Starting a Home Gym

When I read through gun communities, I’m happy to see more talk about the importance of physical fitness. Threat assessment is something humans tend to be poor at doing. Case in point, there are a lot of people who choose to carry a firearm for self-defense, which is a smart response to the threat of physical violence. However, many if not most of those people have a terrible diet, do little if any physical training, and/or exercise poor sleep hygiene. Diet, exercise, and sleep are your best defenses against ailments like heart disease. Even though the statistics of suffering from a heart condition are significantly greater than being faced with physical violence, most people (in general, not just amongst those who carry a firearm) don’t bother to address that threat.

I’ve had some manner of home gym since at least 2016 (those are the earliest exercise logs I found). My first home gym was a couple of kettlebells, a small clearing in my tiny apartment living room, and a door frame pull-up bar. Besides the addition of a few kettlebells, it didn’t change much until I bought a house. When my wife and I bought our house, I set aside a space in the unfinished utility room to be my home gym. I laid some rubber matting over the concrete floor and acquired a standalone pull-up bar (technically it’s a half rack, but I wouldn’t trust it with my weight). Over time I added more kettlebells and this year I finished phase one, which was to expand the size, complete my kettlebell set, and add some adjustable dumbbells.

Since I started with a very modest setup, I thought that I’d write some advice on starting your own home gym.

Let me start by addressing an obvious question, why would you want to start a home gym. The answer is, you might not. If you live close to a nice gym, you might be better served getting a membership there. I can tell you why I started a home gym though. If these answers resonate with you, you might be well served by starting one too. When I decided that I need to start exercising, I did an honest analysis of myself. This analysis left me facing to criteria. First, I knew that if I had to drive to get to a gym, I’d inevitably use that as an excuse to skip workouts. If my gym was in my living room, that excuse was immediately off of the table. Second, I’m impatient. Waiting for my turn at a piece of equipment would drive me nuts. This is especially true when I’m busy and want to crank out a workout quickly so I can get on to other things.

My two biggest reasons for starting a home gym was to eliminate two excuses that I knew I’d eventually make to skip a workout: having to drive and having to wait in line. Both ultimately boil down to time. I would use the classic excuse of “being too busy.” There are other advantages to a home gym besides saving time. Gym memberships are a reoccurring expense. When you buy equipment for your home gym, you own it. There’s no reoccurring expense unless you decided to upgrade (with the exception of machines requiring maintenance). The monthly gym fee is cheaper in the short run, but in the long run a home gym is cheaper. Another advantage of a home gym is that you make the rules. Different gyms have different rules. Gyms that cater to casual exercisers (which are sometimes the only gyms available in an area), like Planet Fitness, have rules to foster a casual atmosphere. You can absolutely get fit at those gyms, but their rules aren’t conducive to certain types of behavior like grunting loudly when lifting, yelling when you make a personal best, or slamming weight down. You can grunt, yell, and slam weights down all you want in your home gym (this may not be true if you’re living in an apartment on floors two or up). Along with picking the rules, you also get to pick the music. I enjoy the freedom of cranking up Iron Maiden or Ex Deo during a workout without having to wear headphone.

Now that you’ve thought about the advantages and decided a home gym is right for you, you need to ask a simple question: what resources do you have to work with?

What you have to work with will determine the type of home gym you can build. The first resource you need to consider is money. The more money you have, the more equipment you can buy. If you’re looking at your bank account and feeling like you can’t afford to get gains, worry not. You don’t need a lot of equipment or any equipment at all to get gains. Equipment opens up options. As I will note below, you can start a home gym with nothing but yourself. My equipment recommendations will assume you’re impatient and want to get your gym started as soon as possible. Therefore my recommendations are based on buying new equipment rather than hunting for good deals on used equipment. If you’re patient, used equipment will save you a lot of money, but at the cost of delaying your home gym setup. My opinion is to strike while the iron is hot. If you’re interested in starting a home gym right now, get equipment right now before that interest wanes. Once you have a basic home gym and are using it consistently, start searching for deals on used equipment to expand your setup. With that caveat out of the way, let me begin.

