If you have one monkey with a typewriter, you will quickly get the U.S. Code.

I thought of this while listening to Henry Hazlitt destroy John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money on mises.org.  I originally thought of the joke in reference to the General Theory, but since that’s an obscure reference, I decided to apply it to the United States Code instead.  Either would be fitting.

“Now, I am perfectly ready to admit that standardization in some spheres is a good thing. It is a good thing in the making of Ford cars; but just because it is a good thing in the making of Ford cars, it is a bad thing in the making of human beings, for the reason that a Ford car is a machine and a human being is a person.”

Quoted in With Education Like This at mises.org by Shawn Ritenour.

Today I preached my second sermon at Christ Church of North Carolina.  I preached on Proverbs 11:1 and the title of the sermon is “Weights and Measures: Just and Unjust.”  In it I deal with such issues as honest business dealings, fraud, fiat money, and a basic overview of Christian economics.

Feel free to listen to the sermon, provide feedback, and share it with anybody whom you believe may benefit from it.  Like any endeavor you need a lot of practice at this to get good at it.  I’ll probably need to preach a hundred sermons before I come into my own.

The sermon audio can be downloaded here.

The manuscript of the sermon in PDF format can be found here.

While you’re at it, check out the Christ Church sermon archives page here.

Like all things at michaelduchemin.com, you are free to distribute these under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported license.

Generally, the rise of domestic American tyranny has been via a gradualist approach, much like the philosophy of the Fabian Socialists.  Incorporate an income tax at 2%, make use of a crisis to increase the top marginal rates to 90% and then settle on a rate of 35% for the time being.  They approach hasn’t been uniformly gradual.  Often the government will increase its influence at a greater rate during crises.  As Robert Higgs illustrates in Crisis and Leviathan, the government never lets a good crisis go to waste.  The government will substantially increase its intervention in the lives of its people during times of crisis, but once the crisis is over, the government never returns back to its pre-crisis levels.

The recent TSA implementation of a choice between naked scanners or a frisk-down that goes beyond inappropriate has provoked the proverbial frog to jump out of the water.  If this was a pilot program for the American tolerance for tyranny, I am pleasantly surprised with the level of resistance.  This is far more encouraging than the results of any election.  Even people at work who are usually silent regarding political matters are up in arms about this.  Only the most ardent statists are defending the TSA, and even they are grasping at straws.

Airport security is frankly too important to be entrusted to bureaucrats.  In a truly free economy, the airlines would have a vested interest in seeing to it that passengers safely arrive at their destinations without humiliating and alienating them.  If Delta got their own naked scanners, they would not get repeat business.  This should hopefully help people to rethink their opinion of government competence and “benevolence” in endeavors outside of airport security.  Education is too important to entrust to (any level of) government.  The economy is too important to entrust to the government.  “National security” is too important to entrust to the government.  This will be a tough sell for your garden variety conservative, but we need to realize that the department of “defense” is just another government bureaucracy.  As such it has the interests of bureaucrats, lobbyists, and powerful interests well above those of doing the actual job it purports to do.  I’m not stating that every individual in the armed forces (or any other government agency) is of this mindset, but every individual in the armed forces is trained to obey orders without questioning.  What the TSA has done is essentially given us a picture of what the American forces do to the rest of the world.

This parasitic tyranny needs to be opposed at home and abroad.  God has ordained civil magistrates to be his ministers of wrath.  Those usurpers who would rule in a manner that refuses to submit to the Triune God acknowledging their role as subordinate deacons, who violate God’s higher law, who pervert justice, have a lot more to worry about than a bunch of angry subjects.

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,

Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.      -Psalm 2

http://www.youtube.com/user/RichardMaybury#p/u/10/AqEmEjYuT1s

(Quote begins at 6:49)

Anyway, nullification has made a comeback in the past few months, and I’m glad of it.  Aside from Doug’s post, Tom Woods has written a recent book about it and been interviewed by a zombie.  Anyway, we have seen a lot of interesting developments lately, and I decided to record my thoughts as the first Of the Way podcast.  I know I’m more likely to listen to something at my desk than to read a blog, and I thought at least some of my readers might have similar preferences.

“Can I Tell You” by Kansas can be purchased on iTunes, or by going here or here.

Enjoy!

A few years ago, while listening to lectures by Steve Wilkins on “America: The First 350 Years”, I heard about jury nullification for the first time in my life.  I had paid attention in my public school classrooms, and I can guarantee you that this concept was never mentioned, especially when we studied the constitution.  I was hot under the collar about this, but I wasn’t surprised.  Government schools would be very reluctant to teach their students that they had an opportunity to stop tyranny and corruption on a case by case basis. That would work counter to the objectives of the teachers’ unions whose quasi-monopolistic control over the compulsory propaganda centers would be jeapordized if their students were actually educated.

