a subtle change. Often people feel a weight lifted from their shoulders and a new sense of energy flowing through them. Their life patterns change and now they are in a position to organize their lives around their highest aspirations and deepest values. Their possibilities of success increase dramatically. Their patterns change from oscillation, in which success is reversed, to advancement, in which success becomes a platform for future success...

See also "Plato truth virus."

War Making and State Making as Organized Crime

by Charles Tilly

A Chapter from Bringing the State Back In, edited by Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

(Charles Tilly taught at the University of Delaware, Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the University of Michigan, the New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Sociological Research Association. See also: Charles Tilly in Wikipedia.)

If protection rackets represent organized crime at its smoothest, then war risking and state making -- quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy -- qualify as our largest examples of organized crime. Without branding all generals and statesmen as murderers or thieves, I want to urge the value of that analogy. At least for the European experience of the past few centuries, a portrait of war makers and state makers as coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs bears a far greater resemblance to the facts than do its chief alternatives: the idea of a social contract, the idea of an open market in which operators of armies and states offer services to willing consumers, the idea of a society whose shared norms and expectations call forth a certain kind of government.

The reflections that follow merely illustrate the analogy of war making and state making with organized crime from a few hundred years of European experience and offer tentative arguments concerning principles of change and variation underlying the experience. My reflections grow from contemporary concerns: worries about the increasing destructiveness of war, the expanding role of great powers as suppliers of arms and military organization to poor countries, and the growing importance of military rule in those same countries. They spring from the hope that the European experience, properly understood, will help us to grasp what is happening today, perhaps even to do something about it.

To continue, Click Here.

Smash the Idols
of Civilization
in your Head!

Sally Kempton: "It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head."

Steve Biko: "The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."

The enemy/oppressor plants IDOLS in your mind to serve as "outposts in your head." These "outposts" are used to gain control over your mind, so you can be controlled, manipulated, and exploited. Think of it this way: There are "Bullies of Civilization" who want to control you. If they plant their "god-idol," and/or "democracy idol," and/or "government-idol" inside your head, then you have your own "god-idol," and/or "democracy idol," and/or "government-idol" in your head to do the controlling. You do the controlling the way they want. So they can control you without doing anything further. You must smash the idols of civilization and get them out of your head!

You can also think of the idols as a "citizen mask," as described by Claude Steiner. So take off your "citizen mask!"

Éttiene de la Boétie: -- (Discourse of Voluntary Servitude - 1552/1553):

"Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose "greatness" you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you."

George Washington: -- "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master."

Thomas Jefferson: -- "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

H. L. Mencken: -- "A good politician under democracy is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar."

Lord Acton: -- "The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections."

James Bovard: -- "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."

Christian Michel: -- "Democratic law does not say, "Thou shalt not kill." Instead, it designates certain people who have the right to kill -- soldiers and state police. Democratic law does not order, "Thou shalt not steal." It says that only certain people have the right to steal -- tax and customs agents. What does "power to the people" mean when the people enjoy fewer rights than their supposed servants?"

Edward Bernays: -- "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

Oscar Wilde: -- "All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised... The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."

L. Neil Smith: -- "The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists -- or ever existed, or ever will exist -- is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves." Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce."

George Bernard Shaw: -- "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

Voltaire: -- "In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other."

Mark Twain: -- "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session."

Frederic Bastiat: -- "Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

Max Stirner: -- (edited from The Ego and His Own):

"I no longer humble myself before any supposed "power," and I recognize that all powers are only my power, which I have to subject at once if they threaten to become a power against or above me; each of them must be only one of my means to carry my point, as a hound is my power against game, but is killed by me if it should attack me personally. All "powers" that attempt to dominate me I then reduce to serving me. The idols exist through me; I need only refrain from creating them anew, then they exist no longer; so-called "higher powers" exist only through my exalting them and abasing myself.

Man, your head is haunted; you have idols in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of "gods" that has an existence for you, a "spirit-realm" to which you suppose yourself to be called, an "ideal" that beckons to you. You have fixed ideas!