Let’s start with budget. If money is extremely tight, you may want to focus your training on calisthenics (body weight exercises). Your body is actually an excellent platform by itself. When I have to fly somewhere, I can’t realistically bring a kettlebell with me. I’m of the opinion that doing something is better than doing nothing so if I don’t have access to equipment, I will do calisthenics. No equipment is necessary for calisthenics so there’s no upfront cost. If you’ve got a few bucks to spare, you can enhance your calisthenics workouts with a pull-up bar and a pair of gymnastic rings, both of which are cheap. Gymnastic rings can be hung from a pull-up bar. While a door frame mounted pull-up bar isn’t ideal for hanging gymnastic rings, I can confirm from experience that they do work (you just have bend your knees for things like ring holds). If you have a bit more money to spend, buy a set of resistance bands. Resistance bands are extremely versatile and you can recreate a lot of weighted exercises with a bit of creativity. During my next flight, I plan to bring my resistance bands so I can get a solid workout in my hotel room if the hotel doesn’t have any strength training equipment.

If you have $100 to spend, I recommend investing in a kettlebell or two. As of this writing, for $100 you can get a kettlebell up to 24 kg in weight from Rep Fitness and Titan Fitness. Both sites offer good quality kettlebells and free shipping. I would recommend against cheaper kettlebells like the enamel coated ones on Amazon. Often the handles aren’t finished well and have protrusions that can make them uncomfortable to use. With that said, if that’s all you can afford, they’re far better than nothing. On his podcast Dan John has mentioned that he find a 20 kg kettlebell to be a good starting weight for most men. I started with a 20 kg kettlebell and agree with his assessment based on my experience. Kettlebells are versatile. You can use them for both strength training and conditioning. You can use them in very tight spaces. You can easily carry them outside and enjoy a workout in your backyard when the weather is nice. In my opinion, kettlebells are the best bang for buck you can get when it comes to workout equipment. Dumbbells are another option if money and/or space are right. Keep in mind that you typically want to buy dumbbells in pairs whereas many kettlebell programs are designed for a single kettlebell.

If you have $500 to spend, my recommendation remains the same except I will suggest buying a set of kettlebells that include at least one each of 16 kg, 20 kg, and 24 kg (if there are any women reading, you will probably want to chop those weights down by four to eight kilograms). Dumbbells become a more attractive option at $500 since you can accord to buy several pairs or you can buy a set of PowerBock Elite EXP adjustable dumbbells and have money left over. I own a pair of these and really like them. They’re not as awkward to work with as they look. There are also expansion plates available that let you take each dumbbell up to 90 pounds.

If you have thousands of dollars to spend, the sky is the limit. At that point your main consideration becomes space rather than budget so let’s talk about environment. If you don’t have a lot of space to work with (which I didn’t when I started), you may want to focus on equipment that can be used in tight spaces. If you live in an apartment, you may be limited in what you’re allowed to install. Management might be upset if they see a power rack bolted through your floor or a deadlift platform in your living room. You’ll also want to be conscientious towards your neighbors (assuming you like or are at least neutral towards your neighbors). Unless you’re on the ground floor, dropping a weight onto an apartment floor is likely to agitate the downstairs neighbors. Especially if you do it habitually.

Everything I mentioned above: pull-up bars, gymnastic rings, resistance bands, kettlebells, and dumbbells can all be used in tight spaces. Barbells require a wide enough space to accommodate the bar and enough space for a bench and at least a half rack. You can still do a barbell setup in a pretty small space though. Machines are space hungry. My wife’s elliptical takes up a good chunk of space. Treadmills, air bikes, rowing machine, and other cardio oriented machines typically have sizable footprints. Strength training machines also tend to be space hungry. If you want to include machines in your home gym, you’ll want a room that you can dedicate to it. Keep in mind that there are wall mounted half racks that can be folded up when you’re not using them and a lot of benches are designed to be stood upright when not in use. That allows you to reclaim space when you’re not working out. If you have a large space like a shed or a garage (assuming you don’t already put vehicles in it), you can pretty much get whatever you can afford.

You can start a home gym with very little money and space. Obviously more money and space brings more options. But don’t be discouraged from setting up a home gym just because your budget is tight or because you live in an apartment.

