Kirby Ferris

Mind Control And Gun Control

2009-04-12T13:36:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - May 1999

Just a week before the National Rifle Association has its annual convention in Denver, Colorado, two or more insane teenagers (just four miles south of Denver) shoot and kill 13 of their classmates with firearms and then kill themselves. This seriously challenges the law of chance. Anyone familiar with the history of so-called "gun control" in America, beginning with the "Texas Clock Tower Sniper", to Lee Oswald, to Sirhan Sirhan, to James Earl Ray, and through to Patrick Purdy (Stockton schoolyard shooter), and Colin Ferguson (Long Island railway shooter) will smell a rat.

How many of these senseless "random" incidents will it take for the American people, in their fear, naivete and ignorance, to willingly surrender their right to keep and bear arms? If you wanted to disarm the citizenry of America there is no better way than to barrage the excitable public psyche with horrendous acts such as the Colorado High School massacre. Hitler disarmed his opponents, including all Jews, also promising "public safety".

It is time for concerned Americans, whether they own guns or not, or whether they support or oppose "gun control", to seriously consider the possibility that the murderers in many, if not most, of these bloody incidents were under the mental influence of "handlers", or, to put it bluntly, mind control experts.

Before you toss me off as a conspiracy kook, I ask you to take the time to research the below listed clinical studies and scientific discussion on hypnosis. These will not meet your standard Psych. 101 assurance that "you cannot be hypnotized and forced to do anything that is against your moral fiber". Most obviously, who can say what the moral fiber of those two Denver teens actually was? Not much, we can agree on that. I'll let the scientific papers listed below make my case. You decide about how you feel about "gun control" and "victim disarmament" after you've contemplated this material. You should be able to retrieve all these papers on the Internet. Additionally, search keywords "hypnosis/coercion" and "hypnosis/antisocial behavior" for other material. Improved search engines will turn up far more than what is listed.

Gibson, H.B. (1991). Can hypnosis compel people to commit harmful, immoral and criminal acts?: A review of the literature. Contemporary Hypnosis, 8, 129-140.

Kline, M.V. (1972). The production of antisocial behavior through hypnosis: New clinical data. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 20, 80-94.

Watkins, J.G. (1972). Antisocial behavior under hypnosis. Possible or impossible? International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 20, 95-100.

Orne, M.T. & Evans, F.J. (1965). Social control in the psychological experiment: Antisocial behavior and hypnosis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1, 189-200.

Orne, M.T. (1962). Antisocial behavior and hypnosis: Problems of control and validation in empirical studies. Hypnosis: Current Problems.

Barber, T.X. (1961) Antisocial and criminal acts induced by "hypnosis": a review of experimental and clinical findings. Archives of General Psychiatry, 5, 301-312.

Kline, M.V. (1958). the dynamics of hypnotically induced antisocial behavior. Journal of Psychology, 45, 239-245.

Marcuse, F.L. (1553). Anti-social behavior and hypnosis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 1, 18- 20.

Estabrooks, G.H. (1951). The possible antisocial use of hypnotism. Personality: Symposia on Topical Issues, 1, 294-299.

Weitzenhoffer, A.M. (1949). The production of antisocial acts under hypnosis. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44, 420-422.

Brenman, M. (1942) Experiments in the hypnotic production of anti- social and self injurious behavior. Psychiatry, 5, 49-61 (note: This research is mentioned in the dialogue in the motion picture "The Manchurian Candidate". You must see it. It is a marvelous movie. Frank Sinatra was denied an almost certain Oscar for his fantastic performance because the film was pulled from circulation and remained unviewed by the public for thirty years!)

Gibson, H.B. (1991). Can hypnosis compel people to commit harmful, immoral and criminal acts: A review of the literature. Contemporary Hypnosis, 8, 129-140. (for a complete list see website: coastalpost.com.)

Rowland L.W. (1939). Will hypnotized persons try to harm themselves or others? Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 34, 114-117.

Hoencamp, E (1990). Sexual abuse and the abuse of hypnosis in the therapeutic relationship. International Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 38, 283-298.

Levitt, E.E., baker, E.L., Jr., 7 Fish, R.C. (1990). Some conditions of compliance and resistance among hypnotic subjects. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 32, 225-236.

Levitt, E.E. 7 Baker, E.L. (1990). Compliance and resistance in the hypnotic state: The effect of a social and academic counter- motivation. In R. Van Dyck (Ed.) Hypnosis: Current Theory, Research and Practice (p. 121-130) Amsterdam: VU University Press.

Balson, P.M., Dempster, C.R., & Brooks, F.R. (1984) Auto-hypnosis as a defense against coercive persuasion. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 26, 252-260.

Levitt, E.E. & Baker, E.L. (1983). the hypnotic relationship: Another look at coercion, compliance and resistance. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 31, 125-131.

Conn, J.H. (1981). the myth of coercion through hypnosis: A brief communication. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 29, 95-100.

Perry, C. (1979). Hypnotic coercion and compliance to it: A review of evidence presented in a legal case. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 27, 187-218.

Levitt, E.E. (1977). Research strategies in evaluation the coercive power of hypnosis. Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, 296, 86- 89.

O'Brien, R.M. & Robuck, S.J. (1976) Experimentally produced self- repugnant behavior as a function of hypnosis and waking suggestion: A pilot study. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 18, 272-276.

Levitt, E.E. (1975). the objectional act as a mechanism for testing the coercive power of the hypnotic state. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 17, 263-266.

Levitt, E.E. Aronoff, G., Morgan, C.D., Overly, T.M., & Parrish, M.J. (1975). Testing the coercive power of hypnosis: Committing objectionable acts. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 23, 59-67.

Parrish, M.J. (1974). Moral predisposition and hypnotic influence of "immoral" behavior: An exploratory study. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 17, 115-124.

Coe, W.C., Kobayashi, K., & Howard, M.L. (1972). An approach towards isolating factors that influence antisocial conduct in hypnosis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 20, 118-131.

Orne, M.T. (1972) Can a hypnotized subject be compelled to carry out otherwise unacceptable behavior?: A discussion. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 20, 101-117.

Wagner, F.F. (1966). The delusion of hypnotic influence and the hypnotic state. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 14, 22-29.

Cheek, D.B. (1959). Use of rebellion against coercion as mechanism for hypnotic trance deepening. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 7, 223-227.

Let's Build Prison Farms

2009-04-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - October 1996

The idiocy of the liberal mind struck me full force when I read a news story from a New Zealand newspaper. It seems a store owner had been burgled three times in less than a month. It was obvious that juvenile delinquents were the perpetrators. Typically, the police weren't about to mount much effort to catch the thieves. So this store owner doesn't get a guard dog, doesn't buy a burglar alarm, and doesn't hire a couple of large thugs to lie in wait for the punks who are ripping him off. No, this bleeding heart crime victim decides that he will fund a frigging rugby team for the "disenchanted" youth of the community because the thieving little fecal worms are "bored" and have "too much time on their hands". Jeez, maybe if the punks keep ripping off the people of the community, the village council will vote to build them a swimming pool and a free video arcade.

Here's the bottom line: crime pays. Any kid can understand that it is now as easy and safe to get money by thievery as by earning it. Isn't it time for the pendulum to swing the other way?

Don't you think it's time to return punishment for crime to our way of life? We can wring our hands over the breakdown of the nuclear family, the widening gap between rich and poor, the dumbing down of our children, and violence on television (and attempt to do something about these problems), but we still have to make a single, old-fashioned equation very clear: If you steal, you go to jail. It doesn't matter if you are 15 or 50. The rich kid shoplifter and the ghetto burglar both go to jail.

And when you get to jail (juvenile or adult) here is what you find: 1. No television. 2. No Walkman CD player. 3. No Nintendo. 4. No school yard games or weight training. 5. No "self-esteem" therapy sessions. 6. No radio. 7. No fancy hair styling, pierced ears, flash clothes, or Nikes. You see, boys and girls, these are all things that civilized people earn by the sweat of their brow. Since you have not earned these things, you simply do not get them. (Hey, Liberalbrain! How is this cruel and unusual?)

In fact, you don't even get fed unless you earn the food. Why should jail be any different than the natural world? The lazy coyote starves to death. Who said that human beings living in this "biosphere" are somehow privileged to break this fundamental law of nature? I'm not talking about compassion for those too young or physically or mentally incapable of working for their food.

Starting with Juvenile Hall, we should immediately begin offering offenders (beginning with the very first conviction) a simple, real world choice. Work or starve. Every youth or adult penal facility should be a highly-organized farm. We don't need these vast, mega-million dollar condos. Criminals should labor in the fields, or elsewhere on the facility, to produce fruit, vegetables, poultry, eggs, or meat. It's an eight-hour workday (less strenuous than many American farmers live with all their lives).

Are you an "inmate"? No, you are a prisoner, a convicted criminal. And, as a prisoner with a debt to repay, you rise at six in the morning to a rousing half-hour of calisthenics. (We may play some music for you during your jumping jacks. Maybe something German with a distinct marching rhythm. Sorry, dude, no U2 or Snoop Doggy Dog). You then shower and shave (face and head) and present yourself for a large, nutritious breakfast. All you can shovel down in half an hour. Then it's out to the field where the taxpayers (who you have been victimizing) have generously provided you with acres and acres of fertile soil.

You are given a wide brim hat, a long-sleeve shirt, sun screen, sunglasses and plenty of pure spring water. Oh yeah, and a hoe and work gloves. Get down, bro! There are weeds to be pulled, soil to be turned, bugs to be squished (we're strictly organic here). You get a 15-minute break for coffee and a cigarette (if you're old enough). Then it's back to work until the noon whistle. You shuffle over to the lunch tent and are served another huge, rib-sticking meal. All you can eat in an hour. Doesn't that chicken taste good? It should, you raised that chicken, amigo. Aren't you secretly a little proud? How about those big potatoes and that gravy? Came right out of the soil your tired ass is sitting on.

Oops, it's one o'clock. Back to work. What? You don't want to work anymore? Are you sure, honey? Okay, we'll take you back to your tent and you can skip dinner and breakfast in the morning. The rest of you get off at four and have the rest of the afternoon and evening to read or attend classes. You can choose to improve yourself or just do the minimum needed to get your meals. But there's no free lunch anymore. Whoa! Vastly harsh! Call the ACLU!

The extra food you grow on the prison farm goes to feed the truly needy. Isn't that a unique idea? Minimum stay on the farm is two weeks. Caught shoplifting? First offense? Two weeks. No plea bargain. No "counseling". No fancy attorney to finesse you out of the two weeks of sweat, dirt and payback. Isn't life cruel? Maybe it is. But we'll see if you go back and steal again when the next conviction gets you a guaranteed six months in the fields. The question is: Will Americans come to their senses and demand that the judicial system and prisons be run this way?

The McVeigh Verdict And You

2009-04-05T08:37:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - July 1997

There's a saying out in Nevada cattle country. When a steer is down and beyond help, a bullet in the head is the only humane solution. A .357 cartridge costs about ten cents. Tim McVeigh deserves "the ten cent vet".

Anyone who favors the death penalty, in an absolutely clear case of guilt, could reasonably be invited to drop the hammer. The reason that I believe I would be able to pull the trigger with a clear conscience is that McVeigh's attorney confessed for his client (ostensibly with McVeigh's full approval) to the mass murder in Oklahoma City. (Nagging question: Can anyone out there tell me why this was a responsible tactic from a defense attorney attempting to keep his client's neck out of the noose?)

Also strange behavior from McVeigh's attorney was his plea to the jury to not make Tim McVeigh a "martyr" by executing him. What a strange, yet vile, innuendo that is. I don't know of a single anti-government critic (and I have met and conversed with quite a few of them in the last seven years) who did not fervently condemn the Oklahoma City bombing.

A dangerous illogic is at work around this pernicious event. The forces of police statism in our country are, in the eyes and minds of a gullible, tv-entranced public, effectively painting millions of morally-upstanding, intelligent and yes, patriotic, dissidents with the label of "right wing fanatic".

The perverse illogic goes: McVeigh was appalled by the FBI's apparent incineration of the Branch Davidian church members at Waco. Therefore, anyone who is also critical of the fed's handling of the Waco situation is the moral equivalent of a Tim McVeigh.

McVeigh was a vocal critic of "gun control" schemes, therefore, anyone who views the unconstitutional disarming of the sane and law-abiding American public as a dangerous step towards tyranny is the moral equivalent of a Tim McVeigh.

