Text #1: The Bible

The Bible is the Most Important Book in the History of the Human Race

What does the Bible say about the issues that face America (A-Z):

A • B • C • D • E • F • G • H • I • J • K • L • M • N • O • P • Q • R • S • T • U • V • W • X • Y • Z • # •

 A

B C D E F G H I

 
Our First Assigned Text:
The most important work in the history of America and Western Civilization, obviously, is the Bible.
 
The Bible is the most important book in the history of the human race.

Atheists might disagree with that statement at first, but consider the fact that TIME Magazine named Adolph Hitler the "Man of the Year" in 1939. Not that Hitler was the nicest man, but Hitler was the most important man that year and had the most significant impact on the world.

Some atheists might then say the Bible has had a negative effect on the world, by trapping its readers in superstition and non-reason.

But simply compare those nations where the Bible is freely distributed with those nations where the Bible is banned. The Bible brings social order, "civil rights," lower crime, charity and welfare, science and practical arts, and gives nations the highest standard of living. It is almost impossible for any thinking person to imagine what the world would be like if the Bible had never been written.

Despite fierce opposition from tyrants and dictators over the centuries, the Bible has continued to be preserved, translated, printed and circulated. It is a truly miraculous book.

George Washington read the Bible an hour every morning.
Then another hour in the evening.
America's Founding Fathers knew it well.
It takes 11 minutes a day to read the Bible
from cover to cover in one year.
Maybe you've already read the Bible --
but you read it as a religious book.
A "devotional" book.
A book to "inspire" you.
A book to help your "self-esteem."
 
We're going to read the Bible as
marching orders from General Headquarters.
We're going to read the Bible as a
non-religious book, as a
textbook in political science and economics.
For example,
We're going to pay close attention to
what the Bible says about
inflation and fractional reserve banking,
which led the Framers of the Constitution to say
"No state shall make anything but gold or silver
 a tender in payment in of debts."
 
Americans in 1776 knew what the Bible said about economics, law, political science, and more.
Americans today do not.

Christianity is not just religious devotionals.

Christianity is a worldview that affects every area of life.

To the left and the right you can see a list of contemporary issues which the Bible addresses directly and clearly. During the next 365 days, you'll see these issues in the Bible like America's Founding Fathers did, and like you've never seen them before.
In addition, you're going to see the story of the Bible like you've never seen it before. Many Christians today believe the story of the Bible goes something like this:
  • God created planet earth;
  • God put man on earth to be a good steward;
  • Satan tempted man;
  • Man rebelled against God, choosing to be his own god instead,
  • Satan now controls the world.
  • Even during the future "millennium," Satan leads a rebellion at the end, and the whole glorious millennium falls apart.
  • Since Satan and man refuse to play God's game by God's rules, God has to take his cosmic football and go home.

In other words, Satan wins.

Pretty dismal story, isn't it?

Sure, God sent His Son, who died on the cross, so that some of the players can be forgiven for their rebellion and go home with God when He takes His football and runs away from certain defeat on earth, but God's original purposes for man and the creation were thwarted by Satan, the ultimate victor.

The Bible doesn't teach this.

The Bible says our purpose as human beings is to turn a fallen wilderness into a Garden-City. We can do this because we have been re-created by Christ. The New Jerusalem is the "Vine & Fig Tree" society.

Hundreds of years before Christ, the prophet Daniel spoke of the first Christmas, the birth of the Messiah in the days of the Roman Empire. That barbaric, debauched empire was destroyed, and the Kingdom of Christ began growing like a mustard tree, like leaven, like a field (Matthew 13). The Emperor Justinian began Christianizing the Eastern Roman Empire, and in the West kings like Alfred and Ethelbert made the 10 Commandments the basis of new legal systems. The "Common Law" began, with a Christian foundation, and eventually found its way into the Constitution of the United States, "a Christian nation." Though there have been ups and downs, the progress of Christianity has been undeniable -- at least to those who have been taught the facts of history.

Most Americans in the 21st century have not.

If you enroll in the Anarchist Bible Bet Program, you will learn the story of the "Vine & Fig Tree." You will learn that the Bible says the purpose of the first Christmas was that "the knowledge of the Lord should cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." (Isaiah 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14). This has been going on for 2,000 years now. This is a wonderful story that isn't being told.

Some people sincerely believe that the Bible says that everything is going to get worse and worse until God finally destroys everything and then starts over. (Why He would want to go through failure again is not disclosed.)

You will read a different story in the Bible when you enroll in the Anarchist Bible Bet Program, and have a coach pointing out things in the Bible that you may have missed.

Perhaps you're reluctant to pay your tuition for a class that teaches something very different from what you've always heard. So we'll give you the entire year-long curriculum. We want to make it clear that simply reading the class outline in a week, or even a month, will not give you the same result as you will have if you enroll in the Anarchist Bible Bet Program and study a little bit each day, think about it, study more the next day, pray about it, and take an entire year to complete your reading of the “Vine & Fig Tree” story. It just won't be the same.

But you wouldn't be a good shopper if you bought a product without knowing what it delivered. So if you're doubtful about our agenda, here are two ways to survey the story of the Bible that you'll learn in the year-long Anarchist Bible Bet Program.

The first way is a 12-day study entitled "The 12 Days of Liberty." It's modeled after the "12 Days of Christmas," which take place from December 25 to January 6. You've never heard the Christmas message like this:

This study is obviously not a review of the entire Bible, though many other parts of the Bible are reviewed besides the Christmas narratives in the Gospels.