Anarchism Isn’t a Social System

Despite not using social media, I still find myself entering discussions with people who remain convinced, despite all of the evidence around us, that statist is the best -ism. In one of the more entertaining conversations on the topic I’ve had, the statist said, “Anarchism sucks as a social system.” I surprised him when I agreed. Anarchism does indeed suck as a social system because a social system can never be anarchism by definition.

Consider the etymology of anarchism. The word anarchism is composed of the Ancient Greek prefix an-, meaning without, and the word arkhos, meaning ruler. Therefore, anarchism literally means without rulers. Now consider a few of the popular social systems advocated by self-proclaimed anarchists. I will start with anarcho-communism. The inclusion of the word communism tells you up front that the system isn’t going to be without rulers. Anarcho-communists believe in the abolition of private property and the implementation of some bizarre system of personal (which they insist definitely isn’t private) property and collectively owned property. The question is, who defines what constitutes private personal property versus collectively owned property? Collectives using democratic principles, of course! Therein lies the problem. A democratic system necessarily has a ruler, the majority vote. If you’re desires don’t align with the majority vote, you’d better shut your trap or face the consequences (which will probably be decided by the same people who voted against your desires)!

What about the mutualists? Mutualism is better defined than anarcho-communism, but just barely. Mutualists advocate for a mutual-credit bank that provides producers nearly interest-free loans (a little interest is OK to cover overhead expenses and we all know such a system could never be manipulated or abused). Moreover, mutualism has a slightly less convoluted system of private property based on usage. If you’re using property for productive purposes, you get to keep using it. If you’re no longer using property for productive uses, someone else can claim it. Hence we’re faced with the questions, who defines what is nearly interest-free in regards to loans and who defines what productive use of property is? Whoever is allowed to answer those questions and enforce their dictates is by definition a ruler.

Finally, let’s consider anarcho-capitalism. According to every other flavor of anarchism, anarcho-capitalism isn’t real anarchism. I guess that means I can skip it. Anyways, if you were curious, the rulers under anarcho-capitalism are the private property owners.

I can think of no social system that could also be without rulers. Therefore, I cannot think of any social system that fit the definition of anarchism. Maybe I lack creativity. Feel free to correct me. Until I’m corrected, I will continue to advocate that anarchism is a method of individual liberation rather than a social system.

The next logical question is, how do I view anarchism through the lens of a method of individual liberation? The answer to that is I view it as methodologies that allow individuals to ignore, bypass, cripple, neuter, obliterate, or otherwise free themselves from unwanted hierarchy. This is one reason I continue to cite the works of Samuel Edward Konkin III. If you set aside his views on Agorist class theory, Agorism is a methodology that uses counter-economics to allow individuals to bypass and potentially cripple and even destroy the hierarchy of the State. It also advocates for individuals to be entrepreneurs so they can control their livelihood rather than depend on another entrepreneur. I also continue to cite the works of Max Stirner, Renzo Novatore, and Friedrich Nietzsche because their writings serve as methods for individuals to liberate themselves from the thought structures (brainwashing) trapping them into believing that being subject to a hierarchy is necessary (or even more absurdly, freedom). The works of crypto-anarchists and the products of cypherpunks are also of significant value because they allow individuals to liberate themselves from the corporate/government surveillance apparatus.

Once freed from unwanted hierarchy, an anarchist is able to define their lives on their terms. They may decide to associate freely with specific other individuals for mutual benefit. Those associates may be long lasting or very short lived. They may choose to help or harm others (and face the consequences of either). They may choose to try to survive on their own. But before they can forge ahead with their life on their own terms, they must be free to do so. Anarchism is, in my opinion, the methodology that one can use to be without rules, an anarchist by the literal definition.

Year Plus Check-In

I was updating my server and realized that it’s been a little over a year since I posted any content. Do I feel bad? Not at all. As I’ve always said, this blog is more for me than you. But I thought that I’d give a little update for the two people that added my blog to their RSS reader and forgot to remove it.

