From Every Direction We Cry R3volution . . .

In the fall of 2008, as I contemplated the crisis that was approaching this country--a crisis brought on by bad legislation and partisan politics, and by a sense of entitlement to the property of others -- I also felt the sense of isolation and fear among patriots, and I felt very alone.


I had followed and supported Ron Paul's R3volution, I had silently cheered the R3volution sign that appeared overnight on the fence outside of Del Norte High School--and smiled inwardly at the young people's refusal to allow the administration to remove it. But over at New Mexico's Flagship University, I talked about my concerns only with the young R3volutionaries in tricorn hats who manned the Ron Paul R3volution Booth.


But beginning last spring, with the melting of the snow came Bob Schulz and We the People Foundation's drive to commit concerned citizens to the restoration of Constitutional governance. And the Oathkeepers Rally on the green at Concord. And a meeting of patriots at a small restaurant in Edgewood. And the Tax Day Teaparty Protests. And I ran into Dave Batcheller again and again. He was handing out a flyer, trying to bring disparate patriot groups and individuals together. As I sipped coffee at Chile Hills--it was Pesach and I couldn't eat anything--I told him of my passion for the Constitution and my conviction that we needed Bob Schulz's Continental Congress. And so, right then and there, we set a date and met the next week, and began to work on it. And at the same time, I was drawn into the nascent New Mexico Patriot Alliance, and quickly became a member of the core leadership group.


Through all of the work we did with the Tea Parties, the 9-12 groups, the R3volution, and the Libertarians, I met many of the people that I now share my passion with today. They include the New Mexico staff of the Kokesh for Congress campaign. I met Michael Moresco, who rode his bike across the country for Ron Paul, and Jordan Page, a musician who is the Bob Dylan of the R3volution. And most especially, I met Dave Batcheller and Michael Lunnon, my fellow CC2009 delegates from New Mexico, and the Professional R3volutionary and founder of the R3volution March, R3volution Broadcasting, and my business partner in Common Sense Inc.


The things we are doing together now, are the things that I imagined we must do back in that very strange and sad fall of 2008, but could not imagine with whom and how. And last night as I sat at table at the Independence Grill, chairing an NMPA Sons and Daughters of Liberty Committee meeting (a.k.a. Kids of Liberty), I realized how far we had all come.


I was talking about the original Sons of Liberty, who were the activists that sparked the flame of the American Revolution. I was telling the group about their protests of Writs of Assistance (the 18th century British version of the Patriot Act), and the taxes levied without representation to pay for empire-building wars, and the Intolerable Acts that closed the Port of Boston and put the city under martial law. As I described the Sons of Liberty then, one of my Kids of Liberty members said, "Doesn't sound much different than now. . ." And at that moment, sitting under an antique flag dating back to the American Revolution, I realized that we are the children of those Sons of Liberty, and like them we are facing the same age-old threats to our Liberty. And moreover, like them we are no longer alone. The spirit of Sam Adams was among us, literally from the tap and figuratively as we talked about a kinder, gentler approach to showing our displeasure than that of tarring and feathering tax collectors, although some of us would still like to ride them out of town on rails--or at least on the Rail-Runner.

And as we talked about the R3volution, seriously and with black humor, I realized that I'm no longer alone.

As Jordan Page sings in his new song, Liberty:




"As arrogant men tear up our Constitution-
From every direction we cry "R3volution"!
Standing together and without permission,
Soldiers for truth in the war of attrition
The love of our country as our ammunition . . .

"I'm going to change all the things I find strange,
For I know that I'm not alone . . ."


From every direction, patriots are crying: R3VOLUTION!

Eighteen months in the R3volution

Today the last entries posted from a blog that used to follow appeared mysteriously on the reading list of my Blogger Dashboard. Since I hadn't seen items for this blog, I quickly clicked through to it, excited to find out what was happening with that particular homeschool blogger. Since I had been fooling with the blogs I follow on that list, I thought I had fixed my reading list. Then, as I clicked on links on that blog, I realized that I fallen into a time warp to February of last year. I have no idea why those blog entries from that blog appeared on my list today, and labeled that they had been posted one day ago.

