It seems wise to me to eschew hair-brained conspiracy ‘theories.’ It’s astounding to me that people could actually believe crazy shit such as a belief that we are all being mind-controlled through chem-trails and fluoride by Jewish reptilian overlords from outer space. Wow! Really? Such insane garbage does nothing but confuse and muddle the real issues and distract from debates in which we can look to hard facts and empirical evidence to evaluate an issue.   But there is one conspiracy I believe to be true; governments conspire against our freedom every day. That much should be obvious to even the most casual of observers.

 

Resisting a one-world government is not about fighting against some secret cabal of a handful of narcissistic puppet-masters manipulating the entire human race, but simply about preventing a global tyrannical government that we could potentially bring upon ourselves as one of many possible futures for humanity.   The danger of tyrannical government is not so much in any ill-contrived conspiracy, but is much more accurately described in the words of American revolutionary and former President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, who said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” This is not a desperate and irrational reach at a conspiracy, but the wise consideration of an important cautionary tale such as told in Friedrich Hayek’s, “Road To Serfdom.”

In whatever form tyranny ominously creeps, it is the civic responsibility of people who wish to be free to be vigilant in guarding human freedom and individual liberty from all types of tyranny – including the tyranny of government over-reach which may even be sanctioned by a majority vote. This principle of freedom was championed by another American revolutionary, Thomas Paine, who said, “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” This seems reason enough to me that the conspiracy crowd should let go of all the nutty-ass conspiracy bunk, and simply stand for those same timeless principles of human freedom which consistently call out real government corruption and statist/collectivist oppression in all its’ various forms – especially over individuals, who Any Rand aptly pointed out is the smallest minority.    In other words; instead of flailing about in the wind attempting to combat some nameless and faceless cabal of conspirators like some raving lunatic, we should analyze fact-oriented information for ourselves if we want to fight back against those things which are tangibly destroying human freedom and even claiming innocent life. While I can certainly appreciate a good scalding of the state by some appropriately outraged person who has suffered long at its’ most violent hands, outrage and shouting is not always enough. For some of us, this may mean we further dedicate ourselves to obtaining knowledge and trying to be helpful in the struggle for positive solutions; for others, it may mean launching an all-out propaganda war for control of people’s minds and not be so worried if the truth is lost to the dogma. This may be the crux of the matter as to the difference between a philosophical libertarian such as myself, and a ‘conspiratarian’ who seem to me to many times mistakenly call themselves libertarians because they end up finding so much in common with the libertarian-esque suspicion of governments. It is worth noting that while ‘libertarians’ and ‘conspiratarians’ may share a cynical view of government, it stems from much different roots; where a philosophical libertarian can point to empirical evidence of encroachments on the natural rights of individuals as enough reason to be always vigilant and cautious of governments, conspiratarians by my definition for the purposes of this essay are those who accept conspiracy-based hypotheses on faith very much like the blind religious faith of theists. And just like much of religious fundamentalism and apocalyptic environmental extremism, that faith is a deeply held and emotionally-charged conviction that is much more likely to result in cognitive dissonance than open-minded free-thought when challenged.

While I don’t wish to call out any particular names, I do think it’s worth noting that cockamamie fantasies being perpetuated and politically charged are not impotent – and probably very much should be challenged and corrected when possible. Take this asinine hoax hypothesis about the Sandy Hook shootings for example, and just how far some of the conspiratarian activists have taken it – even denying a mother’s heart-broken and tragic loss of her child. Pardon me if that offends anyone’s conspiratorial (in)sensibilities – but that’s just sick, sociopathic, and abominable:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/12/grace-mcdonnell-playgroun_n_5310928.html

 

I have to admit that I think that the conspiratarian activist kind of asked for what he got in this video; but even at that I’d welcome his and all cameras to film an actual relevant event like what recently happened at the Bundy Ranch with the militarized BLM force in Nevada:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O3n6finELs

 

While this sharp contrast in worldviews can make libertarians and conspiratarians very awkward bedfellows, one must ask if it ultimately matters in a given scenario what are the underlying beliefs and motivations of those who work on the same goals as you. If you’re dehydrating alone in the desert, do you care if the good samaritan who happens by to cool your lips with fresh water believes that his soul depends on his generosity? Would you even care if he thought he’d been sent by water-worshiping aliens on a mission to never have a case of dehydration in the world again? As long as you get the life-saving water your body needs, are you really going to stop the good samaritan and ask questions about his motivations – the answers to which may even cause you to refuse the water? Necessity has surely been the inspiration for many bridges to be built between otherwise irreconcilable parties.

 

If you need to put a label on it and define your enemy, then take a look at the corruption, tyranny, and misguided crusade of the ‘war on drugs.” America now accounts for about 5% of the world’s population, but about 20 – 25% of the world’s prison population. It seems we’re trying to fix all of our social ills by throwing everybody who doesn’t fit neatly into the government/corporate-approved box into a real box – complete with bars and people who will physically force your compliance.