Here, then, is a review of the entire Bible. Again, it is no substitute for the Berean model of searching the Scriptures daily. And reading them all in an afternoon is not the same as reading one a day and thinking about it prayerfully over a period of time. But just so you can see an example of the worldview of the Anarchist Bible Bet Program, here are 95 Bible Studies, patterned loosely after Martin Luther's "95 Theses," somewhat-humorously called “The 95 Days of Christmas”:

Welcome to “The 95 Days of Christmas” | View
The Importance of Luther's 95 Theses | View
The Origin of These 95 Theses | View
Introduction: Taking the Bible Seriously | View
Thesis 1: Christ the Word | View
Thesis 2: Christ the Creator | View
Thesis 3: Creation, not Evolution | View
Thesis 4: Omniscience, Predestination, and Providence | View
Thesis 5: “Self-Evident Truths” | View
A. “Vine & Fig Tree” BEFORE THE FALL | View
Thesis 6: The Biological Basis of Patriarchy | View
Thesis 7: The Dominion Mandate | View
Thesis 8: Patriarchy and “the Extended Family” | View
Thesis 9: “Vine & Fig Tree” and the Sanctions of the Covenant | View
Thesis 10: The Priority of Agrarianism | View
Thesis 11: “Vine & Fig Tree” and the Mountain | View
B. “Vine & Fig Tree” BEFORE THE FLOOD | View
Thesis 12: The Fall Of The Angels | View
Thesis 13: The Fall of Man | View
Thesis 14: The Purpose of Cain’s “Suspended Sentence” | View
Thesis 15: Cain’s City: The Autonomy of the State | View
Thesis 16: The Demonic Roots of Violent Tyranny | View
C. “Vine & Fig Tree” BEFORE SINAI | View
Thesis 17: The Post-Flood Absence of The Institutional Church | View
Thesis 18: The Patriarchal Power Of “Capital Punishment” | View
Thesis 19: Nimrod: The First Politician (Post-Flood) | View
Thesis 20: “Vine & Fig Tree” vs. Political Slavery | View
Thesis 21: Demonic Activity At   Babel | View
Thesis 22: The Division of The Nations | View
Thesis 23: Evangelism In The Old Covenant | View
Thesis 24: “Vine & Fig Tree,” “National Defense,” And Military Socialism | View
Thesis 25: “Vine & Fig Tree” and “Sacraments”: Circumcision | View
Thesis 27: “Vine & Fig Tree”, Precious Metals, and Money | View
Thesis 26: The Myth of The “Separation Of Church And State” | View
Thesis 28: Salvation is Political | View
D. “Vine & Fig Tree” UNDER MOSES | View
Thesis 29: “Vine & Fig Tree” and Resistance to Tyranny in the Early Days of the Old Testament | View
Thesis 30: As With All Angelic Activity, No State Action Is Coincidental or Random | View
Thesis 31: Ceremony, Ritual, Liturgy, And The “Pedagogical Law” | View
Thesis 32: “Vine & Fig Tree” and “Sacraments”: Passover | View
Thesis 33: Patriarchs And “Elders” | View
Thesis 34: The Need for a Pedagogical Legal Structure | View
Thesis 35: Angels And The Pedagogical Legal Structure | View
Thesis 36: The Promised Land | View
Thesis 37: The Temporary Character of The First “Church Officers” | View
Thesis 38: “Vine & Fig Tree” and the Temple  | View
Thesis 39: Patriarchy and Education | View
Thesis 40: “Vine & Fig Tree” and Oaths | View
E. “Vine & Fig Tree” AND THE RISE OF THE STATE | View
Thesis 41: The Character of “gods” | View
Thesis 42: National Security Without a State | View
Thesis 43: The Prohibition of Monarchism | View
Thesis 44: The State as the Answer to the Prayers of Rebels | View
Thesis 45: The Inferiority of Old Covenant Typological Mediators | View
F. “Vine & Fig Tree” AND PROVIDENCE : THE STATE | View
Thesis 46: Romans 8:28 and The State | View
Thesis 47: God’s Sovereign Ordering of Every State | View
Thesis 48: The State Serves God by Sinning | View
Thesis 49: The State As Sanctified “Servant”/“Deacon”/”Minister” | View
Thesis 50: The State Does Not Serve God Self-Consciously | View
Thesis 51: Only One King Self-Consciously Serves God | View
Thesis 52: Judgment of the State in Heaven and Earth | View
Thesis 53: Moloch-Worship and the Nature of Idols | View
Thesis 54: War, Capital Punishment, and “The Sword” | View
Thesis 55: The Throne of David | View
G. “Vine & Fig Tree” AND THE MESSIAH | View
Thesis 56: Statism At The Time Of Christ | View
Thesis 57: Kingship, Citizenship, and The Gospel | View
Thesis 58: The Civil Authority of The Pastor: Christ The Shepherd | View
Thesis 59: Jewish Opposition To The Kingdom | View
Thesis 60: Christ’s Binding of Satan | View
Thesis 61: True Power vs. Political Power | View
Thesis 62: Agrarianism As Environmentalism | View
Thesis 63: Christ’s Ascension to the Throne of David | View
Thesis 64: The Camaraderie of “Church” And State | View
Thesis 65: Fox News and the Coming of the Kingdom | View
Thesis 66: The Anointed King vs. Political Kings | View
Thesis 67: Jesus The Nazarene | View
H. “Vine & Fig Tree” AND THE EARLY HOME-CHURCHES | View
Thesis 68: Extremism Vs. Neutrality | View
Thesis 69: Sons of God and Pedagogues | View
Thesis 70: Judgment and the Church-Courts of Christ | View
Thesis 71: The Apostolic Church and the Spread of Power | View
Thesis 72: “Vine & Fig Tree” and the House-Church | View
Thesis 73: “Vine & Fig Tree” and the “Sacraments”: Baptism | View
Thesis 74: “Vine & Fig Tree” and the “Sacraments”: “The Lord’s Supper” | View
Thesis 75: Self-Ordination | View
Thesis 76: Salt and Statism | View
Thesis 77: Political Authority and Kingdom Citizenship | View
Thesis 78: “Vine & Fig Tree” and Resistance to Tyranny in the Last Days of the Old Covenant | View
Thesis 79: Taxation, Kingdom Citizenship, and Overcoming Through Suffering | View
Thesis 80: Violence | View
Thesis 81: Vengeance | View
Thesis 82: Creationist Anarcho-Socialism and Darwinian Archo-Socialism | View
Thesis 83: Pedagogy and The Powers | View
Thesis 84: The End of Archists: The Pedagogues Judged by the Church | View
Thesis 85: The Last Days of the Old Covenant | View
I. “Vine & Fig Tree” IN “THE MILLENNIUM” | View
Thesis 86: “The Millennium” | View
Thesis 87: “Ruling with Christ” | View
Thesis 88: Salvation as Light and Social Healing | View
Thesis 89: Edenic Restoration | View
Thesis 90: The New Heavens and New Earth | View
Thesis 91: The Unconverted In the “Millennium” | View
Thesis 92: The Last Acts of Earthly Archists | View
Thesis 93: The City of God | View

