Legal self defense - Introduction
In the United States neither laws nor rights are taught in public schools.
Why is this a problem?
- Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking the law
- Public schools do not teach law
- Governments will not clarify the law, claiming that to do so would be to provide legal advice
- Governments put thousands of new laws on the books each year
Add these together and you have a country where those who create law can literally take whatever they want from the general populace as the populace cannot defend itself.
When talking with friends and family, all too often I hear them say "It's the law!".
When asked who's law, what kind of law is it, and who is the subject of that law, they have no idea. In fact, they typically don't even realize that there are different kinds of laws.
The law is NOT too complex to teach
Most people believe that our laws are simply too complex for average people to understand.
If this were true, then claiming that ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it would be insane.
Law is quite simple to comprehend and could easily be taught in a semester or two of high school.
The real reason law is not taught in schools
Think hard about the problems outlined above then take a good look at how things are in this country.
Anyone who looks hard enough should be able to see (or at least suspect) that the real reason we do not learn about law and rights in school is to prevent us from being able to defend ourselves from continued government encroachment on our lives.
Law is a form of self defense
I am a strong advocate for self defense in all of its forms simply because you never know when you are going to need to defend yourself from someone else.
While many people learn to use guns and learn martial arts, most people never consider the fact that knowing how law works is at least as important, if not more important, than physical self defense.
Someone who knows law and comes after you can very possibly take your property, your liberty, and perhaps even your life via our court systems.
What you get for learning law
You will be better able to resist incriminating yourself.
You will know how the processes of law (civil and criminal) work.
If you are involved in a lawsuit and choose to hire a lawyer, you will be able to make sure that your lawyer is doing what you hire him to do and not just taking your money.
You will have the option of defending yourself rather than accepting a public defender if you lack the cash to find a good lawyer (or choose not to hire one).
You will know how to prevent your adversary (it is an adversarial system) from using smoke and mirrors to hide any actual issues in controversy.
About this series
Major topics in this series will be:
- What law is
- How our court process works for civil cases
- How our court process works for criminal cases
While covering these topics, I expect to cover quite a few critical rights as well as a variety of legal definitions.
Civil court process is covered before criminal court process because those running our various governments have a vested interest in obfuscating criminal process (which they use against us) and tend not to obfuscate civil process (what we use against each other, and sometimes the governments) nearly as much.
Notices
- I am not a lawyer: I am simply a man sharing what I believe to be true based on a decade of study.
- This is not legal advice: You must decide what you believe to be true at your own risk
- Exercise Due Diligence: As a free descendant of the race of man, it is your responsibility to weigh the information I provide, do your own due diligence, and find the truth for yourself.
A law guide by an anarchist ?!?!
If you read my introduction, you might note that I consider myself an anarchist/voluntaryist and think that it is pretty crazy that someone with my beliefs would study law much less believe that law is important.
The explanation is simple, but requires a few quick definitions:
- Anarchy: An [no] + Archy [rulers]
- Anarchist: One who believes in anarchy rather than some other archy (monarchy, oligarchy, etc)
- Natural Law: Laws that anyone can discover for themselves if they consider all people to be equals. Basically the idea that my rights end where yours begin (and vice versa). This means doing no harm to others. Things like murder, theft, and rape fall into this category of law.
- Man Made Law: Edicts that cannot be discovered by people as obviously true. Things such as licensing, food laws, and traffic laws fall into this category.
- Rule of Law: People governed by law rather than other people
- Rule of Man: People governed by other people, whether or not those other people call their rules law or something else
- Lawful: proper under natural law, the opposite of unlawful.
- Legal: proper under man made law, whether or not is is actually lawful
Rule of Law vs Rule of Man
I believe that the best society will be one that decides to obey the rule of law rather than the rule of man.
Every country in the world currently upholds the rule of man rather than the rule of law.
While many governments (such as ours here in the states) claim that we have the rule of law, such a claim is easily proved to be false:
- Those in government claim the right to create new laws that can force us to do (or not do) whatever they want. This is, by definition, the rule of man.