Do not think that I jest or speak figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the "higher" as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. The vast majority belongs to this category. What is it, then, that is called a "fixed idea"? An idea to which a man has subjected himself. When you recognize such a fixed idea as folly, you lock its slave up in an asylum. And is the "truth of the faith," say, which we are not to doubt; the "majesty of the people," which we are not to strike at; "virtue," against which the censor is not to let a word pass, so that "morality" may be kept pure -- are these not fixed ideas? Is not all the stupid chatter of most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed ideas of "morality," "legality," and so forth? Fools who only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space?

Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have to guard your back against the lunatic's stealthy malice. These lunatics assail by stealth him who touches their fixed idea. They first steal his weapon -- free speech -- and then they fall upon him with their nails. Every day now lays bare the cowardice and vindictiveness of these maniacs, and the stupid populace hurrahs for their crazy measures. One only has to read today's journals to get the horrible conviction that one is shut up in a house with fools. But I do not fear their curses, and I say, my brothers are arch-fools.

Whether a poor (or rich) fool of this insane asylum is possessed by the fancy that he is "god the father," the "emperor of japan," the "holy spirit," the "president of the usa," or whatnot -- or whether a poor fool in comfortable circumstances conceives his mission as being a "good christian," a "faithful protestant," a "loyal citizen," or a "virtuous man" -- these are all fixed ideas.

Just as the schoolmen philosophized only inside the belief of the church; as "pope" (so-called) Benedict XIV wrote fat books inside the papist superstition, without throwing a single doubt upon these beliefs; as authors fill whole folios on the supposed "state" without calling into question the fixed idea of "the state" itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are manacled to the fancy that man was created a political zombie - so also "subjects" wallow in "subjection," "virtuous" people in "virtue," and "liberals" in "humanity"; without ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a madman's delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who doubts them - lays hands on the "sacred!" Yes, the fixed idea, that is the truly "sacred"!"

"The decision having once been made not to let oneself be imposed on any longer by the extant and palpable, little scruple was felt about revolting against the existing State or overturning the existing laws; but to sin against the idea of the State, not to submit to the idea of law, who would have dared that?"

Friedrich Nietzsche: -- extracted from Thus Spoke Zarathustra -- Of the New Idol:

"The state? What is that?
The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth; 'I, the state, am the people.'
Where a people still exists, there the people do not understand the state and hate it as the evil eye and sin against custom and law.
But the state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies -- and whatever it has, it has stolen.
Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth. Even its belly is false.
It would like to range heroes and honorable men about it, this new idol! It likes to sun itself in the sunshine of good consciences -- this cold monster!
It will give you everything if you worship it, this new idol: thus it buys for itself the luster of your virtues and the glance of your proud eyes.
Yes, a death for many has here been devised that glorifies itself as life: truly a heart-felt service to all preachers of death!
I call it the state where everyone, good and bad, is a poison-drinker: the state where everyone, good and bad, loses himself: the state where universal slow suicide is called... life."

Friedrich Nietzsche: -- (Ecce Homo):

"All questions of politics, the ordering of society, education have been falsified down to their foundations because the most injurious men have been taken for great men... I do not count these "pre-eminent men" as belonging to mankind at all -- to me, they are the refuse of mankind, abortive offspring of sickness and revengeful instincts: They are nothing but pernicious, fundamentally incurable monsters who take revenge on life..."

Jonathan Swift: -- (A Tale of a Tub: Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind):

"...[A]t a grand committee, some days ago, this important discovery was made by a certain curious and refined observer; that sea-men have a custom when they met a whale, to fling him out an empty tub, by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship. This parable was immediately mythologiz'd: The whale was interpreted to be Hobbe's 'leviathan,' which tosses and plays with all other schemes of religion and government, whereof a great many are hollow, and dry, and empty, and noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation."

Jonathan Swift: -- (Gulliver's Travels):

"...[H]e was at a loss how it should come to pass, that the law, which was intended for every man's preservation, should be any man's ruin. Therefore he desired to be further satisfied what I meant by law, and the dispensers thereof, according to the present practice in my own country; because he thought nature and reason were sufficient guides for a reasonable animal, as we pretended to be, in showing us what he ought to do, and what to avoid."