You need to go through the entire year-long program to appreciate these studies. You do yourself a disservice if you try to judge any one of the studies without studying the entire series. Real change will take place when you work through the entire Bible systematically, daily, prayerfully, thoughtfully, over the course of a year. The change in your thinking -- the change in your worldview -- will not come about because we forced you or tricked you. You will experience those "Aha!' moments when the lightbulb goes on and you're never able to look at the Bible the same way again.

The significance of most of these studies will become clearer after you become acquainted with the four other works that we'll be covering in the Anarchist Bible Bet Program.

The first half of the Bible (the "Old Testament") was referred to by Jesus as "the Law and the Prophets." He summed up the Law and the Prophets in two commandments:

  • 37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 
  • 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
  • 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
    Matthew 22

Some will attempt to evade these commandments by asking "But who is my neighbor?" Jesus said we are to love even our enemies.

Luke 10:25-29
25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
28 And He said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?

Jesus answered this question with the parable of "the Good Samaritan." Samaritans were a hated people. One of the other textbooks in our curriculum exposits the meaning of the Greatest Commandments as they can be applied to contemporary issues on our day.

Chapter 1: The Good Neighbor Policy

In Summary

  1. As children, we learned that if no one hits first, no fight is possible.
  2. Therefore, refraining from “first-strike” force, theft, or fraud, is the first step in creating peace.
  3. The second step is compensating others for any damage that we do.
  4. These two steps, honoring our neighbor’s choice and righting our wrongs, constitute the Good Neighbor Policy or the practice of nonaggression.
  5. Peace and prosperity are only possible when we are Good Neighbors.
  6. We can abandon the Good Neighbor Policy without even realizing it when directed to do so by an authority figure (archist).
  7. When we take from our neighbors what they won’t voluntarily give — at gunpoint, if necessary — we call it theft. When majorities take from minorities what they won’t voluntarily give — at gunpoint, if necessary — we call it taxation.
  8. Perhaps we don’t have peace in the world because we’ve abandoned the Good Neighbor Policy without even realizing it.

Chapter 2: Wealth Is Unlimited!

In Summary

  1. Wealth consists of goods and services. Money is only a claim check on existing wealth. (What is money?)
  2. Using resources in new and more productive ways creates wealth.
  3. Since creativity is unbounded, so is wealth.
  4. Countries that practice the Good Neighbor Policy create more wealth than those that don’t.
  5. The poverty of ancient times was largely due to violations of the Good Neighbor Policy, especially aggression by governments.
  6. The poor are harmed most by aggression and prosper most under the Good Neighbor Policy.
  7. The United States is the wealthiest country on earth because it practiced the Good Neighbor Policy for the longest time.
  8. By studying U.S. history, we can learn how a country can create great wealth and how it can lose that wealth by abandoning the Good Neighbor Policy.

Chapter 3: Destroying Jobs

In Summary

  1. In the marketplace ecosystem (also known as the free market), people with different skills find their job niche, just as different species find their niche in the environment.
  2. The marketplace is self-regulation and usually functions quite well without our interference.
  3. Attempts to correct marketplace imperfections with aggression do far more harm than good by destroying the jobs through which wealth is created.
  4. Immigrants to the United States in the 1800s overcame prejudice by offering employers a greater share of the jointly created wealth. Young Americans sometimes use the same technique to get that all-important first job.
  5. Almost everyone is able to create some wealth, so everyone can find a starting niche. As expertise improves, so do job opportunities.
  6. Wage controls intended to help disadvantaged people backfire by destroying their jobs. Instead of low wages, they end up with no wages at all!
  7. Because poverty is caused by lack of wages, rather than low wages, wage controls increase its incidence, especially for blacks and other disadvantaged groups.
  8. The marketplace ecosystem slowly but surely dissolves prejudice by rewarding with higher profits those employers who hire workers solely according to their productivity.
  9. After the Civil War, white landowners tried to pay blacks “slave wages.” Because the marketplace penalized such employers, many paid blacks more than they otherwise would. Prejudice was slowly but surely eroded by this natural process.

