With permission (thanks, Mike!):

From: Mike A. Segal
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009
To: Mike Gogulski
Subject: feedback: Thanks for leading the way.

I know you got into this just for yourself, but I need to say thanks for doing what you’re doing, writing about it, and making these writings public.

I’m a recent university graduate, continued leader of local libertarian/pro-liberty organizations, and begrudged bearer of these shackles which were fastened upon me as a birth-right, but which hold only the burden of responsibility, the nagging but persistent label of “United States citizen.”  I understand that many consider it a foolishly immature act to disrespect that label, a badge of acceptance into this private club that millions of oppressed foreigners with backgrounds far less fortunate than my own can only dream of joining.  But even as indispensable a tool as citizenship has become for navigating our modern world, being helpful is never an argument for being good.  I believe that those who want U.S. citizenship for anything more than its utility are yearning for something which that label cannot and will not give them.

If they are looking for a sense of group identity, let them turn instead to their family, friends, and local communities who they interact with and by whom they are influenced every day.  If they are looking for a role model, then let them remember those individuals who instilled in them the core values by which they live their lives, and those who have inspired them to learn about the world.  Those are gifts that can only be given by individuals, not states. Let them remember the free exchange of ideas which has sustained and advanced societies for millennia, and the philosophy of individual sovereignty on which the United States was originally founded. And if they are looking for freedom, then let them find it as best they can, but recognize that that freedom exists in spite of, not because of, that label.  Being freer than neighboring governments is not a justification.  Even the least harmful cancer is a disease.

Otherwise, if they are looking for handouts from the “public” wallet, for power or control, or just to be on what they think is the “winning team,” then I hope they become aware of the enormous crimes to which their government has been party in order to provide for them such luxuries, and of the enormous costs that those crimes have had for millions domestically and world-wide, so that they may make an informed and careful determination of whom they wish for themselves to be associated with.  I hope they remember that fondness for a nation does not imply fondness for a government, and that their identity is determined by their actions alone, and not those of the bureaucrats who claim to represent them, all the while acting contrary to their interests.

At this point in my life, I am not yet prepared to take such a bold step as you have.  In a few months, I’ll be moving permanently to New Hampshire as a part of the Free State Project, which I assume you’re aware of, and I’m really not sure where I’ll end up from there.  There’s already a small but incessant tickle in my gut, a distinct and incisive plausibility, that one day, at some point in my future, I’ll want to throw the shackles from my body and free myself of the badge of terror with which I was unwittingly associated, and formally renounce my United States citizenship.  So thanks for leading the way.

Mike Segal, President
Florida Liberty Alliance
www.floridalibertyalliance.org

Dear Mike,

Thanks a lot for writing this. You’re certainly welcome.

When I first imagined ditching American citizenship, I didn’t really conceive of making a public spectacle of it. I’m glad that I did, though, simply because I’ve put a stake in the ground perhaps somewhere near the extreme(ly consistent) pole of things. Moving to NH for the FSP is a movement toward that pole. There’s a camp there, a fire already burning, a network. Use it. It’s a wee bit colder out here, if you follow my analogy I’ve also been immensely gratified to have met, at least online, so many interesting and passionate folks.

Thanks again,

Mike

Oh, it was just an exercise.

From the comments to “Multinational forces storm Mayport beach for drills“, wherein commenter “tut tut” need not be forgiven for her/his use of the imperial first-person plural:

This is like one of those stories I used to write for my high school newspaper. I’d comment on everything but what the actual news in the the story was. And I’d have my thesaurus next to me to make it seem like I knew more than I actually did.

Why does the author not ask the obvious questions:

What the hell is this troop of military soldiers doing by running war games on our beaches?

Why is it a multinational group to begin with? Are we at war with Peru?  Is Peru at war with us?

Why is it US soldiers and soldiers from several different foreign countries are training to ‘jell’ and why is that ‘good’?

I’m surprised he didn’t write something like ‘The alabaster whiteness of the rugged Major’s teeth shone as fireflies in the aggravated heavens.’

Puff piece that tells me nothing of what I need to know about this curious incident.

SOUTHCOM press release (and Google cache).