After sending her an e-mail, I suddenly noticed the time warp and realized that my blogging friend appears to have given up blogging last year at this time for reasons unknown. Usually, it seems that those reasons are related to major life changes, that alter the rationale for a blog or that interfere with one's ability to blog. In my admittedly unscientific survey of blogs that have ended, I see very few blogs that have successfully changed the theme or purpose for blogging and continued blogging on the same blog site.

Ragamuffin Studies has changed focus as my life has changed over the past eighteen months to two years. Started as a homeschooling blog, I am still blogging even though the Boychick has made the transition to high school, and even though my focus has changed from his schooling--and my university research, to other topics. I am not sure how successful those changes have been, since I do not meter my blog, but I do know that the number of comments has decreased over this year.

One of the most interesting results of clicking through some of the links to this particular blog, and on to the blogs of other blogs I frequented, was the experience of reading my own comments on those other blogs and realizing how thoroughly my life has changed over the last 18 - 24 months. It is an amazing transformation that grew out of seeds planted long ago; seeds that lay dormant for many years, but began the process of generation through the homeschooling process itself.

In one of my first overtly political posts, called Creeping Fascism, I wrote:

My son is not the servant of the State. He does not owe allegiance to a specific government, office or person. He owes allegiance to an idea. The idea that "governments are instituted among (human beings) at the consent of the governed." If he chooses to run for office or serve in the military--and himself becomes a servant of the citizens, then he will take an oath of fealty. Not to a flag, government, office or person. Rather, he will take an oath to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." To protect and defend an idea. The idea of Liberty.

This statement, written almost casually, reveals certain assumptions that I have about the nature of government and the importance of the individual, assumptions that were sown as I was brought up libertarian, hearing discussions at Papa's Kitchen Table University that regularly referred to Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, among others. And although in my young adult years I chose to either ignore political thought and philosophy altogether, or I experimented with various political ideas that took me far from them, the roots of my upbringing and a certain sense of personal independence remained with me, formed as they were in my childhood.

Even when I was not overtly an individualist or a libertarian, the way I conducted my life remained individual and libertarian. I chose to practice my religion, but maintained an idiosyncratic rational approach to its beliefs and stories. I gave birth to my daughter at home, after carefully researching the subject. When certain questions were raised with respect to my views and their impact to my husband's security clearance, I pointed out that my political views were protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution. I used to regularly assert my fourth and fifth amendment rights when passing through the odious INS checkpoints fifty miles inside the borders of the United States. I taught my children to know their rights are and how to assert them in the face of the growing police state within the United States.

During all the years that I voted, I never voted for a single major-party candidate in a presidential election. I tended toward voting Libertarian, although I also voted Green or independent, depending on the candidates. I was outspoken about the bankruptcy of the two-party system.

And in doing these things, I was never afraid. I think that is the way of Americans raised when I was raised. We had a certain, somewhat naive optimism that our government respected our rights and our sovereignty. An optimism that I now know that my own children do not share.

After 9-11, I became aware that certain political ideas that I had been flirting with were neither rational nor idealistic. That event, and the Patriot Act that too swiftly followed, were the dawning of an adult awareness (in my 40's, no less!) that I did not live in the same United States that I was born into, and that my country as I was educated to understand it had not existed in my own lifetime. I had heard these very things said as I listened in on Libertarian meetings during my childhood, but in my very Aspie way, I focused on the United States of the Founders, and thought of the present in the same idealistic way.

In the years following 9-11, when I began to enjoy the fruits of my remarriage and newfound financial security, I took time off from politics and thinking about the implications thereof. I was able instead to focus on making a home for our quirky family and living the life of middle class security. Except. . .

