I do not wish for you to take my idea of Freedom. She is precious to me. I can only hope that after what I have to say, you find Freedom as well.

Freedom.

People like to start their essays on a word with its dictionary definition. People generally think they know what it is. Do we? Do I?

Freedom has no definition. If anything, Freedom is anything but what mere words can describe.

I write to you in a language that was handed to me, taught to me, from someone else. I write the language of man's invention - and so I can only edge the idea based on the limitations of linguistics. I can't write Freedom. But perhaps I can paint it, that you will taste it.

Although absent from today, Freedom and Liberty go hand in hand. They are brother and sister. Manifested only in this world as an idea.

But what we know of them is often perverted, twisted by the State and those who bow to it. In the first-world countries, we are taught that we are free, though we are not. We are taught that we stand for "liberty and justice for all". But neither are afforded to us. What we hear are words meant to silence us. The words are there to oppress us. "America is the land of the free". Since the rise of statehood, this is not true.

You are not free to do what you want. The laws are clear; you may do anything so long as you don't do ____. Our lives are by law... when we break these laws, our freedom is taken from us through incarceration. First, we cannot be free if we abide by such laws, and we can not be free if Freedom can be undone. Freedom does not come with caveats. Freedom bows to no one. It cannot be taken, but only offered in turn for slavery. If we are not free, then we are slaves. No one demands our freedom but the State. Nationhood. Nationalism is slavery.

The United Nations, in their "Declaration of Human Rights", which passed unanimously, suggests a series of rights that appeal to the individual, not the nation. It says that we have the ability to travel as we please, to have democracy, among other things. It is a pity that this declaration has never been adopted by any of the nations which passed it. Nations, States, have no interest in freedom. They have no interest in the individual. We no longer live in a world dominated by the qualitative. Instead, everything is statistics. Everything is numbers - quantitative. We are numbers before our masters, registered by numbers and filed for future use. The individual has no place in nationalism.

The leaked notes from the '66 Bilderburg convention underline that "Nationalism is dangerous." Indeed - but not to groups like Bilderburg. In fact, nationalism inspires people to embrace the quantitative - to serve as a overwhelming majority - destroying the idea of individuals, and instead a united hivemind. If nationalism is dangerous, it's because of the hivemind. But the hivemind favors the majority - and thus in the spirit of the nation-state, the rulers of the state can have in their possession the hivemind of the people to do their bidding. One country can crush another country with nationalism. We've seen this to power the Napoleonic wars. World War 1. World War 2. The Invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. When the people collect to the hivemind, they lose their ability to think critically - they balk at the logical in favor of the will of the majority. The hivemind is fed by the most carnal of humanity. Anger. Fear. Lust. Desire. Manifested as desire for power, anger towards another, fear from another, lust for resources. No war in humanity has ever been fought without the hivemind, nor nationalism. Such a war could not stand. If the soldiers will not fight, and the people will not support, then the rulers have no utility for whatever sick machinations they have in mind. There is no will of the people without the hivemind. We can call it something else. Complicity. One that does not outright support the hivemind can still participate by apathy. I am grossly aware of the atrocities my country is commiting across the world, and what have I done to stop it? I feel often as David to Goliath. I commit myself to revolution, but I have not succeeded yet. I did not single-handily end a war. I have made effort, but it is not enough. If it were, we'd be free already. For every moment I am not out in the streets in action, I am failing through inaction. It is a guilt I bear. That I can sit here and write a treatise, and feel incapable to save another human being. I am complicit. I know others more complicit than I. Apathy is death. We can stand indifferent to the suffering of other brothers and sisters, and so they die. It is not so much a tragedy that someone dies, but that their connection to society is lost. That that person can no longer give their life-blood to humanity. That all they could have done is dead. That all they have done rests in memory. That they are no longer present to connect with us. That is the tragedy. I care not whether someone is sitting in hell nor heaven, but only that no longer can we count on them to make a difference in our lives - they're gone. They will never come back. Death is apathy. The dead cannot suffer the living. By complicity, by apathy, we allow the suffering of others. Genocide. Murder. Torture. Rape. We are complicit in our apathy, and so good people die. The same society that tells us that only statistics count, blot out the fact that these people dying are not just people. Not a number. We cannot hope to quantify the connections to the world lost through senseless death. Apathy is death. We do not stop wars, we protest them. And for every bullet that will fly through the brain of fellow human, apathy is death. As the corporations sit on vaccines that could prevent plague and famine, apathy is death.