Chapter 4: Eliminating Small Businesses

In Summary

  1. Self-employment provides another option for employees who are dissatisfied with their working conditions.
  2. Businesses that please their customers are rewarded by profit. Those that don’t please their customers suffer loss.
  3. Licensing laws stop entrepreneurs -- at gunpoint, if necessary -- from providing service to willing customers.
  4. Many licensing requirements have nothing to do with safety, because they are intended to keep the disadvantaged from competing with established workers. The poor have a difficult time climbing the Ladder of Affluence because wage controls keep them from being hired and licensing laws keep them from establishing their own businesses.
  5. Most people who get a foothold on the Ladder of Affluence are able to climb it. Indeed, someone on the lowest rung is just as likely to advance to the top as to stay at the bottom.
  6. Licensing laws impoverish all of us because the cost of enforcing them, lobbying for them, and supporting those who are forbidden to create wealth greatly shrinks the Wealth Pie. We get less than we otherwise would, even if our Piece is larger than that of our neighbors.
  7. Most poverty today is caused by licensing laws that inhibit the creation of wealth. Getting a business license, for example, takes hours in Hong Kong, weeks in New York City, and years in India. The gap between rich and poor is wider in nations with the most regulation.
  8. The damage done by licensing laws can be reversed. Every time we retire one regulator, we create more than 150 private sector jobs!

Chapter 5: Harming Our Health

In Summary

  1. Licensing laws designed to protect consumers actually cause harm. The number of service providers goes down, and prices go up. People either do without the service or try to provide it themselves.
  2. Consequently, states with stricter licensing laws for electricians have more accidental electrocutions; states with the most requirements for optometrists have more blindness; states with the most restrictive licensing for dentists have poorer oral hygiene.
  3. Likewise, licensing for medical doctors creates physician shortage and overwork, as well as higher prices. Innovation, especially in nutrition and alternative specialties, is compromised both by licensing and by use of taxes for funding research. Our nation’s health suffers as a result.
  4. The higher income that practitioners gain from licensing laws is more than offset when those unable to afford the higher prices demand tax-supported care.
  5. Certification provides a better way to insure quality while honoring the choice of each consumer (e.g., electrical equipment certification by Underwriters Laboratories [UL]).

Chapter 6: Protecting Ourselves to Death

In Summary

  1. If a loved one were dying, we’d never snatch lifesaving drugs from their grasp. Yet, we unwittingly do just that with FDA “consumer protection” regulation.
  2. The FDA’s mandate to approve only drugs that are completely safe and effective can be fulfilled only by approving no drugs at all. Because the FDA is unfairly blamed when drugs affect some people adversely, it drags out the approval process.
  3. Consequently, drug development time and cost has increased five-fold since the early 1960s without any improvement in either efficacy or safety. We pay five times as much for drugs as we should!
  4. The true cost, however, is measured in lives, as tens of thousands of people die waiting for the FDA to approve breakthrough drugs.
  5. The FDA limits the information that drug companies can share with doctors and consumers. Consequently, 10,000-100,000 Americans died needlessly from heart disease each year be­cause aspirin makers couldn’t advertise aspirin’s role in prevention; 25,000 children were born with preventable deformities because vitamin sellers weren’t permitted to advertise folic acid’s protective effects.
  6. The biggest cost of regulation, however, is the stifling of innova­tion that could transform life-threatening diseases (e.g., infec­tion) into a mild inconvenience.
  7. Innovation lowers the cost of health care dramatically. In the 10 years after its introduction, ulcer medicine slashed the cost of treatment from a $28,000 surgery to $140, a savings of 99.5%!
  8. When certification replaces aggressive regulations, prices drop, safety improves, and innovation thrives. More treatments be­come available, lessening the chances that quackery will prevail.

Chapter 7: Creating Monopolies That Control Us

In Summary

  1. We create the Pyramid of Power with successive layers of aggression-through-government. Each layer of aggression gives us less choice and higher prices.
  2. The first layer outlaws some goods and services;
    the second layer         outlaws all but a single service provider to create a monopoly.
    The third layer         of aggression forces us to subsidize the monopoly and
    the fourth layer     forces us to use it.
  3. Rockefeller gained 90% of the oil refining market with innovations and low prices. The marketplace ecosystem made it impossible for him to raise prices and exploit consumers. However, the aggression of exclusive licensing allowed him to stop some of his strongest competitors.
  4. Bill Gates, like Rockefeller, gave consumers quality products at low prices. His competitors complained to the U.S. Justice Department instead of wooing their customers back with better service.
  5. Bell Telephone enjoyed a monopoly for many years because its patents gave it an exclusive monopoly. When the patents expired, Bell’s competitors brought phone service to the masses. When Bell regained its monopoly through exclusive licensing, the rate of phone installations plummeted.
  6. Deregulation returns control to the consumer. Service providers compete with each other to provide the highest quality, lowest cost service. Everyone wins!

