Here’s a hypothetical question:

What will you do, personally, if Government agents come to your door and ask you to give them your guns?

If you don’t want to go public with your answer by commenting on this blog, please send me an email to dave at backwoodshome dot com.

I’m writing a column on this subject for the next issue of Backwoods Home Magazine, and I’d like some input from others. I’ve already asked some neighbors and friends.

If you don’t feel comfortable sending me a comment, please think about what your actions would be. Let’s assume the visit from the Government agents will not be a surprise, as it will have been well advertised in the media, after Congress passes sweeping federal gun control legislation.

A word of caution: Consider your answer without bravado. Remember the story of Bradford Metcalf who went to prison for 40 years for possessing illegal guns and talking about resisting Big Government. It’s serious business when you resist Government and guns are involved, so consider what you would “actually” do, not what you’d like to do.

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Following is an email from LD Shannon of Peyton, Colorado. I think it’s a glimpse into a world into which America is now going — a world in which Big Government bureaucrats control everything. I’m glad BHM was helpful in this case.

We are recent subscribers & now ardent fans!  The advice in Backwoods has, literally, saved our lives as we had a major shock hit us this week.

We received a letter from the State of Absurdity (names changed to protect the guilty) that they had placed liens on all of our accounts because we had not paid enough in taxes to the tune of $81,000.  Problem is – we have not lived in that state for four years and their information was flat dead wrong!

Correcting faulty information would be simple enough …  if a ‘police’ state followed due process and had actually NOTIFIED us prior to these illegal seizures.  We had NEVER heard a peep from these bureaucrats before in our lives!

I am a disabled vet and have days where I can barely get out of bed.  We have four children, one  a son with down syndrome who requires plenty of extra care, ie, we have enough on our plate without this brand of bs dropping out of the sky!

Now comes the good part.

After our initial shock, after our calling these nut-cases in the state of absurdity with no success at all in explaining their irrationality, well … after all that my wife and myself looked at each other and began to laugh!

That is because we have built a heck of a pantry to feed our family.  We have chickens laying near a dozen eggs a day.  I am pretty handy with a rifle and have put down a deer and in the next few weeks expect to harvest a buffalo and two elk.  We have gallons of homemade wine.  And finally, and most importantly, we have cash.  Not in the bank … cash in hand!

We’ll straighten out the nut-cases.  And yes, we’ll probably have to pay some lawyer to prove our innocence and never get an apology or that fee refunded when we prove them wrong.

But because we have read and followed the great advice from all of you at BHM we have the best sleep-at-night insurance one can buy – self reliance!

This illegal seizure of property is a sign of the times, Dave.  The Federal government created this mess and is now taxing the bejesus out of us all to try and bail out a sinking ship.  State Governments are feeling the trickle down choke and are deciding to take it out on the citizenry.  And this is just the beginning of this g## damn mess.

Thank you for showing the way, Dave … thank you and all your writers and staff for helping all of us build our ‘ark’ so we can survive and thrive these coming bad times.

God bless you and all the staff of BHM, Dave.

LD Shannon
Peyton, CO

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Without firing a shot, the socialists took over America today when Congress passed the $850 billion bailout package. Most Americans slept through it all and probably won’t realize what happened for years.

Backwoods Home Magazine will, ironically, benefit because Americans are going to have to be more self-reliant than ever. The magazine has just become the best buy in town when it comes to Americans spending their soon-to-be scarce dollars. I didn’t want to get rich this way, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. The all powerful Government will soon tax most of it away anyway and we’ll all be working for pennies.

But what the heck! Wall Street and the banks will be making money, right. At least for six months to a few years. With the Government’s new powers to control what we used to call capitalism, the politicians can float their friends on Wall Street for quite a while. The rest of us, unfortunately, will have to be hunkered down with back issues of BHM trying to figure out how to be more frugal with what money is left over for us.

It’s been fun being a free capitalist all these years. Too bad it had to all end today. Click here to subscribe to BHM so you can prepare for a grimmer future.