My biggest focus for the last year has been me. By that I mean I’ve been getting even more into physical fitness. I completed the first phase of my home gym project this year. It went from a small section in my unfinished utility room to a significantly larger section of that room. I have a complete set of kettlebells, which means I have pairs of every weight from 16 kg to 48 kg in 4 kg increments. I also bough a set of PowerBlock Elite EXP adjustable dumbbells (a great opportunity to abuse that free shipping Amazon Prime gives). Horse mats are the typical go-to for flooring options for home gyms, but I opted for Amorim sports flooring. It’s not a squishy as horse mats and doesn’t have the same room clearing stench when you first get them. You may notice no mention of a barbell and accompanying weights. Right now I’m getting the results I want from kettlebells. There’s also not enough space in my utility room for a power rack and barbell setup. When I get around to building a shed, I plan to have a space in it set aside for a barbell setup. Finally, I bought an elliptical, but that’s more for the wife than me. I used it when the weather isn’t conducive to walking or rucking.

I was running Pavel’s Rite of Passage kettlebell program towards the end of 2022 and through much of 2023. However, I changed programs when I finished my kettlebell set because I had doubles of every weight and wanted to take advantage of them (Rite of Passage is an excellent program and I highly recommend it). I ran Geoff Neupert’s Dry Fighting Weight program since it combines two of my favorite exercises: clean and presses and front squats. The only lift that was missing from my top three were snatches. Low and behold he released his new Maximorum program this year, which uses double clean and presses, double front squats, and one arm snatches. I’m beginning that program this afternoon.

On other fronts, I haven’t relapsed on social media. I haven’t logged into Facebook or Twitter (or X as it’s not called) for almost three years now. I still use Matrix and Signal, but neither of them are designed to suck as much time from your life as possible so I actually enjoy popping on and off of them. My wife and I (which is to say mostly my wife) expanded our garden. We have nine raised beds and a few small plots used for odds and ends.

If the two of you who forgot to remove my blog from your RSS read are still reading, I plan to add more content in the coming months. Expect to see a few articles related to physical fitness. I will likely write some posts related to guns since that is the reason I started this blog. Don’t expect to see any content related to the upcoming election since I don’t care about rigged games played by geriatrics.

Decentralized Social Media

When I abandoned Facebook, I also decided to abandon all centralized social media platforms. In their place I opted to make use of decentralized services instead. To that end I joined various Matrix chat rooms on multiple servers and spun up a few of my own. I recently joined a Mastodon instance and have been enjoying the community on that instance as well as interacting with people on other instances through federation. Although not technically a social media platform (nor a decentralized one), I also participate in and even run a few group chats on Signal.

This setup takes me back to the days before Facebook gobbled up half of the Internet. Before Facebook, online social interactions were spread amongst a dozen or more chat clients (ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, XMPP, etc.) and thousands of forums. Most forums had a theme. If you wanted to discuss guns, you would join any of the many gun forums. If you wanted to discuss video games, you would join any of the many video game forums. There were forums for the most niche of subjects.

For those who missed those days of the Internet and only know the post-Facebook Internet, what I just described probably sounds like chaos because you needed a separate account for each chat platform and forum (and this was in an era before password managers). However, the chaos came with many upsides. The most notable of which was that getting banned from one platform or forum didn’t result in you being banned from every other. People today often complain when they receive a temporary or permanent ban on Facebook, Twitter, or other centralized social media platform because it means they’re banned from interacting with all of their friends. To make matters worse, the number of rules and therefore the number of reasons you can receive a ban continues to increase. And since many bans are completely automated, you can find yourself barred from interacting with all of your online communities because an automated moderation system took an innocent thing you posted the wrong way.

Compare that with the decentralized social media experience I described in the first paragraph of this post. If I’m banned from one Matrix or Mastodon instance, I can sign up for an account on another instance. In the case of Matrix, you can choose to encrypt all messages in a room, which prevents the administrators of your Matrix instance from reading any of your comments (and therefore banning you for it). Signal actually forces encryption on all rooms so the same is always the case on that platform. Federation on Mastodon and Matrix means that you can continue to interact with your acquaintances even if you migrate to another server, which fixes the biggest issue with pre-Facebook chat clients and forums (if you were banned from one, you couldn’t interact with your acquaintances on that platform unless they also used another platform).