Although it's obvious to any "reasonable animal" that the notion is absurd that "governments can make laws," do you have the intellectual courage to remove the "law idol" from your mind?

If you do remove the "law idol" from your mind, you may want to be careful about who you tell that you've done so. In particular, it's prudent to realize that there are millions of "lawnuts" out there, some with uniforms and guns!

Don Lancaster: -- (The Incredible Secret Money Machine):

"A "granfalloon" is any large bureaucratic figment of people's imagination. For instance, there's really no such thing as the Feds or the General Veeslefeltzer Corporation. There are a bunch of people out there who relate to each other, and there's some structures, and some paper. In fact, there's lots and lots of paper. The people sit in the structures and pass paper back and forth to each other and charge you to do so... All these people, structures, and paper are real; but nowhere can you point to the larger concept of "government" or "corporation" and say, "There it is, kiddies!" The monolithic, big "they" is all in your mind." (See also "Does the government really exist?")

Kurt Vonnegut: -- (Cat's Cradle):

"If you wish to study a 'granfalloon,' Just remove the skin of a toy balloon."

Timothy Leary: -- (Neuropolitics):

"We have been robot-trained to believe that democracy, as practiced in this country, is something sacred. Everything we have been taught is dangerously wrong... Everything printed in our newspapers is a selective fraud. (I know that you know this, but we have to keep reminding ourselves.)

Representative government, as practiced today, is a brief and now outmoded historical phase designed to bridge the period between the rise of national states and the emergence of globe-linking electrical-electronic communication...

Guilt, innocence, punishment, forgiveness, law and order, rehabilitation -- all constitute the mythology that masks the simple reality of badly-wired robots bumping into one another. Most agonizing -- and supposedly intractable -- social problems are caused solely by our ignorance of the brain's capacity for rote repetition and abrupt change.

Brainwashing is happening to all of us all the time. Knowledge of brain function is our only protection against it. The solutions to our predicament are neurological. We must assume responsibility for our nervous systems. Our robothood can remain static if we endlessly repeat the imprints of infancy to adolescence, or it can be drastically altered by brainwashers without our consent, or we can take control of our nervous systems. If we don't assume this personal responsibility, somebody else will; if we do take over the control board, we can each be any person we want to be."

James J. Martin: -- (Introduction to No Treason by Lysander Spooner):

"Since late Neolithic times, men in their political capacity have lived almost exclusively by myths. And these political myths have continued to evolve, proliferate, and grow more complex and intricate even though there has been a steady replacement of one by another, over the centuries. A series of entirely theoretical constructs, sometimes mystical, usually deductive and speculative, they seek to explain the status and relationships in the community since it became discernibly organized politically.

It is the assault upon the abstract and verbal underpinnings of this institution ("the State") which draws blood... those who seek to destroy the abstract/verbal justification for such "play" ...are its most formidable adversaries."

Francis Bacon: -- The Idols of Human Understanding (Novum Organum) (condensed and edited)

"The idols and false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding, and have taken deep root therein, not only so beset men's minds that truth can hardly find entrance, but even after entrance obtained, they will again in the very instauration of the sciences meet and trouble us, unless men being forewarned of the danger, fortify themselves as far as may be possible against their assaults.

There are four classes of idols which beset men's minds. To these, for distinction's sake, I have assigned names:

1. Idols of the tribe;
2. Idols of the cave;
3. Idols of the marketplace;
4. Idols of the theater.

The idols of the tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe, race, and culture of men. It is a false assertion that the measure of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well as the sense of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

The idols of the cave are the idols of the individual man. Everyone has a cave or a den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature; owing to his personal and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed, or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.

There are also idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call idols of the marketplace, on account of the commerce and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.

Lastly, there are idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call idols of the theater; because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage-plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion."

