Liberty Liberally - Vol I Issue IX - October 2021

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

Liberty, Liberally Volume I - Issue IX

October, 2021

Alaska

SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

By Joshua Fryfogle

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

They do not know the truth of it Those who want their freedom And have not done due diligence And books they do not need them

The idea that voting alone is our only means of interacting with government is an appalling lie. Voting is literally the least you could do and still claim to be involved.

They’d rather rant and rave all day When something doesn’t suit them And rattle sabers, these rifle wavers Who lack resolve to shoot them

Voting alone is simply harm reduction, voting against a worse evil, for eternity. It’s the mindset of having already lost control, simply trying to avoid complete destruction.

They haven’t taken time to learn And so they are not fit to fight Thinking that the battle’s won By men with arms and brutish might

But what is a regular person supposed to do, then??

Using language, adequately to communicate one’s own ideas, is the means by which a liberal society (like the Constitutional Republic you lawfully live within) self-governs. Through the use of language, we communicate to each other, making public our own intellectual output, along with every other individual. In this free exchange of free expression, we simply present our ideas. Then, after we present them to our re-presentives, they represent those ideas in Washington DC and in our respective state and local congresses.

But the tree of liberty Is planted in the mind at first Watered there with thoughtful care Lest the tree should die of thirst While the tree of tyranny It grows without the willful hand And spreads its seeds without the thought Or the artifice of man And when these trees grow side by side Both to yield their kind of fruit One you prune with loving care The other you strike at the root

But one thing I’ve learned after publishing a newspaper for 14 years, a publication that is completely dependent on local people writing what we publish, is a hard truth. I’m just going to come out and say it, even though it might hurt feelings.

We must learn now to be free Which only comes from learned toil Freedom won’t come naturally We must coax it from the soil

Most of us can’t effectively write a letter.

Most of the people in the community, as a direct result of curricular misadventure, simply do not have the language skills or procedural knowledge to contribute to the civic process.

Liberty, Liberally it’s not about timely information or updates; the goal is not to clue you in to some narrative. I’m not a news man, I’m in essayist, and Liberty in our western nations was written into the public discourse as essays.

It’s philosophical, not political.

Your right to free expression allows for exploration of the philosophical mode of thought. Philosophy is the product of your individual conscience. Your philosophy you claim or proclaim isn’t always that of conscience. How you live, that’s your true philosophy.

Liberty, Liberally

Liberty, Liberally, is only one fellow’s thoughts, but each of us has the right to think and publish those thoughts.

The People’s Paper is that same fellow’s effort to provide his neighbors with a free-to-use platform, beyond the inherent insecurity of the internet, where we put the Press back into the Freedom of the Press.

“Civics was a class that you used to be required before you could graduate from high school. You were taught what was in the U.S. Constitution.

And after all the student rebellions in the ‘60s, civics was banished from the student curriculum and was replaced by something called social studies. Here we live in a country that has a fabulous constitution and all these guarantees, a contract between the citizens and the government — nobody knows what’s in it. It’s one of the best kept secrets.

And so, if you don’t know what your rights are, how can you stand up for them?” Frank Zappa

This is not the teachers’ fault, but the system and their unions have them trained to respond as if they’ve been blamed when we point out the trajectory of the education system. But make no mistake - the curriculum itself is failing to produce adults who are capable and competent in their civic engagement. As a result, they only vote.

I spoke to my own Legislator from my district. My Legislator is extremely popular in our district, and perceived widely as consistent with the people that live in my district. From this, I would guess that he is on the high end when it comes to constituents communicating with him about their civic concerns.

He told me that there are more than forty thousand constituents in his district, and of those forty thousand, about five hundred unique, individual constituents reach out to him per month. This, he told me, varies when there is a particular hot-topic issue, but on average this is a reasonable guesstimate.

500 is what percent of 40,000?

1.2% We think a lot about voting numbers, and low voter turnout is certainly an issue that’s worthy of concern. However, this percentage of constituents who actually engage in the process prior to voting is abysmally low.

Here are the things you can freely do to affect your free society: Make your concerns public - it’s called ‘publishing’.