Except that the Boychick was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, and as we entered the special education maze, I realized that we would not be the preppily dressed, straight arrow family of my imagination. (Alas, I would never fit into the Country Club Judaism of our synagogue). And in order to meet my son's needs--and my own, as it dawned on me that I am more than a little bit Aspie--we decided to homeschool him. Which brought me squarely into conflict with the growing notion in this country that our children belong to the state or that they exist to benefit that faceless entity we call "society." And as I observed the growing statism reflected through the legislation and political system of the United States through the lenses of homeschooling, those seeds planted back in my childhood began to germinate and sprout.

Thus, in May 2009, two years after the first political blog entry, I wrote in The Wrong Side of A Do-Gooding Law that:

I was a more than slightly crunchy mom, and my awakening and my return to my libertarian roots . . . was catalyzed by 9-11 and home education. As I began to realize that . . . statists and do-gooders wanted to control what I teach my children and how I raise them, I understood that the only thing that stands between me and absolute tyranny is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

And during the past 18 months, I see what profound changes in my life were brought about as I went through the stages of awakening to the peril to our liberty; and through the sense of grief and aloneness that waking up caused; and finally into the fullness of awareness that my historical and philosophical explorations have created. I now understand that this is not merely a political crisis--it is a crisis brought on by irrational ideas about what is goodness, and how human beings can best achieve it in order to live their lives in liberty. This mature understanding of ideals that I learned during my libertarian childhood has now brought me full circle and more, to a confidence in living Liberty that enables me to take action and assume leadership through the public espousal of unpopular ideas without fear.

This is the idea of R3volution--action taken to secure for ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty--done out of love and firm resolve, rather than out of fear and mindless violence. Thomas Jefferson understood that the revolution is a turning in the minds of individuals--a change wrought through ideas, and only after such a revolution could a rebellion against tyranny be successful. That if a revolution is to be brought about, it cannot be begun by the initiation of force against others, but rather as forceful defense of the natural rights inherent in individual human beings.

The R3voltion is the process of sparking the idea of liberty in the mind. And only then will the fires of liberty be ignited in the heart, and principled action taken to secure a future in which liberty can be lived.

Spring Doesn't Quite Begin in March . . .

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

. . . Or at least, March does not begin with spring. The Purim Full moon happened Sunday night to Monday morning, and with it came another round of snow. This time, light and fluffy.

The full moonset from the bedroom patio, while it was still fair dark . . .

















Later, I am barely in time to take a picture of the Adar Moon as it begins to slip behind the snow covered Pinyon and Juniper on Los Pecos Loop during the early morning dog walk.

Although it had snowed, the clouds hiding most of South Mountain in the pre-dawn twilight look like the rain-filled clouds of spring and summer. The snow covering the road is soft and slippery. It is barely below freezing and destined to be gone soon.










A February fog fills the Mountain Valley, even though March has just (barely) begun. The evidence of the changing season is subtly there for us, as we walk the meadow in the early morn.

Clouds lit by the sun that is still below the horizon have the look of spring rains rather than the late winter snow they had brought us.

It has been a long, snowy winter. The snow that came to cover the ground on December 7th melted back, but did not depart and we have had many a storm since then.

We have now had at least partial snow-cover for three months.

But on the new calendar, spring does begin in March. And today it is 50 degrees and the sky is blue, even though there is still a good 4-5 inches on the ground under the trees and in the north lee of the hills. The solar angle is perceptibly higher. Winter's grip must loosen at last, and the warmth will come again.

Purim: If Esther Was a Spy in These Days at This Season . . .

. . . and Mordechai had to deal with the U.N.

Today is Purim, the hilarious holiday when we celebrate the death of that evil Haman, the one who tried to annihilate the Jews of Shushan in Persia (now called Iran).

We interrupt this discussion to bring you a correction from the UN: Of course Haman was completely justified in his desire to annihilate the Jews of Shushan, because by their very existence they made sure that not everyone would bow to Haman's will, nor will they accept that his culture requires their demise.

In any case, on Purim, nothing is sacred and the politically correct becomes the politically incorrect, and even the rabbis get drunk enough so that they cannot tell the difference between "Baruch Mordechai!" (Bless Mordechai) and "Kalal Haman!" (Curse Haman). Mordechai is the hero who organized Jewish self-defense in Shushan.


