Chrisforliberty's Blog

Fellow blogger Denae D’Arcy was interviewed on Green Living:

“WATE’s Josh Ault interviewed me for an Earth Day story regarding green living. I never even considered myself as a trail blazer in this area but I am so excited about Josh’s willingness to bring attention to recycling, composting and conserving rain water.”

Here are some sights and sites of interests from my trip to Texas

Family Violence Prevention Services, Inc. - Talked with a representative on the sidewalk after visiting the Alamo.

Pat O’Briens - nice place to spend your nightlife. They hosted the opening night of the Mud Crawl with the Mud King and Queen candidates.

Saltgrass Steak House – a lovely restaurant along the Riverwalk

American Football Coaches Association

Gridiron Heroes - met Chris Canales at the AFCA Convention in Dallas. It is now a national organization that seeks to support athletes who have spinal cord injuries.

Silver Leaf Resorts – I visited the Hill Country Resort north of Austin. While I don’t have the money or time to commit to this now, it is certainly a possibility in the future. It would beat staying in a hotel.

Premiere Parking Company – This gives you an idea of what is going on.           A phony front that poses as a parking company. They use a device called “Boots” and fake ID’s which can be ordered off the internet. At least in Texas, they target out of state vehicles and have hired thugs from the drug cartels such as MS-13 to do their dirty work. The address is non existent and the phone number was out of the country. Upon further investigation, these kind of parking scams are happening all over the country. Furthermore, the local police department and FBI look the other way. It goes to show why you can’t rely on government.

‎”Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.” Edward Abbey

(Originally published October, 2008)

I’ve long been interested in court cases especially as it relates to matters of constitutional law. Specific cases would include the 2nd Amendment and how ironic that assailants of the 2nd Amendment say it is okay to trample on it (as well as the whole document itself) by claiming that the police will protect you and thus you don’t need a firearm for self-defense. Guess what? They are lying!

This past Wednesday, an employee at the Knoxville Center Mall was shot to death. Now yes, police officers were on the scene within four minutes, but the damage was already done. The police don’t prevent crimes. They only show up after the fact if they do at all. “If they do at all?” you ask. Yes. If they do at all. The police are not legally obligated to respond to any calls. So, you would not have legal case against them. There is plenty of case law that proves this to be true, two cases in particular. It call comes down to the general duty of the government (as if) and special relationships between particular parties.

“Here the effort to separate the hostile assailants from the victims — a necessary part of the on-scene responsibility of the police — adds nothing to the general duty owed the public and fails to create a relationship which imposes a special legal duty such as that created when there is a course of conduct, special knowledge of possible harm, or the actual use of individuals in the investigation.”

The D.C. Court of Appeals went on to say that it is a `fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.”
Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981).

The law in New York remains as decided by the Court of Appeals case Riss v. New York: the government is not liable even for a grossly negligent failure to protect a crime victim. In the Riss case, a young woman telephoned the police and begged for help because her ex-boyfriend had repeatedly threatened “If I can’t have you, not one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no one else will want you.” The day after she had pleaded for police protection, the ex-boyfriend threw lye in her face, blinding her in one eye, severely damaging the other, and permanently scarring her features. “What makes the City’s position particularly difficult to understand”, wrote a dissenting opinion, “is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense. Thus by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of New York which now denies all responsibility to her.”
Riss v. New York, 22 N.Y.2d 579, 293 N.Y.S.2d 897, 240 N.E.2d 860 (1968)

In other words this means the only people the police are duty-bound to protect are criminals in custody, and other persons in custody for such things as mental illness. YOU have no recourse if the police fail to respond or fail to protect you from injury! Self-defense is your own responsibility.

In our modern culture, we are interested in victory. Whether it is a pitcher winning his 300th game, Peyton Manning throwing the ball all over the place or an individual being elected to public office, we want to win, favor those who are victorious and frown upon those who lose.

Victoria was the goddess of victory. She is the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Nike. The Romans generally would adopt other culture’s gods and goddesses and incorporate them into their own worship. Religion to the Romans was primarily a means of social control and keeping the masses placated. After all, who questions those who claim to be in office by divine right?

Alexander The Great and Julius Caesar are considered champions by what they were able to accomplish.  But to me, Alexander was full of himself and Caesar was a tyrant. Not my measure of how one obtains victory.

The Visigoths, led by Alaric I stacked Rome in 410. Some people consider this to be a defeat as they point to the period between 500-1400 as being “dark”. I find this label to be misleading. Yes, there was poverty, bad drinking water and people starved to death. Guess what? Even today, there are billions of people who are facing the same issues. So have things changed? Not really!