Most of us don’t have the the confidence in our competence to do this simple, civic act. Publishing our own thoughts can be difficult, even for a master rhetorician. But for someone who simply doesn’t have the language skills to feel confident about their ability to communicate will not attempt to do so.

Remember, the Declaration of Independence is a published document; the printing press made freedom known. (My monthly publication, The People’s Paper, makes that easy, just send your writing to us through our website: www.makeasceneak.com

Donate. Subscribe.

Support.

Thanks for reading, and writing, and for your continued financial support of one fellow’s effort to empower and encourage local voices like yours.

www.LibertyLiberally.com

907-373-2698

www.LibertyLiberally.com

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

Volume I - Issue IX

Liberty, Liberally

www.LibertyLiberally.com

2

Gather together for public exchange of ideas, and petition.

The People have the right to gather together, freely, without interference from the government, in order to exchange their ideas and to create petitions for redress of grievances. We love to gather for cultural reasons, but most of our supposedly civic gatherings are really just protests, and rarely are petitions clearly communicated to government. Platitudes abound and symbolic victories are contrived, bread and circuses, but the spectacle usually serves some other purpose than actual civic engagement.

Druthers

By Joshua Fryfogle If you had your druthers To go against the others The protests that they utter Would not mean much at all The slave must ask permission The free mind makes decisions And of your own volition You have to make the call

Present your concerns to your Representatives in elected office.

You can present your concerns by writing emails and letters to your representatives so that they can represent those ideas accordingly. From issue to issue, the elected re-presentative that is elected by the people is supposed to re-present those concerns in their votes on statutes, etc.

The will that is inside you The vision to decide to Do as you’ve a mind to Your fear alone forestalls

Right now, in my district, 1.2% of the people are being represented by my Legislator, and that’s not my Legislator’s fault. If my Legislator respects representative government, then he will re-present what the majority of constituents communicate. But they can’t read minds, and in fact, they should not attempt to. Every elected individual who serves in our representative government ought to re-present what is presented to them by the people, and nothing more. But it’s the people who have to present it to them to start that process. Right now, 1.2% of the people are doing so. I suspect that this anecdotal approximation holds across all districts in all States.

And finally, you can vote for your Re-presentative government.

Precipitation

You can vote for your representatives in government. You can go to the polling place and choose who will represent you. But if you don’t present anything for them to represent, then what’s the point? Why vote, if you’re not even going to tell them what you want them to do? It’s literally the least you could do.

By Joshua Fryfogle Wisdom, like rain, Falls on the right-minded And insane

If voting is all you’re going to do, then you probably should’t do that either. If you have nothing to say, then why should you have a say? If you have nothing to present, why should you help choose who will represent those of us who do?

Voting alone, without the other, more effective civic action, is really just lending your consent to be governed without your input. It’s a concession of Liberty itself, and it only serves those politicos who think themselves fit to rule over those who would let them. Voting, without actually contributing to the public discourse, only dilutes the the voices of those who do contribute, which in turn discourages the rest of us from ever bothering to contribute to that public discourse.

Voting is the last, the least, the lesser form of civic engagement, and without the other forms, it only serves to make things worse.

This brings me back to my original point. Most of us, statistically speaking, do not feel confident that we are competent to effectively communicate our own ideas. We have not cultivated a culture of civic engagement, which would necessarily be an intellectual pursuit. Instead, we’ve allowed apathy to overtake us, while our reading comprehension has atrophied, and our grammar, rhetoric and logic are lost arts.

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” Emma Goldman “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

Plato “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”

John Quincy Adams “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”

Aesop

Wisdom, like downpour Pours down on the rich And the poor Wisdom, like weather Affects us al-together Wisdom, like fate On everyone, Precipitates

We’ve gotten a surprising number of donations from community members at The People’s Paper and Make A Scene Magazine over the years, and recently it’s increased with the publication of Liberty, Liberally.

We’ve also received many requests for subscription services, requests to mail Liberty, Liberally, and our other publications to people near and far...

So we thought, why not make it easier to donate, and get something in return, too?