We interrupt this discussion to bring you another correction from the UN: Political incorrectness is never allowed, especially if it relates to Jews defending themselves. No matter what the provocation, the UN policy of moral equivalence requires that we condemn Mordechai the Jew's defense of his people as wrong as Haman's attempt to annihilate them, and even more so. After all, Mordechai is a Jew. In some way, he must be associated with Israel. And anyway, the UN supports initiatives to disarm all law-abiding citizens so that they cannot defend themselves.



In any case, Purim is indeed one of those quintessential Jewish holidays upon which we say:
"They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat!"


We interrupt this discussion to bring you yet another announcement from the UN: The Jews won in those days at this season, but we cannot not allow them to win now. It is the requirement of the religion of Achmadinajad (a descendent of Amalek) of Iran (it used to be Persia), the current reigning Haman, to bring the 12th Iman to power by annihilating the Jews. The current strategy to do so is to wipe Israel (a.k.a. 'the small Satan') off the map using powerful weapons of mass destruction. Since this is a religious quest, the Jews of Israel--in the spirit of fairness and multiculturalism--should do their part and be annihilated in order to fulfill the religious requirements of the son of Amalek.

Unfortunately, we must also say:
"So many Haman's, and only one Purim.
Remember, don't forget to blot out the name of Amalek."


And now, Latma's 'Tribal Report' brings us the latest on Queen Esther (a.k.a. 'Hadassah') and her espionage right in the Royal Palace at Shushan and who has been offended by the cost of her iniative to save her people:




Utzu eitza v'tufar. Dabru davar v'lo yakum.
Ki emanu El!
Make your plans --they will be annulled. Scheme against us--it will not avail.
For the Eternal is with us!


Happy Purim! Let's nosh on Hammentaschen!

R3volution: Liberty First!

What are rights? If you have to ask permission from someone, it's not a right. If only some people are given a pass on an issue, it's not a right. A right accrues to you as a person, and must be exercised wherever you are, regardless of what others might think or do.

In the United States, our natural rights to life, liberty and property are proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, and they are protected in the Constitution. But the Constitution does not "give" us our rights. Rather it forbids the federal government from violating them. Specific rights are described in the Bill of Rights--the first ten amendments to the Constitution--but the 9th and 10th amendments make it clear that our rights are unenumerable, whereas the privileges we grant the federal government are enumerated and circumscribed. And since the Constitutions of all of the several states also pledge to protect the natural rights of every citizen, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights apply in every state.

Every government functionary, from every branch of federal government, state government, and the military, swears an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. These people have no obligation or loyalty to any politician, any other government official or any other person. Their sole obligation is to the Constitution of the United States, and their function is always to defer to and protect the rights of the citizens of the United States for whom they work. This means that every senator, representative, military person, sheriff, lawyer or police officer is obligated to uphold every provision of the United States Constitution. This is one of the ways in which that document serves to protect our rights. (Please check out Oathkeepers and No Sheriff Left Behind to see how the military and our peace officers can do their office and protect our rights).

But we only have the rights we assert are ours. If we allow the violation of our rights, if we ask permission to exercise our rights, we have abdicated them. Our rights travel with us wherever we go. As Michael Badnarik says in "It's Good to be King!", our rights exist wherever our feet land. Therefore, if we are to reverse the terrible violation of our rights in the growing police state in the United States, it is important to exercise our rights, even when it is inconvenient to do so. We must do so politely and firmly, without iniation of force against anyone (which is a violation of the rights of others), but we must do it.

The other day the Liberty Kids, traveling in New Orleans as part of the Southern Tour of Operation Defuse (in conjunction with the Liberty Restoration Project and Texans for Responsible Government), encountered a potential violation of their rights when their car was pulled over on suspicion of a traffic violation. The officer asked for the ID's of everyone in the car, including passengers. Only the driver, since he has signed a contract by obtaining a driver's license and is driving on public roads, is required to show his license. All others are not required except when the officer can cite a probable cause that each has personally violated the law. (There is no collective responsibility for any crime in the United States. That would be a violation of individual rights).