McVeigh seemed to have an obsession with the virulently anti-Jewish screed espoused in the book The Turner Diaries. Therefore, anyone who takes a stand against the socialistic path this country is headed down must also be "anti-Semitic". This has become the incessantly chattered party line for such intellectually bankrupt socialist groups as the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The irony of this, in my own experience, is frustrating. The single most articulate and powerful voice against "gun control" in this nation is that of Aaron Zelman, a proud Jew, and founder of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

The single most articulate and powerful voice against the corruption of the American justice system is Godfrey Lehman, a proud Jew, and the "grandfather" of the jury rights movement in this nation. Lehman's newest book, soon to be published, is entitled We, the Jury. It is an eminently scholarly work and describes the twelve most important jury trials in history.

And the single-most rational voice against the dangers of "liberalism" (in the past more accurately defined as Marxist socialism) is Dennis Prager, a proud Jew, and the author of a terrific, common-sense book entitled "Think a Second Time".

Fortunately, Zelman, Lehman and Prager are steadily gaining the attention they deserve. Thinking men and women (thanks to the research of Zelman and Jews for the Preservation of Firearms) are reconsidering the amazingly "coincidental" resemblance of Nazi German "gun control" laws with the American Gun Control Act of 1968. Also coming to light (again, thanks to Zelman and JPFO) is the carefully documented correlation between past "gun control" schemes and the major genocides of the 20th century.

No better validation of Godfrey Lehman's warnings about the manipulation of juries exists than the jury selection process that resulted in the abysmal verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial.

Dennis Prager's insights strike to the heart of virtually every social problem we face today. Prager's views on racism, abortion, personal responsibility, "family values", and capital punishment are must reading for any concerned American.

The forces of socialism in our country simply cannot risk a rational debate with the likes of Zelman, Lehman and Prager. Those of authoritarian mentality must demonize the articulate and logical opposition if their plans are to be furthered. The propaganda sound bytes of the socialists at the ADL, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Handgun Control, Inc. simply cannot stand up to the scrutiny of documented historical evidence and the logic of common sense.

Zelman, Lehman, and Prager each ground their convictions in the fundamental right, even duty, of the individual to take charge of his or her own life. Aaron Zelman asks us to each take responsibility for our own self-defense by arming ourselves and quietly letting criminals, both inside and outside of government, know that each of us is somberly willing to oppose victimhood with lethal intensity. A scary proposition this may be, but freedom is not free...and it has never been comfortable.

Godfrey Lehman asks each of us to contemplate the individual conscience that a juror (meaning you and me) must exercise with an almost religious dedication if our nation is to remain even remotely just and righteous.

Dennis Prager's essays constantly remind each of us that life is a constant series of choices. Morality is choice. Freedom must be seized and nurtured in the mind of the man or woman who would deserve to be free.

No, Tim McVeigh did not speak for me and those I most admire. Whether by plan, or by coincidence, Tim McVeigh is exactly what the forces of police statism needed at this moment in history. Pay very, very careful attention to the upcoming Oklahoma state trial of McVeigh and the independent investigations of the Oklahoma City grand jury. McVeigh's conviction is just the first chapter in a much larger story. Whether you believe me now or not, your and your children's future will be written on those pages.

The Sociopaths

2009-04-04T08:44:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - March 1997

A while back I was in a store and a television was blaring from the upper corner of the showroom. Bill Clinton was giving the so-called "State of the Union" address. There were no other customers in the store, and I, being virulently allergic to the fetid slime bag from Arkansas, petulantly asked the sales clerk to either change channels or turn off the damn television while I perused the merchandise. The sales clerk changed channels... and I was confronting the lunatic hubbub pending the O.J. Simpson civil trial's jury decision. I couldn't help myself. I pontifically blurted out: "Can't you see? America's consciousness is presently dominated by two lying sociopaths!" The sales clerk, a young white woman, looked at me with wide, stunned eyes. "Do you really think that O.J. did it?"

I think she was kidding. And she prudently didn't tell me what she thought of our Commander in Chief. I didn't ask. I already suspected her point of view, because she had been imbibing his rhetorical bilge with rapt attention.

Later, I went to the dictionary (Webster's) and looked up "sociopath". The word isn't in the dictionary. My computer's spell checker has it in memory, but it wasn't in the dictionary. And it wasn't in a huge 1934 Webster's that is ponderously nested on my bookshelf.

I was told, back in Psych. 101, that a sociopath is a completely amoral person, someone with zero conscience. Luckily, not many members of society are afflicted with this immense character flaw, but (and this is the scary part) those who are, often have high intelligence. High intelligence mixed with zero conscience equals, in my estimation, a character trait called "cunning". One would have to call O.J. a cunning man. And one would certainly not be off the mark in so characterizing William Jefferson Clinton.

Let me list some other cunning sociopaths who have left their mark on history.

Karl Marx: A brilliant, yet personally despicable, human being. One of his mottoes: "Religion is the opiate of the masses."

Vladimir Lenin: The totally ruthless first leader of the Soviet Union. It was Teddy Roosevelt, I believe, who once called Lenin "evil incarnate".

Joseph Stalin: Responsible for the murder of more than 20 million Russian citizens. Harry Truman once delicately referred to Papa Joe as "one evil son of a bitch".

Mao Tse Tung: Responsible for the murder of more than 60 million Chinese citizens. Completely unfettered by the "weakness of conscience".

Adolph Hitler: Considering the body count, not quite the big league genocidist of either Mao or Stalin, but still paving his way to hell over the bodies of some 16 million innocent people.

Now, neither Clinton or O.J. are anywhere in the realm of kingpins listed above, but if either Clinton or O.J. were given the power that Stalin or Hitler had at their disposal I believe we would see a terrifying state of affairs.

Seriously. Imagine someone with absolutely no conscience. They can look you right in the eye and lie to you with a warm, puddin' cake smile that warms the cockles of your heart. Oh yes, I believe you do feel my pain, Mr. President. Because you tell me so. And I, because I am brainwashed human cattle, want so much to believe your teary-eyed, corn pone, socialist bull manure.

And O.J. trying on that glove? Lawdamighty, wasn't that touching? Yep, Mr. Lincoln was certainly correct. You can fool some of the people all of the time.

Above and beyond anything else, sociopaths are the ultimate materialists. I'm speaking here of the philosophy of materialism, not the greedy acquisition of material goods. To the pure materialist there is no God. There is no good and evil. There is just what works to their benefit and what doesn't work to their benefit.

Imagine being unencumbered by morality. There is no punishment for sin. There is no Heaven and there is no Hell. No karma. Social niceties don't bother you. Personal power is your goal, even if you have to grind others into a bloody pulp to achieve that power. After all, morality is relative, isn't it? Religion is the "opiate of the masses", isn't it? The only limit that concerns you is if you will be punished by your fellow human beings or not. You are only wrong if you get caught and punished.

The architects of the American Constitution understood the mentality of the sociopath. They had seen the tyranny of monarchies. They understood that the law and an armed citizenry must eternally stand as a barrier to the desires of the insatiably conscienceless who crawl out from under rocks and into the halls of power.

There is only one way to deal with the sociopaths among us. We must keep them afraid for their lives. A sociopath like O.J. must know that the gas chamber stands ready. (Or what if Nichole had just shot his halfback ass off?)

A sociopath like Bill Clinton (or many of the other men and women who lust for political power in America) must fear the citizenry. They must know that an uncorrupted legal system awaits to stop, and then harshly punish, their amoral behavior. Failing this, they must know that millions upon millions of armed Americans stand guard over their public servants and demand that the restraints of constitutional government be enforced, even at gun point. If you ever surrender your personal power (your right to keep and bear arms) into the hands of the sociopaths you will be enslaved. It will be like begging Charlie Manson for mercy.

Too few Americans have the common sense (or personal courage) to understand this. And so, the sociopaths among us fuel their ravening ambition with this comforting knowledge.

A "Flat Tax" Leaves The IRS Alive

2009-04-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - February 1996

The biggest misconception about the so-called "flat" income tax is that it would somehow destroy the Internal Revenue Service. Mind you, a flat tax would be an improvement on the present, so-called "progressive income tax". A flat tax might slightly reduce the tyrannical power of the IRS in our lives. That is good. But there would still be an IRS. And that would be bad.

For six years I have been suggesting that a standardized national sales tax (replacing the income tax) would be the fairest way to tax the America people. All state sales taxes should be abolished. The rate? I'll stand firm on ten percent. God doesn't ask for more than that.

However, each state would retain complete control of eighty percent of the revenue collected. Twenty percent would be sent from each state to Washington D.C. to fund the federal government. The states would take over the operations of most federal buildings and agencies and become the employers of most of the now federal employees.

The federal government would shrink and the state government would be come more powerful. But that power would be more directly answerable to the people of each state. Something tells me that is more along the design the framers of the Constitution intended.

The income tax would be abolished. Capital gains taxes would be abolished. Inheritance taxes would be abolished. Property taxes would be abolished. True ownership of private property would be restored, and productivity would be rewarded and not punished.

What about the poor being burdened by a national sales tax? Simply make certain items exempt from the tax. No tax returns needed. It all happens at the cash register. No sales tax on food, medical expenses, insurance policy payments, school tuition, or on the purchase price and mortgage of primary residence or the expense of primary housing rental. That leaves the poor with their food, shelter, education, insurance, medical expenses, and income untaxed.

Government exists (at least in the original America ideal) to protect life, liberty and property. Each American deserves equal protection of his life. The cop should not differentiate between Joe Sixpack and Bill Gates when he walks his beat. Our liberty is protected by the court's jury systems and, ideally, the poor man should be treated with the same care and respect as the rich man. Our liberty is also protected by our military forces. A soldier doesn't serve just for certain classes of Americans. He is pledged to protect all. These protective aspects of government are across the board and are due every American.

However, when it comes to protecting private property, a blatant differentiation arises. The property of Bill Gates requires much more protection than my property. And it is here that a sales tax is a marvelously equitable technique to fund government's protection of property. When Bill Gates buys his ten million dollar vacation ranch (remember, primary residence is excluded) he will cough up one million dollars in sales tax (if the rate is ten percent). If Mr. Gates buys a nice big Montana ranch, $800,000 of the sales tax money stays in Montana and $200,000 goes back to Washington D.C.

The key is the local control of assets that are meant to protect the property in each state. Now you don't let Mr. Gates lease his ranch tax-free. He'll pay sales tax on that because his primary home is in Seattle. If he wants to move to Montana permanently, you can bet the Seattle sales tax collectors will pick up the slack on their end. No loopholes. No IRS. The real estate salesman simply make sure that the million is collected and sent off to the Montana State government, just like sales taxes are collected now. In California, every store owner is already a tax collector. And they all work for free! The budget for the IRS is presently more than seven BILLION dollars a year.

We constantly hear that a national sales tax won't pay the bill. And I ask: The bill for what? It's obvious that our federal government has become a bloated, blood-sucking monster. Aggressive and sizeable cuts in spending must happen, regardless of which tax system we operate under.

A consumption tax (sales tax) is a good idea. The gasoline tax is a consumption tax. Mile for mile, it has provided America with the finest road and highway system in the world. Big cars do more damage to highways and bridges. They use more gas. The owners of big cars automatically pay a larger share of tax.

Commerce demands the stability (the obligation of contract) that government and law provide. The heavier the commerce, the more tax is generated to provide the necessary fundamental services that provide social (i.e., economic) stability.

In case you didn't realize it, the rich would like to spend more of their money instead of hiding it away with every new tax scam under the sun. The image of Scrooge McDuck swimming in his vat of cash and coins is funny, but fictional. Certainly the wealthy (and the not-so-wealthy) also want to provide for their family and heirs. So they don't spend all of their money.They save some of it. But savings are reinvested. These investments create more businesses that create more products which create more gross sales which create more sales tax.

As long as there are income taxes, capital gains taxes, inheritance taxes, and property taxes, there can never be true ownership of private property. These devices of government sponsored thievery, forms of eternal extortion, were the main planks in Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. And that is why the present insidious state of affairs is un-American and unconstitutional.

You Can't Cheat An Honest Man

2009-03-31T06:46:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - September 1996

And here's another gem from W.C. Fields: "Never give a sucker an even break." Apparent non sequiturs to what is written below? Somehow, I don't think so.