With a minimum $8 per month donation, you’ll receive a copy of each publication - and even special publications and other things that might fit in a Manila envelope!

Thanks so much for your words of encouragement and financial support over the years. We take your trust very seriously, as we steward content from you and your neighbors onto the printed page. It’s an American tradition which we are blessed to uphold.

You can respond to what you’ve read, or write what matters to you.

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

Liberty, Liberally Liberty, Liberally

www.LibertyLiberally.com

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

Volume I - Issue IX

Liberty, Liberally

3

JULY 6, 2016

JUNE 28, 2020 ABOVE: Always hiding their identity like bandits, Black Bloc seeks to instill fear in those who do not cover their faces in the public square.

There is a multi-faceted ideology, I will call it ‘leftist’ in this article, that is different from liberalism, that has taken control of the progressive movement in our nation. We are in the midst of a cultural revolution, and as a result, words themselves become fluid during times like these; but for the purposes of this article, I will use the term ‘leftist’. Their stated goal is to reshape our nation, and to tear down any institution at all. They do not represent the left side of the political spectrum of the U.S. as a whole, but they have commandeered their conversation, through coercion and intimidation. They’ve left many liberals in fearful silence. They have also attached their political ideology to multiple issues, two of which I will discuss in this essay. Namely, the plight of black people, and second, that of the LGBTQIA community.

In the past, for hundreds of years, black people in America were made to labor, to pull society along, to carry the weight of other people. Mostly white people. The benefit to those other people was so great, the power so intoxicating, that many slave owners didn’t want to let go of their coveted possessions: these souls of humanity. Many who didn’t own slaves wanted slaves to be kept, too, because it helped them indirectly, improving the overall quality of life.

They wanted to keep black people, where they were, and continue to benefit from their suffering.

They wanted the suffering of black people to continue, in order to achieve what they declared was for the good of society as a whole. They built their buildings, their roads, their schools, their state buildings - they built a culture, and the slave masters saw it as a big-picture success. This psychosis, this eternal blind eye, was turned on black people in America, with the slave owners rationalizing that they were helping black people by using them for the good of all.

Now we see the same dysfunctional dynamic taking shape, within the American progressive movement, with the leftist faction of modern America using progressivism as their carriage, and black people as their ideological workhorses. We see it already, that the social changes occurring in America are mostly focused on feigned leftist issues - issues that are mostly championed by white people while the issues that weigh heavy on black Americans remain unchanged.

On the same day, June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court issued two rulings. They issued one ruling that LGBTQIA people could not be discriminated against in their jobs, and they also announced that they would not review their own Qualified Immunity Doctrine. That’s right, after all the grand gestures and symbolic destruction in the cities of America, mostly white leftists have moved the ideological war forward, on the backs of black people. And LGBTQIA people are just along for the ride.

Giving grand but symbolic victories to black people, the leftists tore down statues, but the corrupt legal doctrines and unconstitutional laws, being the means for racism to be injected to the system, these remain firmly on their foundations.

The LGBTQIA community has their own issues, and like any group of Americans, they have a right to lobby, protest, petition, and all of the other things that free people might

Liberty, Liberally

do to affect change. I don’t begrudge them that, and I am glad to live in a nation where they can petition for change. Still, theirs is only one issue, among many, added to this larger agenda to restructure this nation into another. They are being used, too, for a political ideology that wants to destroy the law of the land itself - an end that would ultimately nullify this recent Supreme Court ruling.

The Black Lives Matter mantra has been lifted up and amplified, with any dissent from the All Lives Matter crowd being decried as racist - because it diminishes the plight of black Americans.

That’s something I can understand.

But, like so many leftist ideologues, their tone-deaf capacity for hypocrisy is a spectacle of the white privilege they denounce.

Black Bloc started in Europe, an evolution of the two-sided Totalitarian worldview.

These white leftists go into these cities, under the banner of Black Lives Matter, dressed head to toe in black clothing. They start the riots, start the fires, throw the first stones, all while pretending for the cameras. And what do the cameras show the People? What do the People of the world see? A sea of black figures, rioting in the streets, without the tell-tale sight of white to be found. They literally masquerade as black people, but unlike the culturally inappropriate practice of black face, these black clad, middle-class white people are not making fun of black people. They are doing much worse, perpetuating a stereotype that gets black people killed.

