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Weekly Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country
of West Texas
Opinion
Friday, March 9, 2007
Sage Views
By Smokey Briggs
Smokey’s
manifesto
A “manifesto” is simply a public declaration of your intentions.
Well here is Smokey’s Manifesto: Freedom is good, and more freedom is better. Complete freedom is best, and I intend to be free.
That’s it. I know, most manifestos go on and on and on and on.
But, I’m a simple guy, and I have simple desires.
I simply wish to be free.
But, Smokey, you idiot, you are free. You live in the “Home of the Free.”
Right?
Nope. Well, yes, I live in a land that brags it is the Home of the Free, but like Granny always said, “What matters isn’t what a person says, it what he does.”
Judging from my past 41 years, calling this the land of the free is a sad joke.
I want complete freedom, not just a glimpse of it.
I want to be left alone to work and play and direct my life without anyone or thing or agency having the so-called authority (also known as the ability to throw me in prison or worse) to force me to do something else.
I will let common sense and common decency and my very well tuned sense of survival guide me.
I feel very confident that I can do at least as good a job as the current legions of laws, rules, regulations, licenses, taxes, bureaucrats and cops that currently shape my life on a daily basis.
Frankly, I do not need to be told what to do, or what not to do.
I do not need to be forced to send my tax money to Austin or Washington for this or that Good Samaritan program.
Believe it or not, I’m fully capable of deciding to contribute to charitable causes - or not to.
I do not need to be taxed in infinitely imaginative and numerous schemes so that the profit I make from my work can be well spent.
I can spend it well myself.
I do not need a legion of bureaucrats to communicate for me with my fellow humans.
I can bargain with other people just fine. People did it long before the obnoxious idea of government regulation came about, and we still can.
I do not to be told which drugs to put into my body - and which not to.
I do not need to be told if or when or where or how I can drink whiskey.
I do not need to be herded about by monetary incentives to buy more whole grains and less red meat, or to eat more vegetables and fewer cookies.
I don’t need to be told what I can or cannot do on my own property, what jokes I can tell, who I can hire, when I can fire someone, or how much I should pay them.
I do not need to be protected from helmetless bicycle crashes, eye-blinding BB guns, deep swimming pools, stray dogs or cigarettes.
What I need, is to be left alone.
And, it is what we all need.
I am capable of associating with other like-minded people to provide for the things I need, from physical security to food.
People are not stupid creatures. We are capable of living with each other without the government keeping us penned up with countless rules and regulations to keep us from hurting ourselves and each other - and of course taxing us to the bone to pay for all this help and protection.
When you get down to it, that is the difference between people who really believe in freedom, and those who like the sound of the word, but do not really trust the idea.
People who believe in freedom believe in their fellow man. You have to.
People who scoff at the idea of absolute freedom fear their fellow man. They think that as surely as the sun comes up in the east, that if the government enforced programs and laws and rules suddenly disappeared, they would be devoured by legions of near brainless savages within hours.
That is not surprising. It is what we have been taught.
But, it is a lie. Man is not an irrational beast kept in check by the paper shuffling of bureaucrats and guns wielded by cops.
If we were irrational beasts, we would have long disappeared from the face of the earth.
We are thinking, ethical creatures who are born with and understanding of right and wrong, and we are capable of living and prospering with each other without a legion of armed herd dogs to keep us from hurting each other and ourselves.
We are capable of living in true freedom.
I intend to be free.
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Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 432-445-5475, FAX 432-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net
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