I hear a lot of talk these days about how we need to vote the Democrats out and the Republicans in come November, so that things will change in Washington. Well, the same claims were made in 2008, 2006, 2000, 1994, etc… What’s changed? Even the Founding Fathers were hoping that a new Constitution that placed much on the liberal ideas of individual rights, one having the right to worship as they see fit and a limited government would finally cause people to turn a corner.  But in many ways, if things did change for the better at some point, we reverted back to form.

For all those who think that winning elections in November or hoping for a military victory in the Middle East is going to usher in the return of Christ, you are being deceived. The people of the 1st century made the same mistake. The Jews expected a messiah that was similar to King David or the Macabees. But Christ was neither a general, a politician or any member of the elites. This speaks to the nature of who God is. Earthly victory and victory in Christ are two entirely different things.

Roger Berry in an editorial published on August 26, 2001 titled “Can a Deeply Religious Person Be a Government Leader?” by Christian Light Publications referred to the situation with John Ashcroft being nominated for Attorney General. He wrote that “With an obvious knowledge of the Bible and its implications in practical life, the reporter noted, “The New Testament that Ashcroft believes in calls on everyone to ‘render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.’” He aptly noted that the people of the United States need to know what John Ashcroft would do when rendering to one will offend the other. I am convinced that the reporter had a clearer understanding of the dilemma of a Christian serving in government than many “conservative” Christians have. Politics is by its very nature the art of compromise. Even a professing Christian in politics is going to have to compromise Christian principles at times. Ashcroft’s supporters even pointed out that when he was governor of Missouri, he efficiently established a state lottery system in spite of his religious opposition to gambling. The state voted to establish a lottery, and it was up to him to see that it was carried out. As Attorney General of the United States, he would need to enforce the abortion laws on the books.”

“The temptation is to trust in the hope that somehow Christianizing politics and government will lead to the betterment of society. In the last half century, numerous government leaders from the top down have professed to be born-again Christians. But it is also true that society in general has been on the skids spiritually as never before. I believe that the fault does not lie at the door of the government as much as at the door of the church that has trusted in politics to promote its standards and has failed in the call to point men and women to the Christ who alone can change their lives. The Christian’s “politics” is not earthly or carnal but persuading men and women to be reconciled to Christ.”

I once was dreaming of a career in the movies or TV production. It didn’t work out that way and needless to say, I wouldn’t want to be associated with what is coming out these days. So after a number of years of working odd jobs and trying other things, I am finally starting to find my niche in coaching or teaching. If I had known then what I know now, I would have chosen that path to begin with. At one time, I even dreamed of being President of the United States. Now a career in politics is the furthest thing from my mind. As for coaching, sure I would love to become a head football coach someday and maybe win 300 and something victories. But it is not my sole reason for being. True victory has to be measured in other ways than solely how the world measures it.

The issue of immigration has really been on the front pages this year. Whether it is purely for political purposes or come as the result of realizing that has gone awry is anyone’s guess.

Of course, if we truly wanted to be consistent about immigration, legal or illegal, how come nothing is being done about the immigration coming from Canada, Europe and Asia? I am sure the natives would have something to say about that. To really understand the root cause of this, one must first understand the rather unfortunate state of affairs south of the border. A little history is in order.

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” Smedley Butler, “War Is A Racket”

The pre-dominant economic system in the Eastern and Western Hemisphere is one that is a mix of fascism aka the corporate state and communism aka the poor person’s statism. I do agree with some that NAFTA to a large degree has played a role in the economic collapses that we’ve been witnessing lately. But it was merely a symptom of the problem, not the cause of the problem. As Alan Greenspan so succiently put it (before he went over to the dark side):

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.”

Folks, while I don’t enjoy upsetting your apple care (then again, I’ve done it quite a bit over the past 10-15 years), the economic problems we are experiencing isn’t because of the free market, but in spite of it. We are in fact witnessing the end results of the welfare state. The economies of welfare states inevitably collapse. It has happened in numerous other countries and yes, it has been happening in the United States, the land of the free and the home of the brave. But I’ve been having my doubts as to whether we are as “free” and “brave” as we like to claim. Perhaps I should insert “the few” along with the free and brave.

While we address this “immigration problem”, don’t ignore the underlying causes of it. Otherwise, we are just going around in circles. Only by embracing liberty-oriented options can it be solved. We must be careful to not adopt statist measures to address a problem that was caused by statism in the first place.