For those of you who don’t know, jury nullification is the right of juries to stand in judgement of the law as well as the facts of a case. Thus if a juror believes that a law is unjust, he is not required to convict, even if it is clear by the facts of the case that the law was violated. The jury has the ability to rule on a case-by-case basis that a law is unconstitutional. The jury is equal to the judge, and is even allowed to disregard the judge’s instructions and acquit a defendant if a law is unjust. This has its roots in English Common Law, dating back to the Magna Carta, and the founders made sure to include trial by jury in the Constitution because the jury provided an important safeguard against tyranny. This right of the jury was unquestioned for the first several generations of the republic. Until the landmark split decision in 1895 stating the opposite, judges were required to inform juries of their right to judge the law as well as the case. Jury nullification was used to stop the enforcement of fugitive slave laws and prohibition.

Today, they try to get the dumbest jurors available, so you will need to play dumb and not let on that you know of your rights as a juror or you will be dismissed. (Conversely, if you want to get out of jury duty, volunteering your knowledge of jury nullification is an easy way to get yourself dismissed.)

Fortunately, there has been some buzz on the topic of nullification in general recently.  Tom Woods recently published a book titled Nullification, which is one of the top selling political books on Amazon right now.  He was also interviewed by a zombie which you might find on youtube or by stumbling upon my site’s 404 page.  Also Doug Wilson has posted on the topic recently as well.  This is information that the “Justice” System does not want you to know about.  In fact, jury rights activists have been arrested for attempting to inform potential jurors of their rights.

For more information on the purpose and rights of a jury, please visit the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA).

“I foresee the day when rights will subsume responsibilities, where the poor and the despised will become wage slaves of the elites; and the mercantilism that we have fought against and the tyranny that we have stood against will be swallowed by the average American citizen.  And they will call that ‘freedom’.”

Update: This has been pinged a couple of times.  I realized that I forgot to cite the source I gleaned this from.  It comes from a lecture by George Grant from the 1999 Association of Classical and Christians Schools (ACCS) Conference titled “Dumb and Dumber: The Desperate Need for Covenantal and Christian Education.”  It is available from Word MP3 here.

I had my “the Emperor has no clothes” moment regarding public education during my junior year of college.

I was a product of the government schools, and I was studying to be a public school music teacher when I took my first class with the education department at the university. The professor would present educational issues with a false dichotomy: Should educational issues be solved by status quo traditional government means or by ultra-progressive Marxist government means? The question of whether this was the government’s domain at all never came up until I posed it halfway through the semester.

At the same time, I was getting to know a local homeschooling family who aided me immensely in becoming a more consistently biblical Christian. I had read the Bible cover to cover for the first time the summer following my freshman year, but still had an admittedly idolatrous view of what the government’s role in society should be which was left over from my compulsory indoctrination days. By witnessing their lives and approach to education compared to the approach and results of the educrats, I became ideologically “converted” from a government paradigm of education to a family paradigm of education. I’m sure many of you, my fellow homeschoolers, have had similar experiences when you realized that the system you grew up with (and possibly supported) was a fraudulent and unbiblical sham.

I address this letter to Christian homeschoolers with the knowledge that homeschoolers (as a general demographic) have a greater desire to live their lives in a manner consistent with the whole counsel of God than do evangelicals at large. Christian homeschoolers generally have better critical thinking skills and have already developed a healthy suspicion of government. This is why I can write this letter in hope that you will prayerfully consider my arguments for why Congressman Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate whose values are consistent with homeschooling, (and specifically why the views of Mike Huckabee, whom HSLDA has endorsed, aren’t).

Homeschoolers have never had a more faithful and consistent friend in Washington than Ron Paul. While other representatives need to be called and prodded to remember the rights of homeschoolers when legislation affecting education comes up, Ron Paul already knows the right answer without needing to be reminded. He shares our views and principles on educational liberty genuinely rather than seeing us as yet another special interest group he needs to placate (as the overwhelming majority other “homeschooling friendly” congressmen do). He opposed the disastrous “No (Public Schooled) Child Left Behind (meaning ‘left without a huge federal subsidy’) Act” (which Governor Huckabee enthusiastically supported). He wishes to abolish the federal Department of Education (while Huckabee is eager to expand it). A Ron Paul presidency would be the first step in the direction of educational liberty unknown since before the Fillmore administration that would hopefully end with HSLDA no longer needing to exist. If educational liberty is your primary issue as a voter, you need read no further.

