Law to me is what I believe law should be for everyone but we all have our own beliefs don't we?
As you can probably tell by reading much of what I post, I love to learn law and talk about what I have learned in an effort to know more, hoping to make a positive difference in our system.
In my writings and conversations I get many asking me about why I say I don’t need man’s law and if I don't need man’s law I must be an extremist, sovereign citizen or anarchist. To be honest in many ways believe I am the opposite of each. First, I am a Constitutional centrist or Constitutional moderate so I am not a member of either wing. Second I am not a "sovereign citizen" because I believe the term to be an oxy moron and I don't even believe citizens can individually be sovereigns within a state because in order to be a member of any collective, certain sovereign powers are given up for the sake of others.
Finally, I am also not an anarchist because I personally like government when it operates as it should lawfully. I also find that anarchy is chaos or the complete abandonment of government and would prefer not to have to go back to staying home and defending my property against poachers. I like the idea of having my rights defended. Sadly today, government doesn't do so well defending rights and if it does it defends theirs at our expense.
When I say I don’t need man’s law, it isn’t because I am law-less, it is because a I am law -full. Adherence to God’s law I believe is Supreme to statutes and I know the Constitution was sure meant to me Supreme to the statutes. It also means that I desire freedom not only for myself but for everyone and adhering to man’s law has been the direct result of our loss of freedom.
But how can we lose freedom when those that have taken an oath swore to protect that freedom? Well, its because I argue that they don't know what they took an oath to and they also don't understand what freedom is. Furthermore, if those that took the oath and graduated from government propaganda mills they may not possess critical thinking skills to understand hypocrisy and inconsistency. This is no way is intended to disrespect others in their profession, these are just the facts.
I don't really need mans law for several reasons: For me personally...One, I love God, Two, I try to love my neighbor as myself. If I fail in my actions of either, I am held accountable by God, and my conscience is hounded by regret and that I am literally my own worst critic. In other words, no one needs to tell me what I may have done was wrong, if I didn't understand it at one particular time, conviction makes sure I know. My point is that I know what evil is, I try to refuse to participate in it and by refusing to doing so the carnal consequences don't apply to me because I didn't. I will say however that I also believe that Man's law through Gods law when correctly applied lawfully allows government to step in in the commission of crimes. So in those instances where one may have intentionally (not accidently) stepped out from within the law, the government has the rightful authority within the strict confines of such an application and is not subject to random and arbitrary or eve changing definitions of what law is.
Rightly so, Man's law was not to be created, it was to be found and applied. It was a power transferred by God and our Constitution to government to punish evildoers and is a legitimate lawful creation as long as it punishes evil. But if it is merely used for incremental arbitrary and abuse of power those that are enforcing such laws may be more the one's arguably doing evil than those defending themselves against them.
Here is a very popular and easy example, but I warm you, it may raise your blood pressure. I am also open to debate it.
First I would like to ask you think speeding evil? Is speeding evil if it is intentional or accidental or both?
Some say, "well, Tom, are you just going to go 90 MPH on the freeway?" (I don't know why but in conversations 90MPH is the most common choice for people in making an argument. Its weird to me.) The answer is maybe but the question shouldn't be how fast I would go, it would be when, how, if it was accidental or intentional and was I endangering anyone.
Some will say: "well you could endanger yourself!" Well that is true but governments were not created to protect me from myself, they were to keep the peace. If what they say is true, none of us could do anything that was even remotely defined by them as dangerous and that is a slippery slope.
The proper way to look at the law for me is whether what I do, when I do it would it harm others and depending on when and the surroundings of when I chose to drive 90MPH would be more important than actually driving 90MPH. In a lawful court, the citation wouldn't be determined by the mindset of an officer especially if he could provide reasonable doubt on whether I was intentional in my actions and if I did, the intentionality would be because of the posted speed limit it would be beyond a reasonable doubt I did it intentionally to endanger others.
Consider a conversation I had with a friend in ISP on a ride-with. I watched as he set his cruise control for 72MPH. When I asked him why he chose 72MPH, he told me it was because he wanted to give people a little leeway and if they pass him, he would pull them over and may cite them. When I asked him about why I couldn't go faster in the fast lane he told me that I would endanger others and it was against the law because the posted speed limit is law. I brought up an example about him arbitrarily choosing 72MPH and about the 10MPH speed variance between tractor-trailers and cars. I told him well if 10MPH difference is against the law, and dangerous why does that difference exist between trucks and cars? He said, If you were going faster in the fast lane than others, you would be endangering others. I asked him so what about slow cars on the freeway or those on a slow merge coming onto the interstate are they not more of a danger? Apparently the government led, tax payer funded propaganda campaign has led them to believe that only going fast on the interstate is dangerous and not going slow.
