The US government is a totally illegitimate authority. It’s rather obvious that the people funding the slaughter in Gaza have no moral authority, but it needs to be understood that they do not have any legal authority either. What they have is men with guns who will kill you or put you in a cage if you don’t do what they want you to do. The US government is an international criminal gang.
We need to examine this concept of “the sovereign.” The sovereign is the source of authority within a society. Now, this is universally represented by the center of power in a nation-state.
Historically, “the sovereign” was a king who served God and thus ruled by divine right. This was true not simply in Christian Europe, but everywhere in the world that had developed past the level of a tribal system. The Divine Right of Kings in Europe was virtually identical to The Mandate of Heaven in China. There are other versions of this, but comparing these two systems is particularly useful, given that they developed completely independently of one another, which suggests that this idea of God appointing a singular authority to rule a people is something innate to basic human psychology.
During the Age of Enlightenment, it was determined that people had something called “human rights,” and from this developed the ideas of liberalism and modern republicanism (which remains the technical term for what are now referred to as “democracies”). The core idea of importance here is that every man was himself sovereign, and therefore has a list of personal “inalienable rights” by virtue of being a human. Widespread acceptance of this concept of individual sovereignty philosophically nullified the Divine Right of Kings. So then, people set out to create a concept of a state based on individual sovereignty. The core documents establishing this system were the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. (Shortly thereafter, the French did their thing, but the French Revolution wouldn’t have happened without the American Revolution.)
The basic idea of republicanism is that the people of a state form a “social contract” to cooperate and “self-govern.” They agree to respect each other’s individual rights, and they enshrine these rights in law. The government then explicitly serves the will of the people, being guided exclusively by the the governing documents (a constitution), which the population has agreed on through this elusive process of the “social contract.”
There is obviously a conversation to be had about the positives and negatives of this philosophical revolution. The positives are largely self-evident, while the negatives were less obvious and took time to manifest. I’ve largely come to the conclusion that liberal republicanism is unsustainable, as it will always devolve into a liberal democracy, which will in turn devolve into a tyranny. Further, the core ideas of liberalism, such as “human rights” and “social contracts,” are so abstract as to be incapable of making the leap from the realm of thought to the realm of reality. But the details of this discussion are beyond our scope here today.
For the purposes of reaching agreement that the US government is an illegitimate entity with zero legal authority to tell anyone what they can and can’t do, let alone use violence against those who disobey it, we must simply establish that the US government does not follow the US Constitution, and therefore does not have any source of legitimacy as “the sovereign” of these United States. The discussion only becomes abstract because the ideas of liberalism are so abstract. If that were not the case, the illegitimacy of the US government would have been self-evident as soon as they blatantly violated the US Constitution.
As a comparison, we might consider what would happen if the Holy Roman Emperor had endorsed the normalization of gay sex as an official state policy. Because his legitimacy as the sovereign came from the Christian God, his authority would be forfeit by endorsing such a policy in blatant violation of the Christian faith. The people would then have not only a right but a duty to overthrow him and replace him with someone who respected divine law. This is very simple, because there are no particularly confusing abstractions associated with the Divine Right of Kings.
A Monopoly on Violence
Every sovereign necessarily has a monopoly on violence. There is no other way to run a society, because no one supports the idea that anyone should be allowed to go around killing other people arbitrarily.
Under the system of the Divine Right of Kings, if you committed a murder, the king would sentence you to death. Given that he was appointed by God, according to the doctrine, he had the exclusive right to kill people.
Under the Republican system, “the people” are the sovereign, so in theory, “the people” hold the monopoly on violence. This is clearly confusing, but it is worked out through this “social contract” theory, which states that the people have agreed to be governed by representatives, and therefore police are allowed to kill people. You also have the jury system, where people accused of crimes are judged by “their peers.” This leads to odd situations, possibly most famously the OJ Simpson trial, where a jury decided it was okay for Simpson to murder his wife and her boyfriend. The DNA revolution has also proved that huge numbers of people were convicted by juries of crimes they did not commit. However, I’m sure there were people who got away with murder or were executed for crimes they didn’t commit in the Middle Ages as well, so this is not necessarily a valid critique of the jury system.
