I am insane, or I am just another!

reply to post by hhott

Ah, Jean Paul .. you accuse me now not of insanity but of cowardice. That may be, by your standards, but it is a different issue altogether.

This is how you began that last post. I did not ignore the rest of what you said, and in insisting that each person must decide for themselves what is sane or insane, directly addressed the thought behind what followed your defensive opening. I have made no assumptions what-so-ever about your level of courage, nor do I expect you to admit cowardice, nor claim to any courage. Further, I have also spent time in this post asserting that discernment and the ability to distinguish were key in maintaining ones insanity.

Neither the Founders, nor many great rebels throughout history, including Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, were men who rebelled without just cause, and each had their own personal integrity questioned while they were rebelling. It is perfectly fine to suggest that maintaining the status quo is a prudent choice, and even fine with me if one wants to suggest that such maintenance is courageous, but the cultural memes suggesting the status quo is proper, are numerous, and those who would challenge the idea that the status quo is proper are all too often marginalized, and relegated to "fringe" status.

My initial post praising the Founders for daring to, not just challenge the status quo, but defy it, deserves more than simply being dismissed as a personal attack. If you wanted the rest of your thought to be the operative of that post, perhaps your own prudence would have dictated you avoid dismissing my post as a personal attack.

Okay .. back to the topic...

@ Jean Paul - You asked, a few posts back:

how sane is it to ask permission of the state to do that which is your right to do?

And I answer, albeit apparently with some lack of clarity originally, that if one chooses to ask permission of of the state to do something which they believe is their right to do, because it is "following the rules" (laws), and said person considers it to be more acceptable to do so than to endure the (legal) consequences of not doing so, it's perfectly sane. In my opinion.

On the other hand, choosing deliberately to not follow the rules because the principle involved is more important to the person than the personal consequences suffered by doing so, is also perfectly sane.

In my opinion, therefore, neither obeying the laws nor rebelling is necessarily sane or insane, but the inability (or refusal) to consider and make deliberate choices about whether to obey or rebel might better be considered insanity.

Perhaps this might even have been part of the OP's original point: How many of us simply obey law and authority and believe the information and "reasons" presented without consideration or question under the assumption that "they" (the authorities/Powers That Be) are always, by virtue of their existence and power, right, and is that a form of insanity?

Are not perhaps those of us who question what we are told and seek independent knowledge, information, or confirmation, and choose on a case-by-case basis what to believe and what to do or not do, the ones who are truly "sane"?

And thus I arrive at the (personal) conclusion that your post about the founding fathers, while undoubtedly heartfelt and stirring, is irrelevant to the topic at hand. The act of rebellion is no more inherently sane or insane than obedience - the difference is the reasoning (or lack thereof) behind the action. So .. the point was not to suggest you intended a personal attack, but to point out that your example addressed other issues (courage, integrity, etc.) rather than sanity or insanity. I noticed that you are a writer and assumed, therefore, that you would take a bit of creative literary posturing in stride. My bad.

reply to post by hhott


Pretty good answer, up to the last paragraph. I agree with the rest of what you said though. The last paragraph and declaring the point of the Founders "irrelevant" is moot, and what the Founders did is, of course, no more or less relevant than your claims, no matter heart felt, that the consequences to obeying or not obeying laws were. I understand you were responding to my initial question of how sane is it to ask permission from the state to get married, and this last post of yours certainly did a much better job of answering that question in the most diplomatic of ways. It is hard to not see equivocation in it though, in that the answer seems to want to frame the right to get married as not so much a right, as how one perceives a right. As if rights are what we make of them, and if we don't view them as rights, then they aren't rights.

Of course, under a standard of law, such equivocations can never work. Every person has the right to waive their rights, but if they are rights, no one has the right to dismiss another persons right simply because they, or even if a vast majority of people have waived their rights. To clarify this thought a little more, allow me to return to the issue of driving, and the DMV.