Chapter 8: Destroying the Environment - Audio

In Summary

  1. Third-layer aggression forces us to pay subsidies, usually to exclusive monopolies created by second-layer aggression.
  2. Subsidizing these monopolies, usually government services, increases costs, encourages waste, discourages conservation, and destroys the environment.
  3. Federal and state lands, which cover over 40% of the United States, are maintained through subsidies. The natural process of homesteading is stopped -- at gunpoint, if necessary.
  4. Because the bureaucrats who supervise government lands do not profit by caring for them, special interest groups, such as loggers and ranchers are allowed to abuse them.
  5. When loggers and ranchers are allowed to own the forests and ranges, however, they take better care of the land.
  6. Similarly, when bureaucrats control our parks, they upset the ecological balance as they did in Yellowstone. Some states even subsidized bounties to kill hawks and other predators.
  7. Private parks, like Sea Lion Caves and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, do a better job of protecting wildlife.
  8. When Ravenna Park was under private ownership, the giant Douglas firs were protected. A few years after the city took over the park, the beautiful trees were all cut down for cordwood.
  9. Since people protect the environment when they own a piece of it, privatizing our parks would ensure better care. When we end the subsidies that make parks and government monopolies possible, we get better service for lower cost.
  10. Privatizing government-owned services gives us more for less. Privatizing government-owned lands might even retire the national debt, while protecting our ecological heritage.

Chapter 9: Banking on Aggression

In Summary

  1. One example of fourth-layer aggression is the Federal Reserve, an exclusive, subsidized monopoly on currency issue. We are forced to use the Fed’s currency “for all debts, public and private.”
  2. When banks lend, they expand the money supply, causing inflation. When banks slow lending, the creation of money slows too, causing deflation. By manipulating the money supply, banks can control a nation’s economy.
  3. For example, the Second Bank of the United States, a precursor of the Fed, tried to create a depression when President Andrew Jackson refused to renew its charter.
  4. The Federal Reserve is subsidized invisibly by devaluing the currency through expansion of the money supply. Between 1933 and 2000, this “inflation tax” was more than 90% of all newly created wealth.
  5. People without property, such as the poor and those on fixed incomes, pay most of the inflation tax. At current rates, the inflation tax on retirees will cost them half of their purchasing power over the next 20 years.
  6. In essence, the inflation tax redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich.
  7. The Federal Reserve is supposed to protect us from booms and busts. However, highly regulated banking systems, like the Fed, have eight times as many crises as banking systems free from aggression.
  8. In the past, “free” banks expanded the money supply carefully since they, not the taxpayers, were obligated to make up any shortfalls. Consequently, prices were more stable as money and wealth creation proceeded at approximately the same rate.
  9. The marketplace is reacting to the inflation tax by creating alter­native currencies based on precious metals or work hours.

Chapter 10: Learning Lessons Our Schools Can’t Teach

In Summary

  1. The education monopoly is an example of fourth-layer aggression: a subsidized, exclusive monopoly that we are forced to use. Even private and home schools must abide by rules set by the school licensing boards.
  2. In the early days of the United States, when most education was private and voluntary, Americans were among the most literate nations in the world.
  3. Modern public schooling, however, has failed our children. Costs are twice that of private schools and test scores are lower. Drugs and violence are more prevalent in public schools as well. If schoolchildren rebel when forced into the one-size-fits all educational mold, they are given potent psychotropic drugs to quiet them. These drugs often have severe side effects, including violent behavior, in children.
  4. Black and minority children suffer the most in public schools. Consequently, parents will often go to great extremes, such as cutting back on groceries, to give them a private education. Private schools are better integrated than public ones, both in the classroom and in the lunch room.
  5. Public school teachers and members of the U.S. Congress send their children to private schools more frequently than the rest of the American public.
  6. Public schools are not legally obligated to teach our children. Private institutions, like Sylvan Learning Centers and Hope Academy, however, guarantee to teach students up to five times faster than public schools!
  7. A fully privatized educational system would teach our children better for less than half the cost in an environment that was safer and more integrated. Indeed, with Internet, educational cable TV, and advertiser-sponsored programs, even children who didn’t study could hardly help learning the basics!

Chapter 11: Springing the Poverty Trap

In Summary

  1. Poverty is caused by unemployment, which usually results from minimum wage and licensing laws.
  2. By trying to alleviate poverty with tax-supported welfare, we tempt the disadvantaged to accept an aid check instead of a pay check.
  3. Welfare breaks up the family by encouraging multiple illegitimate births and discouraging marriage.
  4. By the time young mothers realize that welfare is a dead-end, they are caught in the poverty trap. Entry level jobs don’t pay enough to support her many children, but while she is on welfare, no progress is possible.
  5. When welfare recipients are required to do community work, more than half get a job and get off the dole.
  6. In just four years, welfare reform in 1996 slashed black child poverty to the lowest levels ever seen.
  7. While tax-supported charity doesn’t help the poor, private charitable groups have been incredibly effective in helping the home less, the addicted, the criminal, and the illiterate. The most successful private programs accept little or no tax support. Indeed, their existence is often threatened by regulations imposed by bureaucrats. Even Mother Teresa’s helpers were put out of business in New York!
  8. An entire mutual aid network that once provided a social safety net for low- and middle-income Americans, survived both World War I and the Great Depression. Regulations, however, destroyed mutual aid.
  9. The human spirit is so generous that the time and money contributed by Americans exceeds the entire poverty budgets of federal, state, and local governments. Without the aggression-through-government that makes people poor, befriending leadership and charitable donations would be more than sufficient to care for the truly needy.