I have two tasks:

• Exchange a quantity of Slovak koruna banknotes for euro notes
• Purchase a number of commemorative coins for a friend who is a collector

I hand over the banknotes, my card with my account number and my canceled US passport, asking to exchange the money for euros. The teller lady flips through the passport a few times, checking the data page and my visa page. She types in the passport number and confirms it against my account records on her computer screen, satisfied that they match. She then returns to look, curiously, at the four holes punched through the passport booklet, then picks up a telephone, signaling me to wait a bit.

Nope, that's not the guy.

A supervisor lady comes over. I tell her that the passport is canceled. She steps away to speak to someone out of sight for a few seconds, and comes back to tell me that they can’t accept the passport since it’s no longer valid. “I’m sorry,” I say, “but I probably don’t have any document, then, that will be sufficient.” I present my still-valid Florida driver’s license and the notarized copy of passport and visa I had made before the passport was canceled. No love. The supervisor steps away again, this time for about ten minutes. She’s on the telephone with someone.

While she’s away, I briefly address the teller, saying, “This is a matter of identity; I lost my citizenship, not my identity.” She just smiles emptily, and asks my patience for waiting.

The supervisor comes back and apologizes, saying that she’s spoken to the bank’s legal department. The passport can’t be accepted since it’s no longer a valid document.

All I wanted to do was exchange one pile of fiat currency for a different pile, and maybe buy some shiny metal tokens with the remainder. I didn’t even need any access to my accounts.

I wonder if, when the US State Department person was operating the hole punch on my passport, little wisps of smoke might have been observed coming out — magic smoke which wafted away, carrying my identity as well as my citizenship along with it.

There was a time when presenting ID at a bank was done for only one purpose: to verify that the person attempting to withdraw money from a given account is actually an owner of that account. Just ten years ago in the US I could walk into a bank and deposit cash or endorsed checks into any account, even one I didn’t own, without needing to present any ID at all. I haven’t tracked exactly what’s gone on in the US banking system lately, but with the introduction of POS fingerprinting and all manner of other “Know Your Customer” measures and such mandated under the guise of combating money laundering — which isn’t even a real crime — I imagine the situation there has only gotten worse.

You are not the bank’s customer any more. The bank’s primary customer is the state. You are just an epiphenomenon, fluttering about that core, corrupt relationship.

If the bank people wanted to serve me, they would have responded to my letter asking about alternative forms of identification differently than they did. Instead of saying, “you must bring us one of these official documents,” they could have said, “come to our office, satisfy us of your identity; we will then take your photo and put it in the computer, and establish a password by which you can access your account at the branch.”

Remarkably, I can log on to the bank’s internet banking website using nothing more than a password and GRID Card code. I can move money between accounts, issue payment orders, even invest in securities. Nobody even needs to see my face. Yet that same method of authentication is unavailable or unacceptable if I appear in person at the branch.

So, whatever. My collector friend won’t get his coins unless he can find someone else in Slovakia to deal with it for him. And I’ll phone up the guy I know who operates as a black-market money changer and see what kind of rate he’s giving on Slovak koruna notes. I’ll bet it’s still better than the official exchange rate.

Roderick, do I get Agorist Demerit Points for this, or issue them?

Almost 20 years ago, at the muddled dawn of my political awakening, I took a road trip from Orlando, Florida to Washington, DC with a few friends intent on joining one protest or another against the first Gulf War. My car was literally festooned with anti-war, pro-peace graffiti, bumper stickers and slogans — a rolling billboard for anti-war protest.

Late at night during the journey we stopped off for food and a break from the road at a Waffle House or Shoney’s in a tiny little town in South Caroline called Paxville. The perfect stopping place, one might think, given that the Latin word “pax” means “peace”, and wasn’t that just what we were after?

So we ate our meals and drank our coffees. About mid-way through, a small group of young men came in to dine as well, looking at us suspiciously and having conversations with a waitress in hushed tones. Cold stares all around. One of my friends noticed an insignia or patch on something one of the guys was wearing that suggested he was a member of the Civil Air Patrol. Potential conflict ahead, and under the surreptitious appraisal and venomous looks we finished our meals quickly, full of tension that this group might decide to provoke some sort of conflict.

