Now that the debate has begun, Retopper please cease posting in this thread (as you said you would), and everyone else please stop addressing him regarding this topic and regarding his character and conduct. I’m leaving this thread open so Samaramis, JAlanKatz, and others can continue their cool-headed conversations, but I will lock it if I have to.
^rettoper don’t bother responding to my post. Focus on lilburn’s new thread.
Yes, sure, but what do you do once you’re out? I have the desire, and I’m out, but what is involved in becoming free in your mind? Do you continue keeping your head down and avoiding trouble, and if so, how does this count as freeing yourself? Why doesn’t becoming free have to involve getting rid of these restrictions?
I’ve been free and “off paper” for almost 40 years. But my epiphany began, as previously stated, while in solitary. One can have significant “spiritual awakenings” in the hole.
I had been the victim of state slavery (“the draft”) and had spent the better part of 4 years in the US Army, much of it overseas. I married immediately upon return in hopes, I now understand, a wife could ease the trauma of all that. Nine months and twelve seconds later I was a father. 11 months and 15 days after that I was the father of 2. I ended up with seven children while yet wet behind the e: 4 boys and 3 girls. Jewish boys should never marry Catholic girls.
As an idealistic child I somehow had the idea that I had been “serving my country”. Somewhere in that time frame while trying to become a decent father I began to see things the way they really were. For one thing I never ever wanted to see one of my boys enslaved by state employees to participate in another of the white man’s scams. That was long before anybody even thought up the evil of girls being involved in the horror episodes we read about from their being in the “service”. There were “Wacs”, but they stayed back in the orderly room or they were medics.
I came to understand I hadn’t been “serving my country” at all. That slogan was just one of the many, many inducements to state worship absolutely necessary for the “military-industrial complex” to continue to prosper. I had been participating in the greatest fraud in the history of human kind.
Today I avoid gatherings where the sheep-like moderators might ask “veterans” to stand so everybody can bow and clap. I stay away from spectator sports so I don’t have to witness the obligatory state worship before the game can get under way. Needless to say I don’t participate in the series of political holidays this time of year designed to aggrandize state wars.
If you love your freedom DON’T THANK ME. Thank yourself if you are free. You earned it.
Liberty, simply put, is seeing things the way they really are and behaving appropriately. Nobody – not a wife, not children, certainly not employees of state – can grant you liberty. “If it’s going to be it’s up to me”.
I quit blaming others. I look at the roll I played in becoming locked up. I focus on my behavior, not that of the mother of my seven children, for our divorce (we were married 25 years, have been divorced 27 years. I just received my 27-year AA sobriety medallion. Go figure). That does NOT mean I beat myself up – I try never to do that. On the other hand if I blame others for my calamities I’ll spend my life in disaster. Many do, you know.
You asked: “Do you continue keeping your head down and avoiding trouble…?” If you’re implying we (ex cons) should fear the white man (white man = all state employees – a native term) or be obsequious to him I reply “not on your life!” I am totally indifferent to employees of state unless they’re armed, wearing a state costume and directly confronting me. Then I will ask, “is that gun loaded?” S/he will normally give me a sullen, supercilious response of some sort. I’ll try to be nonchalant when I say, “I always believe a man with a loaded gun!..”
Now if your question is in the boot camp sense, then my answer is “yes – always keep your head down – better a body wound than a head wound…” There are large numbers of people, J Alan, gleefully striving to prevent you and me from being free. They smile and they wave and they urge you to march down and vote next time they hold “an election”. And if we’re not careful – well, they can sound so genuine and so sincere. They just want to take care of everybody (read: enjoy power over everybody and steal as much of their produce as practicable – and then some). That translates, of course, into making government larger and all pervasive. Every single piece of legislation put forth out in the “District of Collectivism” is a volley of machine gun fire and shrapnel aimed directly at you and me and those we love.
I actually look for another crisis event of “9-11” proportions quite soon. Think about it. That phenomenon opened the door for the Bushes and Obamas of the world (and the “power heads” who are behind them) to expand government exponentially in very short order with very little resistance from the shapeless masses. But alas, time has a way of drawing even the dumbest of us to a semblance of reality. So now come the “tea party” types offering the entrenched and seemingly powerful state employees (and those silent backers who stand to benefit from their machinations) some real opposition – they’re even putting a number of incumbent political hacks at risk. Look for a crisis. And a war. And bank closings.
“Why doesn’t becoming free have to involve getting rid of these restrictions?”
I don’t know that I’m reading that question correctly. My mantra is that we can’t have a whole lot of influence over “THEM” (whoever we perceive might be keeping us from being free; or whomever it is we would like to help become free but who will not grasp hold of our “lifeline to freedom”). They’re probably not going to listen to us. But that should never keep us from being free.
The best single reading I remember coming upon many years ago that set me on the proper road to freedom was (the late) Harry Browne’s “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World”, published around 1973, was out of print for years but I understand is now sold through their website. Google “Harry Browne” and I think you can find a copy.
Be free.
Sam
Well, thanks for what you’ve told me. I’ll look for Browne’s book.
@ Samarami - Your posts are interesting, and your insights contribute much to the forums along the lines of, let’s call it, “practical liberty.” Hope to see you contribute often.