Chapter 12: By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them

In Summary

  1. Freedom from aggression-through-government is the most important determinant of a country’s rate of wealth creation.
  2. Since modern government can only collect the money it spends through taxation or inflation, government programs start with aggression.
  3. Consequently, as government spending increases, wealth creation decreases.
  4. When Sweden increased government spending from 31% to 66% for its social safely net, wealth creation plummeted from 4.9% annually to a mere 0.6%.
  5. Slowing wealth creation hurts the poor the most. Consequently, aggression-through-government is the poor’s greatest enemy.
  6. Most poverty in the world today is caused by aggression-through-government. When nations cut back on government spending, they automatically cut back on this aggression.
  7. The three countries that have slashed government spending in recent years (Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom) increased their wealth creation dramatically.
  8. Without aggression, we’d create wealth 3 to 18 times faster!
  9. When we recognize that we live in a win-win world, we no longer need to choose between our welfare and that of others, between what’s good for the individual and what’s good for society. Instead, we recognize that our mutual welfare rises and falls together.

Chapter 13: The Other Piece of the Puzzle

In Summary

  1. Righting our wrongs is the second part of the Good Neighbor Policy.
  2. TIT FOR TAT is a well-known social strategy that acts very much like the Good Neighbor Policy. In both computer tournaments and diverse situations of strife, it has proven effective in convincing aggressors to become peaceful and cooperative.
  3. In addition to our own experience as children when we re-created the peace by righting our wrongs, TIT FOR TAT’s record suggests that letting aggressors experience the harm that they have done is the best way to teach them to be Good Neighbors.
  4. When aggressors make their victims whole again, they experience the harm they have done to others. Restitution through productive work is the most successful rehabilitation known.
  5. Restitution also deters crime better than imprisonment. Japan has an extensive program of restitution and is the only industrialized nation in the world that has seen a consistent decrease in crime since World War II.
  6. Full restitution, which would include all the costs of trial and apprehension, would end the aggression of taxation that currently subsidizes these functions.
  7. When in doubt, erring on the side of forgiveness and contrition is less likely to provoke further aggression.
  8. When we used licensing laws and regulations in an attempt to stop individual aggressors, we slashed our wealth creation. When we substitute restitution for these laws, we will deter individual aggressors more effectively and increase wealth creation once again.
  9. Corporate irresponsibility would lessen if aggressors were required to right their wrongs. Forgiveness could only come from victims, not from an arbitrary limitation of liability by government.

Chapter 14: The Pollution Solution

In Summary

  1. Righting our wrongs is the ideal pollution solution. Restoring the person or property of another is so costly that it acts as an effective deterrent.
  2. Government officials are actually penalized if they try to protect the environment. In contrast, if they cause great harm, sovereign immunity protects them from personal liability.
  3. The Love Canal disaster happened because the Niagara Falls school board disturbed buried chemicals after repeated pleas by Hooker Chemical not to do so. When the chemicals caused skin irritation, Hooker was blamed, but the school board was not.
  4. Taxpayers had to pick up the bill for relocating residents. Hooker had to clean up the mess that the school board had made.
  5. When nuclear testing damaged rangeland and more than doubled childhood thyroid cancer in Utah, courts denied compensation to the victims because the U.S. government has sovereign immunity.
  6. The U.S. military is the greatest polluter in the world, but it rarely cleans up its mess. Sovereign immunity protects it from legal action.
  7. DDT saved millions of lives by nearly eradicating malaria in the Third World. The DDT ban killed millions of people in developing countries when malaria returned.
  8. Asbestos removal in schools, as ordered by the EPA, endangered our children by increasing airborne concentrations of this carcinogen for years afterward.
  9. All polluters, public or private, should compensate their victims.
  10. Restitution, by deterring pollution, will contribute greatly to environmental protection.

Chapter 15: Dealing in Death

In Summary

  1. Although people who rape, steal, and murder are clearly aggressors, people who use alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs peacefully in their own homes are not.
  2. Alcohol Prohibition failed to stop people from drinking. Organized crime thrived and the murder rate increased two and one-half times.
  3. The War on Drugs kills more than 10 times as many people as the drugs themselves by increasing homicides from turf wars, AIDS from shared needles, and accidental overdose caused by contaminated drug supplies.
  4. Because our police spend more time arresting pot smokers than thieves, murderers, rapists, and child molesters, crimes of violence increase when drug enforcement does.
  5. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes have forced overcrowded prisons to release violent felons to prey on the innocent.
  6. The desperately ill are condemned to unnecessary pain and premature death because some drugs with documented medicinal uses are prohibited.
  7. Marijuana’s cousin, industrial hemp, may be the real target in the War on Drugs.
  8. In Amsterdam, where marijuana can be legally purchased, heroin addiction is dropping and pushers have left the schools. Cocaine and marijuana use by Dutch teenagers is only 10-40% of U.S. rates, depending upon age group.
  9. Even if everyone in the United States took drugs once they were re-legalized, the death toll would still be less than we have today from the War on Drugs.