I’ve also discovered that I prefer to keep a lot of my social media activity isolate from my other social media activity. It wasn’t uncommon for me to post something on a public Facebook group just for a friend who didn’t like the topic of that group to show up and try to engage in a fight. This was even more common on Twitter, which is just a public forum. But when I post something on a Mastodon instance, only users on that instance and anybody federating with that instance (who are usually federating because they’re interested in the topic(s) found on that instance) see it. This cuts down on the bullshit from the peanut gallery. This is even more true for Matrix since most rooms are topical and the only people who join those rooms are interested in the topic.

Whereas I found centralized social media aggravating because everything I posted was visible to all of my friends, decentralized social media has been very pleasant. I can post anarchism content to anarchist rooms and not have to argue with statist friends. I can post gun content to gun rooms and not have to argue with anti-gun friends. I can post online privacy content to online privacy rooms without my technology illiterate friends taking it as an opportunity to seek free technical support. While trolls do pop in from time to time, they’re rare and generally more fun since they’re not my friends and I therefore don’t give a shit about their feelings.

While decentralized social media may seem inconvenient compared to centralized social media, I strongly urge you to give it a try. You may find that what you currently perceive to be an inconvenience, such as not all of your friends being on one platform, is actually beneficial.

Bypassing Online Censorship

This post reiterates a theme this blog had for a long time. If you don’t own your publishing platform, you’re at the mercy of whoever does. I’m bringing this topic up again for two reasons. The first reason is as a response to the number of messages friends keep sending me about individuals or groups they follow, all of whom express opinions not in line with the party in power, being removed from the likes of Twitter and Facebook. The second reason is to give some historical context about the nature of avoiding censorship.

Whenever somebody alerts me that an anarchist, libertarian, Austrian economist, or any other individual outside of the mainstream gets banned from Twitter or Facebook, I roll my eyes. Of course they were removed. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, etc. are all services that depend on having a large user base. Any online service that depends on having a large user base is going to cater to the mainstream. Moreover, the mainstream attitude is very much in favor of censorship. In order to cater to the mainstream, these services will remove anybody who expresses ideals outside of the mainstream.

Censorship isn’t a new phenomenon. I will actually argue that it’s the norm rather than the exception. The concept of free speech as we understand it is the product of Enlightenment thinking. And while the Enlightenment was popular throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, it wasn’t as popular throughout the rest of the world and its popularity has waned significantly in Europe. But even Enlightenment thinkers often supported censorship of ideas they found especially distasteful.

Just as censorship isn’t a new phenomenon, neither is bypassing censorship. Anarchists are often targets of censorship. Not surprisingly many governments overtly censored anarchists, but even private publishers are often unwilling to publish and distribute material written by anarchists. As a result zines became a popular way for anarchists to publish and distribute their writings. Under the Soviet Union, any literature deemed counterrevolutionary (in other words any literature that showed the communist leadership as anything other than saints) was typically censored. The heavy handed censorship of the Soviet Union gave rise to Samizdat.

Both zines and Samizdat material were self-published works. The author or one of their associates would create copies using whatever means available, usually photocopies or hidden printing presses, to create copies of their works. Those copies were then distributed by hand. Often the copies would circulate from person to person. Zines and Samizdat material were typically crude because they were created with no budget and without the benefit of sophisticated printing equipment. Neither usually circulated far. A handful of copies would usually be traded amongst a handful of like minded individuals.

Today’s modern world has analogs to zines and Samizdat. Self-hosted services such as Mastadon and Element allow like minded individuals to communicate with each other via services that they can control. Peer-to-peer services such as Retroshare allow each individual to completely control their own node. It’s also possible to self-host a website. This blog is hosted on a server in my basement. There are also old school methods such as private e-mail lists that allow anybody with an e-mail client to connect to an e-mail server being hosted by a like minded individual.

The most common criticism of these services is that not everybody is on them. While true, this is a feature, not a bug, for anybody interested in distributing ideas outside of the mainstream. Do you think your grandparents are going to enjoy or be convinced by your radical posts on Facebook? If you do, you’re a fool. The only result of posting your non-mainstream ideas to centralized services used by the masses is its removal because eventually Karen is going to see it, she is going to be offended by it, and she is going to report it. Shortly after she reports it, it will be removed because the service needs her (or more specifically the masses who think like her) more than you.