You are walking down the street. You've just cashed your paycheck. Your wallet/purse feels fat and happy. I come up to you and stick a .357 right under your nose. I command: "Gimme your paycheck."

You hand over your wallet. I take 30% of the money out of the wallet and hand the rest back to you. As I turn and walk away, I yell back over my shoulder: "Don't worry. I'm going to spend some of this on a good cause."

As soon as your pulse rate lowers, your state of mind is: a) Fury. You have just been robbed at gunpoint. You call the cops. b) You are thankful that I only took 30% of your hard-earned money. And you don't bother to call the cops. c) You are completely satisfied with the entire affair because I told you I was going to spend the money that I stole from you on a good cause. And you don't call the cops.

Ladies and Gentlemen, what I have described above is the Federal Income Tax. There is absolutely no difference in the modus operandi. The only difference is that you can call the cops on a common mugger, but you can't call the cops on the Internal Revenue Service. They "police" themselves. Or it will take far more expense (and a miracle) to get your money back through the court system than most of you can afford.

We have given the government permission to steal from us because our ancestors allowed the 16th Amendment to the Constitution to become law. (The 16th Amendment wasn't lawfully ratified by three-fourths of the States. But that's another story.) Back in 1913, the government only stole from the "rich guys". So the huge majority of Americans weren't touched. In fact, they felt a snide little satisfaction that the "fat cats" were getting gouged.

We allowed our morality to become relative. A crime against a wealthy man became less heinous than a crime against a poor man. And, because there were far fewer wealthy voters than poor voters, the law stayed in effect. In fact, the thieves, being clever, realized if they cut the majority in on a slight bit of the action (government "programs") there was the likelihood that legalized theft would become a permanent fixture in American politics.

Now, the rich aren't stupid. Putting envy aside, one must admit that it takes brains, determination, cunning and discipline to make lots of money. It may not take honesty, but it takes smarts. So the smart rich guys grabbed control of the lawmakers who were spewing out all these tax schemes and simply built loopholes into the Income Tax system. That's why the Internal Revenue Code is now twice as thick as the New York City phone directory!

So some of us dummies are still thinking that the rich guys are getting gouged. Wrong. The burden began to fall on the upper middle class, because they didn't have the legislative juice to diddle with the tax codes. Then the upper middle class began to groan loudly and make angry noises at Congress. And so Congress "eased their burden" and dropped the Income Tax burden even further down the economic scale. Into the middle class. The trick to this balancing game was to attempt to always make a majority of voters think that they were getting something for nothing. Oh yeah, the government used a nice-sounding word to describe this: progressive.

A "progressive income tax". Now doesn't that make you feel better? You want to be "progressive," don't you? Aren't you all for "progress"?

You see, we think that we can give permission to the government to steal from one class of people and not end up being victimized ourselves. This is the height of folly.

But the thieves are not stupid. The plan is to get a majority of voters on welfare or employed by the government and paid by taxpayers' money. Are you going to vote to end your welfare check? Or your paycheck with the United States Department of Turtle Flatulence Evaluation? No way, dude. So automatically you don't want to see the income tax disappear. You don't want to see government become smaller. It would cost you your freebies or your job. So you piss and moan along with all the rest of the peasants. But you never really apply the heat to change the system, do you?

You keep buying into this socialistic system by voting for Socialist Party "A", the Democrats, or Socialist Party "B", the Republicans. Or maybe you are taking a closer look at Mr. Perot's "reform" socialism. The trouble is that your children will bear the weight of your vacillating. Think about it. Think about how we have legalized plunder in America.

Oh yeah. Pay your income taxes. You'll get your ass kicked if you don't. But while you're cutting that check, take the time to read up on what the Libertarian Party has to say about all this.

One final point. Excessive taxation fomented the American Revolution, and an attempt at "gun control," at Lexington, set it off. There is nothing new under the sun.

Through The Cross Hairs Darkly

2009-03-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - May 1997

The lights go down in the theater. The young (late teens to early 20s) males stare in awe as the latest psycho-murderers-from-Arkansas splatter movie vomits its imagery into their minds. Along the top border of the movie screen are secret viewing ports. Infrared video cameras scan the testosterone-frenzied audience for the hottest of the hot, those individuals who really get a rise in blood pressure from degradation and violence. Telephoto lenses beam in on the eyes of the viewers. Pupil dilation is measured and recorded against the carefully engineered subliminal mind manipulation buried in the imagery of the movie. By the end of the movie the five best candidates are picked out of the audience of 200 young men. They will have tasks assigned later.

Fiction so far? I sure as hell hope so. But the rest of what you are about to read is based upon clinical papers and the guarded opinions (some off the record) of a minority cadre of this nation's most outstanding psychological researchers. My extrapolations into the recent history of America are my own, but are shared by a growing number of concerned observers who have supplied me with disturbing, mainstream, correlative material over the past five years.

Hypnosis has a dark side. College students are taught, parroting the optimistic opinion of the late, great Milton Erickson (one of the founding fathers of modern hypnotherapy), that no one can be hypnotized to do anything against his or her will. The 18th century novel about Svengali, and Trilby, his helpless trance-state sex puppet, is scoffed off as simple sensationalism born in ignorance. Psychologists assure us that hypnosis is safe and virtually foolproof "in the hands of trained professionals". If commanded to do anything against his or her moral fiber, the subject will balk at the order or snap out of the trance. In most cases this is absolutely true.

But can some subjects, a small minority of fundamentally unstable individuals, be hypnotized and successfully commanded to commit suicide? Clinical investigators of lofty moral sense claim the answer is no, because they would never take such an experiment through to its ultimate completion. Think about it. How many psychologists, even if they were sufficiently bent to conduct such an experiment, would come forward and publish their startling discovery that they had succeeded in getting subjects to willingly jump out of high buildings? So, if it has been done, you just aren't going to hear about it. Personally, I think it has been done, many times.

The next potentially dark facet of hypnosis has to do with what is called "induced hallucination". Stage hypnotists play with this one all the time. The hypnotic subject is put into a trance and told that a huge, cuddly dog has wandered out on the stage. The subject kneels down and pets the imaginary dog and, if snapped out of the trance suddenly, often asks where the "dog" went. Post-hypnotic suggestion, planted in the mind of the subject, can reintroduce the "dog" into the subject's consciousness at a later date. The subject is simply told that he will come across the imaginary dog on the sidewalk after the show is over.

In 1947 a researcher named J.D. Watkins induced hypnotic hallucination in the minds of American servicemen. They were told that they would enter a room and be faced by a bloodthirsty Japanese soldier. The subjects entered the room, where they encountered, not a crazed Japanese soldier, but the commanding officer of the Army base. The entranced subjects threw themselves at the commanding officer with unrestrained violence, and in one case the subject produced a pocket knife that the researchers did not know he kept concealed on his person. Only the fast action of Watkins and a powerful MP kept the subject from slitting his own commanding officer's throat! Watkins was suitably sobered by these experiments. He became one of the dissenting voices in American hypnotherapy who has asserted quietly, but persistently, over the years that "anti-social behavior" could be induced via hypnosis.

Watkins later became the prime researcher in post-traumatic stress syndrome, or "shell shock." Thousands of American soldiers owe the reconciliation of their horrendous memories and the healing of their psyches to Watkins and his ground-breaking work. Watkins' textbook on trance induction and hypnotherapeutic technique is fascinating reading.

Enter the "Lone Gunmen." Beginning the early '60s, with Charles Whitman, the "Clock Tower Sniper" in Texas, certain types of individuals committed despicable acts of murder with various firearms. Sirhan Sirhan had an obsessive fascination with hypnosis and visited more than a half dozen hypnotists prior to killing Bobby Kennedy. Sirhan's behavior after the tragic shooting in L.A. is textbook trance state. Lee Harvey Oswald's demeanor while under arrest by the Dallas police was dazed and confused. "I'm a patsy" is one of American history's most mysterious declarations.

The official autopsy report and police background biography of Patrick Purdy, the young man who committed the Stockton school yard massacre, is eerie reading. Purdy had earplugs in his ears when he mowed down those children with a semi-auto rifle and then shot himself with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. This young man, with a background of years of rampant drug abuse and addiction, had only traces of nicotine and caffeine in his bloodstream the day he did his filthy deed. He was strangely clean and sober.

The list goes on and on, from the Texas cafeteria shooter, to 101 California Street, to the Long Island railway shooter. Colin Ferguson, the Long Island railway gunman, swears vehemently that someone else did the shooting. Ferguson was tackled by brave bystanders before he could reload his semi-auto pistol and shoot more people...or himself.

Each of these tragic events propel the burgeoning wave of "gun control" legislation and the eventual confiscation of firearms from the sane, and law-abiding, American citizenry.

In Australia, after the recent Tasmania massacre, the people of that nation were ordered by their government to turn in all pump-action shotguns and semi-automatic rifles. Believe it or not, it is now against the law to protect oneself with a firearm in Australia! It can happen here, and your current President and his minions of naive, ignorant or downright evil "gun control" advocates quiver with spasms of unconstitutional legislation every time a "Lone Gunman" strikes again.

Every major genocide of the 20th century has been preceded by firearms registration campaigns and the resulting confiscation of those firearms from the citizens who then became the helpless, unarmed victims of their own government-gone-bad. A police state must disarm the citizenry. The twisted acts of "Lone Gunmen" are having an immense impact on the social and political realities of millions of people in the free world. To paraphrase Winston Churchill: "Never have the lives of so many been so affected by the actions of so few."

I sadly predict that in the near future a crazed "Lone Gunman," using a scoped hunting rifle, and with plenty of time and ammunition, will open up in a crowded sports stadium or concert venue and wreak abominable mayhem. I predict the shooter will kill himself or be killed by security guards. We will then see hunting rifles, aka "sniper rifles" (Teddy Kennedy's turn of speech) outlawed. All this will take is one entranced subject, properly programmed on top of an innate, sociopathic disposition.

The movie The Manchurian Candidate is scientifically valid. There is a reason that movie was pulled out of circulation shortly after its theater release in the '60s and only recently allowed to surface. "Gun control" had been soundly entrenched in the American way of life by the time The Manchurian Candidate was finally shown in a few theaters and offered in video decades after it was produced. Listen to the soundtrack carefully (when the Korean shrink lectures his audience). You will be told exactly how to find the actual clinical research papers on the induction of anti-social behavior via hypnosis. This is what is known as "Revelation of the Method". Let those who have ears, hear.

[author's March 2009 note: "The Manchurian Candidate", I have since learned, was actively suppressed by Frank Sinatra (a close personal friend of the Kennedys), but actually did air a few times in the 60s and 70s. It was, however, very, very long in coming to video.]

The Parable Of The Farmer And The Nerd

2009-03-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - January 1997

While being virtually computer illiterate (pun intended), I am attempting to understand a book by Robert Cringely called "Accidental Empire". It's about the personal computer revolution that has taken place in this country in the last 20 years. The overwhelming message conveyed within its pages is just how damn smart guys like Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates actually are. The author's premise, oftentimes expressed with wry humor, is that Woz did it for fun, Jobs did it to prove himself, and Gates just wants to rule the world.

I can't help wondering through the whole story where the hell we are going with these frigging machines. And a week ago Intel announced a computer that cranks out one trillion calculations per second! Who the hell invented that thing? Is there a computer programmer eugenics experiment going on somewhere in the Nevada desert? Is it bootleg space alien technology?

So now we've got this "Big Bertha" computer that, according to one excited nerdy guy I heard on the radio, is going to make decoding DNA information a "slam dunk". Unraveling the secret to life on earth, a "slam dunk"? Oh boy. And, according to Cringely's book, computer technology is doubling in speed and capacity every 18 months.

Is this the hubris of Greek Mythology? Or, is the Biblical Tower of Babel really a parable regarding the computer?

In the Tower of Babel story mankind has a single language. God gets a bit irked at the arrogance of these upstart hominids building a tower that was going to reach right into Heaven. God red-tags the tower, gets ignored, and then knocks it to the ground. He then punishes mankind by giving all the pesky critters different languages.

With this in mind, I'm going to spin a wild yarn. Pure fiction. But maybe it contains the glimmer of some sort of genetic survival mechanism, like baby chimps being afraid of rubber snakes even if they are raised in captivity.