Chapter 16: Policing Aggression

In Summary

  1. Private police cost half as much as public police, yet deliver up to seven times faster response times. Crime drops as much as 95% because of their preventive procedures.
  2. Private police have no sovereign immunity, are not funded by taxation, and focus on aggressors. Because they themselves are Good Neighbors, they are less likely than government agents to create tragedies like Waco and Ruby Ridge.
  3. Guns save 400 times more people through self-defense than they accidentally kill.
  4. In Orlando, Florida, rape plummeted 87% when women were encouraged to train with firearms.
  5. Homicides dropped 30% and rampage shootings fell 78% when states permitted concealed weapons.
  6. In Britain and Australia, gun crime increased 40-300% when firearms were banned.
  7. Under U.S. civil asset forfeiture laws, property can be confiscated on suspicion alone.
  8. American juries have the right to judge the law as well as the guilt or innocence of the defendant. However, judges often tell juries otherwise.
  9. If police stopped chasing pot smokers and speeders, they could spend four times as much time apprehending violent criminals.
  10. Private highways have one-third fewer accidents than the U.S. interstates.
  11. The poor benefit the most from private justice.

Chapter 17: Healing Our World Is Inevitable

In Summary

  1. The Good Neighbor Policy, honoring our neighbor’s choice and righting our wrongs, creates harmony and abundance in our city, state, and nation.
  2. Becoming Good Neighbors promotes our own individual health and happiness as well.
  3. Suspiciousness, hostility, cynicism, and blame -- Type A or aggressor behavior -- alter our body’s biochemistry, predispos­ing us to cardiovascular disease.
  4. Similarly, Type C or victim behavior -- frustration, helplessness, giving up, and resignation -- predispose us to cancer.
  5. Much of our society is caught in a destructive A/C loop, alter­nately becoming victims and aggressors through the guns of government.
  6. Type S or self-actualized people focus on changing themselves rather than others. They are neither victims nor aggressors and reject aggression-through-government. Type S individuals live longer than Type A or Type C individuals.
  7. The thoughts that precede aggression estrange us from the rest of humankind, sabotaging the happiness that we hope to gain from our actions.
  8. Even those who gain money and power through the guns of government eventually recognize that aggression sabotages their own health and happiness and reject it.
  9. Because our health and happiness depend on our becoming Good Neighbors, we will all abandon aggression one day. Healing our world is virtually inevitable.

Chapter 18: Beacon to the World

In Summary

  1. Excessive government regulations and licensing laws greatly limit wealth creation, causing widespread poverty and suffering. Some 50-80% of the people in Third World nations create their wealth illegally.
  2. Legally owning a home in Third World countries is virtually impossible. For example, in Peru, obtaining legal title to land requires 728 steps. Consequently, most houses in poor nations are built without clear or formal title.
  3. The land and homes of the world’s poor are worth almost $10 trillion, but because they don’t have legal title, they cannot access this equity.
  4. Most U.S. foreign aid is squandered by Third World despots. Rather than using the money to help the poor or build their economies, they use it to increase their own wealth, power, and prestige.
  5. Because bureaucratically managed loan funds are usually wasted, borrowing leaves only crushing debt in Third World Nations.
  6. High tariffs and import restrictions in developed countries keep poor nations from becoming self-sufficient.
  7. Trade barriers designed to protect jobs in developed countries backfire to destroy jobs instead.
  8. The only poor nations that have grown rich in the past few decades are those that have lowered tariffs and increased their trading volume.
  9. To become wealthy, poor nations need only follow the example of Hong Kong and become Good Neighbors. By getting rid of stifling regulations, formalizing the property of the poor, and ending tariffs and import restrictions, they can go from abject poverty to First World affluence in a few short generations.

Chapter 19: Is Communism Really Dead?

In Summary

  1. Communism has killed more than 100 million people in the twentieth century, all in the name of compassion.
  2. Many people view communism as obsolete, even though it is openly practiced in a variety of countries, including China.
  3. Communism is simply aggression-through-government taken to its ultimate extreme.
  4. The communist vision is the whole of humankind sharing like one happy family -- at gunpoint, if necessary.
  5. Because communists use aggression as their means, poverty results. People who can’t keep the wealth they create don’t create much. Shortages of food and medicine were so common in the Soviet Union that life expectancy there declined while it rose in other nations.
  6. Communism encourages resentment, hate, and animosity. Psychological development is hindered. The environment is destroyed.
  7. The Communist Manifesto of 1848 outlines a 10-step plan for converting the developed nations to socialist states. The United States and other Western nations have implemented at least 8 of these 10 planks.
  8. The real communist threat stems from our belief that aggression serves us. Our military might cannot protect us from ourselves.
  9. When we recognize that love must precede sharing, we realize that honoring our neighbor’s choice is the first step to implementing the ideals of communism without its horrors.

Chapter 20: Making Our Nation Safe and Secure

In Summary

  1. The Communist threat posed by the Soviet Union was a consequence of our domestic aggression (taxation and banking regula­tions) rippling outward into the world.
  2. By similar means, Washington D.C. has helped to empower virtually every threat to U.S. national security in the past 50 years, including terrorists Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
  3. U.S. intervention in the Third World often causes a great deal of death and suffering. The result: animosity toward Americans.
  4. Because of biased reporting, Americans are often unaware of what is done in their name.
  5. New findings suggest that both Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks were provoked by aggressive U.S. foreign policy.
  6. Because the military-industrial complex profits from war, it encourages conflict. As President Eisenhower warned us, we need to be vigilant.
  7. If the 9/11 terrorists wanted to destroy our freedoms, we are playing right into their hands with the USA Patriot Act, secret military tribunals, and torture of suspects.
  8. By ending foreign aid and the drug war, we can deplete the cash flow to would-be dictators and terrorists.
  9. Trade turns enemies into allies by increasing the wealth of both nations (e.g., Japan). Trade with every nation may be the best deterrent of all!
  10. Privatizing defense can be an effective, economical, and innova­tive alternative to a tax-supported military.
  11. Good Neighbors make few enemies. In the rare instances when defense becomes necessary, their superior wealth-creating abilities give them a strategic advantage over their adversaries.

