I can not write enough good words about how promising these two liberty focused initiatives are for actually doing something that can effectively combat the problem of the State that pretends is our federal government. Please read the information on the other side of the link below and consider supporting one or the other or both. I support the foundation and its Zero Aggression Project.
The message is clear and many citizens have known this problem for years. So now what do we do? http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-edt-spending-editorial-20120708,0,2415744.story
An acquaintance of mine here in Yorktown, VA emailed me this morning. He simply writes: “Robert, I just re-read your letter……you have it right……now what?” GG
GG is a highly successful businessman in real estate who has been working hard to revamp our local Republican Committee for the last several years. Back in early April of this year, I sent the below email to our local Board of Supervisors and cc’d the “who’s who of conservatives” here in York County, VA. It was a reply to GG having emailed us about a tragic story of property rights being violated by a local government in GA to the point that the property owner took his own life (see below).
So GG left me thinking, “Now what?” If you are reading this, do you have any ideas? If you do, please post them here to share with me and any other readers.
Thanks,
Robert E. Lehman #WakeUpAmerica!
Subject: RE: What county does this sound like? You will be shocked to read this !!
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2012 08:46:39 -0400
From the below linked article http://lfb.org/today/death-by-regulation/ :
“The political class is not really running things. As I’ve written many times, the political class is only the veneer of the state; it is not the state itself. The state is the permanent bureaucratic structures, those untouched by elections. These institutions make up the real ruling apparatus of government.”
I have no doubt that every individual who works for York County government as either an elected official or as a paid employee is just as much in support of the Constitution and individual liberty as most ordinary people. They want to live their lives the way they want as free citizens of these here United States.
But what often goes unnoticed by most people is that despite these individuals who work for the county government being in favor of limited government, as direct workers for the government, they can’t help, no matter how hard they try to not grow the government bureaucracy , to do the exact opposite.
The government at any form at any level is a cancer to freedom. It naturally grows even without conscious awareness on the part of those otherwise good people who work for it who think themselves to be in fact a proponent of limited government. The mere act of participating in a political party and/or serving as an employee for government leads to MORE government and LESS freedom. Why is this? After all, isn’t York County composed of a majority of so-call limited government conservatives?
Why is York County government more of a citizen burden than it has ever been before and inserting itself more and more into the private lives and encroaching on violating the freedoms of its citizens? Because that is what government is supposed to do by its very nature – even when we think we are electing conservatives to keep it limited.
Here is the county BOS mission from its website:
As stewards of the public trust and resources, the Board of Supervisors will maintain and improve the quality of life for all County citizens.
The Board will:
(emphasis added)
I have to laugh, as how are they to even truly know how they can improve the quality of life for anybody other than themselves as individuals? Even with their good intentions, they trample the individual, despite the last bullet. The last bullet is complete hogwash when coming from any government. Government by its natural definition is anathema to the individual’s rights.
When good liberty minded, limited-government people get involved in running the government, the government still grows, because those good natured people mean well and through their good deeds as servers to the “cause of government” that is the mission above, get sucked into the black hole leviathan that is liberty killing government bureaucracy.
Yes, you read it right. The otherwise good and caring people who run York County government are conscientious and hard working and successful. They do not fail. So naturally, they become good at running government. After all, working to support government is how most of them make their living and support their families. They need to do a good job to keep earning their paychecks. But make no mistake, no matter what they try to do to prevent it, the government will grow. Nothing they do to try not to grow it will work. They are powerless to stop it.
Only the citizens who support the government through their hard earned tax dollars and by their voting for elected members of the governing board can stop the growth of government. The only tool the citizens have between their freedom and the heavy hand of government is its elected board members. For the BOS members to be successful at keeping government growth at bay, they MUST dig deeper and look past the administrator or attorney and other appointed leaders of the government staff to see the waste and to truly see the initiatives that lead to less citizen freedom and that add to citizen burdens. BOS members cannot rely solely on senior administrative staff for the real picture. After all, they administrative leaders of county government are working to save their jobs. Does it make sense that any of them will commit harakiri with respect to their careers? No, of course they wouldn’t!
Government, no matter how well intentioned its conservative leaders are is a cancer to freedom. If you have read Atlas Shrugged or Animal Farm, you can appreciate the very natural tendency that government has to take otherwise good people who work for it and almost hypnotize them into having to do whatever it takes to grow it. It is a very real system that has the structure of a self-reinforcing feedback loop that inevitably leads to MORE government and LESS freedom.
When permitted to run unabated, you get the tragedy of Death by Regulation and the sad story Andrew Wordes of Roswell, GA. Ladies and gentlemen of York County, VA: do no think that we are immune to the ills of uncontrolled big government. It is happening to us now and many people are blind to it. Use this sad story as a lesson. What will be your role in York County’s history?
Respectfully Yours,
Robert E. Lehman
Yorktown, VA
From: GG
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 22:37:22 -0400
Subject: What county does this sound like? You will be shocked to read this !!