Here’s how members of the House of Representatives voted today to pass this nation-changing legislation.

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Well, the Senate passed the bailout, now estimated to be as much as $850 billion with all the pork added on. The House is expected to vote on it Thursday night or Friday morning. The socialists among us must be licking their chops. Their moment of taking over America is about to arrive, they must think. Maybe it will when the House votes.

Here’s another guy, Dave Ramsey, who has his head screwed on pretty straight when it comes to this bailout. He doesn’t subscribe to Ron Paul’s fix, namely, let the market go through a correction, but he agrees the bailout currently under consideration in Congress is a very bad idea.

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Well, shortly after sundown today, our Congresscrooks, starting with the Senate tonight, will begin voting to send us into an economic Depression by bailing out banks that should be allowed to fail. Their only alternative to voting for this new porked-up $700 billion bailout is to vote against it, let the banks fail, and allow the country to suffer through a brief – maybe one year — recession. But I don’t think they’ll do the latter because they’re up for reelection Nov. 4, and they care more about their jobs than they do about the country. Plus, many congresscrooks are too economically stupid to do anything but follow lockstep behind the congressional leaders who are whipping them into a herd like they are so many dumb cows.

What congressional leaders have done for this evening’s vote is to add porkbarrel spending to the bill so that wavering congressmen can suck down a little more Government money. That should get them to vote for this bad bill, the leaders figure. What a sorry day for America if this passes. Big Government will be much bigger and our individual freedoms will be much smaller. If the bill passes, our financial future as a country will appear to be better temporarily, but it will actually have taken a tremendous body blow.

If the bill passes, look forward to big financial inflation in your future. The only way the Government will be able to pay its bills will be by printing more money. For those of you about to go into the social security system, look to a financial future of bleakness. Someday soon the Government will start slowing your cost-of-living increases as it inflates the money supply. It will have no choice, and those younger voters of the future will demand it. You’re all doomed to poverty.

Look for prices of all sorts to go up. As the value of the dollar plummets, most things will cost more. The staples of life, such as food, will be severely affected. Electronics should be okay because they benefit from continuing innovation and improved techniques of manufacture, but food prices will not. Food is adversely affected by inflation, plus Government programs that encourage things such as ethanol production will take farm land out of production, putting even more pressure on food prices.

I went out over the weekend and bought a lot of food and supplies to weather the coming Depression and inflation of prices. That’s my immediate personal strategy. The next three issues of Backwoods Home Magazine will concentrate on the emerging Depression and give you strategies about how to cope. If you think you could use such advice, click here to subscribe. Also, click here to immediately begin reading some articles that will help you plan for what’s coming.

Here’s an interesting interview from today of Congressman Ron Paul by Fox’s Neil Cavuto. Paul would be a good President, but his own Republican party treats him as an outsider because he doesn’t play the Demopublican game of Swindle the Taxpayer.

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My mind is working overtime to look into the possible future of this financial mess our Government has gotten us into. If it’s as serious as Bush, Pelosi, and their CNN media allies claim, I think they may do anything to “help” the country. (Substitute your own word for my word “help.”)

If Bush declared some sort of State of Emergency, in effect declaring martial law, then injected all sorts of our money into the stock market to bail out his financially strapped friends, and the public revolted against his actions starting with riots in some of our major cities, and Bush sent in Americans troops to quell the riots, would American troops fire on American citizens?

American troops are certainly trained for urban warfare. Urban warfare military schools of various types are the last place American troops go before being deployed to Iraq. Why does this all seem so sinister to me now that we have a President who will probably do anything to save his friends’ money?

Am I paranoid? Yes, but that’s not a bad thing in these days when our Government has grown totally out of control. The current financial crisis is a manifestation of what can happen when we, the American people, allow our Government to assume greater and greater control over our lives. We are standing up to our Government now. Will we continue if Bush assumes emergency powers his advisors (friends who are now being hurt in the financial crisis) convince him he has the power to assume? We may find out soon.