Imagine, if you will, the world of 2020 (if we make it that far). I've got a Big Bertha on my desk and you've got one on your desk. More likely, they'll be laptops. We all speak the same language. I mean the whole world. Because the computers automatically translate English into Japanese or Ebonics, and vice versa. So it's like we all speak the same language. You be gettin' it, homies? At this point, all the world's nerds decide to build that tower to Heaven. (Arthur Clarke has some cool ideas about an elevator system that goes up into the zero gravity of outer space, but I'm tending to think that this tower is symbolic.) If we climb this computer tower, we will really screw things up. Just like in the Babel tale.

I think this tower leads to time travel. Imagine Bill Gates going back and buying up IBM stock in 1955. Pretty scary.

So the tower has to come down. God can't let us mess up the whole universe, can He? Okay, so here's the catch: Electromagnetic pulse (EMP). An atom bomb exploded 10 miles in the air over Denver would wipe out all the electrical circuitry in the Western United States. The military guys know all about this. EMP fries transistors, microchips and magnetic information storage devices.

Now imagine a Divine Cosmic Blast of EMP pummeling Earth. It wouldn't necessarily kill anyone. Might even help the ozone layer. But it would kill every computer on Earth that wasn't deep in some cave somewhere. So there goes 99.9% of all our computers. And radios and telephones, and television sets (so it for sure has to happen during the Super Bowl).

Zap! We can't communicate with each other! The translators are splorked and gone. Can't understand each other no more! And your bank balance? What's that?

Doncha see? Mankind is in a pretty dicey position at this point, because we've put our eggs in the almighty, computerized Big Bertha Basket. And she's giga-crashed, dude!

So who are the big shots now? Culturally speaking, I mean. It's the guys and gals with the dirt under their fingernails. The farmers. You can't eat a floppy disk, pal. But they told us in school it was the "information age" this, and the "information highway" that. And that we had to adapt and become a "service society"!

Wrong, Buckwheat. Now it's the food providers, the farmers, who are the big shots. They really always were, but the elite intellectuals just thought of them as knuckle-headed hayseeds who got drunk in pickup trucks and listened to Merle Haggard tapes.

And now, after the Divine Cosmic Blast EMP, the entire global food distribution system is caput. It can't run without the computers. So the only people who don't starve to death are those who have access to local agriculture. Remember, part of this global monkey wrenching is that all the airplanes and trains and trucks have fried electrical systems also. So if you can't sail a boat or ride a mule or walk to the farmland, you are going on a diet, Jack.

Did you know that Bill Gates has a huge vegetable garden in the backyard of his Seattle compound? Yep. That's what I hear. So maybe Mister Bill really has seen the future. No! Hang on a second! What if his computer was deep in a cave in 2020, and only he figured out how to... Nah. Can't be. Nobody is that smart!

Who Owns These Hands?

2009-03-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - August 1997

Lift your hands up in front of your face and look at them carefully. If there was ever something that might qualify as private property, those hands in front of your face should fit the bill. They are yours; they belong to you and to no one else. Can we agree on this basic fact? I hope so, even if you happen to be a socialist.

If someone comes up to you and says, "Give me your hand," you might think he wanted to shake hands with you. But what if he really meant for you to give it to him? He actually wants you to cut your hand off and give it to him! How do you answer that person? Can we assume that you would firmly declare that he can't have your hand? Would you be selfish if you loudly said, "It is mine. You cannot have it."? I doubt that even socialists (who love to rail against "selfishness") would consider this a selfish act. In fact, to chop off one's hand and give it to someone under such circumstances could properly be called insane.

Let's take this a step further. We can logically acknowledge that the muscular energy that moves your hands is also your private property. That energy is exclusive to your hands, and therefore to you. You own the actions of your hands because you own your hands. Suppose someone comes up to you and says, "Take your hands and carry this sack of concrete for me." It is a blunt command, not an offer of employment. Are you selfish if you tell the guy to get stuffed? I don't think so. And the law agrees. Slavery is the theft of someone else's labor. Slavery, involuntary servitude, is illegal in America.

The next step is the realization that there are two basic types of able-bodied, adult people in the world: producers and thieves. At first this may seem simplistic. But if you examine this declaration carefully, you will see that it is a precise, accurate observation.

An honest government should protect the producers (owners) from the thieves (non-owners). A dishonest government empowers the thieves at the expense of the producers. Which form of government do you think we live under today? The next question is: How far are we going to let this go? To answer that question we must examine how far it has already gone.

Now, in that previous theoretical situation, you boldly told off the obnoxious guy commanding you to carry a sack of concrete. But when you are taxed by a SWAT team-armed government at an effective rate of 50 percent, it is the same as though you carried five sacks of concrete for yourself (for some form of compensation that you have previously agreed upon), and you were then forced to carry five sacks as a slave.

The key to this trickery is the subtly seductive nature of theft by proxy. If you are the beneficiary of any sort of government program, are you not guilty of receiving stolen goods? After all, the money or benefits you are receiving were literally stolen via armed threat. In case you didn't know, the government enforces tax laws at gunpoint.

This is not a comfortable realization to accept. For instance, your children are able to attend free "public" schools because other people have had their money stolen by the government. You may have been taxed as well, but if the education of your child costs a single dollar more than your "fair share" of taxes that are directed towards your local public school, are you not effectively in receipt of stolen goods? And, therefore, are you not, in a subtle, morally significant way, a thief?

On the flip side, if the amount of money from your taxes directed towards public schools is greater than the cost of your child's education, are you not a victim of theft?

I can hear the indignant liberal socialists sniveling now. After all, every child has a "right" to a free education! Oh yeah? Who the hell made that one up? Seriously, folks, where did that idea come from? And where does the concept end? Does every child have the "right" to free food, free medical care, free tricycles, free Nintendos, free Nikes? You expect your kid to get a free education, so why don't you send him down to the shoe store and tell him to pick up his free pair of shoes?

The obvious fact that we are ignoring here is that nothing is free unless it is freely given. If I steal a car and give it to someone, and get caught doing so, I will be punished for theft and the recipient of the "free" car will, at the least, have to return the stolen property to its rightful owner.

Can't you see how socialism, also known as "democracy" or "mob rule," allows the enshrining of dishonesty (theft) as something virtuous? It is morality by consensus. If the majority one day declares that something intrinsically evil (theft) is in effect good, is it then okay to steal?

The sustaining energy behind government-sponsored theft is most often plain envy. I look at you and I covet the wealth you have earned. I want some of it for myself. The easiest way for me to get it is to steal it. So I hire professional thieves known as politicians to plunder you so I don't have to stick my own neck out. Now I don't like to think of myself as a thief, so I have to demonize you, my victim, and characterize you as "greedy," or "corrupt," or "exploitive," or "filthy rich." Now you very well may be all those things, but what if you are not? What if you are just a hard-working, bright, ambitious, inventive, honestly wealthy person? Well, that's just too bad, isn't it? Because those positive traits don't get anybody a tax exemption, do they?

Intrinsic to the deception of this theft called socialism is the phrase that "we vote to tax ourselves." This is a huge lie. If a tax scheme is approved by 60 percent of the voters, there is a minority of 40 percent that will be plundered against their will. Has anybody ever wondered if it might be possible to tax only those who vote for the scheme and let the others off the hook? (Of course, it is only right that the nay-saying minority would then be denied the "benefits" said tax scheme would allegedly deliver.) I hear it all the time: "I'm willing to pay for public schools!" Well, good for you! Go for it! Dump you money into those government-run brainwashing centers, those idiot factories, those institutions of inculcated collectivist passivity. But why, fellow citizen, must you coerce others to bear the financial burden?

Whose hands are those in front of your face? Are you looking at the hands of a producer or the hands of a thief?

Violence Solves A Lot

2009-03-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - January 1998

One of the more insidiously deceptive lines of the socialist-liberal agenda is the banal phrase: "Violence doesn't solve anything." How much retrospection is required to understand that Hitler wasn't stopped by peace marches, negotiations, or "conflict resolution" sessions. It is a horrible, disgusting task, but evil acts, whatever shape they take, must eventually be countered by a superior, violent force.

The liberal doesn't seem to understand that the threat of counter violence is perhaps the most effective preventative of actual physical conflict. Liberal pacifists in modern times mocked the phrase "peace through strength" as though the pragmatism contained within such an idea were rooted in some atavistic, macho, testosterone-poisoned psychosis that had been propagated by alpha males throughout history.

Can't the liberal understand that bad people are prevented from committing evil acts by their fear of punishment? Perhaps at a childhood level, the threat of adult disapproval or the disapproval of one's schoolyard peers keeps the behavior of the youngster in some kind of conformity to morality. But it doesn't take long for the criminally-minded teenager to realize that he really doesn't care what other people think. Crime pays. Evil is profitable. Bullying works. Unless, that is, you are harshly confronted with the realization that your malicious behavior will be rewarded by a beating, a bullet, or a prison cell.

A peaceful, free society, of which America (even with its flaws) is the most outstanding example in all of recorded history, is preserved by the willingness of its people, either singly or as a group, to commit decisive acts of righteous violence to counter evil activity.

Hebrew experts now declare that one of the Ten Commandments has been mistranslated. "Thou shalt not kill" is more accurately translated from the ancient Hebrew as "Thou shalt not murder." The punishment for murder in ancient Israelite communities was stoning. Murderers were killed by the citizens. They were executed. And stoning was the most effective way to spread the responsibility for the execution through the mass of individuals who were willing to pay the price for living in a peaceful, moral society. Because of its face-to-face horror, the compassionate individual would, one might imagine, actually cast the first stone...to make sure it knocked the murderer immediately unconscious, in much the same way the ethical hunter or fisherman puts his quarry out of its misery as quickly as possible. The ancient Hebrews forced personal responsibility on each individual via the group act of stoning.

It comes down to individual responsibility. It comes down to the individual being willing to act with violence when confronted by certain criminal behaviors. How many of your would idly stand by and watch a man torture a helpless pup? You would first yell at him to stop. If he continued, you might grab at him or throw yourself between him and the bleeding, cringing animal. What if he slaps you aside and continues his barbarity? You look around and see a two-by-four on the ground. How many of you would not take that two-by-four to the man with a clear conscience? Sorry, there are no phone booths around. You can't call the cops or the Humane Society. You have to act now! What do you do? Are you really going to stand by and watch the travesty, all the time telling yourself that "violence doesn't solve anything"?

If you would club the animal torturer with a two-by-four, how much quicker should you come to the defense of a human victim? I grew up in the Marxist-Socialist, namby-pamby Bay Area, and I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard some pompous person tell me "I could never kill anyone!" I even said it a few times myself during my naive teens and 20s. It felt so good to utter that unctuous homily. But I don't feel that way anymore.

I would kill another human being. I would do it to save my own life or the life of an innocent victim. The act would probably make me physically ill. I might have to live with it in my mind for the rest of my life, but I pray I would have the courage, yes, courage, to stop consummate evil with whatever means became necessary.

And it is for this reason that I am a fervent advocate of the right of the law-abiding and sane individual to possess and carry a firearm. The right to self-defense is not only a right guaranteed to us by the Constitution, it is a duty, a command of "Nature and Nature's God" (to quote Jefferson) that each of us must confront if we are to preserve freedom and moral civilization in our communities and nation.

Modern-day "gun control" is not something invented in America by Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. Adolph Hitler used firearms and ammunition registration to create the paper trails that facilitated the eventual confiscation of the firearms of his opponents in Nazi Germany. The Nazi German law bears such an amazing resemblance to America's Gun Control Act of 1968 that every school child should be made aware of the similarity. Or perhaps we should all think about a very simple fact: slaves can't own guns.

Perhaps the world isn't the way we wish it would be. We all might wish that evil men could be persuaded from their vile behavior with bleeding heart entreaties, a kiss on the cheek, or proper toilet training. But it ain't that way, folks. Pacifism is a sickness, an actual moral perversity, when its effects spread to anyone else beside yourself. You may choose to walk to the cattle car, but damn you if you let your children be led up the ramp. You must never allow any group or government to steal your right to exercise armed lethal force in a just situation.

One of the greatest instructors in the defensive use of firearms used to say to his graduating classes: "May you never have to use what you have learned here." And in that spirit I would like to see an American citizenry that is armed to the teeth and as skilled in the use of pistols and rifles as we are in the driving of automobiles. Am I insane? Somehow, looking at the tragic lessons of history, I don't think so.