If you want to do your fellow human beings a solid, then stand against growing international imperialism and occupation, unconstitutional military adventurism and intervention abroad, and war profiteering. It’s very possible that it was the outcry of a loud resounding NO by demonstrators in the UK, America, and all over the world last year that kept the U.S. from getting bogged down in another middle-eastern war when the heads of many states began beating the war drum for Syria. If you were at any of the demonstrations, you might have noticed that a lot of people from all types of various backgrounds were there to unite in our shared belief that the U.S. didn’t need to take actions that would potentially draw us into another costly war. This was an issue that even showed some TEA Partiers, Occupy’ers, pacifists, constitutionalists, conservatives, progressives, budget-hawks, anarchists, democrats, communists, republicans, humanists, and even some of the neo-con crowd showed we could unite around our shared distaste for another ill-advised war in a way that was truly representative of grassroots concerned citizen activism.   We may have actually stopped a war, and that is a revolutionary act worth dancing at the Jefferson Memorial over – a memorial which I confess a soft spot for when I saw it with my own eyes and realized for the first time that it was inscribed with this iconic quote from one of the great libertarian thinkers in human history, “I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” But, even T.J. Shouldn’t be put on a pedestal, as, alas – he was also a slave-owning hypocrite. It’s not the people, but the ideas that must be examined and forever challenged.

If you want to remove the obstacles to economic prosperity, efficiency, productivity, and innovation; then join the fight to roll back the regulatory Leviathan of ballooning and progress-choking government bureaucracy. In a Money Morning online post by David Zeiler last year, the Government Accountability Office reportedly identified 162 areas of duplicate spending – accounting for possibly $200 billion a year in waste on top of waste irresponsibly spent by government. And the national debt now stands at over $17 trillion; that’s over $55,000 per individual American citizen’s share of the debt.

If you want to call out to the carpet those who have betrayed human freedom and are responsible for growing tyranny, then you probably need look no further than those people who hold public office in your own neighborhood, county, state, and nation who support, defend, or even just fail to oppose all the freedom-killing laws which grow in size and scope every day all across America and even the rest of the world. Yeah, statists gonna’ state – but free people are gonna’ live free, and hopefully have enough of us vigilant enough to stop the creeping state from its’ most depraved crimes against humanity on some occasions. Leave it to government to tell people not to listen to all of the returning veterans who are trying to warn the American people about our own government because we all have ptsd and/or some other personal problems for which our input should be ignored. The truth is that many of us returning veterans do battle with lots of different demons, but that doesn’t automatically mean we’re paranoid when we see the militarization of the growing American police state looking more and more like the war zones our military occupies – or that some of us might feel uncomfortable with the secretive nature of the FISA Courts, the permanency of the Patriot Act, the Orwellian nature of the NSA, DHS, TSA, ATF, BLM, and other bureaucratic powers in this alphabet soup of agencies which aren’t authorized in the constitution. Surely it’s not just being irrational to be concerned about a national debt over $17 trillion dollars and with running deficits on track to only get worse going forward. Surely it’s not being unreasonable to fear that a government which would abandon our own people in Benghazi, use the IRS as a tool against political opponents, spy on Americans and knowingly lie about it until hard evidence proved otherwise thanks to an NSA whistle-blower who now has to seek asylum in other countries while charged with espionage, and equip major travel points with machines that can reveal your genitalia and people to feel them if you’re to be allowed to travel – all while these TSA employees are responsible for at least hundreds of thefts of passenger belongings but never proven to have deterred or caught one terrorist; would be a government that could do anything to anybody any time for any reason and not be in danger of being held accountable – having grown morbidly anti-thetical to the principles of those revolutionaries who have fought for liberty and independence and inspired the language of the Bill of Rights.  

Understanding the issues and problems we face in our coexistence here on earth is really not about any sensationalistic conspiracy – it’s much more accurate to describe it as history just repeating itself as fallible human beings continue to make the same old mistakes as our forebears, albeit sometimes in a slightly new context which includes contemporary technologies, industries, social structures, and politics, etc. All in all, the point is really that it’s such a huge waste of time and brainpower to get bogged down in asinine conspiracies and relatively inconsequential debates when obvious tyranny glares at us from all levels of a corrupt and criminal government. My vote is to waste no time fighting whatever invisible enemies the conspiracy hypothesizers conjure up, but rather funnel our efforts into resistance to the actual tyranny slapping us in the face on a daily basis and calling anyone (regardless of their beliefs (everyone has some strange beliefs if you look hard enough)) a friend if they ally themselves in that common struggle.

 

“If you see a good fight; get in it.” – Vernon Johns

 

 A.G. “Brick” House is an Afghanistan war veteran and former licensed minister (UPCI), who has become an outspoken skeptic, peace advocate, and involved himself in many other issues which he believes affect the individual freedoms of the people whose constitutional rights he took an oath to defend.  He currently resides in the heart of Tennessee with his companion dog ‘Liberty,’ where he is recovering from PTSD, enjoys the therapeutic hobbies of gardening, creative writing  https://chaossection.com/, playing drums in the metal band Outlaw Serenade http://www.outlawserenade.com/, and other forms of artistic expression   \m/