Here are my political views (I reserve the right to add to or modify these at any time):
1. I believe in promoting liberty, and so did the founders of the United States. To that end, they drafted a constitution that specifically enumerates the only powers the federal government would be allowed to exercise, and reserves all other rights to the States or to the people. We’re way beyond that now, and the federal government exercises all kinds of unconstitutional power, depriving us of liberty. This is justified by how “good” the causes are — public education, social security, health care insurance for everyone, food and drug safety, etc. — but to the extent these causes are beneficial, they can and should be obtained without having the federal government exercise unconstitutional power.
2. When choosing whom I vote for, I stand on principles that most people call either conservative or libertarian, as the case may be:
- limited government
- low taxes
- reducing public debt by reducing public spending
- capitalism
- reducing regulation
- limited executive power
- strong national defense
- rare foreign military engagements (but all-in when they go!)
- NO federal taxes of any kind on individuals, estates, or business entities; NO federal sales taxes, value-added taxes, or real or personal property taxes. In my ideal world, the federal government would fund its operations by foreign trade duties, and perhaps by a population-based assessment against the states, which would be levied by the states and tendered to the federal government
- this is not an exhaustive list of my political principles
3. I favor conservatives taking back control of the Republican party. It’s hard to find candidates as staunchly conservative as I am, but if I find one sufficiently conservative I’ll support him in hopes of winning. However, if he’s another RINO, I’ll vote for the conservative third-party candidate even at the risk of letting the leftist Democrat win the election. Democrats and RINOs are on the same path to destruction; the RINOs go a little slower, but you wind up just as destroyed as with the Democrat, eventually. I mean, look at the Republicans over the last twenty years. Nuff said.
4. I keep and bear arms to defend myself and those in my care against criminals and mobs (should they come), not to fight the government. If the government comes to take my guns, I’m not going to prison or get myself killed. My family needs me. Don’t take up arms to overthrow the government — win the battle politically. But to win you have to fight. The reason we’re in this mess is because conservatives and libertarians, unlike busybody leftists, basically want to live their lives in peace and they don’t get out there and fight the political battles. The best defense is a good offense. Liberty is a target, and its enemies must be actively sought out and destroyed — politically. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Take action — politically.
5. I’m not a member of a militia, but they’re the best way to maintain the security and liberty of a free people. I’m a Swiss citizen, and Switzerland is a perfect example of a “well-ordered militia.” The citizens are the military. However, I would not favor compulsory service, as they do.
6. Killing babies in the womb is murder. Our land has a lot of blood on its head.
7. I do not pledge allegiance to the flag, to the Republic, or to the nation. My allegiance is to Jesus Christ and none other. I am grateful to him for this nation and the good he has done by and through its people. I’m also distraught by the harm they have done. I’m not blameless myself.
8. Government “social security” is a scam. The only real social security is a big happy family. The same goes for health care insurance. Failing a big happy family, church, community, and charities in general care for the poor and disenfranchised far more effectively than government does. If you don’t like health insurance companies and you’re not satisfied with your charitable options, start your own organization and do it better than the competition.
9. Get the government entirely out of the food, drug, health care, and agriculture regulation business.
10. Abolish the IRS.
11. End the Fed. Establish a commodity-based money system, e.g. gold and silver.
12. Re-open the national civilian machine gun registry. In fact, repeal all federal gun-control legislation including the acts of 1968 and 1993. Let the states handle it. Constitutionally, it’s their business anyway.
13. It’s nobody’s business if I want to install a toilet that flushes more than 1.6 gallons at a time.
14. It’s nobody’s business if I want to buy raw organic milk across state lines.
15. It’s nobody’s business if I decide vaccinations are more dangerous for my kids than the disease they claim to prevent.
16. The government has no business forbidding you to bury your loved ones on your own land in a burlap sack if you choose. Instead, you have to buy a coffin at monopoly prices from the funeral home and pay monopoly prices for a burial lot on someone else’s land.
~SnoMan, champion of liberty
right on ,brother. Me,Im more spiritual than church going,but,Im a believer. I also believe in our Constitution….I swore my oath for the first time in 1987 and at each Re-up.The Army retired me in 2004
I am a fan of the site, long time homesteader and prepper, but I do wish to make a comment. While in some ideal world I agree in principal with many of the 16 points in your political views, these opinions, which are shared by many, ignore history and the reality of today. For example #13; while I agree it shouldn’t be anyones business how much water you use to flush, unfortunately, it does matter to everyone. Perhaps not so much if you live off a well or natural spring, but most people today don’t. Since it is a fact that clean water is quickly become a scarce resource it becomes necessary for people to conserve water. As the lesson of the Commons shows us, if left to the individual we would simply exhaust our resource out of selfishness. Therefore, big bad governement (or the PEOPLE) must mandate 1.6 gal for all to protect the limited resource. #8 is more of the same. While I would prefer to return to a time with no social security because I have the means and the family to provide for me, it seems you forget that the reason we have social security is that in the 20’s and 30’s many of our elderly did not. Many seniors lived in poverty with no source of income or healthcare. Family, church, and neighbors didn’t help. Again, government (the PEOPLE) decided that it was in the public interest to help provide a safety net and hence, SOCIAL SECURITY. Best part is, many of the same Tea Party folks so angry at the governement are the same people dependent on Social Security and Medicare today. So long story short, I agree with you, but your views would not work for 330,000,000 people and therefore are not practical.