By the way, here’s another article shedding some light on this financial crisis: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1845209,00.html?cnn=yes

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Here’s my take on the Presidential race so far. It’s nonpartisan; I don’t like any of the frontrunners.

If Obama is the Democratic candidate, the Democrats will win big. Conservatives will stay home. They don’t like McCain, and eight years of their man, Bush, overspending has disheartened them.

If Hillary is the Democratic candidate, the Democrats will still win, but only by a little. Many conservatives will come out just to vote against her, but it won’t be enough. Bush has really succeeded in crushing their spirit, plus Libertarians, who have totally given up on the Republican Party, will vote for a third-party candidate.

Here’s the only combination of factors that could defeat the Democrats: Hillary is the candidate and

1) She has stolen the nomination from Obama through superdelegates, or by getting state delegates that have already been discounted by the DNC to be counted in her favor, or by any other means perceived underhanded by voters. Blacks and independents will feel cheated, and they will rebel against it by voting for McCain, who is not that far to the right of Hillary.

2) The New York Times and other major media outlets continue to attack McCain with political hit pieces. That will cause conservatives to rally around McCain in a big way because they hate the NY Times and left wing media far more than they are dissatisfied with McCain.

3) Hillary continues to turn off male voters. This is a dynamic that no one will talk much about, but it’s obvious most men don’t like her. Let’s call it the Bitch Factor, but Hillary has a smug look that reminds a lot of men of someone they’d rather forget.

4) The Dems talk about gun control too soon, as in before the election. This will set off alarms in the heads of one-issue voters who regard the Second Amendment as the most important amendment, and they will go to the polls to vote against gun control.

The Democrats can avoid a lot of headaches by just nominating Obama. They’ll win the Presidency and Congress in a landslide. Blame yourself, Republican Party. You forsook conservative and libertarian principles for too long, and now you will pay the price.

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My predictions are normally 100% accurate, as you can see from my commentary in the current print issue , not to mention my predictions way back when about Y2K . Here are some more predictions:

First round of NFL playoffs:

The Redskins by 3 over Seattle and the Jaguars by 10 over Pittsburgh in Saturday’s NFL games. (Pittsburgh is too injured.)

On Sunday, I pick the Charges by 7 over the Titans, and the Giants by 6 over Tampa Bay.

Presidential race:

My man, Ron Paul, will get a grudging last minute invite to the NH Republican debate on Fox.

But in the end, it will be Obama all the way to the White House in November, no matter who the Republicans nominate. The Dems will also capture Congress and we’ll have National Health Care during his first term, plus the beginning of the collapse of the Social Security system during his second term.

America will be in recession by next year, and the value of the dollar will sink out of sight. Dems and Repubs will blame each other and pass all sorts of laws that restrict individual freedoms and increase the power of government.

Backwoods Home Magazine:

In 2008 our paid print issue subscription numbers will rise from 27,000 to 35,000, but the money we get for the subscriptions will be worth 20% less than it’s worth today. Our monthly online visitor numbers will rise from 225,000  to 350,000.

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My Issue no. 109 commentary  giving my predictions for 2008 has prompted some mail from supporters of Ron Paul, the longshot Republican candidate for President. Some Libertarians are concerned that I have slighted Ron Paul because I vowed not to vote for either Republicans or Democrats in the 2008 elections. Ron Paul, they correctly point out, shares my Libertarian beliefs, even though he is a Republican.

So I thought I’d point readers of this blog to a couple of brief newsletter commentaries –  click here and  click here  — I’ve written supporting Ron Paul for President, and explain why I won’t vote for Democrats or Republicans, even though Paul is a Republican. (If you’d like to get a copy of the free newsletter, click here .)

I intend to vote for Ron Paul any time the opportunity arises. But I won’t have that opportunity when the real elections are held in November because Ron Paul won’t be the Republican Presidential candidate. The Republican Party will see to that. Ron Paul is death to the Republican OR Democratic Party. He represents total reform of a corrupt system that keeps a lock on a two-party system to the exclusion of non-Demopublican parties.