The State would have you keep all these deaths nondescript. The dictionary that we follow is meant to minimize individualism, Freedom. If you have ever known death, then these words will be stark. Perhaps you don't even need to know death. Perhaps it is enough to witness dying. My father is dying. I can see on the horizon the moment that he will sever his connections to me, to life, to everything and everyone. I feel great pain to know that one day I will not be able to call him, to speak to him and hold his hand. I don't seek your pity. But he is a man, a very real man who is dying, and I know his name. I know where he was born and when, what he is dying of, and all that he has done. All that he could do. You cannot quantify for me, nor can I for you, the measure of grief I will face when he dies. But the dictionary betrays us. I can qualify my grief to you for him, but the words we hear so often sound like "5 killed in suicide bombing." The dictionary provides for us a language so callous, that in 5 words, we can measure many lifetimes of grief. In each of those words, we are led to apathy. When we hear it on the news, we shrug it off. "Wow, five people. Yikes. Pass the corn, please." Apathy is death. We are so complicit. It should break our hearts to hear that 6 people, an infinite number of connections to real humans, real things, places, events, are now wiped from the slate of the earth. Words are so cold. So mundane. Apathetic. Words have no power but what connotations we decide to invoke. The definition is set to us.

There was a book once, that you may recall, where 2+2=4. Two plus two equals four. Well, why not. One and one and one and one are four. Wait, who says? Why do we trust it to be four? Why don't two and two equal five? I cannot answer the question. No mathematician could either. Mathematics are a story which has been told and defined over thousands of years - but we have no way of knowing what 2+2=4 means if it were not that someone told us. 2+2=5. There is nothing which prevents me from writing it. There is nothing that prevented you from reading it. The mathematical sentence is sound. If I write that 2+2=5, you can claim that it is incorrect, except that by the rules of mathematics, that I am able to type an equal sign rather than an unequal sign means that whatever I write, you must believe. 2+2=5. Because I said so. I wrote it, and so it's true. If your mind cringes, then ask why. Deconstruct. The rules that have been given to you that define that 2+2=4 are based on no natural law. They are man's law. Thus, they are subject to man. If I say 2+2=5, then you damn well better believe that it does. Because the equal sign means that whatever the expression was, the equation is always true. You can count it on your fingers. 1,1,1,1. 4. Why do you count like that? It is because someone told you to. You can ask any mathematician why they do math like they do, and their final answer must be that they learned it from someone else.

Our lexicon works in the same way. It is subject to cultural linguistics - our culture dictates the linguistics and lexicon. Language is a man-made thing. If I type "fjdkalsuei" it is not suspected that it is a real word. Why not? Because it wasn't in the dictionary? Perhaps I made up the word. It means "bucket". Does the word I have made exist? Of course. I made it, you read it, it's typed and published for all to see. You can argue that it is not English. Of course not. It falls out of the rules of English language, and yet it's not slang, and they call it 'gibberish'. If I spoke to you in French, and you had never known that French existed, wouldn't it just be gibberish to you? If you have no word for it, and you do not recognize it, then culturally the word is invalid. Linguistically, it exists, but it won't make a dictionary. I type these words under constrains. I cannot type the language of my mind, because my mind knows no language - it relies on rules, definitions, and vocabulary that has been passed on to me as a language to communicate. If I were able to communicate from my mind, then perhaps those communications would be so much more efficient than the cold, callous form that I must write in. What we know may indeed be a lie.

The Babylonians were the first to codify a lawbook. To that point, law did not exist - order was maintained by the society. The society defined its own codes of conduct, more appropriately, norms, which had to have been followed lest one breach the unwritten social contract that one must "behave". Every society had its own ways to deal with breaches in social contract - but until it was codified, they were not uniform. Thousands of years later, we no longer rely on social contracts to rationalize or criminalize behaviors. The last vestiges of such contracts may come in the form of "fashion foux pas", or perhaps things that can fall under the dictionary description of lewd or inappropriate. Such as farting on your neighbor. There is not technically a law which prevents this, however, society will look down on you for it. You may be shunned. Perhaps nobody will want to be around you if you fart on them. The police do not interfere with farters on a regular basis, because the social contract takes care of the issue. Now what we have left after thousands of years is the ideation that things are either legal or illegal. Something cannot be both legal and illegal, and you cannot at any point claim that you are neither legal nor illegal. You must be one or the other. Such a claim is illegal under the dictionary. Society revolves around this. It dominates us. We all desire to be legal, because being illegal means being illegitimate, and harmful to society. Being illegal is a treason of its own - it means being a non-person. You cannot be a normal human being and also be illegal. We are compelled to lock away the illegal into prison systems, because we cannot suffer that an illegal person be around us. Neither can we suffer any acts that are illegal. We are trained at birth that we must always be legal, and are taught to fear the illegal. The dictionary refines these fears, which are also codified into law, so that we are taught to fear illegality because there is not only the crime of being illegal, but a punishment. One of the many ways that this is ingrained into us is the classic "don't eat the cookie" experiment between mothers and children. The mother tells the child that they cannot eat the cookie, or they will be a bad child and that they will be punished for their crime. The child is only just learning, and may take the cookie. The punishment means that we suddenly lose control and are placed in unwanted situations are or made to experience unwanted things. This is only a simplification of the legal system that adults must adhere to. A human is so conditioned to fear illegality that they will go do any lengths to avoid criminality, even if it it morally irresponsible that they do so. This is where the law takes precedent over social contract. For instance, it is a social contract that two partners working together must never act against their partner. But if one partner was to commit an illegal act, the law takes precedence over the social contract, stating that the innocent person has a legal obligation to turn in the criminal. If the person wishes to remain legal themselves, they are expected to divulge all the information required to convict their partner, less they be charged as illegal as well.