Sorry, but I would like to make a few more comments. #9 again seems to harkin back to some romantic bygone era. "Get the government entirely out of the food, drug, health care, and agriculture regulation business." This just seems to ignore history and the facts. Read the Jungle, or read about death rates among children in the late 19th and early 20th century before vaccines. Also look up industrial dairies before pasteurization. I’m in the food industry and I can assure you that without the USDA the # of death’s and illness from contaminated food would shock you. Do I think that the governement is efficient or always gets it right, of course not. But advocating for the return of the wild west where corporations are free to pollute, make false claims, practice unsanitary food processing, spray chemical herbicides and insecticides near my kids school, etc. seems unrealistic and naive. Reform, yes! But, abolish, not practical or sensible.
Just one more. I live in the country and we got an exemption to bury a relative on our own land, but if I lived in a suburban community with 1/2 acre lots I imagine I’d feel differently if you were my neighbor and wanted to contaminate my water supply with grandma in a sack. Part of the problem with our politics today is that people seem to take extreme positions without understanding that in most cases there must be exceptions and compromise for society to function.
I respect your political opinions except for the one about vaccinations. When you choose not to vaccinate your child you put other children at risk. For example babies and infants cannot receive certain vaccinations because they aren’t developed enough yet. When you choose not to vaccinate your child, they can contract a disease that may not be deadly to them, but they might spread it to an infant who could die from this. It is not just your business, it is an issue of the public and should be addressed that way. Public school systems are starting to require vaccinations because it is a serious public health issue. The MYTH that has been spreading in recent years that vaccinations can cause autism is completely false. The British doctor that published that study recently admitted to falsifying all of his data, and stated that there was no correlation between vaccinations and autism. And Jenny McCarthy is doing the world a huge disservice by spreading false information. Anybody who has taken a biology class should understand that vaccines are effective and should be used.
I understand your concern for children too young to be vaccinated. But I’m a libertarian, and so whenever I look for a resolution of competing interests like this, I always go for the one that respects individual liberty and property rights.
Compelling someone to ingest substances assumes that you own that person, which is the basis of slavery, and is completely incompatible with liberty. So if you’re going to respect the liberty of people, you can’t compel them to take a vaccine. This is inconvenient for those who think it increases the risk to their children, but the solution is for those people to ban unvaccinated people from their property.
This is a problem only because of the existence of "public" property. In a world without public property, the issue vanishes. In a world in which people were free to regulate their own property, you could exclude unvaccinated people from your house, your neighborhood, or your whole town.
As it is, we do have public property, and so there is a conflict of rights to be resolved. Putting liberty first, we can see that putting the parents of the unvaccinated child to the choice of hunkering down until he’s old enough to get a vaccine is less of an imposition on liberty than invading the physical person of another by compelling him to be vaccinated.
Still less of an imposition to the autonomy of the unvaccinated child’s parents would be to allow the vaccinated child’s parents the liberty to restrict their child’s whereabouts as they see fit, and the responsibility to be judicious about their child’s whereabouts. The former solution still places an unfair burden of restriction on parents who are exercising their right of self-determination.
Social Security, as it was conceived, was a noble idea but, as with so much that the government does, poorly executed. The Ponzi scheme that it turned into is an abomination. If it were managed by reputable financiers, I have no doubt that it would be in a healthy condition. I was one of those who believed that I should trust part of my livelihood to the politicrats in D.C. and expect that it would be best for me when I retired. HA! But, truth be told, I made some unwise choices myself. I worked for a few governmental agencies into whose "retirement funds" I paid the equivalent of SS. If I had known then what I know now, I would have deposited those funds into SS when I left those jobs. As it is, I receive below-poverty-level SS monthly checks and am housed in "government housing." It’s a nice apartment at low rent in a small town, but I have to watch what I spend, and I certainly can’t afford $80-90 for a BOB. A $30 pack from Wally World is having to suffice right now.
So if you have any suggestions for lower-priced equipment and supplies, they would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
#7, Christ before country!AMEN brother. Thats the root of the whole problem here. no Christ in this country.big brother wants Him out of this country.
I love this! You’ve got a new reader man. I’ll be coming back to see what else you have to tell.
Thanks!
I completely agree with your every point, and I dig the fact that you articulated them so well. Do you by chance have an off-the-top-of-your-head list of areas/regions in the US where like-minded, outdoorsy, self-reliant people might live that’s within striking distance (<30 miles) from a decent urban area for occasional outings?