Fusion Confusion

2009-03-26T10:29:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - October, 1997

A few years back, I advised readers to check out the Art Bell Show, an eccentric late-night talk radio program that ranged far and wide in subject matter. At that time, Art was on only a single station that we in the Bay Area could pick up. Now, from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. you can't miss his program, as it comes in on at least a half dozen stations.

Art Bell has interviewed many so-called psychics and remote viewers. Several of the darkest of the bunch have, for quite awhile, been predicting disastrous (mostly climatic) changes over the next several years. This end-of-the-world stuff comes on strong as we approach the millennium. The fundamentalist Christians have their interpretations of the Book of Revelations, the tree-huggers are howling at melting ice caps, and anyone with an ounce of foresight can guess that somebody is going to pop an A-bomb suitcase off somewhere.

In short, and certainly just to be safe, we could do with a serious change of behavior on spiritual, environmental and political levels. So here I sit, pretending I'm one of the Illuminati. I'm realizing that the fecal matter is going to hit the fan pretty soon. Here's how I, as one of the Illumined Ones, one of the Global Plantation's Overlords, might view the coming situation:

1. I and my ilk have controlled the economics and politics of this planet for several hundred years. We are the Royal Families, the Old Money, the International Banking Priesthood. We have controlled the money supplies (we print the stuff), the political structures (we own the armies), and the wheres and whens of our very profitable wars (think of it as an NFL with tanks and bombers). No, it's not a conspiracy. It is simply a form of coercive collusion. Our hierarchy and minions go along to get along. Keep your mouth shut and profit, or start talking and we'll kill your children and grandchildren. Morality is not a hangup with us. We invented Communism as part of the dialectical materialism that hid our growing international corporate monopolism behind a carefully orchestrated global fear of thermonuclear war. Our socialist, Pavlovian experiments upon the psyches of the Soviet people taught us much about how to control the minds and emotions of the herd, you our cattle. We now employ these techniques, in a diluted form, upon the so-called free people of America, using television mind control, news manipulation, and hypnotic sedation via the boob tube. These brainwashing techniques have allowed us to instigate and perpetuate massive vote fraud, because the boobs in front of their tubes are too ignorant, naive, or wishful to ever understand that computerized ballot deception can be surfed as easily as the internet. First, we tell you how you're thinking with our opinion polls, and then we produce elections that, by gosh, by golly, reflect your opinions. Isn't democracy neat? And you wonder how these blatant idiots and liars called politicians keep getting elected?

2. We have mastered societal compression via our shock testing techniques. We know how, in a given social situation the vast majority of people will react. We know how far to push our luck before we back off slightly and allow reform to occur. The present hearings on the IRS are just an example of the pablum we feed you. You don't like the IRS, do you? Alright, we'll reform those wretched hooligans and give you the same thing with a different name. However, can't you see that with each compression and decompression, we actually strengthen the finances, resources, technology, and military might of the secretive, elite, feudal civilization we have been fostering in your very midst?

3. As long as it was business as usual, our plans have played out harmoniously across the decades. But of late, our models have been suffering the slings and arrows of anomaly. I speak herein of...El Nino. Ah, we Illumined Ones would like to take credit for that, but sadly we cannot. So we fall back to Plan B.

4. As the winters of '97 and '98 progress, the Pacific jet stream will be forced far south over the northern section of Baja California. Visualize a band of incredibly heavy rainfall, storm after storm, marching through all of Southern California, across Arizona, Texas and into Florida. See huge waves pounding the California coastline from the more vulnerable directions of the west and southwest. Erosion from sea and rain will cause an erosion of the social fibre within a society that is, even now, rather fidgety. Other problems will arise as the vast agricultural areas of the Central Valley are flooded and food supplies diminish. The highway infrastructure will suffer from the three to four times normal rainfall, and communications will sputter fitfully because of downed power and utility lines.

Southern California and the Southern U.S are just isolated examples of the general confusion that will be experienced. Now we Illuminated Ones profit from a bit of stress and strife, if properly managed. But this thing is going to be more dicey than we'd like. So we're gonna be nice guys. We're going to allow cold fusion to rather abruptly put our petro-chemical fuel system out of business. We are going to centralize the fusion technology so that we can meter it and make you pay us for it. We aren't going to let you get energy independent from our benevolent, addicting teat. But we are going to cut you poor bastards some slack and appear to be heroes at the same time. Trust me, you'll take whatever you can get when the going gets sloppy.

We've been warming you up to this idea with a couple of Hollywood movies of late. And that fellow Art Bell had an interesting interview with a highly-respectable scientist who knows the skinny on the actual cold fusion situation. We also let you get a glimpse of the technology on Good Morning, America. That's why there's fusion in confusion.

Deceptions Defined

2009-03-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - December 1997

Here are some of the deceptive words used by socialists today. Read or listen to the brainwashing, leftist media, and you'll be bombarded with these examples of sedition by syntax.

"Affirmative action": This really means state-sponsored racism and sexism. We've had two, and in some cases three, generations of this egalitarian trickery. Ask yourself if this is really necessary today. A business owner is going to hire the person (black, yellow, brown, white, female or male) who is going to make him or her the most money. Michael Jordan could be a green-skinned transvestite and he'd still have a job as the highest-paid basketball player in the world. Bill Gates could be a black, lesbian Jew and the world would beat a path to her doorstep with offers of employment. Gee, Tiger Woods's race sure has been a handicap for him, hasn't it? That little golf ball looks up and gets extra crotchety when it realizes there is an African-Chinese American swinging at it, doesn't it?

Why can't the socialist liberals out there realize that the cash register is color and gender blind? The scoreboard is color and gender blind. If I am a business owner, an employer, I simply want talent and drive from my employees. And can you really claim that any modern school, at any level from first grade to college, purposely holds back a student in any subject because of sex or race? Give me a break.

"Democracy": The true meaning of this word is mob rule. If we had real democracy in America, blacks would still be sitting in the backs of buses and gays would be so deep in the closet they'd need flashlights. You don't want "democracy," friends. It means that 51 percent of us can decide to rip off the other 49 percent. As much as I like the results of voter initiatives that have reined in property taxes in California, busted taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens, and crushed affirmative action (racial quotas) in this state, I am firmly against mob rule "initiatives." Because what happens when the initiative to take away my guns or limit my freedom of speech ("hate speech laws"), or allow me to smoke a cigarette if I so choose, passes by "majority rule"? Legislation means creating laws. Laws control our lives. We've got way too many laws as it is, and hundreds more are laid upon us year after year. Legislation should be a slow, deliberate and ponderous mechanism. Remember that Lenin called the murderous monster he created a "social democracy."

"Equality": In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson claims that "all men are created equal" and have an innate right to "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." The word "pursuit" implies that you might not succeed (no matter which lying politician you may vote for). Michael Jordan and I are not equal when it comes to basketball. No matter what training I was given in my formative years, I could never, ever leap from the top of the key and slam dunk a basketball. Steve Wozniak and I are not equal when it comes to math. I can't even begin to fathom the numerical wonders he mastered to create the first personal computer. Think of the absurdity of making Michael Jordan play basketball with his feet hobbled so that I could have a "level playing field," or of keeping Wozniak drunk as a skunk so I could think that I was as smart as he is.

"Gun control": This really means gun confiscation. From the beginning of recorded history, tyrannical governments have sought to keep personal weaponry out of the hands of commoners. The ancient Israelites at one time weren't allowed to have swords. The Scottish peasants weren't allowed to have swords (see Braveheart). The American colonists rose up and rebelled when the British Army attempted to confiscate their muskets and powder. It wasn't about tea or even taxes. It was about "gun control". "Gun control" advocates have an insane trust in the fickle beneficence of government. Look what governments have done to unarmed civilians in just the 20th century! Stalin's goons murdered at least 20 million. Hitler's goons murdered at least 13 million. Mao's goons murdered 60 million. Pol Pot's goons murdered nearly 2 million. Idi Amin's goons murdered half a million. Guatemala, Rwanda, Zaire, Yugoslavia, Algeria, Argentine, Chile, Indonesia...the rivers of blood flow because evil cannot be challenged by righteous individuals who have been robbed of their most fundamental right to self-defense. There has never been a more pragmatic saying than "Trust in God, but keep your powder dry."

"Illegal immigrant": This one is absurd on its face. An "immigrant" is someone who has legally applied to live in a nation in which he was not born. The proper phrase is "illegal alien." Yes, alien. This doesn't mean a bug-eyed space creature. For centuries it has just meant someone who was not born in the nation in which they are visiting. Every time you see the phrase "illegal immigrant," you are being manipulated, because "we all came from immigrants." Yeah, okay, but our immigrant grandparents or great-grandparents most likely came to America, legally applied for residency, and then passed the citizenship examinations. We can give this nation away overnight if we want. Let's just let every foreigner (alien) who wants to come here come on in. But you should think about what that will really mean for your own children and grandchildren, Mr. and Mrs. Bleeding Heart Liberal.

Socialism is like cancer. It is unhealthy for the body politic in any stage of its development. Socialism is a lie. Its use of the English language is dishonest, and its proponents are, in the depths of their souls, either naive idiots, lying parasites, or calculating thieves.

The Cure For Tax Trickery

2009-03-24T03:32:00.000-07:00

By Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - July, 1998

The right to lawfully acquired private property is a prerequisite of human freedom. Even birds stake out territory during nesting season and, in quite a few instances, the progeny of a mating pair return to nesting sites. Anyone who has ever raised aquarium fish understands the territorial imperative. Human beings call the exclusive use of land or materials "private property". Even the socialist liberal believes in a certain amount of private property, or else he would ethically have to let you sleep in his house whenever you so wished.

The importance of private property to human life and liberty is so fundamental that life and liberty are absolutely impossible without some level of recognition of private property. The food and water that goes into your mouth to sustain your life must be owned by you at the moment of ingestion. That food and water is exclusively yours. Once it is in your guts it isn't going to do anyone else's body a bit of good until it has been shat out upon the ground and fertilized a tomato plant that the next guy eats.

Government costs money. To expect someone to protect your life, liberty or ability to pursue happiness for free is to expect the person doing the protecting to be your slave. Taxation is how government generally gets the money to pay for the essential tasks to which it has been assigned. We expect government to help protect our bodies (cops and soldiers), and our property (cops and soldiers and courts that enforce contract). Now it seems proper that the poor person has a right to the same protection of his life that the wealthy person deserves. No more, no less. Bill Gates's life is no more important than yours (although Bill might argue persuasively about that). But Bill Gates places a much, much greater burden upon the available resources of government when he expects his vast amount of property to be guarded and protected by the cops and soldiers that are also appointed to watch out for your property. Yes, Bill Gates should pay a lot more taxes than you.

An important question arises when we ask ourselves how this is to be accomplished. The Marxist socialist advocates a progressive income tax. The progressive income tax is one of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto. The federal income tax was launched with the catchy phrase "soak the rich". This is the politics of envy. Too often it has been wielded by the non productive to steal from the productive. (And herein lies the parable: That not all the rich are productive and not all the poor are non productive).

Think about it. How can the phrase "the redistribution of wealth" actually mean anything other than common theft? The dope addict who hits you over the head and takes your wallet is just "redistributing" your wealth, isn't he?

Bill Gates should be taxed, not on what he earns, but on what he spends (as should all the rest of us). His vast estates require more police protection than your humble apartment, so he should pay more. And that greater payment should be extracted at the point of purchase. While Bill Gates' money is in the bank the bank has been given the responsibility of protecting that money, and Gates pays for that service by allowing the bank to lend out his money at interest. But once Bill takes his money out of the bank and buys a new Mercedes and a private jet the government (with your tax money) is now expected to protect the newly acquired private property of Mister Bill. As things exist now, you are paying an unfair proportion of that protection fee.

For the life of me I can't understand why we cannot abolish all income taxes, all property taxes and all inheritance taxes and run the whole damn show with point of purchase taxation (also known as sales taxes). We built the most extraordinary highway and road system on the face of the planet with just the sales tax on gasoline. Heavier, more ponderous vehicles break down roads and bridges more than lighter economy cars. They also use more fuel and are therefore automatically taxed more heavily. Why can't we see that the disparate amounts of private property of the wealthy and the poor also strain the legitimate resources of government in exactly the same proportional way?