To: list
My writing has slowed quite dramatically this past month or so. It seems that not much is really happening that inspires me to write. I mean, how much can any body rail against socialism and big government before it becomes redundant? So what else is there to write?
Things taking place now for which I am paying attention none the less are:
So as the above plays out, I lay low. I get up, go to work, come home, enjoy some rest and relaxation with my family and do it again…wondering how long all of it is going to last.
The purposeful mistreatment of Ron Paul supporters on the part of Republican party insiders at the national , state parties, as well as local and district levels is going to become known one way or another.
It is well known among people who were there at the time at the 2008 national convention in Minnesota that the Republican National Committee used security staff to subdue legitimate Ron Paul supporters from being permitted to express their support in any way shape or form for Ron Paul as legitimate party delegates.
You can view the Georgia GOP party woman discussing that 2008 snub at the start of the video below. Yet despite her apologies and assurances, we soon see that the intended snubbing of legally registered party delegates is again to take place, and the Ron Paul delegate support is once again suppressed and not permitted to be fully vetted and transparent.
What is happening in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia with the Republican Party inappropriately disregarding established party procedure when it comes to tallying the delegates won by the Ron Paul campaign is happening across the country. Ron Paul supporters are joining GOP committees and they know the rules. The old GOP establishment that remains in control is breaking them. That has got to be some sort of electoral fraud or malfeasance. Please share the news of this story with others to bring this to light. It is not isolated to Georgia. There needs to be transparency and accountability to how the GOP arrives at a nominee.
http://runronpaul.com/interest/breaking-news-athens-clarke-county-ga-republican-delegate-fraud/
Recent news accounts like this of the FBI’s announcement that it has concerns with people who claim themselves to be Sovereign Citizens evokes thoughts of our country’s founding. The patriots who were associated with country’s founding fathers had to consider the threat of apprehension by the authorities when they were contemplating whether or not to break free from the rule of King George and Great Britain. It is no small thing to break free from an established government. That is why the American Revolution was so historic in the annals of human history.
Sovereign Citizens have taken a different interpretation of current prevailing viewpoints of what it means to be an American and living in the United States. In essence, they seem to want to separate themselves from the current laws of the land and live by a different set of rules from the mainstream citizens. They appear to describe the current laws as illegitimate when pitted against the rights American are described as having as written in the Constitution. In the video that runs on their website, the woman makes a reference to the USA as a corporation to which the Sovereign Citizens do not want to participate. I have come across other references about this Corporation over the years and have been interested in learning more about it but then abandoning the issue altogether due to time constraints and thoughts about what does it really matter any way? Maybe the Sovereign Citizens just had more time and interest in seeing what it is all about. I am not sure.
Today in the year 2012, the vast majority of citizens are law abiding taxpayers of which many have serious concerns and objections about how our elected / appointed representatives are managing our national, state, and local governments. It would be members of this segment of American society who organized the Tea Party and /or might be active in the Libertarian political party. Many people who follow the current rules of the electoral and political system have expended a good many years of their lives and personal resources to try and get more Constitutionally compliant leaders into government at all levels.
Anybody who has followed American political events over the past 70 years knows that the Republicans and Democrats backed by highly financed special interest groups have claimed wins in most if not all major political campaigns for public office. It would be very frustrating for any normal person to begin to think that there has to be a better way to push back the problem of the wrong people being elected to run the government because they have what appears to be an inappropriate ability to wield greater influence than a majority of most individual citizens in the election.
Maybe that is what led to this group that calls themselves Sovereign Citizens. When I think of them and why they do what they do, there is a part of me that can sort of relate and understand and maybe even agree with the rationale as to why they would want to “not play by the rules” of the prevailing form of government.
Let me be clear, I do not condone violence and aggression against other people including the lawful authorities. That noted, for purposes of trying to understand their behavior and actions so as to learn and maybe improve the situation that is causing the FBI to escalate their surveillance of this group, perhaps Sovereign Citizens simply have more courage to push back and defend themselves from the government in a fashion that based on their political beliefs, can lead to what looks like violence and aggression against the State.
Obviously there is a stigma that mainstream society attaches to people who are members of such fringe groups. But I get a sense that the fringe is growing. Maybe the Sovereign Citizens are just an early version, a way-out in-front organized group ahead of the game. Sooner or later it seems inevitable that more and more supposedly Free People who have become frustrated with their government run amok would form in this coalesced fashion if unable to realize the changes they see as being needed to save their way of life because of a corrupted and unconstitutional electoral and political system and government.
What I wrote above does not seem to differ much with what Thomas Jefferson and the Founders had to wrestle with when they decided to break free from Great Britain. On the outset of the Revolutionary War, they wrote and affirmed with sacred honor the Declaration of Independence. The words below from that historic document tied to our country’s founding seem to mimic in some part at least, to what might be compelling the Sovereign Citizens to opt out of the current rule of law.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Framed in this light, are the Sovereign Citizens really that bad or just that misunderstood by the current authorities?
Living in America 