It has been a per­son­al stance of mine that lib­er­ty, not be tied to a piece of paper, gov­ern­ment or phi­los­o­phy that includes the state for over two years now. This is a per­son­al phi­los­o­phy that will like­ly see change, evo­lu­tion of the mind in the future. This jour­ney has not been easy, it has result­ed in lost rela­tion­ships with both fam­i­ly and friends. How­ev­er, it has been nec­es­sary to my per­son­al goals regard­ing lib­er­ty for myself and oth­ers. I long ago embraced a stance of non-Aggres­sion in my deal­ings with oth­ers, this was done as a result of long years spent train­ing in var­i­ous mar­tial arts. By com­bin­ing my posi­tion on aggres­sive action and lib­er­ty it is a sim­ple con­clu­sion that I can no longer sup­port the state vol­un­tar­i­ly. So where does this leave me, with degrees in the Mod­ern Crim­i­nal Jus­tice sys­tem, thou­sands of dol­lars spent and owed for this edu­ca­tion, a vast legal library both print­ed and dig­i­tal and hun­dreds of hours spent research­ing, gath­er­ing data and imple­ment­ing var­i­ous pro­grams?

With an expen­sive, inter­est­ing inside look at the very sys­tem I can no longer sup­port.

Two issues recent­ly caught my atten­tion. The first is out of my cur­rent state of res­i­dence, Ari­zona, and address’s the inter­net. the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion being cyber-bul­ly­ing. The bill being dis­cussed was passed through state leg­is­la­tor and awaits the gov­er­nors sig­na­ture now. Accord­ing to the Media Coali­tion, “ H.B. 2549 is not lim­it­ed to a one to one con­ver­sa­tion between two spe­cif­ic peo­ple. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion does not need to be repet­i­tive or even unwant­ed. There is no require­ment that the recip­i­ent or sub­ject of the speech actu­al­ly feel offend­ed, annoyed or scared. Nor does the leg­is­la­tion make clear that the com­mu­ni­ca­tion must be intend­ed to offend or annoy the read­er, the sub­ject or even any spe­cif­ic per­son.” The sec­ond issue can be found in an arti­cle dat­ed Novem­ber 2011 on the Gun Own­ers of Amer­i­ca web­site . This issue address’s sev­er­al coun­ties res­i­dents con­fronta­tions with fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors mas­querad­ing as pro­tec­tors of the peo­ple. The fol­low­ing brief quotes have been tak­en from this arti­cle, “ Word was sent to the For­est Ser­vice that any effort to impede vis­i­tors to the For­est would be resisted…She point­ed out that her land had been in her fam­i­ly for over 200 years, and she was not about to let some offi­cial from an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al bureau­cra­cy tell her what she could or could not do with her land…The res­i­dents respond­ed that they had to for safety’s sake and were going to con­struct the fire break in spite of the For­est Ser­vice… ” need­less to say there is much more hap­pen­ing.

These may seem dis­parate issues, how­ev­er, they are direct­ly relat­ed. In both cas­es the state is attempt­ing to or is insti­tut­ing what it believes to be nec­es­sary for the con­tin­ued prof­it of its self. It is doing so while mas­querad­ing as pro­tec­tors of the peo­ple. For­tu­nate­ly for the cit­i­zens in the var­i­ous coun­ties of New Mex­i­co they have sher­iffs who not only sup­port them in their pur­suit of lib­er­ty but are in fact will­ing to place them­selves in front of the prover­bial bul­let. Here in Ari­zona we have no such thing at this time. In Ari­zona we have polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed, cam­era hun­gry ass­holes who would rather fol­low pro­ce­dure and pol­i­cy than for a sec­ond actu­al­ly do what they were hired to do. Pro­tect the cit­i­zens of the var­i­ous coun­ties from any threat whether it be fed­er­al, state or local crim­i­nals.

In dis­cus­sions with deputies, local police offi­cers and state author­i­ties I have been told almost every time that they will sup­port their office pol­i­cy, and state law as these laws are meant to pro­tect their lives. In almost every instance when I bring up their oaths to pro­tect and serve the cit­i­zens first, they chuck­le, and say some­thing that tends to come out sound­ing like this, “We want to go home to our fam­i­lies, every­thing else is sec­ond”. Obvi­ous­ly. I am a fam­i­ly man, and I firm­ly agree with the sen­ti­ment, how­ev­er, because I am a fam­i­ly man I refuse to have my lib­er­ty, life or my fam­i­lies lives tak­en away because of any crim­i­nal. And if these sup­posed pro­tec­tors of my rights are going to sup­port crim­i­nals regard­less what name they call them­selves we may find our­selves on oppos­ing sides philo­soph­i­cal­ly.

Pol­i­cy is the unwrit­ten law that your local gov­ern­ment enforcers fol­low that they are trained to sup­port pri­mar­i­ly. Sec­ond to that is the cur­rent state or fed­er­al “statutes” or laws, and your local jus­tices, pros­e­cu­tors and coun­ty employ­ees will sup­port these enforcers before they will do the right thing in almost every instance. Much men­tion is made of the con­sti­tu­tion in the arti­cle post­ed on the GOA site, with this I tend to dis­agree sim­ply because the con­sti­tu­tion is a piece of paper. It has no author­i­ty unto itself, and can do noth­ing unto itself to pro­mote any­thing. It can be inter­pret­ed, changed and more impor­tant­ly ignored. I would much rather the local con­stab­u­lary want to help their neigh­bors as I do. I would rather the local sher­iffs deputies and police offi­cers think about who they are pulling over for speed­ing, who they are harass­ing because they choose to car­ry firearms, who they are arrest­ing for smok­ing a sim­ple joint.

Lib­er­ty calls for sac­ri­fices to be made indi­vid­u­al­ly, each of us is guar­an­teed to work hard if we desire to main­tain per­son­al lib­er­ty. How­ev­er, as can be seen in var­i­ous loca­tions in New Mex­i­co, at least the peo­ple are being sup­port­ed by the local lawenforce­ment as they should be. Unlike we here in Ari­zona where the coun­ty sher­iffs and local city police would rather send SWAT teams to mur­der you over ten­u­ous search war­rants, and pro­mote poli­cies that invade my per­son­al lib­er­ties rather than pro­tect the very peo­ple they are meant to pro­tect. Maybe it is time that Ari­zo­nans and every­one across the Unit­ed States holds their local sher­iffs account­able and calls them to task. One of my acquain­tances is Sher­iff Richard Mack, and he is one of the few law enforce­ment indi­vid­u­als I am proud to know. For those who ques­tion my stance and approach I sug­gest watch­ing Sher­iff Mack linked here . Now again, they are sup­port­ers of a dead doc­u­ment, how­ev­er, the goals are sim­i­lar to those of us who desire true lib­er­ty.

To be tru­ly free, to tru­ly have lib­er­ty it seems we may have to stand tall and tell our coun­ty sher­iffs to grab their balls and stop bend­ing over to the fed­er­al and state leg­is­la­ture. More impor­tant­ly, lib­er­ty must start with the mind, before the body can expe­ri­ence it. We must change our approach men­tal­ly, we will even­tu­al­ly need to take a firm stand. Are you ready?