One of the Liberty Kids, Catherine 'Conintelpro' Bleish, refused to give over her ID thus asserting her rights. She politely requested to be informed of what crime the officer was accusing her of, and she also informed the officer that the whole encounter was being streamed live on the web through three different computers in the car. The whole episode may be viewed at Qik, here.

In watching--or more accurately listening, it was dark--two aspects of the encounter were especially interesting. The first was that the officer was uninformed about the Constitutional rights of the passengers in the car. He called for extreme back-up--6 squad cars--and tried to tell Catherine that it was not necessary for her to stream the encounter. She replied that on the contrary, it was "very necesssary" and continued to stream. This alerted the grassroots of the R3volution movement. The second was that it became somewhat of a standoff when Catherine requested that the officer show her the law. Because between the live streaming and Twitter, the R3volution grassroots who were monitering Qik and Twitter, quickly pulled up the relevant Louisiana Statute and case law and the Liberty Kids had all the information before the police did.

The Liberty kids also cited the Fourth Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, Shall not be Violated, and no Warrents shall Issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or Affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The officer refused to listen to the citation of the Constitution that he was sworn to uphold, walking away, probably because he was unable to bully the Liberty Kids.

Of course, the Liberty Kids driver got a ticket, and the whole stand-off took about forty minutes. But as the cop walked away, the Liberty Kids wished him a good night, told him that he served a beautiful city, and then called out "Liberty First!" The cops pulled away, "tails between their legs" according to John Bush, Texas Libertarian.

Liberty First! It means taking the time to assert our rights, to act as free human beings, to politely the forcefully demand that our public servants understand their duty to the Constitution.

Liberty First! It means that all of us should carry a United States Constitution and the Constitutions of our respective states in the glove box with the registration information. We should politely assert our rights in any encounters with our servants, the peace officers. They have forgotten that their duty is not "to arrest and detain", rather it is to "protect and serve." Protect our rights and serve us. It is our duty as their employers to educate them so that they understand that they are to be Peace Officers, not law-enforcement. The Engineering Geek and I plan to carry extra copies to give to the officers upon any such encounter.

Liberty First! It means that we all should equip ourselves to photograph and record every encounter with our public servants, so that we have a record of what happened. When they know they are being recorded, they will be more likely to remember their place and their duty, even if they have never read the Constitution they have sworn to uphold. If we can live stream or twitter with the grassroots, so much the better. Transparency is more than a political campaign promise, easily violated. It is our protection against a police state.

Liberty First! Foremost! And always!

Another Road Trip: Socorro and Catron County

NEARLY WORDLESS SPECIAL

Before the big snowstorm hit last night, Flat Ryan and I went with the Professional Revolutionary and another friend, to Socorro and Catron Counties in west-central New Mexico to hike around some different properties the friend was looking at. It was a great opportunity for a roadtrip before the snow began.

The Ladron fault block, topped with snow, can be seen behind the the stabilized dune field at the confluence of the Rio Puerco and the Rio Grande.






A wilderness area in the Barrel Hills in northern Socorro County, outside of Magadalena, NM.
There was much evidence of volcanism in the rocks, including a brecciated welded tuff in the small arroyo in the center of the picture. We hiked the arroyo, a warm microclime on a windy day.


A spring, a small source of water, at the base of the bank of the arroyo. The water accounts for the presence of willow growing in abundance in an otherwise desert plant ecosystem. The welded tuff forms the bank, and brecciated volcanics form the darker rock at the top.









We stopped at the rest stop on US 60 so that Flat Ryan could get his picture taken in front of the Very Large Array. He's blurred because of the strong wind and the distant camera focus. Behind him is the old San Augustin glacial lakebed, with the VLA buildings and two radio antenna's in the mid foreground. The lakebed appears to run all the way to the San Mateo Mountains.

Clouds build over the ridges of the San Mateo Mts. above Highway 12 at Datil, NM. They are harbingers of the oncoming snowstorm that hit the state today.