I am not an economist or a mathematician, but it seems that a single sales tax of ten percent on all goods and services would fund the essential activities of our local, state and federal governments (with the feds last in line, of course). Even God doesn't ask for more than ten percent (the tithe). When I buy the services of a plumber I would pay sales tax. When the plumber buys a tool with the money I paid him he would pay the sales tax. When the toolmaker spends the money the plumber gave him to buy a magazine he would pay the sales tax. Each time the amount of private property (or its value, i.e. my repaired plumbing) in our society increased the increase would provide for the government resources and manpower needed to protect that property.

Sales taxes have been called "regressive" taxes because they place a so-called "unfair" burden upon the poor. Okay, if you really believe that then let us exempt from the sales tax all unprepared food items, medical expenses, educational tuition, health insurance premiums, and the expense on one's primary housing. The poor guy (and the rich guy) gets to buy untaxed food, untaxed medical care, untaxed education, untaxed medical insurance, and an untaxed roof over his head. The poor could exist at a modest subsistence level without paying a single penny in tax.

What would change is that the very rich would start paying a far greater amount of tax because they spend so much more than you or I. And they don't want to do that. And that is why they bribe the corrupt, fecal brained scum known as politicians to keep the insidious income tax alive while they, the mega wealthy, cry crocodile tears and play the loopholes that you and I can't play. All the while the mega wealthy sucker you into believing that they fear the income tax. They use your envy of their prosperity to fuel your own ignorance of the actual reality. They are like Brer Rabbit begging not to be thrown into the briar patch! Can't you see and understand this? Here is the final piece of the puzzle: Socialism was invented by, instituted by, and is enforced by a cabal of banking and corporate monopolists who call themselves "free market" capitalists but are not, because they are ravening, bloodsucking thieves. Let he who has ears hear. You know who they are.

Talkin' 'Bout Their Constitution

2009-03-23T11:17:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - August 1996

There are few voices of dissent in our nation today that seem as logical and persuasive as that of Bill Medina. He attacks an issue like Copernicus telling his peers that, despite appearances, and despite everything they had been taught, the sun does not orbit around the Earth. An exploration of Medina's thought challenges many of one's most deeply ingrained (programmed?) beliefs.

Our lives in America are being hugely controlled via an immense government that was created by a contract to which none of us are signatories. So it is not really "our" Constitution. The Founding Fathers promised that they would limit their exercise of power to carefully prescribed venues. They created a limited government for themselves and their posterity (which, it should be pointed out, they had no right to do without their posterity's power of attorney). No part of their Constitution can be shown to operate upon "We the Other People" (versus the now dead men who got together in Philadelphia and called themselves "We the People"). So, on its face, it is "their" Constitution, not ours.

Now, one can effectively become a party to their Constitution, and place oneself under its authority, when one swears an oath to uphold and obey that Constitution. Every cop, politician, judge and soldier is bound by the restraints of their Constitution. They join the government and promise to play by the rules. They promise to let us: worship as we see fit, speak to one another freely, arm ourselves, face our accuser in a court of law, and on and on. Fundamental to this arrangement is that none of "We the Other People" have made any promise to perform to those in government. (Unless the "Pledge of Allegiance" is that promise to perform. Medina explains what those words really mean. Yipes!)

Bill Medina sometimes hears: "Why, you're an anarchist!" And, if I'm understanding him correctly, he would agree with the label if one is using the word correctly. Medina is a stickler for the actual, etymological definition of the word "anarchy." The word means "no arch," "nothing over," or, in human terms, "nothing over me." And he would remind you that it also means "nothing over you." And that includes him. His rights end where your rights begin. Get it? This isn't that complicated. You don't need a law degree to understand this.

So what rules would apply in the form of civilization that Bill Medina envisions? Would we still have laws? Yes, the Common Law. One is in violation of the Common Law when one trespasses upon another man's or woman's property. Since your body is your property, you have a recourse at Law when you are assaulted. Since your possessions are your property you have recourse when you are robbed. Since the air you breath is your property when it crosses your lips you have recourse at Law when that air is polluted by another. Assault, robbery, burglary, and air pollution are all Common Law trespasses.

The Common Law civilization that Medina advocates would be immensely self-reliant. The courts would be much simpler. Each man or woman would have to become a plaintiff if his or her property is trespassed upon. Therefore, no one would be breaking the law unless an injured party came forth and filed suit. You've heard it before: "No victim, no crime."

So, I can't sue you for smoking pot. But I could sue you for growing it on my property without my permission. Or blowing it in my face if I can prove to a jury of your peers that you have exposed me to some danger. Gone would be all government created statutes, codes and regulations that pretend to lawfully operate upon "We the Other People." Government created statutes would either disappear completely or be converted into defined trespass against an individual. A sound ordinance makes sense. Noise of a certain decibel level is either dangerous to one's ears (a trespass against your body) or it is deleterious to your peace (which is also a trespass against your body). "Turn down the damn music! I can't sleep!" would be a perfectly legitimate complaint in a Common Law court. What would be the penalty? That's up to the accuser to argue and for a jury of the accused's peers to decide (knowing, that in all likelihood, those twelve men and women also appreciate their own sleep).

Governments don't like the Common Law because the penalty (short of court costs) is made in the form of a monetary reward to the victim. This doesn't fatten the bureaucrat's coffers. Government cannot repeal the Common Law without repealing the 7th Amendment of their Constitution. This has not happened.

The Common Law is easy to understand. The guilty party compensates the victim for injury. A dangerous criminal who breaks your arm in an assault would have to pay your medical expenses, compensate you for pain and suffering and time lost from the earning of your livelihood. Certain heinous crimes would carry with them a tradition of imprisonment, or, in the case of murder, a life of hard labor with the proceeds going to the victim's family. The criminal wouldn't just sit in a cell with a television and three meals a day at taxpayer expense. These are old, old concepts that embrace centuries of wisdom. Again, the Common Law has not been declared obsolete. Repeat: If it had been, their Constitution would not now contain the 7th Amendment.

Is Personal Wealth An I.Q. Test?

2009-03-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - November, 1995

We've all heard the saying: "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" A few decades ago it was a good putdown for that loudmouth at a cocktail party. Today, it would be politically incorrect to consider such a comment anything less than the epitome of philosophical and social barbarism.

Enter, however, the nerd, epitomized by Bill Gates, the now-richest man in the world. And how about those two fellows that became overnight multi-millionaires with the software called "Netscape"? In fact, Silicone Valley is littered with smarty-pants types who are also filthy rich, oftentimes achieving the enviable goal in their twenties.

A while back, I heard a liberal radio talk show host say: "I know plenty of rich people who are dumb." I thought about that for a moment and realized that this was a bizarre and overblown lie. The only instance in which I can possibly see this being the case would be a situation that involved inherited wealth or lottery winnings. The truth of the matter was that this talk show host was subtly attempting to denigrate the acquisition of personal wealth. This is a classic propaganda ploy of the Marxist/Socialist.

There are four ways, and only four ways, that one can attain startling personal wealth. They are: 1. Win the lottery. 2. Inherit millions from a long-lost uncle. 3. Steal the money. 4. Earn the money.

Winning the lotto and inheriting the money don't take any brains. In fact, considering the odds, winning the lotto would almost define those overnight millionaires as people of subnormal intelligence.

Now, are thieves who have stolen millions of dollars all that common? Only in the banking industry. Other than that, most thieves are pretty penny-ante. If you think about it, it is very hard to steal a million or more dollars and get away with it. One might actually consider such a nefarious achievement to be an indication of above-normal, albeit misguided, intelligence.

Now that leaves those wealthy people who have earned their money. This category can be broken down into entertainers (including famous artists) and entrepreneurs.

First, the entertainers. Is Madonna intelligent? Are Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Ice Cube, Jack Nicholson, Rush Limbaugh? I don't know any of these people, but there is something about their style, even if I don't, in some cases, approve of the finished product, that radiates a type of intelligence. Michael Jackson is weird, but he ain't dumb. So I would have to admit that most wealthy entertainers are pretty intelligent. Just the act of seeing a niche and filling it, even with mindless rap music or missile nosecone bras, indicates someone who is smarter than the average bear.

This leads me to the fourth category of wealthy people: Those who earn their money by sheer creative ingenuity. Wozniak, Jobs, Gates, Getty and John D. Rockefeller are not, and were not, stupid men. One might attack the moral motivation that any of these men operate or operated under, but one cannot deny that there is high intelligence being demonstrated in any instance.

So let's get back to the socialist radio talk show host. Write down the names of the five wealthiest people that you personally know. Do not include heirs or heiresses or lotto winners. Leave only the thieves, the entertainers, and entrepreneurs. Now how many of those people, in your opinion, are below average intelligence? Expand the list to the ten wealthiest people you know. Are any of them below average intelligence? Are any of them actually dumb?

The purpose of this exercise is to get you ready to perhaps face something about yourself. Take your list of the five wealthiest people that you know and honestly and mercilessly ask yourself: "Am I smarter than any of those five people?" Be honest! You're not sharing this answer with anyone. Be harshly honest.

I'll bet that the only wealthy people who you think are less intelligent than yourself are from the entertainer group. Not one of the individuals from the entrepreneur groups rate lower than you in intelligence. And, in your daily comings and goings you might have to face the strange phenomenon that virtually everyone you consider to be your intellectual superior also makes more money than you! Ouch! (By the way, I'm not wealthy. Yet.)

This has been an exercise in realism, not naive idealism. It isn't about how the world ought to be. It is about how the world actually is. It is also about the personal baggage called "envy" that many of us lug around in our souls. Socialism, above and beyond anything else, is built upon envy. The socialist wants what the other man has earned or produced without having to put out any effort on his own part. The socialist is a thief and a bloodsucker. He is in denial and spins complex rationalizations so that he does not have to face the realization that he is a contemptible parasite. So the socialist derides the wealthy and productive among us. The socialist flaunts his disdain for "materialism," while secretly plotting the plunder of other people's property through mob rule, taxation and bureaucratic regulation.

The old saying does hold water: "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" And so, if you are not rich (and you would like to be), why would you want to obtain wealth through thievery? Only the individual mired in infantilism and envy wants what is not truly his own.

The Danger Of Star Wars

2009-03-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - January, 1996

Tom Clancy take note. I'm giving you some free ideas.

A Red Chinese tanker approaches the California coast while still in international waters and launches a nuclear-tipped Cruise missile at a population center. A rental truck parks in Dallas with a nuclear device. A Russian submarine launches from international waters. The missiles are coming in at an altitude of ten feet. Beeline Washington D.C. How do you stop it?

A space-based "umbrella" is one of the stupidest (and dangerous) ideas that has ever been put forward by our defense thinkers. What we need to do is ignore the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (we won the Cold War, right?) and begin the construction of a "shotgun" perimeter defense using sophisticated, ultra-high speed interceptor missiles that are ground-, air- or sea-based. Satellite tracking systems and enemy launch detectors are a legitimate part of this kind of defense. But let's keep actual weapons out of outer space.

There are two reasons. First, the Russians and Chinese (Japanese, Koreans, French, Iranians, etc.) would have every right to feel very paranoid with the realization that U.S. particle-beam or rocket-launching satellites are in geo-synchronous orbit above their nations. Little Sputnik scared the crap out of us. How can we expect others to not be equally alarmed? An armed satellite is the ultimate "high ground." Any military tactician soon acquires the understanding that the high ground has been the key in many a battle throughout history. The Russians would be justifiably stimulated to re-build their offensive capabilities if they had armed U.S. satellites hovering overhead. Armed satellites are far more de-stabilizing than anti-ballistic missile systems deployed on and around American soil. If the Russians brought an armed satellite into orbit over America, it would be shot down immediately. Any sovereign nation has this right. Refit our submarines with interceptors and reduce their patrol patterns to the offshore waters of this nation. And while you are at it, iron the bugs out of the Patriot system. It didn't work during the Iraq War, and all our potential enemies know it.

The second reason that Star Wars is so ominous is its obvious potential for authoritarian use. Those at the control console of an armed space satellite would be able to dictate their demands to the humanity below with complete impunity. Call it a sheep herder in the sky. The Greek gods on Mt. Olympus would be envious of the power.

Armed space satellites are the wettest dream of the elitists who want to force a "New World Order." The plum is the United States. Barring space weapons aimed at Americans from above, there are several immense difficulties facing a police state takeover of America.