Ron Paul is a Republican in name only. He is, in fact, a former Libertarian who switched to the Republican Party with the hope of effecting change from the “inside.” As a Libertarian candidate he routinely got trounced at the polls, as Libertarians always do at the national level. I applaud Paul’s efforts, and I will support him until the inevitable happens, namely, until he fades once more into the background of the Republican Party as an embarrassment to most Republican politicians.

I hope I am totally wrong about Ron Paul’s chances to become the Republican Presidential nominee. I will gladly eat my words and vote for him if he is nominated. I think my chances of being wrong, however, are so low they could only be figured by Quantum Mechanical calculations. Nevertheless I will support him through these primaries and by voting for him in the various online polls and by contributing money to his candidacy.

In the end, however, I believe that the only way the Demopublican lock on political power in America can be broken is by abstaining from the Republican and Democratic Parties and voting for third party candidates. The Libertarians need to form alliances with other third parties, possibly even bringing a coalition of far right and far left parties together. Sounds absurd on the surface, but these disparate groups have one thing in common: a desire to break the Demopublican lock on power. We can argue about our differences after we have achieved that goal.

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Claire Wolfe first alerted me to the movie, V for Vendetta, when she reviewed it in BHM’s Issue No. 98 (March/April 2006). Last night I watched it again with my family. Very enjoyable and inspiring, although it got a lot of nasty reviews when it came out because in the movie a terrorist is the hero. I think it’s the best movie about freedom I’ve ever seen. Since Claire’s review is not online, I’ve printed parts of it below. She wrote it before the movie was released, but it’s on target.

 . . .  By Claire Wolfe . . .
The movie is V for Vendetta, a tale of a mysterious vigilante battling an all-controlling paranoid security state. It takes place in a realistic near future where the people of the formerly free world live under fear and deprivation while their rulers enjoy lavish lives, protected by security walls, surveillance technology, and heavily armed security forces. It’s a world “where freedom was not lost, but surrendered willingly to a totalitarian regime that rose to power by exploiting the people’s worst fears.”
It’s the story of the destruction—and perhaps the rebirth?—of individual freedom and identity in an increasingly militarized and terrorized country.
V for Vendetta stars Natalie Portman (Padme from the second Star Wars series) and Hugo Weaving (Elrond from the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Agent Smith from The Matrix trilogy).

She is Evey Hammond, a seemingly ordinary young woman caught up and tormented by the secret police. He is “V,” her mysterious rescuer whose face is always hidden by a jauntily grinning Guy Fawkes mask. (Fawkes, who in real life plotted to blow up the British Houses of Parliament and overthrow the king in 1603, is recalled each November 5 in England with bonfires and chants of “Remember, remember, the fifth of November—gunpowder, treason, and plot!”)
In addition to the eerie mask, V wears a Puritan black cape and hat as he fights the government with blades, a single dire threat of violence, and psychological warfare. Emerging from his shadowy stone crypt beneath ancient London (a crypt filled with books, art treasures, and pop-culture memorabilia salvaged from the destruction of war and oppression), his aim is not so much to defeat tyranny through violence, but to expose the ideology of enslavement and encourage people to take their freedom back.
The screenplay was written by Andy and Larry Wachowski, the brothers who first became famous for their brilliant creation of The Matrix, and soon became infamous for ruining the original’s legacy with two pompous, incoherent (but entertainingly effects-laden) sequels. They based their V for Vendetta script on the graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and illustrator David Lloyd.
 . . .

I highly recommend V for Vendetta. It has a short lesbian scene that I’m sure will turn some people off to its message about freedom, and of course the parts that show a terrorist blowing up buildings will make some people very angry. It came out in March of 2006, so you can get it on DVD. Click here for details about the comic strip on which the movie was based. Click here for the movie’s official website.

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