After getting stuck in the mud at a property southwest of Datil, we drove back across to Socorro and dinner, then home.

A good day. Wonderful company and interesting geology.

I think I want to live in Catron County.

Joe Stack's Act of Desperation

Now that the man is dead by his own hand, and a bystander also, the MSM, blogs and pundits are by-and-large spinning the desperate actions of a desperate man in order to further their particular agendas. According to some, he was a delusional tea-partier, and according to others, a dangerous maniac. I don't believe he was either.

When I heard Glenn Beck using quotes from Stack's suicide note, inferring that all political ideas are either right or left, I though about another desperate act back in 1938, when Herschel Grynszpan assassinated the National Socialist official, Ernst von Rath. Grynszpan's act of desperation was precipitated by the deportation of his parents, Polish-Jewish nationals, by the National Socialist government. There are many differences between the two incidents, but the sense of desperation that emanated from each man's story was the same. Both had seen their lives made into a living hell by the actions of tyrannical bureaucrats.

The IRS operates as a kind of revenue Gestapo, using police powers they technically do not have to raid homes and businesses, seize property, and destroy lives of citizens, who are assumed to be guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent. Instead of trial by jury with an impartial judge, citizens are held accountable to a tax-code that even government experts admit is incomprehensible and contradictory. They must answer to the IRS in office procedures called audits, and are judged by their accusers--agents and accountants--working for the IRS. (My former mother-in-law once told me that "there is nothing quite like an audit to make you hate your government").
The IRS creates impossible situations for ordinary citizens every day of the year and at the same time ignores the tax evasion of Executive Department "czars" and Congress-critters. We find ourselves once again, just as in the National Socialist regime, with a government of men and not law. The injustice of it should be enough to make the blood of every American citizen boil.

Like hundreds of thousands of Americans, Joe Stack was caught in the impossible catch-22 that is the United States Tax Code. Like millions of us, he recognized the injustice of it. And tragically, horribly, he thought there was no way out but to end his life and destroy the life of a bystander.
Although I do not condone such violence, I can imagine the sense of desparation that created these circumstances for this ordinary citizen. His suicide manifesto is not the writing of an insane person. Rather it tells the story of careless, faceless bureaucrats who stole the livelihoods of skilled technical contractors via the stroke of a legislative pen.

And that should be sobering to all of us, who are also bystanders--no more innocent than anyone who works for the IRS--to the pain of our fellow citizens who have been robbed of work, home and family by a rogue government agency operating outside the framework of the United States Constitution. The founding generation understood that taxation without representation--taxation to pay for the wars and frivoloties of a privileged class--was theft. In the Declaration of Independence the listing of the Crimes of the King includes their experience of the domestic terror visited upon them when they refused to cooperate in the theft of their livelihoods.

Many of the bloggers and pundits of the MSM will undoubted spin for us the tale of Joe Stack, the anti-government, homegrown terrorist. But the IRS that is committing acts of terror against American citizens every day of the year. It is no accident that the letters I.R.S. are the most feared three letters in the Amercian vocabulary.

As bystanders, we are not and cannot be innocent. Rather, we must acknowlege the terror perpetrated against us by our own government. And we must choose how we will respond. If we do not choose, we bear the responsibility of knowing that evil was being perpetrated against our countrymen and we did nothing to stop it.

What must we do? We have no right to initiate force against anyone. But we do have the the right to respond to force initiated against our persons and our property by disciplined and peaceful means. It is our responsibility to loudly and consistently withdraw our sanction from a government that violates our rights on a daily basis. There are many ways to begin to do so. One is by reading the Articles of Freedom and signing the pledge to stand with a goodly number of Americans in support of our natural right to life, liberty and property.
On April 15, Tea Parties around the country will be sponsoring rallies outside local IRS offices. We need to be there to let our government and its odious agencies know that we recognize their illegal acts against us and our fellow citizens. Also on April 15, many of us will participate in a National Strike during which we: Don't Buy. Don't Comply. Ask why.

We must not let our liberty be taken from us while we stand idly by and watch our neighbors bleed.