Looking back, the concept of “the people” having a monopoly on violence seems to be something that would obviously lead to a tyranny, as it is so difficult for “the people” to exercise influence over something so specific. However, to the credit of the Founding Fathers, they outlawed “standing armies,” and said that the peace should be kept by “well-regulated militias” at the state and local level. The Sheriff system was a legitimate way to institute a system where “the people” have a monopoly on violence. The Sheriff was an elected official who had very serious authority in a jurisdiction, and he and his deputies were the only people allowed to kill people. And of course, they could only kill people when necessary to protect other people’s lives, otherwise they were to arrest people who were accused of a crime to be delivered to the court system which would convene a jury.
The Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 12) says that the US Congress can only raise a standing army for two years at a time for defense purposes or to respond to an emergency. There is no validity to the permanent US military we have right now. Further, The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the use of military as law enforcement within the United States.
Arguably, any form of federal police force (the FBI, ATF, etc.), as well as state police (which are de facto federal police), constitute illegal “standing armies” in violation of Posse Comitatus, and their existence is therefore in violation of the US Constitution. While constitutional arguments exist in support of the existence of these agencies, both federal and state law enforcement agencies necessarily complicate the connection between the sovereign (“the people”) and the monopoly on violence, which sets the stage for a tyranny.
It’s probably worth noting these organizations are not necessary to keep the peace, and in fact, transfer of the right to commit violence to these federal and state authorities has led to a drastic and ridiculous increase in violent crime. I would dare anyone to make the argument this country would not be much safer if the peace was being enforced by sheriffs and militias.
“The Right to Bear Arms Shall Not be Infringed”
The US government has at this point nullified all ten items in the Bill of Rights, which is the core of our “social contract,” but to keep things simple, and to connect back to the concept of a monopoly on violence, we can look merely at the Second Amendment. “Shall not be infringed” is four words. Very simple. Yet, the US government has declared that there are certain types of arms that you are not allowed to own, including fully-automatic guns. They have also declared that certain groups of people are not allowed to own guns, including felons and drug users, as well as the mentally ill.
Hunter Biden was convicted of felonies for lying on Form 4473, a federal form you have to fill out to buy a gun, about his drug use. This is a fake crime. The federal government does not have the right to tell someone they have to fill out a form before they can buy a gun, they do not have the right to judge who can own a gun.
Now, someone might say “well, fully automatic weapons are really dangerous and I don’t think felons, drug addicts, and the mentally ill should have guns!” But that is not the way this works. The sovereign authority of the state cannot be based on people saying “well, that seems reasonable enough.” Anything can be made to “seem reasonable enough.” The fact is that the Second Amendment says “shall not be infringed” means that the state has no authority whatsoever to infringe on anyone’s right to purchase and own any kind of firearm.
Arguments will follow about black crime. Those arguments present all kinds of problems, perhaps first and foremost that the US Constitution was not written with the expectation that America would end up with a large black population with the same rights as white citizens. But that sort of discussion can go in too many different directions, so we should simplify it with two rhetorical questions:
- “Would sheriffs and militias allow black criminals to behave in the way that the current system allows black criminals to behave?”, and
- “When was the last time you saw the FBI raiding South Chicago to strip the blacks of their illegally owned firearms?”
The axiom that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” has been turned into a cliche, but it is nonetheless true.
However, this is all in fact irrelevant. Even if there were hordes of blacks walking into gun shops and buying fully-automatic rifles and immediately opening fire on crowds of people, the federal government would not have the right to tell you you have to fill out a form before you buy a gun. If that was happening, there would be legal solutions to it, within the framework of the Constitution, which would not require stripping people of their rights enumerated in the social contract.
This is a Tyranny
You can go through the entire Bill of Rights and find similar situations to the gun control situation. The NSA is engaged in widespread spying on the entire American population. There are secret courts. The FBI orders social media companies to censor content. Income tax. Property tax. “Civil rights.” Child Protective Services. Again, I am not going to make a comprehensive list, and I don’t know if one even could make such a list.
If you were to ask someone who believes in the validity of the US government where it gets its authority, they would say “people vote for it.” Obviously, there are all sorts of problems with that argument, for example the fact that elections are so heavily influenced by special interest groups and the so-called “representatives” are just a bunch of criminals who do not actually represent the will of the people in any way at all. You could also point to the fact that as of 2020, elections are not being decided by the number of votes a candidate receives.