If we were under the rule of law:
- Governments could not create laws that make anything illegal for the people that is not already unlawful
- Governments could not create laws that force people to do anything that they do not already have a responsibility to do
My experience with law
I've spent a solid decade learning what law is, how it works, and how our legal process works.
During that time, I've had eight chances to test my knowledge and came up roses on seven of them. On the other test I had just moved across the country and decided to simply pay the fine rather than try to stand trial in a court 3000 miles away due to the travel expenses that I would have accrued.
I'll be posting the first real article in this series shortly.
Until then, be well! @tony.jennings
Nice work Tony. Easy to understand. I'm looking forward to the next installment.
Thanks @kendewitt !
I thought long and hard about this and figure that this would be the perfect outlet to help those who are interested in freedom use the law to defend themselves. At the very least I can point my six kids to this series to help them see what I see.
Yeah, this is a great place to post ideas. As long as we have witnesses running the blockchain this info will be available permanently. And as Steemit's Google ranking increases it will also be seen by more and more people who aren't on Steemit.
I've also thought many times that basic law, basic self-defense, and other things should be taught in school. Really, I think kids (and adults) should have the freedom to follow whatever learning path they choose. That's happening with things like the Khan Academy, and I suspect public schools as we know them might not exist in the future.
I tried to post this on your introduction but it is more than a month old so will not let me.
Just read your introduction. We seem to have a lot in common. I pretty much share all those same interests, and also have six kids from prior marriages. :)
Sorry I missed your introduction. I saw your LAW post a few minutes ago and went to check your intro out. I am following you now.
Now after reading this completely. Great post. I am off to read the second party you just posted. Out of all of your interests you listed LAW is not one I WAS particularly interested in. Thus, I look forward to your posts to learn new things. The operative word being WAS. I consider knowing LAW to be as important as you indicated. I also believe the law system is overly complicated for a reason. We could operate on this planet with a very small set of laws designed to handle just a few outlier like situations.
Otherwise Natural Law and NAP do just fine in my opinion.
Thanks much!
I used to be turned off by law too... until I started digging deep and seeing just what could be done with it.
The first time I beat a debt collector by applying what I had learned was an eye opener.
The first time I beat city hall using law was even more so.
I don't agitate so much these days (my wife worries a lot), but I still keep at expanding my legal knowledge in my free time.
History is another great topic that most people aren't interested in about because they believe it to be boring. The sad truth is that history is made to be boring in our schools. If they taught real history in them it would probably be a very popular topic.
I am a history nut. I also was not turned off by the law. Due to our education system I was not exposed to it much, so it is likely something I would have engaged in very early.
I am an Anarchist so I very much pay attention to law now, but as with all of us I was not always an anarchist. I think most stories of how people become such are interesting and have similar things, yet they all seem a bit different as well.
I am a programming nut and have been since I was 12 years old (am 45 now). I love logic, if then else, NOT, AND, OR, XOR, etc I love tearing apart all human systems with that type of perspective. Looking for abuses, exploits, etc.
So I surmise I likely really would have always been interested in Law if I had actually been exposed to it.
I am still reading but your beginning gave me a chuckle I have to reply to one line.
Unless you happen to be Hillary Clinton or some other WELL positioned person. Then apparently ignorance (or supposed ignorance) is fine.
And, one must pay a fee to find out what the law says...
Pretty much true unless you live near a large law library. I used to live within an hours drive of a state law library so I learned a ton while there.
Always got funny looks from suits while there... and I often got asked what I was doing there. No one laughed when I admitted that I was only there to get better at fighting city hall.
LOL I love that. I was a long haired heavy metal freak with the patches and such all over my jackets. I didn't drink, I didn't do drugs, I was not satanic. I got a lot of looks. The most entertaining ones for me were when someone would give me the time of day to actually talk to them and I'd see their eyes kind of widen in wonder as the scales from their stereotype fell away. I look back and think that was me being rebellious. I continued to dress and be that way for some time just to be afforded the chance to fight stereotypes. All of that changed when I became a parent. It was no longer just about me. :) I know because your family sounds similar in quantity to mine that you likely know exactly what I am talking about.