There are more than two hundred million privately-owned firearms in America. A significant number of these are unregistered. The rest are recorded only on the dealer form #4473, which by law remains in the exclusive possession of the gun shop or sporting goods dealer. A fascist government in America would have to get possession of these yellow sheets of paper to initiate a house-to-house search for guns. Such a move would trigger an armed revolt in this nation. More and more Americans are getting hip to what happened to the Soviet, Red Chinese, German, Cambodian, Guatemala, Ugandan and Armenian Turkish citizens in the last century. Gun registration, gun confiscation, and genocide. That has been the pattern that resulted in the murder of 56 million human beings by their own governments.

If every soldier and cop in America turned on the people, it would amount to about a million armed men. These traitors would immediately face, on a completely amorphous front, the intense hostility of at least ten million armed and desperately determined American citizens. The Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto is a history lesson that all American gun owners should study. Add to this the defeat of the Russians by the Afghans and the damage done to U.S helicopters by Viet Cong guerillas in Vietnam, and you can understand that taking over an armed populace is not an easy task.

The fact is that more than half our soldiers wouldn't fire on their fellow Americans. The same goes for the cops and the FBI agents. I can't make that statement for the idiots in the ATF, because any law enforcement officer worth his or her salt will tell you that those goons are the slime at the bottom of the barrel.

But what if a space-based satellite fired on an American town and incinerated it in a tenth of a second? The self-anointed global overlords demanded complete obedience...or your town was next. Every soldier, jet fighter, tank, helicopter, and armed citizen on American soil would be impotent. Resistance would be hopeless. Space-based lasers could pinpoint single houses, or even individuals. Sound far-fetched? Well, they laughed at that funny little man with a weird mustache, didn't they?

I'm for a powerful defense for America. Anything less invites trouble.We should be capable of disintegrating any overt enemy. But we had better watch how this Star Wars scheme unfolds over the coming years. Big Brother in orbit leaves us and our freedom up Fecal Creek with zero paddle. Pit bulls are great guard dogs only if the leash is short and strong.

Hey! What's Wrong With Nationalism?

2009-03-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - May, 1996

In the U.S.A. today it is appropriate to hope that your favorite football team is number one. No one gets a sideways glance for hoping their son's Little League team wins the championship. Don't most parents secretly hope that their daughter or son might become an Olympic medal winner, or graduate at the top of her or his class? And don't most workers like to work for the "number one" company? Aren't all of these desires a matter of pride?

So what is wrong with wanting America to be the strongest, wealthiest, and freest nation on the face of the Earth? It's a rather old fashioned concept, isn't it? But if we are to believe the socialist media brain washers, such desires indicate that a "nationalist" is some sort of Neanderthal flag-waver standing in the way of a glowing New World Order, a One World Government, and an inevitable and good "global economy."

You are supposed to embrace the erasing of national borders and gleefully welcome "multi-culturalism." And if you don't feel comfortable with that, especially the effective erasure of our border with Mexico, then you are also labeled a racist.

The liberal (socialist) of today has been brain washed into welcoming "globalism." There are some rough spots, however. The trade unionists, whose movements grew out of Marxist strategy (a global revolution of workers), aren't playing ball with their outspoken stands against GATT and NAFTA and the impending downsizing of their union members' paychecks. It's a big push to "Buy American" if you're a union worker. That ain't globalism Comrade Clinton style.

Ironically, borders elsewhere are being re-drawn, not erased. The Soviet Union is no longer. I was taught in school that we'd never see the day the Berlin Wall would crumble. Yet nationalism is rampant in the once Soviet "republics." And, the last I heard, the EEC has a strange holdout in little Switzerland. What do the Swiss know that the others don't? Somehow a "United States of Europe" still seems a utopian daydream.

The social engineers lust for a single controllable unit, a Planetary Plantation, a Corporate Earth, wherein every indentured servant is numbered, computerized and conditioned. This is a coagulating force.

On the other hand there is the fractionalizing force, the tribal instinct buried deep in the human psyche. Many people reach a point where they realize the dangers inherent in centralized government, in joining with the larger. This awareness surfaces after they have been taxed, manipulated and coerced for "the greater good" until their own good, their own innate need for personal freedom, begins to suffer.

Personal freedom wasn't something invented by Thomas Jefferson and the other founders of America. It was something that was recognized. Man is not a hive creature. Our natural priorities are family, neighborhood, tribe (village), state, nation and world, and in that order. Only a lunatic would take the food off his own family's table and send it to another country to feed the poor over there. And yet, day in and day out we are being encouraged to "think globally" and allow our hard earned money to be taxed away and sent overseas while immense problems confront us right within our own national boundaries, or right out our own back doors.

Yet the socialist guilt peddlers always accuse the man or woman who thinks of his or her family first of lacking compassion. If one analyzes the logic one becomes more and more convinced that a serious case of upside down thinking is being foisted upon us. Healthy cynicism would lead one to the conclusion that the reality being projected by the globalists and their socialist media is actually 180 degrees off of one's own self interest.

Have you ever thought that if something is truly against your own self interest that it is likely also against the self interest of your neighbor? And that, in the end, is against the self interest of your nation? Think about this. We are not all that different in our needs. We don't need the "think globally" part of the bumper sticker saying. All we need is the "act locally" proviso and the rest will, if solutions are even possible, take care of itself.

America needs to quit telling other nations what to do and simply show other nations what can be done. This requires a rebirth of nationalistic pride, not a sublimation of that pride. We must realize that many people of the world can't immediately make the leap into a constitutional republican form of government. Charity begins at home. Keep your own doorstep clean. And maybe most appropriate, mind your own business. Could it be that sovereign nations are simply the larger version of the single family household? Like, please stay out of my yard?

The parasite class, the world bankers and fiat money creators, are simply attempting to get every last thing under their control. They play the money exchanges, diddle with interest rates, and foreclose on the true material wealth. At the point of a gun (tax collectors have guns) they take something from you and then, smiling beneficently, return a fraction of what they stole. And the majority of the sheep, the dumbed-down cattle, still don't see what is happening.

Globalism is a plan to erase the idea of Americanism, individual freedom, from the face of the Earth. America, even as wobbly as she is now, is the only place in the world where a resurrection of individual freedom can occur. This sovereign nation is the last bastion, and when each of us surrenders what we are in ourselves, loses sight of what we could be to ourselves, and joins the "Global Community," we will have sold the freedom of our children and grandchildren for a mess of pottage. America doesn't need the rest of the world. The rest of the world needs America.

Is Race War In America Inevitable?

2009-03-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

By Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - May, 1998

"History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen." Enoch Powell, ex-member of the British Parliament

Thus opens Thomas Chittum's disturbing book "Civil War II". With chilling precision, Chittum outlines the realization that America is headed the way of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia ... Balkanization, or, as the subtitle to the book proclaims: "The Coming Breakup of America". If our illustrious President wants us to "dialogue" about race, we'd better face the lessons of history that Chittum identifies in this book. You may not agree with Chittum's conclusions, but every American, of any race, should be familiar with the disturbing similarities between the bloody paths other nations have followed and the path America seems to be blundering along.

Chittum is a military analyst who has had hands-on experience with war, specifically civil wars. He fought for the U.S. Army in Vietnam in the '60s, the Rhodesian Territorials in the '70s, and with the Croatian Army in the '90s.

Apparently, multi-cultural, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic democracies don't last very long, if they even get started in the first place. The minute a single race, religion or ethnic group loses a large majority in a nation, that nation begins to undergo internal fracture. Chittum points out that the fall of the Soviet Union had as much to do with an incredible growth of Islamic forces in the various conglomerates of the Soviet Empire as did the arms race with the West. In the case of America, we shouldn't "celebrate diversity," we should fear it.

Civil War II will start in the American Southwest. Actually, it has already begun. It is called the "Reconquista," or in English, the Reconquest. An estimated two million illegal aliens, mostly Mexicans, have now infiltrated and occupied a huge swath of American soil that stretches from Los Angeles to New Orleans and up into New Mexico. Mexican and Latino radicals have already given this nation-to-be a name: "Aztlan." A beachhead has been established. Mexico will erupt into a revolution within the next 20 years. This revolution will either be brutally put down, as in the recent Chiapas uprising, or it will succeeed and a new, likely Marxist, government will take over. In either case, further millions of Mexicans, attempting to escape the bloodshed and even more depressing poverty, will flee north across the American border and into the Southwest. The conflict between the whites and the Hispanics will be exacerbated by the fact that one group speaks English and the other Spanish. One group is brown and the other is white. The inevitable "them vs. us" division will occur because the opposing forces can be immediately identified by skin color and/or language.

So re-draw your map of 21st Century North America with "Aztlan" occupying the territory (plus a little extra) that was once Northern Mexico before the "gringos" stole it. Toss in Southern Florida, because the Cubans are there to stay.

Malcom X, and now Louis Farrakan, have called for a "Black Homeland." Demographics are beginning to outline the shape of this second nation-to-be. Middle class and working class blacks are moving back to the Old South in increasing numbers. As the Reconquista progresses, blacks in Southern California will be stuck between a rock and a hard place; a growing resentment against the Hispanic tidal wave will be mixed with the age-old resentment against the white race. Patience and compassion go out the window when social misery meets ethnic and racial diversity. This is simply a pragmatic, coldly realistic lesson of history. All liberal, social engineering mumbo jumbo aside, when the fecal matter hits the fan, people prefer to be with their "own kind." So draw in "New Africa" on your map of 21st Century America. This will be most of the deep South.

North of New Africa and Aztlan will be an all-white nation stretching to the Canadian border or perhaps blended with several provinces of Canada. In 1992, the white race was 75% of the American population. If one were to travel through only the rural Northern U.S.A., one would likely assume that this is a nation of exclusively white people. Minorities have historically occupied enclaves in cities in the North. In 2050 the white race is expected to have been reduced to 52% of all Americans. Non-white immigration and the greater birth rate of blacks and Hispanics are fueling this trend.

There is a problem that prevents this demographic transition from remaining peaceful. The Mexicans want that land back. They will take it back, not simply ask. Black and white property owners in the fermenting nation of Aztlan will not likely relinquish their property without a fierce struggle. Likewise, southern whites, some of the most irascible critters on Earth, will not gently surrender their property to waves of black refugees. As the bloodshed against whites by blacks and against blacks by whites increases in the South, the black enclaves in Northern American cities (i.e., ghettos) will erupt into street warfare.

The armies are already in place. Our federal government estimates that 500,000 young men, predominantly black and Hispanic, are members of street gangs. These fellows have guns, money and a highly-organized hierarchy, because, as Chittum perceptively points out, the leadership of gangs is decided by cunning, street-smart business acumen (the drug trade), and a merciless willingness to eliminate rivals for power. The leadership of street gangs is Darwinian, while the leadership of our police and military agencies has to do more with whose ass you kiss than whose as you kick. Given equal armament, the street gangs are potentially better warriors.

Don't get mad at Thomas Chittum for his pragmatic insight. His book is controversial and opinionated, but it is not a racist screed. You just might as well get mad at the weatherman who tells you a hurricane is coming. Instead, read the book. Read it as soon as you can, and think long and hard about what is said. Civil War II is available from American Eagle Publications ($16.95, priority post and handling included), POB 1507, Show Low, Arizona 85901, 800-719-4957. Or order it from your local book store (ISBN#0-929408-17-9).

How To Defeat Organized Crime

2009-03-18T10:01:00.000-07:00

by Kirby Ferris

The Coastal Post - April, 1997

Organized crime in America was essentially spawned in the era of Prohibition. Alcohol was illegal, people wanted to drink booze with a passion, and the market arose to supply the desires of drinkers from all walks of life. Prohibition was a failure because the people of this nation dearly like to get buzzed on hooch. But before Prohibition was repealed (by a Constitutional Amendment), a huge criminal hierarchy had formed around supplying a substance that was once legal and had become illegal.

Prostitution is illegal in many states. Sex probably rates higher than whiskey in desirability, and so organized crime moved into illegal prostitution. Demand creates supply.

Gambling is very popular, and is illegal in many states. Wherever you can't legally bet on a horse race or a ball game, you will find a bookie system that illegally provides the gaming customer an outlet for his or her needs.