It is, in my mind, wholly reasonable for the people to go into agreement with the government that traffic regulations are just and necessary. However, regulating traffic does not demand that every person who drives be licensed to do so, and it certainly does not demand that people relinquish the bill of sale to their cars, (proof of ownership), in exchange for a title of registration. These incremental acts have happened through time, preying upon the reasonable nature of law abiding people. There was nothing at all insane about these law abiding people not quite understanding that these incremental changes were happening and to their own detriment, (VIN numbers are often used by criminals to steal vehicles), but it was surely insane of the government to employ such underhanded tactics, as they tend towards tyranny, and lend themselves to undermining respect for the rule of law.

The incremental changes that have happened, in what too many refer to as "the freest country in the world", have resulted in a nation that imprisons more people than any other industrialized country in the world, and the U.S. imprisons more people per capita today than does China, or the Soviet Union at the height of its tyranny. At some point, the reasonable actions of reasonable people, who merely want to be law abiding people has to be questioned. If abiding by the law means agreeing with, openly or tacitly, making criminals out of people who have not made victims out of a single soul, then the question of the sanity of a populace is merited.

I believe that what is true for you is most certainly true...for you. The same applies to myself and any other soul, but whatever we perceive to be true, no matter how true it is for us, doesn't necessarily make it true. When we live in a nation of more than 600,000 laws on the books, questioning the sanity of such a thing is not only valid, but perhaps necessary.

I think the biggest problem here is the "us" and the "them" have to be defined here. It can be different for each person too. For me, the "us" consists of citizens of representative governments (democracies, republics, and the like) and the "them" consist of the people that we citizens elect to office.

Some would probably include the media in the "them." I don't because I am a member of the media, so it's not possible to generalize an other from my own profession and primary label for myself.

Others may include business leaders or even other socioeconomic classes in the "them" I am not because at that point the generalized other becomes too abstract and unworkable to really pin down to a specific direction and set of violations.

I believe that the failure of us, the people, and especially in my profession the media is the failure to properly identify and understand terms. This has lead to the buzzword-filled insanity that currently is endemic to our political discussions.

I have absolutely no use for capital-T "Truth" because whenever anyone says that, they are almost always talking about a belief.

The "Truth" of the Bible

The "Truth" of a New World Order

The "Truth" of President Obama being Kenyan

These are beliefs, not factually provable actually true ideas. The Pythagorean Theorem is true, provable and impossible to refute. The beliefs that the United States government is actually a corporation not a government proper is not.

This is the principal issue I have with the "us" in my understanding, that we, the voting citizens of the systems we belong to do not understand the words that we ourselves are using, let alone those of the people we elect to lead us!

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Jean Paul, I dare to suggest that in the long run you and I will have more in common than not, at least in our perceptions if not our actions.

In this country (the US) we are hardly free, and less so since the so-called patriot act. Most Americans seem to have no clue what's really going on, as they are diverted by American Idols and Survivors, the antics of celebrities like Charlie Sheen and whoever that girl singer is that's doing the "jewelry for dogs" online, and the only slightly less comedic antics of major political figures.

Back on the farm, Hillary's trying an end run around the constitution to take away our firearms via international treaties, Obama isn't keeping many promises, and nearly half the people I know are still unemployed.

We can't own real property or vehicles, we can't choose not to pay taxes or medicare or Social Security because employers remove the "contributions" from our wages before we ever get them, and our ability to make decisions about our own health care seems to be slowly but surely going away.

(Before you argue that we can and do own property and vehicles, think about this: if you OWN something, free and clear, you don't have to pay to keep it, you can do whatever you want with it, and no one can legally take it away from you without your permission. And yet, I have to pay money every year to keep my house and land or they can legally take it. The same is essentially true for my car(s), there are a myriad of circumstances under which they can legally confiscate it, and I have to pay money every year to keep it registered, licensed, and insured. Furthermore, there are many areas and situations in which the county, city, or some association has the legal right to tell you what you can't or can't do with the house and property you supposedly own. Am I wrong?)

America is looking less like the land of the brave every year, and it certainly isn't the land of the free any more.

Just my opinion, of course.

reply to post by hhott


My friend, the very fact you and I are both members suggest we more than likely do agree more than disagree. We certainly agree that in the U.S. people have been "less free", and I dare say much longer than since the so called "Patriot Act", but I would also suggest that the imprudent legislation known as "The Patriot Act" awoke a sleeping giant, and far more people today are now questioning the validity of a DMV that smugly asserts that "driving is a privilege, not a right", than were prior to the passage of the "Patriot Act".