In Carl Rogers on Personal Power, the author quotes from Sigmund Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego:

"A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence. It has no critical faculty... Anyone who wishes to produce an effect upon it needs no logical adjustment to his arguments; he must paint in the most forcible colors, he must exaggerate, and he must repeat the same thing again and again... It respects force and can only be slightly influenced by kindness, which it regards merely as a form of weakness... It wants to be ruled and oppressed, and to fear its masters... And finally, groups have never thirsted after truth. They demand illusions, and cannot do without them. They constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real; they are almost as strongly influenced by what is untrue as by what is true. They have an evident tendency not to distinguish between the two... A group is an obedient herd, which could never live without a master. It has such a thirst for obedience that it submits instinctively to anyone who appoints himself as its master."

What Freud describes here are essentially people whose minds have to some degree "snapped into subjective social agreement." This may apply to well over 99% of humans. Freedom activists typically attempt to use reason to appeal to their audience. This may not work very well. If you review some the Obama and McCain election speeches of 2008, you may discover that they used primarily emotional slogans and insults.

Just watch the Maher video. Now imagine a version of this performance that appeals purely to reason, with no humor whatsoever. What would work better?

I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. Think of it! One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into harrying a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handfull will rise up on the other side and make the most noise -- perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it -- and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions...

Look at you in war -- what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!...

There has never been a just one, never an honorable one -- on the part of the instigator of the war... The loud little handful -- as usual -- will shout for the war. The pulpit will -- warily and cautiously -- object -- at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity...

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Excerpted from various online sources:

Socrates taught his students that the pursuit of truth can only begin once they start to question and analyze every belief that they ever held dear. If a certain belief passes the tests of evidence, deduction, and logic, it should be kept. If it doesn't, the belief should not only be discarded, but the thinker must also then question why he was led to believe the erroneous information in the first place. Not surprisingly, this type of teaching didn't sit well with the ruling elite of Greece. Many political leaders throughout history have always sought to mislead the thinking of the masses. Socrates was tried for "subversion" and for "corrupting the youth." He was then forced to take his own life by drinking poison. It's never easy being an independent thinker! Today, our ruling government/media complex doesn't kill people for pursuing the truth about the world (at least not yet!) They simply label them as "extremists" or "paranoid," destroying careers and reputations in the process.

There are of course those who have fallen under the hypnotic spell of the TV talking-heads and "experts" whom they worship as "authority figures." Unaccustomed to thinking for themselves, no amount of truth can sway them from their preconceived prejudices. They will even deny that which they see with their own eyes. They are victims of a psychological affliction known as the "lemming effect."

Lemmings are small rodents that have been known to follow each other as they charge to their deaths into raging rivers or off of cliffs. Lemminghood is an innate psychological phenomenon, present in most mammals and observable in common people as well as the most sophisticated and educated elites. Lemminghood is not an intellectual phenomenon -- it is psychological.

As such, no socio-economic class is immune to its strangulating effect. A grant-seeking university scientist can be a lemming just as much as a fashion obsessed teen-age girl. One blindly follows the latest trendy theory while the other blindly follows the latest trendy clothing style. What's the difference? Neither can resist the force of nature.

The pressure to fit in with one's social peers can be irresistible. To a human lemming, the logic behind an opinion doesn't count as much as the power and popularity behind an opinion.

Man, like lemming, behaves collectively. And it could be no other way. Naturally, the individual must be equipped with this trait. Otherwise, the smallest steps toward civilization could never have been made. Lemminghood is a survival trait, an inborn instinct in the majority of people. However, as with all natural phenomena, this tendency can be manipulated and used for harmful purposes.

It is this lemming effect which enables entire segments of a society to lose their sense of judgment all at the same time.

For lemmings, denial is a basic psychological defense mechanism used to not only shield themselves from unpleasant realities, but also to reassure themselves that they will still fit within the acceptable range of opinion held by their peer group. Lemmings are absolutely terrified at the thought of being labeled as an "extremist" or a "conspiracy theorist."

At all costs, their beliefs must always be on the "right" side of the issue and conform within the boundaries of their lemming peers. Lemmings simply cannot bear the burden of responsibility, or the discomfort, which comes with thinking independently. They'll resist any efforts to change their misguided beliefs with all their mental energy.