The Purpose of Government Lists

Statists tend to believe that government lists are beneficial or at worst benign. They tend to believe that government has good cause for creating lists. That part is true. Government does have good cause for creating lists. But that cause is neither beneficial or benign. It’s to inflict ill on those they deem worthy of punishment.

The Attorney General of California just demonstrated this by publishing the name and home address of every carry permit holder in the state:

California Attorney General today announced new and updated firearms data available through the California Department of Justice (DOJ)’s 2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal. The dashboard is accessible though DOJ’s OpenJustice Data Platform. The announcement will improve transparency and information sharing for firearms-related data and includes broad enhancements to the platform to help the public access data on firearms in California, including information about the issuance of Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) permits and Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs).

The Attorney General claims this is to improve transparency, but it’s obviously retaliation for the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which found that requiring carry permit applicants to provide proper cause violated the Second Amendment.

By publishing this information, the Attorney General provided burglars who want guns with a list of homes to hit, abusers who have lost track of their victims with their victim’s hiding places, and every other ne’er-do-well with the identities and home addresses of people whose only “crime” was to obtain a carry permit. Of course, this was the intent because the Attorney General is angry about not being able to deny California denizens the legal privilege of carry a means of self-defense.

Slavery Didn’t End

Yesterday was Juneteenth, a holiday to celebrate the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, based on news articles and social media posts, many if not most people are under the mistaken belief that Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery in the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t end slavery in the United States (and the anti-slavery laws and Thirteenth Amendment that followed), it changed the rules of slavery. Prior to the Emancipation Proclamation people of African descent could be owned by private individuals in specific states. While the Emancipation Proclamation prohibited that practice, it didn’t prevent all forms of slavery.

In the post Emancipation Proclamation United States whether one can be a slave is no longer determined by skin color and whether one can own slaves is no longer determined by the state in which they reside. Instead whether one can be a slave is determined by criminality and the only legal slave owners are the federal and state governments and their contractors.

Yes, this post is yet another one of my rants about the existence of Federal Prison Industries, also known as UNICOR, state level versions of UNICOR such as MINNCOR, and government contracted private prisons. All of these organizations utilize slave labor, but many people seem to be willing to ignore this fact because the slaves are criminals. But I will again remind you that the legal system in the United States is so convoluted that the label criminal is effectively arbitrary. Back in 2011 the book Three Felonies a Day was published. The book pointed out that working professionals in the United States unknowingly commit an average of three felonies per day. The only reason they aren’t all criminals is because the state either hasn’t caught them or hasn’t enforced its laws against them. But if the state doesn’t like somebody it can chose to investigate them and enforce any of its numerous laws against them and thus make them a criminal.

So when you see news anchors, politicians, and celebrities celebrating an end to slavery, remember that slavery is still alive and well in the United States. The rules may have changed, but the practice never ended.

Conflicting Beliefs

An aspect of the human mind that amazes me is its ability to simultaneously hold multiple conflicting beliefs. This is described as cognitive dissonance. What amazes me more is that people demonstrating cognitive dissonance can point out when another person is demonstrating it while remaining ignorant of their own demonstration.

Debates about gun control are gold mines for witnessing cognitive dissonance. But the gold mine has become even richer with the popularization of the defund the police movement. At the root of the defund the police movement is the recognition of the true nature of law enforcement. Law enforcement doesn’t exist to protect the people. It exists to serve the interests of the state. A smart state takes measures to paper over this reality. It’ll keep its law enforcers on a tight leash to restrain them from exploiting too many people too severely. It’ll establish laws that provide law enforcers an excuse for their actions (“I was just following orders”). It’ll go through a great deal of effort to propagandize the masses into believing law enforcers exist to protect them. But eventually the leash slips. When it does, it can do a great deal of damage to the state’s propaganda efforts.

The murder of George Floyd by law enforcers was just one instance of the leash slipping. For some reason that instance garnered national attention and whipped people up into a riotous fury. It did a great deal of damage to the state’s propaganda efforts and revealed the true nature of law enforcement to many previously ignorant people.

