Molon Labe! (86 page)

Once the previous example of 50 Reps have achieved their 5,000+ sigs, a televised pageant is held the night before election day. Each Rep gets equal time (say, 2 minutes apiece) to answer questions and address the Wyoming voters at home (who are marking their impressions on a scoresheet with such categories as: Candor, Intelligence, Resolve, Personality, etc.). Even with commercial breaks, the pageant would take only two hours. Production costs are paid by the state fund which collected the Z10,000 website application fees from all the applicants.

The next day, voters who have not petitioned go to the polls to cast their vote for one of the 50 Reps (or even for one of the original website candidates, although such would be rare). The end result is that 19 out of 20 voters will see his candidate serving in the legislature.

Barring the total elimination of legislators and turning the lawmaking power over to the popular vote (which is technologically feasible, though politically quite impractical), this bold reform is our best chance for a true and fair democracy. You will see huge opposition from lawyers and politicians, for it spells the end of their immoral and inefficient reign.

We find the worst atrocities always occur at the end of the war. And this is the end of the war. It is over and you just have to keep out of the way of the dying dinosaur's tail...

— Steve Kubby, American Medical Marijuana Assc.

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

— Victor Hugo

Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Part 2 of this Report discusses an even more controversial matter: the secret ballot and its inevitable path to tyranny.

NO MORE SECRET BALLOT

This is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended —civilizations are built up — excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings back the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin.

— C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity
, p.39

Whether the State can loose and bind

In Heaven as well as on Earth:

If it be wiser to kill mankind

Before or after the birth —

These are matters of high concern

Where State-kept schoolmen are;

But Holy State (we have lived to learn)

Endeth in Holy War.

Whether The People be led by The Lord,

Or lured by the loudest throat;

If it be quicker to die by the sword

Or cheaper to die by the vote —

These are things we have dealt with once,

(And they will not rise from their grave)

For Holy People, however it runs,

Endeth in wholly Slave.

What so ever, for any cause,

Seeketh to take or give

Power above or beyond the Laws,

Suffer it not to live!

Holy State or Holy King —

Or Holy People's Will —

Have no truck with the senseless thing.

Order the guns and kill!

Saying — after — me: —

Once there was The People — Terror gave it birth;

Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth

Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!

Once there was The People — it shall never be again!

— Rudyard Kipling,
MacDonough's Song

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.

— Thomas Paine,
The Crisis
, IV, (12 September 1777)

We believe that voting secrecy is an unnecessary evil. Stripping that veil is a vital component of a long overdue redesign of our democratic system. It would infuse a new and necessary responsibility for the actions of voters.

The secret ballot fosters secret government and its irresponsible dominion. When any atrocious government act occurs, all parties involved (though guilty) are allowed to falsely claim their innocence.

The enforcers say,
"We were
ordered
to pull the trigger!"

The politicians say,
"
We
didn't pull the trigger!"

The people say,
"We knew
nothing
of this!"

After an avalanche, every snowflake pleads "Not Guilty."

To top it off, judges confer "sovereign immunity" upon such killers as FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi of Ruby Ridge. And everyone gets away with it because there is no assignable responsibility — no real chain of command. Well, if a democracy is a "government of, for, and by the people" then it is actually quite easy to assign responsibility. Enforcers are hired by particular bureaucrats, who are empowered by particular politicians, who are elected by particular voters. Everyone involved has a name, and the republic has a right to know who they are! If the voters were to be made
personally
responsible for the actions of their agents, then the voters would elect better people. It would simply be in their best self-interest.

The earliest and most eloquent case for eliminating voter secrecy was made in 1870 by jurist Lysander Spooner in his
No Treason
:

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years...

The right of absolute and irresponsible dominion is the right of property, and the right of property is the right of absolute, irresponsible dominion. The two are identical; the one necessarily implying the other. Neither can exist without the other. If, therefore, Congress have that absolute and irresponsible law-making power, which the
[U.S.]
Constitution — according to their interpretation of it — gives them
[in I:6:2]
,
it can only be because they own us as property.
If they own us as property, they are our masters, and their will is our law. If they do not own us as property, they are not our masters,
and their will,...is of no authority over us.

But these men who claim and exercise this absolute and irresponsible dominion over us, dare not to be consistent, and claim either to be our masters, or to own us as property. They say that they are only our servants, agents, attorneys, and representatives. But this declaration involves an absurdity, a contradiction. No man can be my servant, agent, attorney, or representative, and be, at the same time, uncontrollable by me,
and irresponsible to me for his acts
.