We are also trained to be possessive. We like our things. We are ingrained to have things. Nobody had things thousands of years ago. There were just things. However, just as we perceive in animals, we have a disposition to acquire things for ourselves if they are not ours to use freely. If we cannot borrow another person's house, we're likely to want to get a house of our own. However, in a successful communal environment, people are generally happy with what they have, understanding that they have free use of it, and that they have by commune a percentage in the ownership of it. However, the current social contracts in capitalism state that each human is responsible and charged with gaining as much for themselves as possible. If you cannot gain these things for yourself, then your stature in culture is reduced. By this, we have a social clime in which it is a terrible thing to be homeless and poor, and that those people have the least standing in the culture. On the other hand, if a person has a large amount of capital, then they are deemed successful, and a role model for humanity. The people with the most capital also hold the most amount of respect and standing by the community, because of their success. But then the dictionary betrays us again. Success is measured by a thick book determining what things are and aren't in a culture. In a dictionary written by capitalists, success and wealth will always be measured by capital. The First Nations, before the perversion and genocide by the Western countries, perceived, in many places, that a person's wealth, capital, and social standing were all determined by how much they contributed to society, either by gifts or by literally how much they could do for other people. There was no possession, and sharing was capital.

Perhaps feeding from these principles, we have a situation in which people now divide themselves on beliefs. Why? It does no good to disagree and to love disagreeing. And yet, we have a perpetual bipartisan system. It changes over the years, but it remains much the same. There is a "left" and a "right". It has been argued that these directions must always exist, but I argue that this is true only as a limitation of capitalism. The left is generally perceived as populist and liberal, and though it goes by many names, it is most characterized by the stance that the people must come first. The right, generally perceived as expansionist and conservative, is most often characterized by it's values of growth and that the economy must come first. It is best argued that one needs all of the above to exist. At present standards, if a country was only ruled by the "right", then the people of the country would likely be exploited and silenced in favor of greater nationalism, economic and imperialistic growth. The primary goal would be that the economy and the nation-state would be headed on a road of being the greatest nation-state and people ever. It is unfortunate that the nation-state itself would implode under the stress of expansionism and laissaiz-faire capitalism. If the "left" were allowed to rule under the same conditions, then there would be no growth, or perhaps negative growth, of the nation-state and economy, and that the services and industry in the nation-state would implode under the oppression of the business. The "left" is inherently anti-capitalist, in the sense that greater importance is placed on the vox populi than is placed on the acquiring of personal belongings and wealth. In the most "leftist" sense, having the greatest amount of wealth is undesirable, unless the wealth were evenly shared. No country can survive under either extreme. This is why the whole thing is folly. In every revolution or crisis, the parties split into two very clear groups. They become extremist. By decree of social contract, is is considered illegal to be neither left nor right - because the parties split the people into a decision where you must be this or that, and never none. This is partially an exercise of clarity - in crisis, humans always prefer to have the most clarity - who is what, where, and why. By dividing the groups so much, the androgyny is abandoned in favor of the ability for brothers and sisters to clearly identify who you are so that the appropriate party can either aide you or act against you. This type of thinking permeates modern culture. In disaster situations, the trend has been that there will be those who rebuild as a community, who sustain it, and those who prey upon it. This is a recollection to thousands of years ago when you were either a predator, or prey. You could not be both, you always had to be one or the other. In many books, it has been said that you must choose, in a disaster situation, which you will be. In the light of capitalism, which feeds upon the same instincts, the "right" will choose the predatory position, and the "left" will choose they prey position. It is the peculiar interest for the "left" that they be prey, because they would rather choose sacrifice than to have to turn on their brothers and sisters. They would rather choose a communal environment where they band together to minimize their risk by predators, but will not choose aggression over self-defense. The "right" is driven by no such contract. The "right" is driven by capitalism, the oldest of systems which states that it is in their best interest to have the most capital. There is no fault to the logic. As a predator, with a bit of wit, it is much more logical a choice to take things for yourself than to share it among others. The most successful of predators will be determined by their own wealth. In a disaster situation, wealth is reduced to who has the most goods and skills necessary in order to survive. This is the most logical of choices. This is the best choice for survival. The only downside is that to be predatory, there must always be prey. Bringing the scope back to the current modern scenario, if the right were to succeed in the destruction of the left, there would be no people to expand the nation-state, and no people to work any form of economy. Eventually, they would all have to convert their ideology to the practicality that some of them must be leftist in order to survive, or they would perish. Bringing a similar situation from history, the Easter Island natives of old were stuck in a situation where through the ideas of capitalism, a great wealth inequality came to light, and the left, the workers, all revolted against the right, the gentry. The workers chased the gentry and cornered them by the volcano, until they managed, with their superior numbers, to kill them. Because there was nobody left to keep up the expansionism or the economy, the workers were unable to manage themselves and fell into great poverty, great austerity, and eventually all but died out. This is what happens if one party were to absolutely win over the other. Cultural death.