White progressives are the overwhelming majority of Black Bloc revolutionaries, though you’d be forgiven for not realizing this fact, considering how much effort they put into hiding it.

So it should come as no shock to any of us that these leftists would do something similar, and sinister, also to advance their larger agenda. Not only do they don the appearance of “black” people when they start their riots, and then leave the rubble of black communities for black communities to deal with, but they’ve done the same when it comes to the BLM movement as a whole - clothing themselves in it.

In both cases, the media goes along with their song and dance mockery of the lived experiences of black people, they pretend not to notice that there is an entire political ideology attached to their feigned concern for black people, and for LGBTQIA folks, too.

Nowhere do we see it more clearly than in this recent Supreme Court ruling, where not only did they ignore the court’s own doctrine of Qualified Immunity, (which came to be not even three years after the Civil Rights Act passed into law), but on that same day, they announced new, expanded protections for LGBTQIA folks. This distracted the liberals and conservatives, and buried their their betrayal of black Americans in the online algorithm.

I was young when I first met Larry.

My dad had done some work for him, and thought I would find his music collection interesting. Larry Head had the biggest collection of Compact Discs I had ever seen! Throughout his home were shelves upon shelves of 5-disc cartridges, black plastic units that Larry could locate in a moment.

You name it, he had it! Such a wide collection of music, thousands upon thousands of titles, in these 5-disc cartridges - unlabeled 5-disc cartridges.

My friend Larry Head was blind.

We would spend lots of time together throughout the years that I lived within driving distance of him. He sold me my first nice guitars - a black Gibson L6-S, and a red Gibson Les Paul studio with gold hardware.

He also sold me a Mercury Cougar SS - yep, a blind man sold me a car.

His sister would come to take him to appointments and for shopping in that car until he decided to sell it to me.

When I didn't have a car of my own, I would ask my musical friends to give me a ride to visit Larry, and admire his collection and amazing ability to remember where all those CDs were located.

He would tell me, "Small Fry," my dad was apparently Big Fry, "Go over to the hall closet, second shelf down, third row from the left, fifth cartridge down..." Or some similar directions, leading me from room to room to my friends' amazement. He would tell us what we were about to hear, as he placed the cartridge in the player and selected the disc with his remote control. His massive stereo was so impressive, using two huge speakers, along with surround sound - total immersion.

There was one steadfast rule at Larry's house. It was of the utmost importance!

Put things back, exactly where you found them! He would sometimes call me after I had visited with friends to complain that something was not replaced in it's proper spot. A pen, a disc cartridge, whatever. Larry would explain to everyone that they should put things back exactly where they picked them up. Moving something just a few inches was practically the same as hiding it, he would explain to us in much more coarse language.

It took Larry all of his time to learn where everything was - that ability to locate anything was tied to a strict system of every-thing-in-it's-place.

While it was amazing to see a blind man navigate such a huge collection of things with greater ease than most people with sight, his lectures about proper placement and care of his things were a firm reminder of the effort he put into that ability. His world was his home. Outside his home he was lost, just a few feet from his fenced yard might as well have been miles.

Inside he was in complete control...

Unless someone moved something.

Larry had a four track recorder that we learned to use, recording my songs.

Of course, I was more interested in hearing my music on tape - like a monkey with a mirror - not realizing any practical application of these skills that this blind fellow was teaching me.

He knew the concepts, but needed me to place his hands on the appropriate controls of this unfamiliar machine.

I would guide his hand from left to right, as he memorized where each control was. He would simultaneously

teach me what each control would do, using my own songs as a subject.

Over time we both learned so much.

He slowly became masterful with the controls, while I began to understand the concepts of sound engineering.

He rarely mixed his family with his friends, but on occasion we would meet at his house. One occasion his sister and her friend were there. Four people, enough for a game of bridge!

