50 Points of Freedom

by Charles Heller

1) You cannot impose freedom, but you can restrain tyranny. It is only through constitutionally limited government that you can keep law from becoming the will of those who have the power to enforce it.

2) You cannot simultaneously advocate for freedom and abdicate responsibility.

3) No one who understands history will ever trust a government. Evil almost always moves just below the speed of notice.

4) More attention in America is paid to automotive choice and cable programming than to freedom. There will never be another revolution in the U.S. as long as there is beer and cable television. The only way to get most people to care about an issue is to kick them in the solar Lexus of their wallet.

5) The founding fathers had another name for "gridlock" - they called it "checks and balances." Gridlock = freedom.

6) The purpose of voting is to endorse a pre-ordained result with the patina

of legitimacy.

7) Eternal vigilance requires the study of great books.

8) You do not want to live under efficient government. Hitler's trains ran on time, but many of them went to the gas chambers.

9) Today we have sickle cell government growth, which has led to a metastasis of government. We have statestatic governance. If the masters do not restrain their servant government within constitutional bounds, they will ever toil at the capstan of collectivism at the behest of bureaucratic buffoons.

10) Ask not, what government can do for the needy. Ask what the individual could do for them if the thieving hand of government were not so deep in his pocket. Charity should be an individual effort, not a group effort.That is collectivism and that depends on theft (taxes).

11) Do not pray for easier times - pray for greater abilities.

12) Force and violence are not equivalent. Force is the amount of energy

necessary to produce a desired result. Violence is an excessive use of that force. Shooting someone is not necessarily an act of violence if it is done as a last resort of self defense against deadly aggression.

13) If your highest value is peace, you will give anything to get there. One of the first things that is usually sacrificed to get there is freedom. If your highest value is freedom, you are then willing to use force if necessary to preserve it. Peace then becomes a byproduct of the strength of being willing to fight for worthy convictions. This requires the notion of being willing to give war a chance.

14) Pray for peace. Dress for war. You never make progress towards peace by collectivizing security. The only way you ever make progress towards peace is by having the individual citizens of the country (those who are able-bodied) take full and individual responsibility for the security of a nation. And that is called the militia.

15) Stupidity should be painful. Failure to make it so encourages stupidity.

16) Asking permission to use what you own is a stupid waste. (See #15)

17) Government will ALWAYS commit the acts that aggrandize to itself the greatest control, no matter what the economic or social cost. This will ALWAYS be touted as a benefit.

18) Freedom is usually defined by government as a "loophole." You have to become an engaged citizen, not a customer of government services.

19) Bureaucracy is a creature of hermaphroditic stimulation.

20) Freedom isn't free, but it's a lot cheaper than slavery. Freedom is the first true blood sport.

21) Slavery requires one party to be bound by each end of the shackles.

22) Nothing is so pathetic as those who cling to an idea whose time has come - and left.

23) Freedom does not exist on a left - right continuum. If the jackboot of government is on your throat, what matter if it is the left or right boot? You are either marching towards freedom or tyranny, and if you are standing still then you are sliding backwards toward the latter.

24) The more willing and fit you are to use force, the less likely you will have to do so to keep peace, and your rights. The less you are willing to use lawful force,the greater will be your exposure to attack. If you look like food, you will be eaten. Those who beat their swords into plowshares will end up plowing for those who don't.

25) Complaining bears with it the responsibility to compliment when things go right. If all you do is complain, you become bitter.

26) Human nature has not changed greatly in thousands of years.

27) The fact that you cannot grasp the infinite mind does not detract from its infinity.

28) We should never let what we don't have stop us from using what we do have.

29) Schools today teach that self esteem is more important than result. There is a word for feeling good about poor performance: delusion. Self esteem is an undefinable quantity. Self respect that comes from accomplishment is priceless.

30) In any compromise with evil, only good stands to lose.

31) Written goals greatly increase the possibility of their attainment.

32) Skill at arms requires discipline and practice. So does almost everything else, so firearms are a great place to start. A gun is used as a tool of situational dominance.

33) Any government that denies its citizens the means of self defense need not be obeyed or financially subsidized.

34) If you believe in the concept that "tyranny could never happen here," remember that Hitler was democratically elected. Government is our tool and it is our job to keep it well protected, sharpened, and in line.

35) Legal and lawful are not the same. Everything Hitler did was legal. After all, he made the laws.

36) There is no law requiring you to talk to any agent of government. All contacts with agents of any authority should be electronically recorded and documented.

37) You should never attribute to conspiracy what you can put off to malfeasance.

38) The installation of idiot proof technologies has only succeeded in the universe's production of more idiots. So far, the universe is winning.

39) The highest and best use of a television is at the 50 yard line on a firing range with .30 caliber.

40) Freedom requires the maintenance of certain tools. Among them are firearms, a multi-tool which is ALWAYS carried, and a computer.

41) Never in the history of man was there a genocide that was not preceededby disarmament of the victims. It CAN happen here.

42) People who are willing to hurt others will ALWAYS acquire the means to do so.

43) Civility fosters a fertile environment for freedom.

44) Econonics is NOT a zero sum game. As with physics, for every action, there is an equal and usually opposite reaction..

45) Freedom is a zero sum game in a one to one relationship with authority. You cannot effectively govern a free people by the same standards you would criminal conduct.

46) People will always do what is in their own best interest. Any rules, regulations, or policies that thwart the individual's interest will always cause unintended consequences. Enlightened self interest is the best reason to do anything.

47) Government's authority is only what its citizens cede to it. It therefore cannot possess any powers that the individual does not have, or he could not have given them to government.

48) The default setting on liberty is to the individual. If said individual is not actively furthering the cause of liberty in some way, he or she, by default, is subtracting from it. Activism is a long, slow ascent into principle, not a rapid parry and thrust into victory. Be not frustrated but rejoice in every discomfort of the anti-freedomists.

49) Every attempt to control human conduct will cause unintended consequences.

50) Freedom is messy. It rarely fits our picture, but that's the great part - It fits the other guy's picture. The other side of the coin of freedom is responsibility. Remember to flip that coin as necessary so as not to mess up the freedom of others.

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