Moving along. We cannot be defined by having to be "this" or "that". In every facet of our social structure, we find these same situations. These are man-made laws. It is man who decided that you cannot be both, and it is man who decided that you cannot be neither. In nature, there are no such requirements. A leaf can be a ocean, and have the freedom to be so. While you think "this cannot be", you must, for a minute, abandon the social laws and contracts which state that a leaf can only ever be a leaf. In nature, there are no such laws, no such contracts, and thus by nature's own standards, a leaf can be as such, and an ocean at the same time. Who are we to regulate nature? Well, we've done just that. We have dictated that 2+2=4 and we have not the freedom to say so. There will always be a social contract or law which will state that 2+2 can only ever equal four, and that five is right out. There will always be a social contract or law which states that you cannot be a man and a woman, because you must be one or the other. It is so. You are digitized - which is a world in binary. We live in a binary world. Not so much a world, but a paradigm. Thousands of years ago, humans never claimed binary life - that something must be something and nothing else. It is by today's standards that strip that freedom of natural law.

Freedom IS natural law.

Prisons are the antithesis. The structure of a prison is man-made. There is no nature in it. Nature is perceived as weak, malleable. Thus, a prison is a fort of iron and concrete. The organic is frowned upon. As such, it is entirely dictated by man. Freedom and liberty, as we see it, are stripped away. A man becomes a shell, stripped of the innate natural law which provides us the ideals of freedom in the first place. A woman is a shell, and faces the grim reality that even after incarceration, the current social contract dictates that a lady who was or is in jail is not even a lady at all, for proper ladies must never be illegal. Men face similar contracts that state that a man who has been to jail must be untrustworthy and cruel because they are or have been illegal men. What life flickers in a jail is only a remaining ritual of human nature, or of natural laws, which over time are diminished due to lack of fuel. After 60 years in prison, a human does not emerge from the front doors the same person who went in. The thing, the monster, that comes out, is a ghost. There is no shred of humanity left in them. They at times show signs of humanity, but it is a wisp, a facade, a trace from a life that was once lived, or else a gut response to the social contract that states that one person must laugh at a joke, or be considered outlandish and offensive - illegal. After so much time in a prison, what shreds of freedom and liberty that thrive in a person, are twisted and perverted into oblivion. It is with more grief that I witness a former "illegal" who has lost their idea of freedom and liberty than I do to witness death. At least in death, the memories of freedom, life, natural law and liberty remain in the memory. To see a human living as a contradiction to those things is a life than no human would ever choose. That innocents are punished an incarcerated, my heart cries even further. To illegalize an innocent is, in my opinion, the worst crime in all humanity. I will never forgive, and never forget those who rule an innocent to death of the body, nor death of the soul. I rage at the thought that this has ever happened, and fight to soothe myself at the idea that innocents are treated in such a manner all the time, ongoing. Freedom and liberty are the greatest gifts of nature, and to have them stripped from you is more crime than a thousand murders. I share infinite solidarity to all who are or have been incarcerated, as the man-made prisons and laws fail humanity the most behind bars, lies, deceit, and the illegitimate claim that a human can judge another human. Judgement is reserved for the self. There is no way to every truly know another human without being that human. We cannot do this. And thus, the courts, the legal system are invalid. They are defunct. They are abhorrent to natural law. There is know codification of natural law, no words to describe it, and no contracts or punishments to adhere to. Natural law dictates that humans must act on their own accord, and if anything else, that it be by social contracts, and that one must be able to act according to nature, which is not always fair or logical, that no human may inflict punishment upon another human. One may always change themselves, but one must never change another.

