I purchased my law education --such that it is-- for ten dollars. I bought a Black's Law Dictionary for five dollars at a yard sale, and I bought a five-dollar pass to the library at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. In the basement there I pored over leather-bound books that perhaps had informed the very Enlightenment thinkers who formed the several states. Some of these books were PRINTED in the mid 1700s. I'm thinking of opening my own practice now. I certainly can't be any less informed than Alberto Gonzales.
What is the State? The state is a body politic. It is a political union among men. It is considered to be comprised of men, a territory, and a government through which the political power of its members is expressed.
Men existed before the state. They each possessed the right to express their own political power. Men created the state. Therefore, the state is subordinate and may be discarded when it no longer serves its intended function.
Its intended function is its "original, animating force." What is this original, animating force of the state? The defense of property. This property includes physical things like cows, firewood, and corn. It also includes intangible things like rights. I have a right to live, to work, to travel, to be secure in my privacy, and to conduct myself in a manner that does not infringe upon others' enjoyment of their property.
This defense of property is the animating force of the state.
In a state of nature, I have the right to defend my property. I do not have the right to appropriate another's property. My individual political power may be righteously used only to defend my property, both physical and intangible.
The state, as a collection of individuals' political power, is merely an expression of that power on a larger and exclusive scale. It has no moral claim to additional power; it cannot claim, for example, a power to steal from one to give to another. This power is not retained by the individual in a state of nature. Therefore, a collection of those individual political powers confers no such right upon the state. What the individual cannot do in a state of nature, the state may not do.
The state claims exclusive operation with a territory. The presumption is that such a claim of exclusivity is owed to the righteously operating state. This is known as territorial jurisdiction. "Within this territory, what we say goes. ...Presumably because we have a right to say what goes."
What is this right to say what goes? That is, what gives the state a moral claim to exclusively operate within a territory? That moral claim is that there ought not be any competitors because the state is performing its assigned function.
But what happens when the state does not perform its assigned function? It loses the moral claim to the exclusive operation within a territory.
The State of Vermont, for example, does nothing. Anything that is produced within this territory is produced by the people. Farmers, factory workers, et cetera. The State of Vermont cannot even perform its most basic functions in defending the members of that political union from criminals who would steal their intangible property. Criminals roam free in this territory. The State does nothing to stop them.
Taxes are protection money paid to the mutual defense organization, the state. They are paid under the expectation that the state will perform its assigned function. Because if it does not, then the economically rational being will pay someone else who will.
Governor Douglas --whom I do not know and of whom I have no opinion-- visited Bellows Falls the other day to see about paying for a new recreation center. While I appreciate his desire to improve things, I am paying that security provider --the state-- to perform its assigned function. I am not paying the state to use its political power to extract under force of arms money to build a new rec center. This is an attempted use of power which the state lacks. It is a perverted, immoral use of the state. It is unlawful. "We hereby constitute the state to provide for the common defense... and to build rec centers."
So the state is busying itself building rec centers while doing nothing to stop the roaming free of criminals within the territory.
The state retired itself. It voluntarily relinquished any claim to the exclusive operation within the territory. It now possesses only in personam jurisdiction over the members of the political union. Its territorial jurisdiction --it would seem-- has ceased to exist.
The failure of a state to enforce The Law within its territory has led to the disappearance of the very concept of territorial jurisdiction.
In the Post 9-11 World --where it is abundantly clear to any who may care to investigate the matter that lawlessness abounds-- the very notion of territorial jurisdiction was extinguished.
Where the states no longer possess a moral claim to territorial jurisdiction, and where a goodly number of persons within a territory are no longer to be considered reasonable persons --and where those unreasonable persons will permit their political power to take on a deranged expression-- the reasonable person is free to join another political union.
And thus was born the Privatized Political Union. United Sovereigns of America is one such political union. It exists to provide for the defense of its members' property, both physical and intangible. It possesses no powers that the individual would not possess in a state of nature.
The Penny Shiners of the world have been for the past hundred years or more attempting to change American law in order to steal the property, both physical and intangible, of the people.
9-11 was to have been their catalyzing event to usher in the Super State. Political unions through history have progressed from the individual, to the family, to the clan, to the village, to the city-state, to the nation-state, and was supposed to progress to the Super State --a one-world government.
The miscalculation in their plans was that it would not be discovered that 9-11 was an inside job.
Everyone in my audience knows this. We're all adults here.
When neither the state, nor the several states, choose to do anything about this unlawful activity, those states deliver to the reasonable person the permission to provide for the defense of his property by other means.
So the delicious joke in all this is that --far from ushering into existence the Super State-- 9-11 caused the state to destroy itself and, thus, any legal link to a Super State.
The most significant effect of 9-11 --or, more precisely, the effect of the states' inaction in its aftermath-- is that the very notion of territorial jurisdiction ceased to exist. Much like Alberto Gonzales accidentally caused the United States to cease to exist, the Penny Shiners accidentally caused the notion of the state to cease to exist.
This is the most significant legal development in hundreds of years.
Do I get a comedy prize now?