I asked him about traffic and the increased risk of accidents and he told me that was true. I said if congestion creates more danger then why when they choose to drive 72MPH or pull us over, won't people pile up behind him and why isn't that doing more danger than allowing people to travel freely on the interstate?
Please, no disrespect to him (he actually became a friend of mine after the court case and is a great man) or anyone else in communicating this issue. In his view I found out that he believes that speed kills. If I believed that I would also believe forks make people fat and that guns kill people. Speed itself doesn't kill, neither does inattentive driving but they both can. The problem is that eating, breathing and living can kill too so if we are willing to be controlled traveling down the interstate because we could possibly hurt someone else, should we also be controlled in the way we eat, breathe and live? This too is a slippery slope.
Also a few other things to consider in this example is who created speed limits and what they were created for and if the laws were indeed legitimate, can these laws become arbitrary and abused and can they be used to generate revenue for a government that never is satisfied with what they get from the taxpayer? Could a scenario exist where the government used to out of control spending that needs money not try different ways to increase revenue for the things it thinks it need and wouldn't that be a conflict of interest? Wouldn't it also be considered a form of "double taxation?" Could it then become an act of soft tyranny?
If I had to guess, I would say that the speed limits and gas rations were not about gas shortages like we were once told decades ago, anymore than masks are mandated to prevent the spread of COVID, they were both about control. I also believe that speed limits were probably properly created by engineers that dictated what the roads were built for and average speeds. If speed limits are left for the governments to decide, and they become arbitrary or too restrictive they will do more to limit the freedom to travel than promote it. Who are the federal agencies that are involved in these regulations as well, are they elected officials or bureaucrats?
Does the federal government have the Constitutional authority to be anywhere involved in roads? Actually yes... Post roads. As far as control is concerned consider the fees to travel: drivers license, registration, insurance, citations, toll booths and more. Do you suppose all of these are about freedom or even safety? Nah, I don't buy it, it is about revenue. How do I know? because cars aren't inspected for safety, you just pay the fee to exercise that "right." I wouldn't support the inspection process either but people do when it comes to boats! Why is it they can enter your boat by law but not your car? I digress.
What's more is that the average speed limit on the interstate in my area is 65MPH in town and 80MPH out of town. On average the flow of traffic is easily 78-80MPH in a posted 65MPH zone and 90MPH in an 80 MPH zone out of town. So is 90MPH really as dangerous as we are told? If you drove with me in my car, you wouldn't even know I was going 90 which opens up another can of worms.
If I am to keep my eyes on the road...how am I also to keep my eye on my speedometer? What if I don't know I am going 90? In my car you wouldn't. In a court of law in order to be charged for a crime, isn't one of the requirements to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I sped intentionally and with malice aforethought or mens rea?
You could say: Tom, you have cruise control! I could say yes or no but does that change the point of the argument? Is cruise control mandatory now? Hardly.
Cruise control? So, now that we have reached the Technocratic Surveillance State, our freedom should be placed in a microscope and set to see the most minute detail and we should now be judged as criminals because our speedo peg was two slashes past the arbitrary established speed limit? If speed limits were recommended like the one's on mountain curves, I fully accept that but what is happening is far different. Does this mean the more technology advances the less freedom we should have or have that freedom determined by the government?
This isn't really about safety at all and anyone that believes it, I argue, lacks the most fundamental principles of freedom. Travel is a right, not a privilege because in this country governments cant lawfully give privileges, they can either lawfully protect rights or unlawfully deny them (with the exception of the commission of a crime where rights actually still exist.) In other words most statutes are control mechanisms to an entire populace that are quite honestly the antithesis of Americanism when they are used to restrict the freedom of the people rather than keeping people free.
Before radar, there was no method of placing people under a microscope to see if they were endangering others. If I recall, there also wasn't a game of "cat and mouse" where the police hid from the citizens to catch them in the act on the motorway. There were no unmarked cars or lights off prior to a traffic stop. This leads me to believe that it isn't about protecting the public or keeping the peace, its seems to be about punishing you for an offense of the state reminding you that you are the servant not the master and that you work for them not the other way around.
Then there is the court issue that we haven't mention yet that provides even more evidence that our system is corrupted. When you are stopped and cited they say "Don't blame me, you can take it to the judge." I always suggest to them that for those like me the statement is inflammatory and if a statement had to be made, the proper statement would be take it to you legislature because if the law is a bad law, it either not be followed or changed through the entity that made the law.