I know you wonder what then would you do if a person were to steal your capital. I say that first, in the words of Goldman, that society gets the criminals it deserves. Governed by the laws of man, there shall always be the crime of man. Governed by natural law and solidarity as humans, there would never be any crime. There would be no want, for people working with nature and not against it will never find a lack of capital, nor a lack of hope. There would be no capital to steal if we did not raise capital for ourselves. The solution lies not in communism, because communism and socialism both rely on large governments to enforce it. It also codifies the law of man to state that one must not be a capitalist, which is akin to trying to dowse a flame with gasoline. Humans are unhappy most often because of the shortcomings of capitalism, and that compels them to violate man's law and become illegal, do illegal things. That someone dictates that you can have no capital makes people unhappy because without capital, and nation-state enforcement of deindividualisation and nationalism, one becomes equally as unhappy at their inability to have capital, and their inability to be an individual. This is the failing of manmade laws. Communism and socialism mimic natural law, which holds that there is no such thing as capital, and there is no such thing as a nation-state. In nature, there are no boundaries, no possessions, there is only nature. Nature is one. If anti-capitalists were to fully embrace the idea, they would take the lesson from nature that there is a world around them, and they are a part of it, but they are individuals most of all. This goes against all the workings of social culture of the past thousands of years. It is considered, under the current dictionary, barbaric to live in, of, and off nature in such a way. However, there are no written or oral arguments which state that being one with nature and embracing the individual was ever an unhappy life. In fact, it was the argument of the First Nations that the Western countries were interferreing with their lifestyle, their homeland, their way of life - as the West attempted to both colonize and modernize the entire New World. They had superior tools of war, diseases, and more that turned colonization to the favor of the Westerners not because they were more intelligent or more advanced, but because they had the most effective tools of war. By any standard, the value of a nation-state and a human cannot be logically determined by how well they wage war, because war is illogical. In the natural world, there is no war. Hunting exists, yes, but there is no war. Hunting is a form of symbiosis - a natural law of checks and balances which determine that the lion is as much grateful for a meal as the gazelle - because one without the other would be the death of both. The gazelle holds no grudge to the lion for being what it is, and the lion holds no vendetta against the gazelle. They just co-exist, and while one must eat to survive, no war of politics, economies, or anything else is waged. It's survival. Perhaps a social contract. Most definitely, natural law. The Americans warring with all the other countries in an effort to perpetuate the war economy by rapid expansionism by blood or by ideals is a man-made social decree that one nation-state must war with another, such is the way of nation-states. Mandated by man's law. Foolish. The soldiers of one country have no quarrel with soldiers of another country - they shoot to kill on command and either propaganda, anger, or fear (carnal instincts) that are placed into their head that allow them to dehumanize another being to the point where a human being is reduced to a "tango", and most affectionately worded as a "tango down". This goes back to the idea that apathy is death, that a human cannot be both a fellow and an enemy, and that we are socially conditioned by the laws of man to refer to other brothers and sisters in the most logical quantitative phrases to the point where humans with real lives, real individualism, personalities and talents are reduced to numbers in a headline. If that.

Freedom does not exist in any of the modern world. The first-world countries know nothing of freedom and liberty, save for that the words are etched into the books of nationalism - a perversion in their own right.

Freedom is natural law - it does not bow to the nation-state or to man's law. Natural law exists, and is alive and well, whether you accept it or not. Civilization is compatible with natural law. In the same way that a colony of ants can survive, so can we. But freedom means you must redefine the word itself. Don't look it up in the dictionary. We already discussed - the dictionary is as much a codification of man's law as the law books are. Freedom is something to experience. Freedom means that you are truly sovereign, that you have total freedom to associate, live autonomously, communicate freely with others, and that you do not have to pledge allegiance to others. Freedom is being able to say that 2+2=4 and be free to say so. Freedom is when man's law is absent, replaced with the compassion, justice, and liberty that is truly inherent in every human being, by natural design, insomuch as that we all have the ability to live free, if we could just get to freedom. Freedom is to say that you have the right to live without authority, without dictation, without having to worship to a higher power. Freedom means that you can love whoever you want to love, and never fear for your life for who your heart pines for. Freedom is not having to worry about starving children, because we are all free to partake of the earth as much as we are free to grow it. Freedom means being able to form collectives and work together for whatever purpose, without having to file for taxes and subordinate to a boss. Freedom means being able to walk outside and breath the free air, swim in the free waters, and for once never feel like you were an alien in a free world.