We can try to open their closed minds and free them from their self-imposed blindness, but it's not easy fighting the force of human nature. The chains of ideological conformity have too strong of a grip, and breaking them is a difficult task. With the limited resources at our disposal, it is next to impossible to compete with the media lemming-masters. Nevertheless, some of us must make the meager attempt, and thus lay the foundation upon which the truth might one day rise again.

Take off Your Citizen Mask!

"The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them."
-- L. Ron Hubbard

Legal Scholar Lysander Spooner Exposes the Pretended "U.S. Constitution" as a Hoax, Fraud, and Scam!

Quoted from No Treason No. I and No. VI, The Constitution of No Authority (1870) [emphases added]:

"...[T]wo men have no more natural right to exercise any kind of authority over one, than one has to exercise the same authority over two. A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character), or by millions, calling themselves a government... Clearly all this is the work of force, or fraud, or both... The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing... Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them... The proceedings of those robbers and murderers, who call themselves "the government"... The "nations," as they are called, with whom our pretended ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators profess to make treaties, are as much myths as our own... Certainly, too, there is in existence no such firm, corporation, or association as "the United States," or "the people of the United States," formed by any open, written, or other authentic and voluntary contract... The lesson taught by all these facts is this: As long as mankind continue to pay "National Debts," so-called --- that is, so long as they are such dupes and cowards as to pay for being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered --- so long there will be enough to lend the money for those purposes; and with that money a plenty of tools, called soldiers, can be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered, they will cease to have cheats, and usurpers, and robbers, and murderers and blood-money loan-mongers for masters. ...Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain --- that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."

Potential Action Based on Lysander Spooner Surveys

Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 - May 14, 1887) "[W]as an American individualist anarchist, entrepreneur, political philosopher, abolitionist, and legal theorist of the 19th century." A Lysander Spooner website is maintained by Randy E. Barnett, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory, Georgetown University Law Center. On 9/19/07 there was a poll on the home page with the following results:

Do you agree with Spooner that the U.S. Constitution is without Authority?

Yes    - 61.8% - 21,247
No     - 24.7% -  8,501
Unsure - 13.5% -  4,648
Total:           34,397

Statistics for surveys on the Spooner site as of 12/12/07:

Do you agree with Spooner that the Constitution is without Authority? (Numbers on 12/12/07)

Yes    - 61.8% - 21,437
No     - 24.7% -  8,570
Unsure - 13.5% -  4,685
Total:           34,693

Do you agree with Spooner that government should not have a monopoly on the production of money?

Yes    - 71.2% - 1,608
No     - 15.8% -   356
Unsure - 13%   -   294
Total:           2,260

Do you agree with Spooner that authors and inventors obtain property rights in their ideas?

Yes    - 52.4% -   804
No     - 27%   -   415
Unsure - 20.6% -   316
Total:         - 1,537

Do you agree with Spooner that the postal monopoly is unconstitutional?

Yes    - 72.4% - 1,332
No     - 14.6% -   269
Unsure - 13%   -   240
Total:         - 1,843

Do you agree with Spooner that slavery was unconstitutional before the 13th Amendment?

Yes    - 80.1% - 2,344
No     - 11.4% -   334
Unsure -  8.5% -   248
Total:         - 2,928

We assume that Barnett maintains his Lysander Spooner website because he has a high regard for Spooner's writings and he therefore encourages others to read them. We wonder if Barnett agrees with the implications of Spooner's writings, particularly No Treason No. I and No. VI, The Constitution of No Authority (1870) -- partially quoted above.

"...[P]retended ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators, ...robbers and murderers, who call themselves "the government."

"...[C]heats, and usurpers, and robbers, and murderers and blood-money loan-mongers for masters."

"...[S]uch dupes and cowards... [who] pay for being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered."

Assuming that Spooner's "Constitution of No Authority" is correct, would it be reasonable to conclude that the entire "US Governmentologist system" is a fake, a fraud, a scam, and a hoax?