Larry invited us for a quick game, dealing out his set of Brail cards, and winning repeatedly - trash talking us like we were playing full contact sports! So much enthusiasm, he loved the company, and loved to excel at anything he could. We were all glad to lose to him, seeing what it did for his confidence.

I loved those times with Larry through the years. He was my friend, and I was a wayward youth who he told the truth. A truth that I needed to hear, apparently, since he repeated it to me throughout the years.

"Everybody's different."

He said it so often, I eventually noticed that he only said it to me. It wasn't something he said carelessly to everyone, but something that seemed to encapsulate his message to me. He knew I didn't want any more people telling me anything. I was free, foolish but free. So he distilled his message so that I would not get lost in an argument within myself or with others. He made our relationship possible by doing this. He made me welcome by allowing my weaknesses.

Because of his way of dealing with me, putting up with me at times, he became my trusted friend. I would vent to him, tell him all my youthful problems, and he would let me rattle on and on. Sometimes he would bring me back to reality - "I'm f'n blind!"

Suddenly my problems were smaller, as he would smile into the distance.

Before long, he would repeat his advice that we are all different. He reminded me to make a space for people's weaknesses, by reminding me of my own.

Larry struggled with opiate addiction, finally overdosing intentionally on his pharmaceuticals - after Hurricane Katrina took the roof off of his home, and he lost everything. For Larry, the thought of replacing all that he had lost was just too much. It wasn't indemnification of assets that was the problem. It was the relearning of everything. Katrina didn't just destroy Larry's home - she destroyed his world. From his perspective, it was the apocalypse. No insurance claim could replace what was lost, as if everything had been moved, all of it all at once. He was lost.

I miss Larry terribly sometimes.

When I feel lost in life, I wish I could tell him about my problems, so that he could jar me into reality. I wish he could give me some insight, with his course language and honesty. I wish he hadn't taken all those pills, and his own life. I wish I had been within driving distance, to be there for him, perhaps I could have helped him learn where things were again. I wish I could have guided his hands, and helped him find control.

"Everybody's different," he would say. So simple, a blind man could see it.

Donate. Subscribe.

Support.

But wait, there’s more!

The Supreme Court audaciously added these protections to that same 1964 ruling!

www.LibertyLiberally.com

907-373-2698

www.LibertyLiberally.com

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

Volume I - Issue IX

That’s right, the Civil Rights Act was expanded to benefit LGBTQIA - the law of the land was adapted to this mostlywhite issue, among many other issues within which these leftists have clothed themselves. Black people get nothing, and LGBTQIA people are turned into human shields, behind which hides a political ideology that only makes use of social issues like these.

I don’t begrudge any group that comes together and petitions for redress. I support all such efforts, completely. The first amendment is clear on this issue, and so is my perspective. But I take great offense at any group that can’t yet garner the support to move their agenda forward, and that would attach themselves to other, more deserving groups. My heart aches that they would harness the suffering of an entire people, that they would hitch their cart to the pain and plight of black people in America, using them to change the culture - while never giving those same people the relief for which they’ve toiled.

It is a shameful proof of white privilege, from those who have weaponized it. The leftist white people, with their Eastern European ideology, in their eternal battle against Western European philosophy, have made the pain of black people in America into their workhorse - and their Trojan horse.

The proof is in the outcome. One of many of their feigned philosophies is memorialized in statute, while black people are given broken statues. And in the greatest and most telling irony of all, among those Confederate statues are the statues of abolitionists, freedom fighters, and black people who have fought fervently for their right to be part of an egalitarian future. A future these leftists don’t believe in.

This statue of Matthias Baldwin, an early abolitionist, was first erected in Philadelphia in 1906, and moved in front of Philadelphia City Hall in 1936. In late May 2020, it was briefly defaced with the words “colonizer” and “murderer”, by uneducated (mostly) white people who only saw his race.

White people, who think they are progressives, need to self-reflect. Look at how this message has been sold. We were told that all lives aren’t hurting, all houses aren’t burning, all bones aren’t broken, and that to include all lives,

Liberty, Liberally

Liberty, Liberally

instead of simply affirming that black lives matter, was outrageous. Now we’re told that it’s laudable to advance any other progressive agenda during this time of turmoil, whichever ones can be advanced, even if it’s not to the benefit of black people.

