Some Remarks On Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday
I have written a lot about property on here including what it meant in 1776. Which, by the way, has almost no semblance of what property means today. Today corporations own most of the property and that includes you. It also doesn’t mean you slave away under corporate work to then buy a new flat screen TV on rental payments. Property has nothing to do with shopping and consumerism. Regardless, it did mean access to the resources or property provided by nature. It did mean ones thoughts and ones mind. It did mean ones home. All of these are under assault or have been destroyed by the endless violence of corporations and the state.
I have also noted many times how Thomas Jefferson wanted to give every citizen their own property (land). Give. Free. Just for having a heart beat. Now, in today’s world, the ignorant wail of useful idiots who support their own self-created misery would be palpable if anyone talks about giving anyone to anything. This shows how ignorant humanity has become under our oppressors, the state and state actors. It’s anti-capitalist and by inference anti-American for anyone to receive anything for simply being a sentient being. Even if those gifts are provided by our Creator. It is YOUR natural right to have your own plot of land and to reap the abundance of your own hand and wit. And to do this through the natural altruism of human community and communion with all life. Nature, or if you prefer, God, grants you that right. Now with six billion people in this world it’s probably not desirable to be granting everyone a plot of land but it is to grant everyone a home and the abundance of the land and the planet. Those are still our natural rights. We simply may have to provide our fair share of labor and intellectual talent to be able to share in this right. Instead the state takes that ability away and through the intent of control, makes you a slave for that which nature has abundantly given to you for free. Or, if not for free (hunting and gathering) through your own hand and wit.
Fred Harrison has an excellent video on how the state set the stages for the ultimate demise of humanity’s natural rights and property rights 800 years ago with the coming anniversary of the Magna Carta, which he essentially exposes as a fraud. It’s about ten minutes and it’s a very worthwhile watch. Fred talks about how the British barons created the massive mess we see today by selling out the common man and common lands 800 years ago and how property was then kept out of the U.S. Declaration of Independence for reasons of corruption by class. One of the biggest crimes in “modern” civilization has turned out to be that which Harrison speaks so eloquently of. That is property rights. One of the themes on here is that the future of property rights is going to change radically. Those that have stolen everything are likely to lose almost, if not all of it. That includes corporations, the state and the gentried rich who use the force of the state to literally steal all of our property and our property rights. That includes the right of my labor, my wit, my freedom of thought and the like.
As I have noted on here many times, Jefferson and Paine were clearly the two most “aware” founders in my estimation. Paine was so “aware” of the criminality of the state that after giving so much to humanity he became a pariah to the state and died abandoned by the United States. One might compare his misfortunes at the butt end of state violence to Edward Snowden or Daniel Ellsberg or Nikola Tesla. Our nation’s founding was about compromise. Some founders were womanizers, some were criminals under British law, some were slave owners, all were probably misogynists in some way. They certainly were not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. One thing they shared in common was ridding themselves of the king, his sycophantic courtiers, his private banks and his corporations. It’s not necessarily that they were against all of those dynamics as we later found out; many just wanted that power for themselves. But many were wildly ahead of their time. At least for that time in history. A thousand years beforehand in ancient Greece or Rome they may have been considered Luddites or uncivilized in some regards. But given the massive repression of European class-based systems at that time, Jefferson, Paine and many others were very enlightened. Of course, enlightenment is a never-ending process and some founders, possibly like Alexander Hamilton, probably didn’t care much about anything other than their own ambition.
I respectfully disagree with Fred on many issues but we both seek the same outcome; human freedom and empowerment. Fred is English and that means he suffers from the mental disorder of class and hierarchy including the economic control system that enforces it, corporate capitalism. But I know we could sit down and respectfully resolve those differences in the name of human empowerment and compassion for all people.
What Fred isn’t going to tell you, and what Thomas Jefferson documented quite a few times is that the economic system that Adam Smith wrote about in 1776 in the Wealth of Nations was the same system the colonies declared war upon. The British corporate and financial empire was in its full glory in 1776. Just like the United States today. It was seemingly invincible. Its navy was used to pave the way for global corporate economic looting for the British state and its capitalist class. Just like today. And the masses of Britain were on the receiving end of that violence with massive poverty, addictions and the like. It seems curious that no one ever really tells us what Adam Smith did for a living. He worked for the East India Trading Company. A company that had its own private army and murdered/subjugated millions of Asian peoples. And whose primary profit for the king and its officers was the opium trade. They grew opium in India, used it to drug millions of Chinese, and in return, they did so for payment in silver. By the way, much of that silver ended up in China through massive European corporate slave silver mining operations in the Americas. The state and corporations selling drugs in return for silver and using a private corporate army to enforce it. That’s the company Adam Smith worked for. Selling drug addiction – opium - was the most profitable trade for corporate capitalism in 1776. And the East India Trading Company had its own private army, endorsed by the British government, to enforce that trade through murder, slavery and complete domination of innocent millions of Asians. Why to all of this? It’s simple. The intent of profit. One cannot serve two masters.
If you think this world has actually evolved, then you really need to think about how your actions in supporting this system have consequences of suffering and misery well beyond your line of site. The railroad worker, the office clerk, the engineer or whatnot. They can claim they did not actually perform any violence themselves but without their willing submission, this system of massive violence would never be possible. Corporate capitalism as it has always been practiced is a f$cking virus. It doesn’t need to be. And can be ameliorated with a few simple changes but central banks, corporations and the like were inventions of the virus that is European class. It is the reason why millions upon millions left that shithole of a place to come to the colonies and eventually the United States. Capitalism is a system of class meant to enslave and loot humanity for a very few and I remain more convinced than ever that what we are witnessing is probably its final swan song.
Jefferson and many other founders knew this. And they warned us repeatedly about the moneyed aristocracy of corporate capitalism. How prescient those warnings have become.
Since Thomas Jefferson, in many regards was well ahead of his peers. And since he uniquely wanted to give all citizens their own property as respite from the state, I thought I would close these brief remarks with the link to some very interesting videos on property in today’s world. As Jefferson warned, that property has become you. And your owners, the state, state actors and state-created corporations and private banks, certainly do own you… and me. And, since they own you, they all work in collusion to spy on you for profit, drug you for profit, steal your labor and wit for profit and even steal your property for profit.
These videos are really some of the best journalism out there you will ever find on these topics. Isn’t it ironic these videos are presented by comedians? Isn’t it ironic that Beppe Grillo is a comedian? That comedic journalism about religious absurdity in France resulted in the murder of people? Oftentimes humor is the only method through which we can attack that which is so well-accepted of societal norms involving our own ignorance. Without the use of humor much of the tyranny of our own beliefs would never have any possibility of making it into the mainstream lexicon.
John Oliver on the incredibly corrupt practice of pharma marketing to doctors.
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