Freedom is refreshing. I know what freedom is, because I dreamt of it. I know it's possible, because for several fleeting moments in my life, I felt it. I felt it at birth, though I don't remember it, because I was born of a womb where I was free to exist without worrying about man's law. I lived nature's law in the womb, as we all have. I felt it as a child sometimes, knowing that if I walked into my backyard, I could imagine and pretend I was anything I wanted to be - I had the freedom to make myself a whole world, and I was blissfully ignorant of man's law, ignorant of right and wrong. I felt it once on a mountain, looking down and seeing nothing but trees. I saw myself, in that moment, being a part of a world where the nations didn't matter, because all that was truly real were the trees, the hills, the grass and flowers, and all the animals in it. I knew that humans could be just part of nature for once, because at that moment I stood on that mountain without caring whatever man's law said. I never worried that I might become illegal, I never worried that I was under another's thumb. I was king of my own mountain. More so, my own king. I've felt it sitting at a campfire, staring in the the flames and admiring how anything in nature can be so free as a flame. The smoke rises freely. The fire cares not for man's law, nor possession, nor capital. It is nature, it consumes, it transforms materials into new things, and then it's gone. That's fire's job.

Eventually I started wondering how, as a citizen, I could truly be free. How am I free, when the government tells me who I must be, and what I must do? How am I free, when the social contract of my friends and community can dictate what actions I can do without being seen as crazy or mean? How can I be free, when I love people of my own gender - and such a love can get me shot or imprisoned? How can I be free in this world when the corporations and government take away my rights - and most of all - how can I be free when my freedom and liberty comes with caveats? If I was ever to be truly free, then I must know without doubt, that my freedom is a right, not a privilege. That liberty is inalienable, and cannot be taken. With a government that threatens death and imprisonment for violation of social contract and man's law, I know for certain that I am  not free. What makes me, me, can be stripped from me in the crush of a gavel, judged by a human who never knew me, acting only according to the game of who has the best ability to condemn. In this world, it is within every possible concept that I can be killed or imprisoned for no reason, that as an innocent, I can be condemned for crime I have never committed. It happens all the time. What's more, without facing a legal system stacked against me, I know that my rights and privileges are being taken from me with every new passing of man's law, which pervert natural law and the spirit. I know that so long as I would ever be a parent, a lie could have my children stripped from me at any moment, by a government which informally convicts every suspect before trial. I know I cannot be free to say "I follow no laws, and neither have broken any" without being crowned a lunatic. I know that social contracts state that I cannot be neither left or right without being radical. I know that I cannot say I am follow democracy without being construed as favoring republic.

These things I know to be true. I suggest on your own time that you compile a similar list of things you know to be true about freedom, about lack of freedom.

I know that I have not known true freedom any more than a fleeting moment, but that fleeting moment I have decided is worth fighting for.

You wonder why people revolt? Do you wonder why people crowd the streets in protest? Do you wonder why the Black Bloc uses militant tactics? Why the IRA, ELF ever blew things up? Why people kill tyrants? It is freedom, my friend.

It is no short order to identify what stands in the way of freedom. Sometimes, even if we were to clear the way, people generally aren't ready for freedom. That takes a paradigm shift. But ever since 1960, we've been having a paradigm shift. It's about time now. Not quite, but very close. We're almost at a point where we could actually handle freedom. But there is a long line of people and things that cloud the way. There are radicals on both sides. Some fight the paradigm shift to freedom, in favor of stability or capitalism, but some radicals fight for freedom. The tactics are not always savory.

Sometimes, people get hurt. Sometimes things get smashed. This is because freedom will never be handed to you. You meet resistance every step of the way. In the same way that rightists reject leftist thoughts, and leftists reject rightist thoughts, both wings reject radical thoughts. It's a internalized distaste for anybody to destabilize the paradigm. We've been trained to reject shift in paradigm, but it's spiraling out of control now. It started with the liberal push for human rights. Human rights is a good thing. Well, it was bad for expansionism, so the right pushed back. Before long, governments and corporations got involved, and now revolutions are happening all over the world. It's a collapse of the capitalist, binary paradigm we've had for the last couple thousand or so years. In the same way that non-radical groups resist radicalism, radicals reject first, that discrimination, and second, the overwhelming resistance to paradigm shift. It is startling to see the windows smashed out of a bank, or to see officers being pummeled in the streets. But you must remember what we've covered when you dissect these actions.