Ron Paul’s stellar credentials for Christian homeschoolers do not end at educational liberty. Ron Paul (being the Champion of the Constitution and all) has repeatedly introduced legislation that would remove abortion from the jurisdiction of federal courts and overturn Roe v. Wade with a simple majority in both houses and a signature from the president. This legislation wasn’t supported even by other Republicans. Why is that? Forgive me for being cynical, but I believe that the majority of Washington Republicans want abortion to remain a Washington issue forever in order to win votes by fear-mongering and political posturing without ever delivering. While they have done this over 40 million unborn children have been slaughtered. Ron Paul’s solution to this problem would immediately make abortion illegal in a majority of states without needing to stack the deck in the Supreme Court. This, however, is not politically desirable for those whose principles are subservient to their desire for political power. Abortion, like other forms of murder, should be punishable under state law rather than federal law. Ron Paul would like to see abortion be illegal in each of the 50 states, but he believes that it is a state issue because he has studied history. He knows that using the central government to usurp states’ powers for your own ends has backfired before and will continue to backfire in the future. The central government is a fickle mistress and a fearful master. When the political pendulum swings back in the other direction, the precedent set by the federal government to assume power that the 9th and 10th amendments of the constitution forbid it will have catastrophic consequences.

On every other domestic issue, I encourage you to do your own research and compare the positions of Ron Paul to those of the other Republican candidates. You’re homeschoolers, so I trust that you can do your own research and come to the correct conclusion on your own. When you do this research, you will find that Mike Huckabee, the favored candidate of HSLDA and many within the evangelical movement is not a conservative at all. Mike Huckabee is a right-wing progressive. This is “compassionate conservatism” taken to its reductio ad absurdum. Gov. Huckabee believes that the government should use the forces of coercion and compulsion to solve every problem and issue under the sun: from space exploration to education to energy to world hunger and AIDS. You’re not capable of making decisions for yourself. Let the State save you and make these decisions for you! But you as homeschoolers will know better. You will be able to realize that the emperor has no clothes on.

This brings me to the last issue, which for many homeschoolers has been the deal breaker: foreign policy.  We homeschoolers believe that government social engineering is dangerous and immoral.  Affirmative Action, the Great Society, prohibition, government schools, and the myriad of other “progressive” social engineering movements of the last century have not only failed to achieve their stated consequences but have been disasters that only made the problems they were designed to solve worse. If social engineering is evil and doesn’t work here in America, what makes you think it will be morally acceptable and work halfway across the world?  We laugh at the Darwinists when they use that type of reasoning.  Does it improve the situation if the armed forces are acting as the social engineers?  Back when Clinton was president, Rush Limbaugh would emphasize that the purpose of an army is to kill people and break things. If social engineering was a bad idea in Somalia and Bosnia under Clinton, how is it a good idea in Iraq under Bush?  If the United States Government is not to be trusted on the above domestic issues, how does it suddenly become trustworthy when it engages in international affairs?  If we deny that the purpose of the military is to act as international police we have to admit that the Bush/Huckabee/McCain/Giuliani/Limbaugh/Hannity definition of “victory” is impossible using military means. Only converting these nations to Christ will conquer Islamic fundamentalism and neutralize the threat of terrorism.  It’s time for the military to move out and the missionaries to move in.

The military should not only withdraw its troops from Iraq, but also from all of the other 130 countries it currently occupies with military forces.  You heard me correctly, I said ONE HUNDRED THIRTY COUNTRIES, as in 65% of all the countries in the world.  In case you were wondering, the other countries do not hate us because of our liberty or wealth-they hate us because they are quartering our soldiers.  How would you feel if China or Russia or Iran decided they were going to build a military base in your country? Exactly.

When you look at interventionist U.S. foreign policy as just another government program, hopefully you will come to agree with me that the Empire has no clothes and join me in support of Ron Paul in the Republican primary.

“As the size of total government increases, the likelihood that any given action will be simultaneously mandated and prohibited increases exponentially.”

This includes not only laws passed by a legislative body but also all of the regulations that government departments make up on their own, and the capricious coercions that petty bureaucrats and police officers enforce which aren’t written down anywhere.

With the sheer word count of laws and within the United States federal laws and departmental regulations, I highly doubt that any single person has read all of the laws currently on the books, and that’s just one level of government.  As this trend increases, it benefits the government, as they are able to arbitrarily harass anybody who they don’t like and bring them up on charges under some obscure statute.  Local petty tyrants (police and “customer” facing employees of government agencies) are able to demand bribes as they see fit because you’re always out of compliance with some law or regulation.

Of course the only solution to this madness is repentance.  Revolts and revolutions often cast out one demon and create a vacuum that replaces the one demon with seven.  Those who will not kiss the Son will look to the state as savior.  No matter how many volumes of laws you write, no matter how much you multiply them, they will be just as impotent to save as Baal was on Mt. Carmel.

In contrast, the Mosaic law code is something that you could read in one sitting.  It provides general precepts and specific case laws with enough detail that the wise can determine what the just course of action is for any given situation.  If only the Christians in this nation could say with the psalmist:

Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word.

I rejoice at thy word, as one that findeth great spoil.

I hate and abhor lying: but thy law do I love.

Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.

Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.

LORD, I have hoped for thy salvation, and done thy commandments.

My soul hath kept thy testimonies; and I love them exceedingly.

I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies: for all my ways are before thee. (Psalm 119:161-168)

If we trusted God and delighted in His law as we ought to, then Duchemin’s Law of Bureaucracy would be moot.