You might think that with this recognition would come a general distrust of the government. But in many cases (maybe even most cases) it hasn’t. Many people espousing the need to defund the police also espouse a need to grant the state more power. Those in the defund the police movement who are also demanding more stringent gun control are a prime example of this. All government is ultimately a form of kleptocracy. Those in power use their power to expropriate wealth from the populace. The only thing that restrains those in power from devolving to their basest of instincts and stealing everything from everyone is fear. All but the most ignorant of the power holders recognize that there are orders of magnitude more people out of power than in power. If enough of those out of power become angry at those in power, they will revolt. If enough people revolt, they will win. Arms are a force multiplier. If those out of power are already armed, they can successfully revolt with fewer rebels.

If one recognizes that the purpose of law enforcement is to serve the interests of the state, they should also recognize that maintaining a force disparity between those out of power and law enforcers helps keep the latter in check. Law enforcers aren’t going to stop exploiting those out of power (doing so is their job after all). But if they hold some fear of those out of power, they are more likely exercise restraint. Even if they won’t exercise more restraint, their overlords, the power holders, will be more likely to restrain them because they don’t want a bunch of people with nothing to lose pissed off at them, especially when they’re armed (that’s how revolts start). The more force those out of power have compared to those in power, the more likely those in power are to keep their basest instincts in check.

But the human mind is an amazing thing and so many people who recognize, at least to some extent, the true nature of law enforcement and the state also simultaneously believe the law enforcement and the state should enjoy even more power.

The True Value of the Bill of Rights

One thing you can always count on here in the United States is that whenever a man made tragedy occurs, a sizable portion of the population will blame the Bill of Rights. Within my lifetime the most egregious example of this occurred after the 9/11 attacks. Citing the need to protect the citizenry, the United States government picked up its systemic campaign against the Bill of Rights with a renewed zeal. Although some of the actions taken during that campaign were later reversed, the citizenry ended up with fewer rights post-9/11 than it had pre-9/11. But this campaign against the Bill of Rights isn’t unique to tragedies similar in scale to the 9/11 attacks. It manifests after pretty much every man made tragedy that receives national attention.

I’ve made my opinions of the United States government, and every other government, very clear. I believe that government as a concept is awful and should be done away with. Anarchy, the state of not having a state, is far better than giving a handful of individuals absolute power and letting them do whatever they please to everybody else. I also hold a worldview that can be described as egoist. I don’t believe rights are god-given, self-evident, or in any way objective. To me rights are a concept that exist exclusively in the imaginations of individuals. With both said, I believe there is merit in many of the Enlightenment ideas upon which the United States was founded. The idea that a government should be subservient to its people, even if it is an impossible one, is meritorious as is the idea that individuals enjoy certain rights.

For those who haven’t read up on the history of the founding of the United States, the first federal governmental system was codified by the Articles of Confederation (which, despite the name, is unrelated to the Confederate States of America). The Articles of Confederation established a weak federal government and left most sovereignty to the individual states. It didn’t last long. The event that sealed the fate of the Articles of Confederation was Shays’ Rebellion. Even though Shays’ Rebellion was successfully put down by the existing governmental system (specifically Massachusetts’ state militia), power hungry politicians used the event to demand a stronger federal government. This sparked off a debate between two camps: those who wanted a stronger federal government, who are known to us as the Federalists, and those who opposed the idea, who are known to us as the Anti-Federalists.

The Anti-Federalists pointed out, correctly as we known with the benefit of hindsight, that the federal government then being proposed by the Federalists would eventually become tyrannical. While the Anti-Federalists weren’t able to stop the creation of a strong federal government, they did managed to get a concession: the Bill of Rights. As I’ve explained on this blog numerous times, the Bill of Rights failed to restrain the federal government. But that’s not to say it was a complete failure. The Bill of Rights at least slowed the rate at which federal power expanded. It accomplished this by requiring the federal government to address the Bill of Rights whenever it expanded its power over territory addressed by the Bill of Rights. Since the Constitution gave the federal government ultimate authority over interpreting the Constitution, those addresses usually ended with the federal government authorizing its own expansion of power. But once in a while a judiciary stomped down an attempted expansion or at least established a number of caveats. What so-called rights we enjoy today are the caveats established by those rare judiciaries that didn’t rubber stamp whatever the federal government was authorizing itself to do.