Let's put our mindsets on gear for FREEDOM. You know you're going to have to fight for it. Freedom isn't handed to you, okay?

You know the corporations often exploit through capitalism to get what the want. Tax loopholes. Child labor. Outsourcing. List goes on and on. They trample on freedom, and shove capitalism down the throats of The People to... get more capital. That's their point. So, they become a natural resistance to freedom. They have enough capital that they can become a huge resistance to freedom and human rights. Looking at a history of lobbying, this can be proven.

So you smash out their windows. It causes a little bit of financial harm, but that's not the point. The point is to let everyone else know that 1. This business stands against freedom and exploits people and the environment though the loopholes and greed of capitalism.

2. This business has been effectively marked as a unsafe place to shop or visit, because they are a bad business that does more harm than good.

3. The nation-state is not all powerful, and this gives us hope (or fear), because it means that the nation-state is weak.

You know that police engage in brutality all the time. It's in the news everywhere. You also know that the police stand for the laws and social contracts of man as the enforcers - they are charged to make the initial judgement of who is legal and who is not legal. They man all the places that strip people of their freedom and liberty, and they are the ones who are guilty for the prostitution of innocents in the legal system - they may be good people, but they come out in force, on the street, behind a badge, getting in the way of and attempting to minimize all signs of protest, unrest, and riot, in an effort to both pacify the masses and silence the minorities.

So when they push, you push back. You might throw a molotov. A rock.

1. The point is not to kill, because they are still your brothers and sisters, no matter how twisted by State propaganda

2. "Violent" or defensive tactics are used as a deterrent for The State to prevent the minority from being silenced

3. Police officers have militarized in the past few decades, meaning that they use more brutal and aggressive tactics that one must defend themself from or face the very real threat of getting hurt

4. This makes a very clear statement that the will of the people or the will of the minority will not be silenced, and will not be pacified into submission or complicity

5. Makes a statement that one can be morally right but legally wrong (going back to neither legal or illegal discussion)

The Chicago Principles (a culmination of anarchist, liberal, and conservative work) state (1 & 2) that although one does not have to participate or condone a diversity of tactics, one must acknowledge that it does exist, and that great care should be taken that one set of tactics does not directly interfere with another, so long as it is possible. It also states that all criticisms should stay internal to the movement, so that one does not publicly denounce another person, action, or collective/group.

What this means is that while you may not choose to engage in what is considered a breach of man's law, a social contract exists that you are no expected to engage in the breach in the same way that it is expected that you will not denounce others for their diversity of tactics publicly in such a manner as a public "call out" or tattling. Particularly, it is a breach of social contract to testify against your brothers and sisters or "rat them out".

While you may not choose to support radical tactics, you should try to understand why they choose radicalism. It's not because they're "criminals" or anything of the sort. When I wrote about freedom, I meant it in the purest of ways. Some people will never know freedom - some have yet to know it. Some have known it.

This has best been described to me by a friend and fellow Newsviner - mountainfirefall.

Still praying at the alter of the melting pot long now missing from the fire of society, they are sightless, when just on the edge of the shadowed darkness outside the warmth of living, human beings stand and watch as believers warm themselves with a justice purchased. Standing at the backs of the believers another line of the hopeful, stand shoulders curled at their backs. This line of human beings between the believers and the shadowed people, keeping what little of the warmth remains, to themselves, never looking just sensing... the shivering masses watching.

The fire warms the believers, and their backs are insulated by the line of people who wish to step up to the fire.

What of the shadowed people. How complicated is it to look and see that the well resourced authority of believers now bestow upon paid butchers a faith made of hate, fear, and myths. The paid butchers, who protect the believers warmed by a line of people promised warmth, are fed an understanding where once there was honor. What is this understanding they have together. Ask yourself now.

Who fights for freedom. Do the believers fight for freedom? No, the answer is No. They do not even work. Not the way we work. They stand in the light and feel the warmth of freedom. A job can be done well when one is warm. Do the hopeful fight for freedom? No, they believe a shift here and there will do and they will also feel the depth of the warmth, not just the edges. They are just this close to believing, and have been warming the backs of others so long, that they now wait for their earned turn.

So, who fights for freedom? Do the paid butchers fight for freedom? No. The paid butchers put on the insulation provided to do the work, then walk out into the cold to slaughter the shivering masses who watch the fire warming the believers, it is the believers who provide the insulation to the paid butchers to keep them warm.

There is another group of human beings who do not stand at the fire. They do not warm the backs of the believers, and they count themselves the savior of those who shiver. The truth of them is chilling in itself.