But that is all straying from the point that even if these were real representatives, they would not have a right to pass laws that violate the US Constitution. They would not be able to tell you you can’t own a fully-automatic rifle or that to buy any firearm, you have to fill out a form. “Shall not be infringed” means “shall not be infringed.” According to the basic theories of republicanism, people do not have the ability to vote away natural rights enumerated in the social contract.
Because the US government does not follow the Constitution, they do not have a legitimate right to tell anyone what to do. You can spend all the time you want trying to deconstruct how we got into this situation, but you will always be left with the reality that this government does not have sovereignty over the American people. And yet, they are able to kill you. They are able to put you in a cage for the rest of your life. The reason they are able to do this is because they command an army of men with guns.
The US government is not a sovereign authority and it is arguably not even a “government.” It is a criminal gang that forces people to do things under threat of violence. This is no different than a mafia syndicate.
Blissful Ignorance
The reason most people are unconscious of this fact is that most people have not done anything that bothers the federal government. People pay their shakedown money (taxes). People maintain the approved public discourse. People follow the laws (at least the ones that the gang cares if they follow). They play video games and masturbate and smoke pot. They eat processed food. They watch Netflix. They are pacified consumers. They are good slaves.
The federal government has done a very good job formulating the illusion of freedom. It’s an invisible cage. The only time you are going to realize that you are under a tyranny is when you do something the tyranny doesn’t want you to do. I did that, and felt the consequences of it. I can confirm that there is no actual freedom in the American system.
Thankfully, we are reaching the point where more and more people are beginning to notice that this system is not what it claims to be. It is infringing more aggressively on the basic rights of average people now. It has become clear that there is no real connection between voting and public policy.
Most people will never understand what I’ve outlined here. But we are reaching the point where many people will refuse to tolerate the abuses they are being subjected to by this criminal gang.
Stop Validating the Rule of a Criminal Gang
Any participation in this system is a validation of it.
Of course, I must add the caveat that just as in any other situation where someone is threatening you with a gun and you have no ability to defend yourself, you have to cooperate. They have the ability to force you to do things because they have a gun to your head, and you would be foolish to get yourself killed or thrown in a cage for not cooperating. That is very basic.
But you do not have to validate the system. You don’t have to go around talking about politics as if they have any meaningful effect on the behavior of the government. You certainly don’t have to vote. They can kill you, but they can’t make you believe they have the right to do so.
God has to be the Sovereign
You can talk about the Enlightenment and liberalism. You can imagine what it would be like if America had a king. These are big topics, and much of the existing discussion is silly. Looking back, it seems to me that liberalism was a mistake, though I also have a great fondness for the Founding Fathers and great respect for the system they were trying to create. There are also big issues relating to the way technology changed the basic nature of society. I have consistently argued that the Enlightenment was simply an unavoidable result of the printing press and widespread literacy, when the peasants began to reckon that the kings and nobles were not all that different from themselves.
It’s a very big discussion, and I don’t think anyone can claim to truly understand how history could have gone differently, or what a future system should look like. It’s probably easy enough to say that the world would be a better place if Germany had won World War II, though no one can claim to know how a reactionary movement like Fascism would have developed over the course of the last century.
It is very important to recognize that while the Divine Right of Kings established the king as God’s representative on earth, liberalism began by declaring that each man was given rights by God. Both systems began with the premise that God was the supreme authority over men. Obviously, modern liberalism has abandoned that concept, replacing natural rights (God-given rights) with human rights (rights that emerge from vague, abstract notions that are surprisingly difficult to pin down). One must admit that it would have been impossible for the Divine Right of Kings to devolve into godlessness in the way liberalism has devolved into godlessness. But then one must also admit that liberalism was a reaction to what were seen as flaws in the Divine Right of Kings.
There is one thing we can know for certain: mankind can only be ruled by God. God has to be the only sovereign. Any system that does not have that core principle will fail. Unless society agrees that man is sacred and born free because he was created by God and has the spark of the divine inside of him, we will always end up as dehumanized slaves ruled over by decadent and depraved tyrants.