A Call to Arm...chair Libertarians Time to load the muskets and hook up with
the Patriotic Resistance!
This could be the big one! — Fred Sanford
On the morning of Wednesday, November 14, 2007, a dozen agents of the FBI and Secret Service raided the offices of the Liberty Dollar company (LDC) in Evansville, Indiana.The Liberty LDC is a private precious-metals and value-based currency business that seeks to provide competition to central bank government debt-based paper notes (Federal Reserve notes (FRNs); roughly $20 million FRNs worth of Liberty Dollars (LDs)—in gold-and-silver specie, redeemable certificate, and digital form—are in circulation worldwide.
Note: The principal form of the LD is a $20 medallion consisting of one Troy ounce of silver; thus a Liberty dollar (lower case d) is technically 1/20 of an ounce of silver.
Over a period of six hours the thugs confiscated all the gold, all the silver, all the platinum and almost two tons of "Ron Paul" dollars that were just delivered the previous Friday. They also took all the files, all the computers and froze the LDC bank accounts. To make matters worse, all the gold and silver that backs up the paper certificates and digital currency held in the vault on behalf of the LDC at the Sunshine Mint has also been plundered. Even the dies for minting the Gold and Silver Liberties have been taken.
No one has been charged with a crime... though LDC proprietor and LD architect and mintmaster, Bernard von NotHaus, expects the feds to issue some sort of trumped-up indictment within days.
Mr. von NotHaus has appeared on Free Talk Live and has answered a handful of mainstream media inquiries; he sent an email to his customers and distributors announcing the gross violation to his person and property several hours after the attack. On Friday, November 16, he followed up with a second letter containing more data on what was behind the assault and to solicit support for a class action suit, as well as legal-defense funding.[1]
News coverage is beginning to avalanche as the weekend proceeds; these I pulled from the LD site on Sunday night, November 18:
Genuine intelligent, freedom-lover interest is ratcheting up as only the Internet can accomplish. This may indeed be the big one: precipitating a giant leap forward for the liberty of mankind. Don't be surprised to see the story of "Barbarians at the Gate of Liberty Dollar Offices" on all major national Propaganda TV outlets on Monday, November 19th.
So how can such a raid happen in a free country? Well, it did and it isn't.
So we all need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
Background
In October 1, 1998, the first Liberty Dollar, which is 100% backed and 100% redeemable in gold and silver, rolled off the presses. The Liberty Dollar provided a simple solution: "Start using the Liberty Dollar to grow and protect your money—one dollar at a time." As a Free State Project immigrant in 2005, I personally have come into contact with numerous free citizens who were and are using LDs for routine purchases and as a store of value. In the Free State (New Hampshire), many merchants and small business people voluntarily and happily accept and use LDs. It's our NH Constitution-acknowledged absolute right of production and trade.
Such popular acceptance is exactly what founder von NotHaus envisioned. Soon I became an enthusiastic associate of the LDC system—not a distributor, known as an RCO (regional currency office)—by acquiring some LDs of different denominations and certificates.
As an associate, I received a packet of literature and materials basically describing the nature of money and how governments have turned the money system into an unConstitutional coercive monopoly. (The government's modern central bank(s) are essentially a sophisticated counterfeiting system where the people receiving freshly printed fiat currency first are friends—chiefly power-elite banks and Wall Street insiders—of the people in government doing the counterfeiting. Please refer to The Creature from Jekyll Island, by G. Edward Griffin for an excellent dissection of the illegal and unConstitutional Federal Reserve System)
This LD concept, which relies on the absolute right of American citizens to trade with one another using any mutually acceptable medium of exchange—from barter to wampum beads to integrated circuits—is dangerous to the illegal government money monopoly. Seeing that LD money was becoming increasingly popular, the federales in the form of the US Mint issued a statement in September 2006 that "prosecutors in the justice department" had determined that using LD coins as "circulating money" was a federal crime. Then Treasury officials sent threatening letters to officers and associates of the LDC.
For a simple analysis of the legality of using privately minted pieces of metal please check out this page from Cap'n Arbyle. Passing Liberty "medallions" or generic "coins" of any kind is completely legal so long as one doesn't represent them as "legal tender." The US Mint here "is making it illegal to offer something as a legal tender when it isn't." The actual legal requirement is you can't pass off a Liberty Dollar as a United States government-minted coin that merchants are required to accept in payment. Case closed.
But the federales foolishly wanted to poke the hornets' nest with the above exquisitely brainless US Mint statement.
So in March of 2007, LDC initiated a civil action against the US Mint to force a retraction of the Mint's misleading statements and the subsequent scare campaign. The complaint was at a point where a judge was going to make a declaratory judgment that, considering these recent federal attacks on LD offices, must have appeared to the government to be going against it. Thus, the enforcers got into action in an attempt to trump the civil action—that would require the Mint to cease and desist its harassment of honest providers of "voluntary barter currency"—with a criminal investigation, however baseless.
Foreground
You decide.
From what I'm seeing on the Web, this ill-considered assault on the livelihood of this all-American hero of honest money (and his proud associates and customers) may represent "the shot heard round the world" leading to the overthrow of a tyrannical government. Wouldn't that be great! I was beginning to think we were stuck with these bastards for two or three more years. It's sure going to sweeten the prospects of the Ron Paul campaign. I'll bet you one thing, whatever "public official" made the decision to rape and pillage the Liberty Dollar offices will soon come to see tar and feathering as getting off easy.
People should not be afraid of their governments;
governments should be afraid of their people.
—V
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[1] You can join the class action suit if you hold an interest in LDC that cannot be discharged due to the recent confiscation—such as holding scrip that you want to redeem in specie (gold or silver). Contribute to Bernard von NotHaus's legal defense, i.e. legal prosecution of the government, by making check or money order to Bernard von NotHaus, c/o Liberty Dollar, 225 N. Stockwell Road. Evansville. Indiana. 47715