They are the gatekeepers who join the hopeful people in their bid for a ticket to the show, the right to be called good people, people who do good. They rise early and go to bed late. They live on the edge of a freedom that they have access to, is of their own making. They believe that they alone will bring those who shiver into the light of their own fires, fires which they shout to all and sundry that they built. Their eyes shine with righteous purpose and moral dignity. They write feverishly to the believers who they beg for money to do the work they do, and call their own. They proclaim to be experts at bringing in the shivering and making them hopeful.

--Mountainfirefall, http://mountainfirefall.newsvine.com/_news/2012/06/11/12167234-stop-the-terror-the-fire-of-freedom-dies-in-the-hands-of-advocates

Building from the words of Mountainfirefall, the gatekeepers are the ones who most heavily resist the change in paradigm. I hope that through what I have written, I have stirred your mind on the thought of Freedom. The Gatekeepers are the ones who will either fight to stamp that out of you, or will have read all this and are already gathering a thousand quotes to tell me why I'm wrong.

The Gatekeeper is the one who believes in reform, that things can go back to normal, that upholds that the middle class still exists (as statistics show its crumbling), and that, even if they deny it, still embrace capitalism. Police officers are often gatekeepers, because mix threat to paradigm shift with criminality. White, formerly middle class or upper class people can easily be gatekeepers, because they embrace the "good 'ol boy" system of reward and punishment, class war, and "Mother, may I?" culture (which dictates that one must above all be legal). They are also often State workers, who base perceptions on the morality and ethics of their job on the minute goodness in their experience, while ignoring any cries of oppression or injustice from the community. Such in the way that a soldier does not doubt that their service is for the good of the people, or that a CPS worker taking a child does not doubt that the parent(s) are guilty. In reality, we know that if one were to fully comprehend the sheer volume of terrorism that State agencies and departments are responsible for, none of those workers would show up to work after learning about it. Gatekeepers can also be class traitors, such as people who work at oil refineries and are complicit in the destruction of the earth, or firefighters who respond to dowse protesters with water cannons, knowing that they are meant to save people, not oppress them. Gatekeepers can also be nurses, who despite any authority to judge, do so frequently and even when it can tear a life in half. Gatekeepers are everywhere. If they didn't exist, the paradigm would be accelerated. Perhaps too quickly. However, as the paradigm collapses, the Gatekeepers are coming to the forefront to save the old paradigm. The usefulness has reached it's peak. Gatekeepers do not stand for freedom, and they do not know it. They hear about it, but are not interested. They are too busy trying to make the paradigm work for them. Mountainfirefall believes that they can change.... I do not. I do not believe that Gatekeepers can ever be radicalized, and I do not believe they will ever support or accept freedom. It scares them. Freedom is scary. Some people truly feel the need to be directed 24/7/365 because they are so unaware of what freedom truly is. Fear is a extremely powerful basic human emotion, that is often used as a tool. Frightened people have no tactical value - they act too rashly, and do not think logically. They refute truths at the behest of being wrong about anything. They think they are innocent, and they will never accept guilt whether it be their own or guilt for another. I don't think that will change. My role with gatekeepers is to try to get them in such a position that they cannot harm or impede the freedom fighters. If this were Che speaking, my role probably would have been armed with a assault rifle - but I believe that as the paradigm shifts and more people radicalize or embrace the idea that diversity of tactics exist and should be treated with respect, that the gatekeepers can be pushed to the sidelines so that the people who truly know what they are fighting for and why, can try and get the shift done with minimal destruction to the psyche.

I expect, in the near future, for things to get bad. Really bad. War bad. On the homefront. Civil war, or revolution. I know not what the historians will call it. I don't too much care. I know my part. I want to encourage you to know yours.

I am a distracted lover. I love my partners, but not as much as I love Freedom. I will always love freedom more. I would never sell anyone out for it, but I will always fight for it. I have tasted it, and it is like ecstasy to me. I am not alone. There are many who love freedom. Many have no idea what it is though. That is why after this treatise I hope you start to analyze it for yourself. It is powerful. It is amazing. There is nothing in the stupid dictionary that can define it, or come close to it. I think my favorite way to describe it is through written imagery...

Imagine waking up, and hearing the heartbeat of the galaxy for the first time.

Imagine standing in the glow of the great sun, but without the harshness, and feeling the energy spread through you.

Imagine soaring over the earth, letting the wind take you as nature compels through the most beautiful scenery in the whole world.

Now... imagine walking naked through a cold and desolate wasteland, and the feeling of eyes following you, through utterly and hopelessly abandoned. This is life without Freedom.

Freedom is worth fighting for. At all costs. Freedom is worth dying for. As long as I fight for freedom, I will never fear death.