To suggest to go to the court, is only going to insure that you must comply with the statute as law because that is how judges see it being a part of that corrupted system. Also, to note, when you go to court, according to the constitution, you are entitled to a trial by jury which doesn't happen. if you ask for a court date, you get one to see the judge but when you do you don't stand before the mediator, which is what judges are, you are faced with the prosecutor without any mediation and you are left on your own to plea bargain with him not appeal to the judge so the state, in essence, remains in control of telling you what your rights are,
Ask yourself what would happen if the (informed) people met and spent every legislative session writing law that restricted what government could do? How would those in government feel about that? One could say "well we have people in government" and I would say, yep, that have forgotten or never knew why they were their or their limitations.
Did you know that when you take an officer to court, you are surrounded by members of the BAR that all work together? If this is in fact true, where is your proper representation when they are all part of the same private organization that would appear to work against you for their benefit? Did you also know that when you go into court, both parties were to supply evidence of their claims and that in cases of infractions none is apparently needed, just the word of mouth of the officer and you? Who do you think in most cases will win that case? I was under the impression that both testimonies held equal weight and without evidence the outcome was undeterminable if based on hearsay alone?
Did you also know that the citing officer also, when I asked him said I was guilty of a crime? the court is in "session" and he believed I was guilty of a "crime!?" After all was said and done I did what i believed to avoid "reasonable doubt" but it didn't matter. I wonder if it was because they may be revenue generators for the state as well as revenue generators to cush the judges retirement funds that I believe I read on one of their websites. I can only imagine what life it like now going to court where they force you to wear a mask, then tell you your constitutionally protected right of trial by jury is suspended indefinitely "due to COVID? is not COVID the blanket excuse to turn free people into slaves while empowering government to tell us what to do and tell us what our rights are and when we can exercise them?
The point of this post is not to focus on the speed limit or lambaste those enforcing the statutes at all, or defend such a position with reckless abandon like some others do, it is just to offer an example of the tentacles and unintended consequences that should be considered when looking at even the most seemingly insignificant issue that will have some statutory requirement. Law to me should be clear, consistent and looked at through the eyes of whether the written law is consistent with the spirit of the law and whether and to what degree it can be abused as well as maintaining that principle of maintaining our freedom not security.
Again, this post is not meant to disrespect anyone, especially in law enforcement it is merely to provide an example of how I see law and I used the easiest example I could think of and one I think could bring out some dialogue by those that disagree that I believe is necessary.
What I can't understand is why people hate traffic yet many of them drive slow enough to create it. Why they hate to get pulled over but continue to allow it without changing the law? This looks to me like decades of compliance programming and of course the neutering of the area in the brain that maintains the ability to critically think.
After all I have said, though it is important to know I understand that a paradigms exists. I understand, as pragmatists, much of what law enforcement does and has to see and deal with. I understand how seeing what they see would change their focus to wanting to protect people from themselves in every proactive way possible and I can respect that desire. What I can't respect are those that use this increase in power to control the people they serve and make them criminals for frivolous and clearly unlawful statutes because the people merely offended the state.
I also understand the "liberty paradigm" that sadly lives more altruistically in our minds that it does in real life. I also understand that to the pragmatists, our ideals and principles are utopian and impossible and even laughable. But just because they feel that way, doesn't mean we aren't correct. Maybe we could be pelted in debate with "what if scenarios" and made to look like our ideas are not applicable today but those that felt like we are the losing side of the debate don't understand the principles and why we are correct.
I get all of it, hopefully you see that I do but what I also get is that there is much more beyond the paradigm and that the law over time and the proper relationship between government and those they were to serve has changed and almost every law on the books does more to violate your liberty than it does to protect it. Furthermore, if we fight for it, somehow it is against the law? If what I say is true, I really only have a few more questions...What is the Supreme Law of the Land? What was the point of the oath they take? How do their actions do more to promote freedom than an incremental totalitarian police state? And how in a Constitutional republic that was created to guarantee freedom to constrain government to few and defined powers has the government that takes the oath, come to believe the opposite and think it lawful while you while they cite you for something that is arguably not?
If liberty is to be preserved we need people that know what liberty is. We also need people willing to fight for it. If you don't know or don't understand, of course you would see us as extreme or ridiculous but maybe that's just like the way we look at those that don't understand.
Some say this topic is ridiculous because this country has bigger issues. This may seem like a reasonable statement if you look only at the issues themselves in that narrow periphery but if you look at the bigger picture, I argue that this country has bigger issues because we have allowed the little one's seemingly insignificant to incrementally increase the power of government they were never to have had.