Even at the expense of black people.

The moral authority to demand change for black people in America is there, and the consensus is there, too. Only the absolute outliers of society are against equality for black people. Black people have worked long and hard to advance their cause, and many white allies have joined in that fight - that fight in particular. They’ve suffered not only in reality, but their suffering has been documented in our shared history, for centuries. It’s undeniable, and that’s why there is a consensus about it.

These newly introduced leftist ideologies, whose ideologues haven’t done the work, who can’t muster the support for their far more broad plan to restructure all of society, they are using black lives like human chattel, and implicating the LGBTQIA community along the way. To them, racism is only one issue among many, affecting all these other lives. To these ‘leftists’, they all matter.

The Leftists haven’t proven the validity of their whole cause, and have only found some support for some of their ideas, and more support for ideas that they didn’t even originate. They can’t do this for themselves, so they’ve attached themselves to the very real and undeniable suffering of black people, yet never arriving at a place where black people are made whole. How convenient, that these leftists with their European philosophies, would forget to set free those that they’ve indentured to their cause. They sign on to this social contract of sorts, but never make good on their commitment to improve black lives.

People tell me that I ought to be ashamed for not agreeing with these leftists, who I think are the epitome of white privilege, who I think are using black people to advance their broader agenda. They tell me that I am the one who is racist for not just going along with this audacious pretense. But I’m not the white person, going to a black neighborhood, masquerading in all black. I’m not the white person who has attached my ideologies to the backs of black people. I’m none of the white people, wearing black robes, who sit in the highest court of the land, refusing to reconsider Qualified Immunity Doctrine of 1967, while expanding the Civil Rights laws of 1964 to include another group of people - a whiter group of people.

All this while Clarence Thomas, the only black person on the Supreme Court, voted against it.

Honestly, up until recent years, I’ve always felt pretty good about the liberals in my life. I don’t always agree with them, or the conservatives, but I always thought that the compassion of American liberals for the black people in this nation would be their saving grace. I always thought that the liberals of the world were, at the very least, willing to speak up for those who are most oppressed. But I see, even among liberals, a fear of the outrage mob, the cancel culture, cancelling out their voices of reason. I see them shrinking from the fight for black people, and offering instead armchair support for a broader agenda that was first imagined in Europe. I see reasonable liberals as quietly complicit, while this tiny group of leftists, willing to burn a city down, take charge of their democratic power, making it their own.

If you want to advance your agenda in the US, you have the capacity to do so. It’s written into the foundation of our law. It’s inherent, unalienable, and therefore guaranteed to you. You have my full support in that effort. But you have to do the work, and you have to build your own support for your own cause. Black people, and their honest allies, have done that work - plus some. They’ve tried a million things, written a million slogans, gave a million speeches, and marched a million men on Washington.

Still, victimless crime laws exist, opening the door for discrimination, creating the pretense of probable cause. The Qualified Immunity doctrine remains on the back end, protecting those who take advantage of those bad laws, keeping them from consequence.

And now, the Civil Rights law of 1964, the hallmark of all that human suffering itself, the greatest accomplishment to date in the fight for equality for black people, has been made into a vessel for various petitions of other people.

Mostly white people.

4

For Love, It’s Self AUGUST 19, 2021 Love is me At liberty To do to you As I Sacrifice myself So I can Look you in The “I” And you at me We disagree But we can see The light Of the soul From days of old When all we knew Was might When all was lost To history Except the tales So penned By the brute And brutal force That always did

The recent protests at the White House are about two and half miles away from where they ought to be, at the Supreme Court building. But instead of progressives demanding change from this highest court in the land, this other issue, this whiter issue of progressive Americans is being celebrated. Progressives are praising this action, lending support to a court that continues to qualify the killings of black people, as they have since 1967, two plus years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 qualified black people as fully human.

www.LibertyLiberally.com

Them in Love is we When we are free To make the choice Ourselves To give up all We know of love All for love It’s Self

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle