Declaring independence from the State!

[This statement by MLL comrade Victor Koman appeared originally in New Libertarian Weekly, Vol. 3, No. 35 (August 8, 1976), under the title “This is the Time – NOW!” I think it’s appropriate to reprint it on this Independence Day celebrating 230 years of American “liberty.” Thank you, Vic.]

We’ve played their game long enough. The bitter taste in your mouth is the filth from their sandbox. Social democracy is the vilest sham with which Leviathan’s defenders have ruled us for the past thousand years. You cannot stop the Mafia by becoming the Godfather. You cannot clean up a dung heap by joining the pigs in their wallow. You cannot cure cancer by treating it with carcinogens.

You cannot end the State by becoming a Statist.

Throw down the banner of Compromise; burn the flag of Expediency. Tear apart the standard of “After we get elected...” All are dreams drawn from the opiate of power lust, the drug offered by the State to addict and blind the idealist, to divide and conquer us all.

When the flow of history brings men to the point where a privileged few, through the power of the State, can control and dictate the lives of hundreds of millions of others, when they can destroy incentive, crush hope, and shatter lives, it is time for all free persons to cease their cooperation with these plunderers, these hideous creatures.

For those in power, those who control the State, those who support even the idea of a State have pillaged us through taxation. They have ravaged our currency with worthless paper, bringing chaos to peaceful transactions. They have slaughtered our children in their brutal wars, setting stranger against stranger who before had no reason to hate. They have strangled our thoughts by seizing the airwaves in our name for their purposes. They have choked our spirit, punishing our successes and rewarding our failures with their hordes of Regulators and Officers, who suck out our substance then call for our souls. They have ruined our Word, making Treaties and Agreements in our name when they had no right to speak for any but themselves, and then have forced us to back their nefarious deals with our lives. They have used their laws to set white against black, worker against employer, young against old, and Man against Woman. These vile monsters, these wielders of the mace of Government, are nothing more than loathsome Thieves, Murderers, and Liars.

We owe them nothing, least of all the promise to abide by their rules in exchange for a division of their Booty, real or intangible.

It is the right of any Person, in light of the dreaded oppression to which all government leads, to break the chains of slavery which bind them to another and to guard precious Freedom from those who would steal it in the name of security for all. It is their right, their natural, glorious Right to ignore, decry, interfere with or destroy utterly any individual or group who rules by force — it is the Right of all Free Persons to cast off the State, to sever from their lives the idea of the State.

It is to the ends of Liberty that a revolt must serve, and so neither must its means be contrary to Freedom’s principles. It is to the goal of Liberty which we pledge, again, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.

Victor Koman

[Unlike the “Founding Fathers,” I speak only for myself. Anyone who agrees with this Statement is free to sign it. Those who don’t sign it aren’t bound by it. — Victor Koman]