Liberty Unchained

As I am in the process of placing the final touches on this site, it occurred to me that I aught to at least replace the silly “hello world” article with a quick introductory article in case someone actually wanders across this site.

Going forward, I will be placing my thoughts on a variety of related topics ( and the occasional not so related topic ) as well as occasional book reviews, product reviews, and experiences related to my experiments with law.

The topics?

American Law:

In the interest of being able to stand up and claim my rights, defend myself from authoritarian public servants, and help those who know me with the occasional run in with the law, I spend quite a bit of time studying the law.

As a result of my studies so far, I have been able to get rid of the couple of debt collectors that have come after me and my family, make a mid sized town government back down on a couple of occasions, convince a few major companies that it would be in their best interests to drop onerous fees, and quite a bit more.

It is true that I have not yet been faced with legal problems of major import, but it is important to me that should such a time ever come, I be able to defend myself rather than trust some lawyer to care about more than my money.

Home Schooling:

I want my children to have a good education, but my views of a good education differ quite drastically from the views of those who run our public education system. In addition to the basic levels of reading, writing, and arithmetic typically conveyed in the lower and middle class public schools, I want my children to:

• Be capable of reading multiple books on a topic, compare and contrast them, and discern bias and fiction while gathering useful information
• Be capable of writing in a manner that can convey new information to others
• Be able to hold their end in a debate with others while questioning what others claim and using new information to alter their own views intelligently
• Have their own private enterprises running before they leave my house so that they are never stuck with a dead end job simply because they know of no better way
• Stand up for themselves physically and mentally, and know how to properly use law to defend themselves from those who would coerce them.

Hopefully my thoughts and musings on the occasional topic related to educating my children will give someone at least a good laugh. Perhaps such writing will also give my parents better insight into why I feel that our school systems are designed to churn out employees rather than educate self reliant people.

Self Education:

The last primary topic that I will be sharing my thoughts on is self education. What free time I do not spend studying law, playing with my children, doing things with my wife, or visiting friends is typically spent improving my own education on a variety of topics.

Occasionally I find new and interesting ways to teach myself things or improve the efficiency by which I do so…and when I do so, I shall share them.

Other topics:

Knowing me, I will likely place random thoughts on a variety of topics here. I have a good deal of interest in working less and enjoying life more which prompts me to look into such things as reducing utility bills, cooking from scratch, improving my poker game, and a large variety of other topics that one might not readily consider to be related to frugality.