Would it also be resonable conclude that if Spooner is correct, then it would be absurd to believe that the Governmentologist "usurpers, robbers, and murderers" can make so-called "laws?"

We wonder how many people, after reading Spooner's No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority, still believe that the Governmentologist "usurpers, robbers, and murderers" can make so-called "laws?" -- and how many realize it's just a silly superstition?

We also wonder if, when Professor Barnett teaches "constitutional law" he does so with an inward smile or with his fingers crossed behind his back? Does he agree with Spooner and therefore think that in reality there's no such thing as "constitutional law?" -- just another part of the hoax? Or does he think Spooner got it all wrong? We find it very interesting that in the above polls, 21,000+ people (61.8% of respondents) thought Spooner got it right!

Barnett is a Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute -- a libertarian-leaning think tank. Spooner is well known among libertarians. In January 2004, Laissez Faire Books (a libertarian publisher) established the Lysander Spooner Award for advancing the literature of liberty.

According to the above polls, 21,000+ people (61.8% of respondents) had "agreed with Spooner that the U.S. Constitution is without Authority," i.e., a fake, a fraud, a scam, and a hoax. Now, how many of these 21,000+ people would go further and agree that, "If the U.S. Constitution is without authority," then the entire "US Governmentologist system" must be a hoax, and the idea that Governmentologist "usurpers, robbers, and murderers make laws" must be absurd?

It may depend on how many, and to what extent, the 21,247 are still intellectually trapped Citizens of Civilization -- for how many of them their logic continues to be trumped (overridden) by "subjective social agreement."

If a thousand of the 21,000+ (less than 5%) were to make a special attempt to expose the Governmentologist hoax -- for example, by posting videos to that effect on YouTube, Google, Yahoo, etc. -- would they have any success? Is it worth creating a political equivalent of "The Blasphemy Challenge?".

See also THE ANATOMY OF SLAVESPEAK.

The following is from the end of the Epilogue of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History by Howard Bloom:

"Superorganisms ["family," "tribe," "country," "nation," "state," "government," etc.], ideas ["killer memes"], and the pecking order -- the triad of human evil -- are not inventions "programmed" into us by Western society, consumerism, capitalism, television violence, blood-and-guts films, or rock and roll. They are built into our physiology. They have been with us since the dawn of the human race.

But there is hope that we may be able someday free ourselves of savagery. To our species, evolution has given something new -- the imagination. With that gift, we have dreamed of peace. Our task -- perhaps the only one that will save us -- is to turn what we have dreamed into reality. To fashion a world where violence ceases to be. If we can accomplish this goal, we may yet escape our fate as highly precocious offspring, as fitting inheritors of nature's highest gift and foulest curse, as the ultimate children of the Lucifer Principle."

The main idea of Personal Power & Freedom Engineering is to persuade individuals to:

1. Regain the ability they were born with to use their senses to discern reality (rather than "subjective social agreement").
2. Gain an advanced understanding of the dynamics of supposed "superorganisms" imagined or hallucinated by proto-conscious Citizens of Civilizations;
3. Identify the relevant killer memes and understand their operation and consequences;
4. Free themselves as far as possible from the unconscious acting out of Pecking Order Bully Systems (POBSs);
5. Perform "garbage removal" from their minds, particularly pertaining to religion and politics;
6. Improve their thinking skills;
7. Become more conscious.

The process of individuals qualifying themselves as Personal Power & Freedom Engineers begins with Project "Learn to Think!" and continues with the suggestions on this page.

If several individuals can be persuaded to qualify themselves as Personal Power & Freedom Engineers, it may be possible to form one or more PPFE Teams who start taking practical steps to "fashion a world where violence ceases to be" (Bloom).