Fortunately, the legacy of the Anti-Federalists continues. Even today after most of the so-called rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights have been caveated into near nonexistence, debates about rights are still generally over degrees. Most debates about speech aren’t about whether an individual has a right to free expression; it’s taken for granted that the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of expression. Instead the debates are about how far free expression can go before it no longer falls under the protection of the First Amendment. While the difference is minor in the long run, the fact that the debate is framed in a way that free expression is guaranteed has kept it in a state of slow erosion instead of immediate annihilation.

Had the Anti-Federalists not managed to get the Bill of Rights included in the Constitution, we would likely live in a different political world.

Without the First Amendment, we would likely be subjected to an extensive list of prohibited forms of expression that ranged from criticism of the government to pornography. The question of who qualified as a journalist would likely be answered and the answer would be only individuals credentialed by the federal government (or maybe even the state governments if the federal government was feeling especially generous).

Without the Second Amendment, there would likely be no debate over what types of firearms an individual is allowed to own. All individual gun ownership would likely be prohibited.

Without the Fourth Amendment, law enforcers would likely be able to conduct random searches of your dwelling without even needing to make up probable cause to get a warrant. Civil forfeiture, where property can be seized if a law enforcer so much as suspects it’s related to a drug crime, would be the norm rather than the exception.

Without the Fifth Amendment, there would likely be no limit to the number of times an individual could be charged with the same crime. The state would be free to bring the same charges for the same crimes against an individual as many times as it needed to get a conviction.

But that wouldn’t matter because without the Sixth Amendment, individuals charged with a crime would likely not enjoy a trial by jury. While the jury system here in the United has flaws (many flaws), it’s still a step up from a Star Chamber.

The true value of the Bill of Rights is that it puts the federal government into an awkward position. In order to maintain the illusion that it is governed by a system of laws (which is the illusion upon which its legitimacy in the eyes of the masses is built), it cannot simply pass a law that curtails an enumerated right. Maintaining that illusion requires that any law curtailing a right must be accompanied by a lengthy campaign to convince the masses that the amendment or amendments that address that right don’t actually mean what they say. Furthermore, the illusion requires the federal government to entertain challenges to the law on constitutional grounds. Once in a while the federal government even needs to temporarily concede ground and wait for a more opportune time to curtail that right.

Had human imagination never conceived of the destructive force we call government or had the majority dismissed the it for the bad idea it is, the Bill of Rights and similar declarations of rights would be of little value. But we live in a world where the majority share a mass delusion, a delusion that says we need to vest power in a handful of individuals to prevent a handful of individuals from taking power. So long as the majority of people suffer from that contradictory delusion, the Bill of Rights and the concept of rights have value even if both are, like government, figments of our imaginations. When you find yourself in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, sometimes the only way to survive is to play a game of make-believe yourself.

Full Faith and Credit Continued

I wrote a post discussing the full faith and credit of the United States dollar compared to the value of Bitcoin. However, I want to add a comparison of the value of the dollar to another currency.

As many of you are certainly aware, the United States Congress was dissolved on October 12, 1859 by order of Emperor Norton. In addition to abolishing the United States Congress and winning a war against the reincarnation of George Washington, Emperor Norton also issued money. As a testament to his benevolence, he offered a one-to-one exchange rate between United States dollars and his currency. During some unrelated research into the glorious reign of Emperor Norton, I came across a 2018 auction for one of his $0.50 bills issued on August 1, 1878 that sold for $10,500.

In 1878 the exchange rate between United States dollars and Emperor Norton’s script was one to one. In 2018 the exchange rate was $21,000 to one.

Once I again I can only conclude that the full faith and credit of the United States isn’t worth what it used to be. On the other hand, the full faith and credit of Emperor North has skyrocketed, which is yet another sign of his legitimacy.

All hail, Emperor Norton! May he reign forever!