For still another reason they are neither our servants, agents, attorneys, nor representatives. And that reason is, that we do not make ourselves responsible for their acts.
If a man is my servant, agent, or attorney, I necessarily make myself responsible for all his acts done within the limits of the power I have intrusted to him.... But no individual who may be injured in his person or property, by acts of Congress, can come to the individual electors, and hold them responsible for these acts of their so-called agents or representatives.

If, then, nobody is individually responsible for the acts of Congress, the members of Congress are nobody's agents.
And if they are nobody's agents, they are themselves individually responsible for their own acts, and for the acts of all whom they employ. And the authority they are exercising is simply their own individual authority; and, by the law of nature — the highest of all laws Canybody injured by their acts, anybody who is deprived by them of his property or his liberty, has the same right to hold them individually responsible, that he has to hold any other trespasser individually responsible.
He has the same right to resist them, and their agents, that he has to resist any other trespassers.

— Lysander Spooner,
No Treason
, Essay VI (1870)

We have a "limited liability" US Government just like "limited liability" corporations. The American legal encyclopędia
Corpus Juris Secundum
(19:XVIII, Sections 883-4) defines the United States Government as a foreign corporation with respect to the states. Corporate stockholders (voters) have no liability for the acts of their managers (Congressmen), who are themselves rarely legally responsible for corporate injuries to the public.

Our "democracy" operates with even more irresponsibility. The government cannot be sued unless it so consents, and its corporate managers (Congressmen) cannot be held accountable outside their boardroom. The corporate charter (Constitution) says so in I:6:2!

Spooner continues in Essays VIII and XIX:

A tacit understanding between A, B, and C, that they will, by ballot, depute D as their agent, to deprive me of my property, liberty, or life, cannot at all authorize D to do so.
He is none the less a robber, tyrant, and murderer, because he claims to act as their agent, than he would be if he avowedly acted on his own responsibility alone.

...
[The voters']
ballots are given in secret, and therefore in a way to avoid any personal responsibility for the acts of their agents.

No body of men can be said to authorize a man to act as their agent, to the injury of a third person,
unless they do it in so open and authentic a manner as to make themselves personally responsible for his acts...
Therefore these pretended agents cannot legitimately claim to be really agents.

Men honestly engaged in attempting to establish justice in the world have no occasion thus to act in secret; or to appoint agents to do acts for which they (the principals) are not willing to be responsible.

The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers. Open despotism is better than this.
The single despot stands out in the face of all men, and says: I am the State: My will is law: I am your master: I take responsibility for my acts: The only arbiter I acknowledge is the sword: If any one denies my right, let him try conclusions with me.

But a secret government is...a government of assassins.
Under it, a man knows not who his tyrants are, until they have struck, and perhaps not
[even]
then.

This is the kind of government we have; and it is the only one we are likely to have, until men are ready to say: We will consent to no Constitution, except such a one as we are neither ashamed nor afraid to sign; and we will authorize no government to do anything in our name which we are not willing to be personally responsible for.
(Essay VIII,
No Treason
)

The lesson taught by all these facts is this: As long as mankind...are such dupes and cowards as to pay for being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered — ...soldiers, can be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered, they will cease to have cheats, and usurpers, and robbers, and murderers and blood-money loan-mongers for masters.

(Essay XIX,
No Treason
)

Whatever program the voters demand through their Reps, it's only
those
voters who benefit from and
pay
for that program. For example, take capital punishment. Those against it would pay for a murderer's life imprisonment. And, they would fund an insurance pool on each lifer to compensate any future victims in case the murderer escapes. Conversely, those in favor of capital punishment agree to be randomly chosen to "pull the switch" and would fund an insurance pool in case innocent persons were executed.

The whole point is to make voters
personally
responsible
for their own actions and for those of their Reps,
instead of distributing (in secret) the consequences of their poor choices across the state. Every enforcer is hired by some official, who is appointed by some elected officer, who is voted in by the people. It's about time we all learned what is being committed (however indirectly and unknowingly) in our name, and own up to it.

The answer is usually simple. Accepting the question is difficult.

— Jeff Cooper,
The Gargantuan Gunsite Gossip 2
(2001), 144