We got back in the car and made ready to continue the long drive to DC. As I pulled out of the restaurant parking lot, one of my friends said that the CAP guys were hustling out of the restaurant and piling into a Camaro. I got us out onto the deserted, dark county road, heading back for the highway, but about 500 yards from the restaurant I and my friends spotted the Camaro’s headlights behind us. The CAP guys were accelerating quickly to close the gap between us. I made a snap decision to evade them; if they wanted to start trouble out here at 4 o’clock in the morning without another soul in sight, we would likely have our faces pulped and the car damaged. Spotting an unfenced field filled with tall grass and weeds ahead, I switched off my headlights and plunged into it, with the Camaro now maybe 200 yards behind. A short, reckless, bumpy ride into the field in darkness, and I used engine braking and the hand brake (to avoid brake lights betraying our position) to bring us to a stop a goodly distance off the road. I shut off the car, and we watched the Camaro pass slowly, take a U-turn a ways up the road past our location and circle back looking for us before making a final U-turn and continuing on their way.

After catching our breath a while and agreeing upon what had just happened, we all shared a laugh about the name “Paxville” and got ourselves back on the highway to continue on.

This close encounter with violence was part of a tapestry of counter-protest that we experienced nearly everywhere. “Support the troops, oppose the war” on our side and “America, love it or leave it!” on the other, backed by the barely-controlled fury of some in the opposite camp eager to bait us into violent confrontation.

I was just reminded of this old tale of Paxville on discovering and reading another follow-on fisking to my “Fuck the Troops!” article. It’s by one W.B.B. Johnson and entitled “OUR TROOPS…MY HERO’S! DON’T LIKE IT…THEN GO TO HELL!“. A long screed with a surfeit of apostrophes and all-caps invective ends on this note:

No one (especially our troops) likes war. Atrocities (which no one wants to have happen) do happen in war… IT’S WAR!! To call our troops murderer’s… is TOTALLY… UNACCEPTABLE and beyond reason! The cracker-ass-joker that wrote this article: http://www.nostate.com/77/fuck-the-troops/, would have been hung for treason against AMERICA… had General George Washington been here today!

What Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to get is that if I were transplanted into the history he romanticizes here, I might indeed be hung for treason — by the British.

It is one measure of the relative success of the American state’s indoctrination program that so few would be able to make that qualification correctly.

Home sweet foreclosure

This was our first house, purchased new in 1995 for about US$64,000 in Winter Springs, Florida. After we left Florida in 1997, we rented it out for a number of years to a young couple that we’d met through the rave scene, specifically through the old fl-raves listserv. When we divorced, she took ownership of the place and sold it off several years later.

Looks like someone fell on harder times and couldn’t keep up with the mortgage, as the house is now up for auction after foreclosure. I wonder if the DMT-bearing Phalaris arundinacea grass I planted around the side is still growing… or the mescaline-bearing San Pedro cactus…

You didn’t really believe them, did you?

The headline here is wrong…

From WTVY News 4, Dothan, Alabama:

Taser Hit Leaves Drug Suspect in Critical Condition

Taser Hit Leaves Seat Belt Suspect in Critical Condition

There, fixed that for you.

A routine traffic stop for a seatbelt infraction on Sunday evening turned into so much more for Houston County Sheriff’s Deputy Robert Reichert and the suspect, 27-year-old Nicholas Cody.

Deputy Reichert noticed a small bag with a white substance; Cody attempted to flee when the taser was first fired.

“Deputy Reichert asked him about the bag; as a struggle ensued with the subject in the cab of the pickup truck, Deputy Reichert activated his taser at which time only one probe struck the suspect,” said Sheriff Andy Hughes with Houston County.

At that point, Cody dove out of the truck and ran toward the Dollar General on Highway 231 with Deputy Reichert in pursuit. He then jumped a fence into the Tanglewood Apartments, and then the deputy redeployed the taser, this time both, prongs striking. During the struggle, Cody was hit with an additional charge.

After Cody went into respiratory arrest, Deputy Reichert , who is trained in CPR, along with another bystander, attempted to resuscitate the suspect with paramedics en route.

As of Monday, he is in critical condition in a Dothan hospital according to the sheriff.

Sheriff Hughes said, “I’m not satisfied that this came as a result of the taser. There have been deaths involving tasers across the country and most of the time, it’s been shown to be from a pre existing medical condition or due to the fact that the subject had previously ingested cocaine.”