And finally, mind-altering drugs are an American way of life. I guess you shouldn't take many of them. Pot seems harmless enough. Cocaine and heroin are insanely pernicious. Drugs are illegal and organized crime long ago moved to supply the lucrative market that illegal dope represents.

What would happen if tomorrow prostitution, gambling, and drugs (all drugs, even the really destructive ones) were legalized in America? Let's hypothetically leave the government out of the trade. No taxation of gambling, hookers or dope. Let the market seek its own equilibrium. Here's what I think would happen.

1. Prostitution would become healthier. I mean this in a strictly medical sense. I'm not making any psychological or moral judgments here. The customers, because prices were relatively low (because of increased competition), would seek out the cleaner pleasure palaces. Why pick up a hooker on a sleazy street corner when, for just a few bucks more, you can obtain services from an establishment that has a well-documented bill of health. The whore houses in Nevada are run like this now. Organized crime would have to simply move out of the sex trade because it had become legal. Men and women who were once criminals would go into legitimate business providing the services they once supplied on the black market.

The fact of the matter is that prostitution is not going to go away. Ever. It is called the world's oldest profession. Obviously, there is some need that is being satisfied here. Legalized prostitution would drive the service fees of the working girl or boy down, and many young people might not be tempted into the flesh trade like they are now by the quick and substantial money that an illegal industry provides.

2. Criminalizing gambling is really dumb. I'll bet there's not a single American who hasn't bet a friend on a ball game or a trivia question at one time or another. So the first thing we are dealing with is rampant hypocrisy. Sure, people become obsessive gamblers. But millions of people are obsessive eaters and we don't make eating against the law. There are millions of obsessive drinkers. But we don't make drinking against the law anymore. Completely legalized gambling would inject competition into the industry. Casinos would post their odds charts, attempting to lure customers. Bookies would give better odds, maybe by shaving a point or two off their own advantageous spreads of games in order to increase their customer bases. More people would win more money if the gambling industry was unregulated and had to offer competitive reward incentives.

3. Legalize all drugs. The "War on Drugs" is not winnable, short of turning America into a complete police state. Illegal marijuana is really stupid if for no other reason than the fact that the hemp plant is a wonderful resource that can be substituted for petroleum fuels, lumber and paper pulp forestry, and very durable textile material.

I've got nothing good to say for cocaine, speed or heroin, but you either realize that this stuff is really bad for you, or you don't. Every fat person you see is evidence that eating can be bad for you if taken to extremes. Every meth head I see just reinforces my lack of desire to snort crank. Let's bring personal responsibility back into the picture here. If you abuse drugs, you ruin your body, screw up your family and social relationships, and blow money that you could spend on far more productive things. The burglary and mugging rate would plummet if drugs were legalized and the open market drove the prices down. Sure, excessive drug use is a form of slow suicide, but so is overeating. More people die of heart disease caused by bad diet and obesity than by drug abuse. Think about that. Again, do you want to illegalize chocolate cake, sugar, and French fries with the excuse that we'd be saving lives?

If the "sins" of prostitution, gambling and drugs were decriminalized, we would be left with a much leaner, understandable criminal justice system. Police would be freed to catch the thieves, murderers and rapists (and even a few more politicians). The American people would be challenged to act like rational adults living in a free society. Strangely enough, that seems to have been the plan when this nation was founded. Are we really willing to throw it away and hand our liberties over to the likes of the DEA, ATF and vice squad bureaucracies that thrive symbiotically on the criminal class? You see, the bottom line is that the criminalization of prostitution, gambling and dope has made an organized criminal out of our own government. Think about it.

Economics For Idiots (aka: I warned of this twenty years ago!)

2009-03-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

The Coastal Post - from February 1997

(This column originally ran in the December 18, 1989 issue of the Coastal Post. I wish it weren't still true.)

Warning: What you are about to read was not written by a college-trained economist, MBA, banker, CPA, lawyer, or tax-consuming bureaucrat. It is therefore likely to contain understandable words and an insidious dose of common sense.

The "Federal" Reserve System was initiated in 1913 as the specific brainchild of a man named Paul Warburg. Warburg was a German-born immigrant to the United States who was trained in the Rothschild-controlled Bank of London. (An intriguing aside: Warburg's brother was the head of the German Secret Service in World War I, 1917)

During a clandestine meeting at an ultra-exclusive sporting club on Jekyll Island, Georgia, Warburg and representatives of the Rockefeller family and J.P. Morgan first gathered in 1910 to discuss how they could manipulate the entire money supply of the United States to their private advantage. If you think this is just wild-eyed conspiratorial fiction, you owe it to yourself and to your children to understand how the mechanism that they invented in 1913 is still in complete control of every aspect of our financial lives today.

The Federal Reserve System is not a Federal institution. It is solely owned by private banks. You and I and the Congress have nothing (despite what the Constitution commands) whatsoever to do with it. Nothing.

The Federal Reserve Corporation creates out of thin air, or prints, our paper currency. Each $1,000 bill costs this private corporation one penny to print. The Federal Reserve Corporation then LOANS this paper money to the Treasury of our national government, which, in exchange, gives the Federal Reserve Corporation some treasury notes (IOUs from the national government) in exchange for that warehouse full of freshly-printed $1,000 bills. But these are not, and never have been, no-interest loans. No way, folks. The national government promises (a T-bill is a promissory note) to repay that loan of freshly-printed paper money with interest. Don't you wish you could print money and loan it out with interest?

There is not one fraction of an ounce of gold or silver backing that piece of green paper that is called a $1,000 bill. There used to be such a safeguard before the Federal Reserve Corporation realized very early in the con game that this age-old idea of gold and silver backing of paper currency would deny them their vast, and unconstitutional, power to print and manipulate our money supply. (1997 note: Gold-backed currency went out in the 1930s and silver-backed currency went out in the late 1960s.)

How does the national government get the money to fulfill its promise to repay the Fed with interest? Well, what the government does is to TAX all of us. At this time, we taxpayers are expected to repay more than THREE TRILLION REAGANMANIA DOLLARS that our national government has borrowed from the Federal Reserve Corporation. (1997 note: It's now SIX TRILLION, and it's only fair to add that Congress spends the money, not the President.)

As you slave your guts out to make ends meet, you are robbed of your hard-earned money (1997 note: actually you are, in effect, robbed of your labor) to pay off a bunch of paper that cost one cent each to print. You see, if you can all be kept in debt, we have to keep working and will therefore produce more to provide for the interest payments! We each have to keep working and paying, or lose it all to...ah, yes...THE BANKS! Either way, loan payment or foreclosure, the banks do just fine, thank you.

Now you may perceptively ask why the Federal Reserve Corporation accepts principal and interest payments on their loans to the U.S. Treasury in the form of the same paper currency that they themselves printed for a penny apiece. It's not too hard to understand. The Federal Reserve Corporation's private bank members INSTANTLY take the paper money interest payments from our taxes and purchases real estate, industry, businesses and commodities like gold, silver, copper and aluminum. They gain a further share of the ownership of the real wealth of America and then print some more money!

The Federal Reserve Corporation realizes that the only true wealth is in tangible products. They aren't stupid enough to believe that their green paper money is true wealth. They trade that worthless paper immediately for ownership in American farmland, industry and an ownership of your productivity via the stock in the companies they purchase using their agents. The "Fed" also has the services of the toughest collection agency in America...the IRS. It's hardball with their rules, my friends. The "Fed" has NEVER been audited.

The Federal Reserve Corporation manipulates the price of the stock in American companies up and down with their control of the prime interest rate. Of course, the agents of the private "member" banks buy off the stock in companies at the bottom of the price swings they themselves manipulate! In this way, bit by bit, America is actually owned by fewer and fewer people.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them [the banks]will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson 1786

The Smart Pirate Shares With His Crew

2009-03-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

The Coastal Post - September, 1995

In days of old, when a buccaneer captain hoisted his Jolly Roger flag and swooped in on a hapless treasure galleon, the crew was looking for something more than just the lust of spilling blood. The crew got a cut of the booty, a share of the plunder. If they didn't, it wasn't long before the captain was "demoted" and a mate with a more liberal social conscience replaced the deep-sixed captain. A happy crew is a loyal crew.

In the 1840s, while the perversion of French social upheaval boiled all around him, a young man named Fredric Bastiat wrote of this phenomenon. Bastiat's observations became the consummate description of the psychology of socialism. That Bastiat, speaking and writing with such clarity and courage, survived this insanity unscathed is persuasive evidence for the existence of guardian angels. (However, he sadly died of tuberculosis in his early forties.) But even more remarkable is the survival of his penmanship. What Darwin's insights did to natural science, Bastiat's observations can do for individual freedom.

It is this simple: If one is not punished for the act, it is easier for one to steal something than it is for one to earn the money to buy the same object.

Recognizing this, behavioral rules called "laws" were instituted in societies. It became illegal to steal. Stealing was against the law and was severely punished. Plunder was illegal. The majority of people in a culture, supported by the preponderance of their combined force of arms (even if it was a million pitchforks), declared that the thieves would be punished and the productive folk would be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labors. This doesn't require a Ph.D. in economics to understand. Most six-year-olds have a clearly-defined concept of "mine" and "yours."

So, the law, the behavioral code, protected private property and punished thievery. Sounds like simple common sense, doesn't it? In fact, it is completely logical. Anything else spells the eventual collapse of a civilization. Here's how that can happen:

Farmer Jones grew his watermelons with confidence that the rest of the citizenry would not steal his crop after he had done all the work. A small minority of people looked enviously at the farmer. They didn't want to give him money for his watermelons. They snatched his melons at night, figuring that he wouldn't miss just a few of them and stealing them was easier than growing them. Eventually, other folks saw the nervy thieves eating free watermelon and a certain number of them also began sneaking into the watermelon patch, reasoning: "Why should those chosen few enjoy free watermelon? I deserve free watermelon. I'm as good as the next man. And besides, Farmer Jones has so many watermelons that he won't miss a few more."

Farmer Jones complained to the authorities. "Enforce the law against theft!" he demanded. So the police moved in, set up midnight ambushes, and caught some (but not all) of the watermelon thieves. This stopped the theft for awhile. But eventually the unpunished, but more cautious, thieves started talking amongst themselves. "Damn! I miss all that free watermelon! They cost two bucks apiece now. Farmer Jones is getting rich! We have to do something to provide us with free watermelon again. We deserve free watermelon!"

Another thief pondered this for a moment. "Hey! I'll bet we could sell the masses on the idea that everybody deserves free watermelon! Yeah! Look, why don't we just get a law passed that makes free watermelon a "human right"...or a "civil right?" I'll bet we can get a majority of people to support the creation of legislation that makes free watermelon the law of the land!"

So out went the thieves to stir up the masses. They mounted voter registration drives, and enlisted the oratorical skills of the Reverend Jesse Jivesome, who was a mate with a more liberal social conscience (see first paragraph above). The Free Watermelon Party swept into power in the next election. Not long after, Farmer Jones watched as everybody flocked to his watermelon patch in broad daylight and cleared out the entire field! Farmer Jones (who hadn't been paying attention to the election campaign rhetoric because he was too busy fertilizing, weeding and irrigating this fields) went to the police in a rage. "Why didn't you protect me from those thieves?" he cried. The police just shrugged their shoulders. "The law says that everybody gets free watermelon. We were just enforcing the law by allowing them to go on in and get the free watermelons. In fact, if you ever try to stop them, it will be you who gets arrested."

Farmer Jones abandoned his farm and moved away. "I can't live in a country where stealing has become legal!" he muttered. The next year nobody grew any watermelons and the thieves wondered what to do. Then one of them got a great idea. "Let's have the government grow the free watermelons that we all deserve!"

The administrators in government (the pirate crew, as described above), now headed by the President Reverend Jesse Jivesome, thought his was a good idea. But the government administrators soon realized that growing free watermelons can't actually be done for free. (Duh!) So the government taxed the masses to provide for the expense of providing free watermelon. Someone pointed out that this scheme provided watermelons that weren't really free. But most of the people didn't understand this and continued on, paying more and more taxes to the inefficient free watermelon providers. But they were soothed by the lovely prospect of a continuing supply of "free" watermelon.

And then, one day, someone came up with the idea that eggs and milk, and houses, and medical care, and education should also be free. The government reminded these people that it would take more tax money to provide these free things. Well, the people still didn't see the connection, because they were getting what they felt they deserved. And, because they had legalized thievery, maybe they were.