The following are extracts from Bloom's The Lucifer Principle [with some comments added]:

• ...Daniel Goleman, paraphrasing Nietzsche, says, "Madness... is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups."
• The ultimate evils are the mass murders that occur in revolutions and war, the large-scale savageries that arise when one agglomeration of humans tries to dominate another: the deeds of the social group.
• ...[H]ow we, without the slightest sense of what the long-term results of our miniscule actions may be, contribute to the social organism's ponderous and sometimes earth shattering deeds. ...[H]ow, in our preoccupations with sex, our sometimes suicidal commitment to ideas, religions, and trivial details of cultural style, we become the unconscious creators of the social organism's exploits.
• ...[H]umans are driven by many of the same instincts as our primate relatives.
• Toward those beyond their tiny circle, they radiated only hatred. And they treated those they despised with remorseless brutality. [See The Monkeysphere.]
• The reptile brain still sits inside our skull like the pit at the center of a peach. It is a vigorous participant in our mental affairs, pumping its primitive, instinctual orders to us at all hours of the day and night... The thinking human, no matter how exalted his sentiments, was still listening to the voices of a demanding reptile and a chattering ancient mammal. Both were speaking to him from the depths of his own skull.
• Darwin saw competition taking place at several levels, including that which occurs between individuals and that which occurs between gropus. When discussing ants, he acknowledged that evolution could easily induce individuals to sarifice their self-interest to that of the larger social unit. In his later writings, he proposed that a similar process occurs among human beings.
• ...[P]redators almost invariably go for a herd animal that is acting differently from the rest.
• Like the sponge cells and the slime mold amoebas, you and I are parts of a vast population whose pooled efforts move some larger creature on its path through life. Like the sponge cells, we cannot live in total separation from the human clump. We are components of a superorganism.
• Remove the sponge cell from the sponge, prevent it from finding its way back to its brethern, and it dies.
• There are innumerable causes for frustration in human life. But the inability to fulfill one's potential is way up there on the list... Frustration... breeds rage. [See The 4-Step Anger Cure.]
• Leaders like Orville Faubus [governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967] and Fidel Castro have skillfully manipulated a few basic rules of human nature: that every tribe regards outsiders as fair game; that every society gives permission to hate; that each culture dresses the demon of its hatred in the garb of righteousness; and that the man who channels this hatred can rouse the suprorganism and lead it around by the nose.
• Memes stretch their tendrils through the fabric of each human brain, driving us to coagulate in the cooperative masses of family, tribe, and nation. And memes -- working together in theories, worldviews, or cultures -- can make a superorganism very hungry.
• If you can convince enough people of your worldview, no matter how wrong you are, you're right! The real significance of a meme is its power to pull together a superorganism.
• Why are humans drawn to ideas like filings to a magnet? Why do memes have the power to create, elevate, pacify, and kill?
• Control is extremely powerful stuf... Contol, in humans and rats, energizes the mind. A lack of control can cripple mental powers.
• This belief in magic is one clue to our need for memes. Religious and scientific schemes -- clusters of guesswork that sometimes seem like a madman's dreams -- offer the feeling of control, an indispensable fuel for the physiological powerhouses of life.
• ...[M]odern doctors sell the illusion of control. [See Beware Medical Scams -- Take Control of Your Health.]
• The memes of magic, medicine, medieval Christianity, and modern fundamentalism offer an illusion that duplicates the health-giving force that saved a rat in a cage from harm. They hold out the illusion of power over the shocks and pains of life. [Does this also apply to the memes of politics?]
• Our cultures... are our collective fantasies about the worlds we cannot see [emphasis added]. They are tapestries of memes. [PPEs understand that the apparent "existence" of so-called "superorganisms" is due to the collective imaginations and/or hallucinations of proto-conscious Citizens of Civilizations.]
• Humans grab at ideas [memes] because ideas knit them together in groups of people who agree with them. They provide the comfort of companionship and mutual aid. That's one way memes seduce humans into their power.
• The pecking order can determine whether you live or die.
• The struggle for position in a pecking order is not restricted to individuals. It also hits social groups... -- the pecking order of superoganisms.
• A web of memes justifies the subjugation of those on the bottom, upholds the power of those on top... It sanctifies the pecking order.
• Never be complacent about barbarians.
• Stripped of their moral disguises, the slogans of freedom, peace, and justice are often weapons that those attempting to achieve hierarchical superiority use to stuff the rest of us into the lower ranks of the pecking order.