Chapter 21: A New Age or a New World Order?

In Summary

  1. A world government would resemble the governments of today and thus would most likely be an instrument of aggression.
  2. The things that we want global government to do (prevent overpopulation, protect endangered species, prevent global warming, create a single global currency, and end war) are best accomplished by simply becoming Good Neighbors.
  3. As countries grow in wealth, their birthrate declines. Because the Good Neighbor Policy enhances wealth creation, it both destroys poverty and controls population naturally.
  4. Private ownership of the world’s fauna promotes biodiversity and protection of endangered species on land or in the sea much better than governmental bans on hunting or habitat destruction.
  5. Global temperature and its measurement are so complex that we can’t be sure that warming is occurring or what might cause it. Even if global warming becomes a problem, restitution would reduce the use of harmful products.
  6. Multiple currencies provide an important check on inflation by central banks. A single, global currency would give the people who control it more power than any ruling elite has ever known.
  7. World government is more likely to be a forced union than a voluntary one. Consequently, its consummation will more closely approximate rape than love.
  8. The Good Neighbor Policy is more effective in creating a world without borders than global government is. Indeed, there are no borders without aggression to erect and maintain them.

Chapter 22: How to Get There from Here

In Summary

  1. Although the world seems to be moving away from the Good Neighbor Policy, appearances can be deceiving. In 1750, no one thought nations could survive without monarchs. During the next two centuries, however, much of Europe began dethroning or disempowered their royalty.
  2. Europe wanted the prosperity of the United States and so voluntarily imitated it. Catalyzing change can sometimes be as easy as setting an example.
  3. By ending aggression-through-government, we can create a world of universal harmony and abundance. Nothing will reform government as quickly as making elected and appointed officials personally liable for any damage that they do.
  4. When we are tempted to use taxation or regulation to temporarily relieve suffering caused by aggression, let us remember the devastating impact -- long lines and rationing -- that subsidies have on health care. Trying to solve the problems caused by aggression with more aggression is a cure worse than the disease.
  5. A number of organizations actively promote the Good Neighbor Policy, usually under the label “libertarian,” from the word “liberty,” as in free from aggression-through-government.
  6. You can use the research done by these organizations to increase your understanding of the Good Neighbor Policy or become actively involved in its promotion.
  7. You are the best judge of how your talents can help create a non-aggressive world. No matter how small you think your contribution is, it most likely will have a major impact. Each link in the chain is vital.
  8. Please accept my gratitude for helping make our world a better place!

 

 
J

K

L

 M

N

 O

P R S T U V W Y Z #

back to top

 

Read through the Bible in one year
with a mentor who can help you see
that Peace is Possible

Why Read the Bible?

Myth:
The Old Testament
advocates war, slavery, genocide, and vengeful retaliation.		 Myth:
The Teachings of Jesus
are impractical, pacifistic, utopian, unrealistic, and should be relegated to the inner religious meditations of a Mother Theresa, but should be kept away from public policy, especially foreign affairs and military strategy.

Both sides of this coin are wrong.
We need to examine these myths.
Jesus endorsed the Old Testament, which says that war is evil. The prophets spoke of a day when we would beat our swords into plowshares and everyman would dwell securely under his own Vine & Fig Tree -- not because his property was being taken from him to fund the "military-industrial complex," (which "keeps us all safe,"), but because nobody was training for war any more. Western Civilization is Christianized Civilization. If we were to follow the teachings of Jesus in Washington D.C., we would experience security, peace, and economic prosperity. No war that the U.S. federal government has waged has ever made things better than they would have been without military intervention.
  • How did the Civil War make things better? It gave us complete domination by the federal government.
  • What future was improved for Poland and Czechoslovakia by World War II? They were rescued from Hitler and turned over to Stalin.
  • How did U.S. war help the people of Iraq? A westernized, secular nation was converted into an Islamic Theocracy that leans toward Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Christians were killed or made homeless. Infrastructure was destroyed.
  • Which improvements in the human condition have ever been won by war?
  • Which war brought smaller government?
  • Which war raised anyone's standard of living?
  • We're told that if we follow the "pacifist" ethics of Jesus and beat our "swords into plowshares," we'll end up living in a "warlord society" and millions of people will die.
    In the 20th century, the world's war-making powers killed hundreds of millions of human beings.
    • They killed 250 million of their own citizens.
    • They killed 250 million human beings from other nations in senseless wars.
    • How could it possibly be worse if the human race denounced the entire idea of archism?
    • Archists not only murdered a half a billion people, they enslaved more than a billion, and confiscated trillions of dollars of private property. This is "rational," "sensible," "practical," "realistic" and "real world," and the Bible is not???
    • This is Insanity. It is the non-reason of idolatry.
    • Obama claims the right to kill anyone he wants, and imprison indefinitely. How is he not a "warlord?" Just because warlordism is global and now has a long tradition, does not mean it is no longer "warlordism."
    • Would Jesus Celebrate Memorial Day?
  • We already live in a corporate-warlord society. The United States is the largest arms dealer in a world of archist violence.

Conclusion:

 We should take both the Old Testament and the New Testament seriously.