Indeed, in this site, as in others, I have seen many users rail against the Tea Party, assuming their grass roots efforts had not begun until after the election of Barak Obama, but this is a false assumption, as I suspect you all ready know, and that grass roots movement in many ways is a reaction to that "Patriot Act". More and more people are becoming aware, not just that The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any other industrialized nation in the world, but also that the prison guard union is one of the most powerful lobby organizations in The U.S. More and more people are more aware today, of precisely what our Constitution for the United States of America say's, and what it does not say, than have been for at least a century.

These people are becoming aware, not because they've rejected mind numbing entertainment from the likes of Charlie Sheen, or American Idol, but because in between their choices of mind numbing entertainment, they are educating themselves, and rejecting the sub par "education" far too many people got via a public school system that perverted civics classes into indoctrination and re-education camps. That they choose to find their opiates in between confronting the harsh reality of what has become of their so called "land of the free", does not in any way negate the fact that they are waking up to the horror of tyranny.

The arrogant belief, by Clinton's and Obama's and other politicians who think they can erase the 2nd Amendment based upon treatise made with cartels, ignores the fact that a treatise can have no force and effect if it usurps the Constitution. People will not hand over their guns simply because clowns in D.C. made a treatise with an organization more and more reviled by Americans. The most recent history of insurgencies reveals just how easy it is for insurgents to ensure a protracted war, and protracted wars have been warned against since the time of Sun Tzu, as being sure fire ways to loose wars.

Military strategists from Sun Tzu to von Clausewitz have pointed out that the first thing a military at war must do when engaging the enemy is to disarm them, and more and more people are realizing that their very own government, the one in which they ordained, has endeavored to disarm the populace. This knowledge makes clear to more and more people just precisely how the elected officials view the populace, and that is as the enemy.

Before you do too much assuming about what I would argue, you should know that more and more people are fully aware that their own compliance in dubious tax policies has funded this combative state between the populace, and those of whom that populace elected, and more and more people are coming to understand just how insane that was. Further, more and more people are taking the time to read the tax code, and compare that to the principles of Constitutional taxation, and discovering that this so called "legal plunder" tax collectors have engaged in is not at all legal, and this is big reason the IRS has just recently ordered more guns. The government is not legally plundering the peoples property, they are doing so by illegal force.

America is looking less and less like the land of the free because it just quite simply isn't anymore and we the people have no one to blame but ourselves. It is insane, in my opinion, to think that we can entrust a super power to protect our freedom. It is insane, in my opinion, to continue financing a rogue government hell bent on tyranny. I suspect strongly this is what compelled the O.P. to make this thread, as he is not anymore insane than you are. He is doing all he can to resist that tyranny, and at the risk of his own personal safety, and the resistance he offers, is non-violent resistance to a state and federal government hell bent on destroying him.

I suspect, that while he endeavors to point people to the law, beginning with the Supreme Law of the Land, he encounters resistance from so many other people who endeavor to argue that rights are not real, and granted by governments, and that freedom is just an illusion, and being told on a regular basis that he is insane, that this is why he created this thread. He, demonstrative of a larger population asking the same questions, is questioning just who is, and who is not sane. I suspect his silence in this thread thus far has more to do with disgust and frustrations than any lack of words to express. I suspect his disgust and frustrations are creating enough problems for him right now, that he is quietly pulling back, and doing what all wise strategists do when under attack, he is in retreat, but I know this O.P., my friend, and I am relatively certain he has not surrendered.

Whatever reasons the O.P. created this thread, only he can speak to, and in due time, I have little doubt that we will hear more from that noble person, and just why he created this thread.

Sanity is based upon a given prerogative.

You may be defined as sane because you FIT within the collective.

What IF you do not? What IF you are not definable?

Do you cease to exist if the collective finds you? Do you disappear in a dungeon of the pseudopsychcological?

Just for those that may THINK that I made this thread to understand my own perceptions, I made this thread for you to understand your own and others.

Who's mind is to be the determined to be the sane one? Who's to be the insane?

I myself do not fit into a cog of the machine, does that mean I am to be considered unfit?

What is the jacket? What is the definition?

Sanity or insanity? That is the question!