American Frontier Liberty (eBook)

Customary Law and Freedom From Government

Jon Garate (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
100 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-2700-9 (ISBN)

Infos

'American Frontier Liberty' is all about Jon Garate's experience living free from the American government in an isolated homestead cattle ranching community. The author provides a full explanation of the customs and traditions that made up the customary law in the primitive and isolated homestead community. He explains the principles of the law and provides explanations and stories of people living under the law. The educational, entertaining book defines liberty in ways you never imagined. 'Liberty ain't for sissies. Liberty is hard work. Some people would rather be ruled over by a controlling government and spend their lives complaining about it.'

Freedom from government is as sweet as apple pie, and just as American. This kind of liberty ain't for sissies, it is downright hard work. My name is Jon Garate. My paternal grandparents arrived on the Madeline Plains as immigrants during the pioneer era, and my father was born there at the tail-end of that era. I was born in 1945 into a homestead community that began in 1910. The area was so remote and isolated that it remained a primitive frontier until the 1970s. Frontier liberty was total freedom from government interference, which was the condition in the isolated homestead community where I spent the first twenty years of my life. We did not have one government law or rule that interfered in our lives. We had no enforcement officers of any kind. And yet, customary law did more to keep the peace on the American frontier than the Colt 45 revolver and the Winchester repeating rifle.

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This book is about American frontier liberty and the customary law that makes it possible to live without any government intrusions into the lives of the people. "e;American Frontier Liberty"e; is about self-governing at its most basic and pure form. The author spent the first twenty years of his life on a homestead cattle ranch in a frontier community that was isolated from the rest of the world. In this community, the people governed themselves by a little-known law officially known as consuetudinary law, or customary law. This law is based on people living by customs and traditions rather than written enforceable laws. There are no government intrusions, government enforcement officials, mayor, policeman, judge, or lawyer. Customary law develops naturally as people live by customs and traditions. They live the traditions because they choose to. Think of a community where there are no written rules or regulations and no permits of any kind; where people abide by the traditions because they help keep peace in the community. They live by traditions because it is the right thing to do. It isn't easy to live this way, it requires taking responsibility for one's actions, wants, and needs. It requires people to work together to solve their problems and settle their disputes. In principle, customary law requires people to be honest, be good neighbors, do their own share of the work, and for the adults to teach the traditions to the children. These four principles are the foundation of any customary law. This is the kind of community that the author lived in. He tells the stories of his own generation, his father's generation, and his grandfather's generation, and how they applied the law to live peacefully for generations. Learn what it was like to live off the land without the benefit of modern conveniences. The high desert region of northeast California and northwest Nevada, where it was miles between houses and where modern civilization was a world away, sets the scene for Garate's story. The area is known as the Madeline Plains, and the community involved is located at the very southern end of the Plains. The author has lived through all stages of the evolution of liberty in America from its purest from on the frontier to where it is today. His personal experiences with liberty give him a unique, entertaining perspective on the subject. You won't want to miss out on this wealth of knowledge.

Textauszug

INTRODUCTION

A few things you need to know

Definition of Fillyosofy: the author’s opinion (bias)

Fillyosofy is my cowboy word for philosophy, only a fillyosofy is better because instead of coming from intellectual thinking it comes out of down to earth rock-hard experience in the Old Cowboy School of Hard-knocks. (a filly is a young female horse, thus fillyosofy alludes to horse-sense, which is also better than philosophy). Working on ranches either knocks all the sense out of you or knocks some into you. I’ll let you judge which you think I received.

Customary Law – Technically Called Consuetudinary Law

“In contrast with the statute, customary law may be said to exemplify implicit law. . . A custom is not declared or enacted, but grows or develops through time. . . Though we may be able to describe in general the class of persons among whom the custom has come to prevail as a standard of conduct, it has no definite author. . . There is no authoritative verbal declaration of the terms or the custom; it expresses itself not in a succession of words but in a course of conduct.” Lon L. Fuller, Anatomy of the law 71 (1968). Black’s Law Dictionary Tenth Edition, Bryan A. Garner, Editor in Chief. This shows evidence that the legal system recognizes customary law.

As stated in the definition, we had a general class of persons in the form of homesteaders, and we did have a standard of conduct in our customs and traditions. We had no written expression of our law. We never spoke of our customs and traditions as law. As is often the case, we were not aware customs and traditions are accepted as a form of law. Though it is a very different form of law. Government made law is externally enforced upon people. Customary law is internally enforced by each individual upon himself by his own choice. Customary law grows naturally out of the hearts of any group of people who desire to live together peacefully.

Customary law is also the foundation of self-governing. The more people self-govern by customary law, the less need they have for external laws, rules, regulations, police, lawyers and judges. It is important to recognize that customary law must be tailored to the needs of whatever community it serves. In my case it was a community of homestead livestock ranchers. It is amazing how well our customs and traditions worked for us. Complicating the application of our customary law is the fact that we were not a homogenous community. There were Irish, English, Germans, Scandinavians, Black Americans, Native Indians, and Basques (My father’s people). We had a hodgepodge of customs, traditions and principles from all over the world. We had no religious practice of any kind. We were a totally secular community. But I think we did a good job of integrating all these cultures, and races. During the entire history of the community there was only one murder committed. It was not a racial or cultural murder. It involved a love triangle.

As you read through the book you will be able to understand how it all comes together. The most important force for good was that we needed each other as neighbors for our very survival.

Unlike city life, where neighbors may be only inches or feet apart, we were miles apart. We were anywhere from one or two miles to forty or fifty miles apart. The nearest year-round inhabited home to the east of our ranch was 40 miles.

In this book, I am codifying or writing and organizing into categories the customs, traditions and principles that made up our customary law. For more about customary law see Chapter 5.

Fillyosofy: Customary law did more to keep the peace on the frontier than the Colt revolver and the Winchester repeating rifle. Sadly, however, history has completely overlooked this law which is far more effective than government made statutory laws. Customary law of the frontier is imbedded in the stories told by the pioneers but can only be seen if the reader understands that the peacekeeping customs and traditions depicted in the stories are the natural customary law of the people.

Grandma and Grandpa

The story of my paternal grandparents is a story of both pioneering and homesteading. They started their life together in the pioneer era of the Madeline Plains. They crossed the Plains (The Madeline Plains), in the year 1909 with a team of horses and an uncovered wagon. With them were their first two children, my father Thomas Jefferson, age four, and his younger sister Amelia Serina, age three.

Grandpa, Eugenio Garate came to America as a Basque immigrant in 1885 at the age of 17, full of the American dream to own a little land and live in the land of liberty. He had no illusions about it being easy. Typical of Basque immigrants, he started as a sheep herder and worked his way up to a successful life in America, running his own cattle and sheep ranch.

Grandma, Maria Landa, also immigrated to America as arranged by her mother in the old country, and an uncle in America, Baptiste Alsaga. Uncle Baptiste and Grandpa knew each other and out of that acquaintance came the union of Grampa and Gramma in 1905.

The Basque people have always held a deep reverence for liberty, and for America. They were instrumental in its discovery by Columbus, and in settling the new world under the King and Queen of Spain. The Basques had settled in the western Pyrenees mountains long before any other settlers entered what is now known as Europe. They had been sailing the seas out of the Bay of Biscay since ancient times. A Basque family owned the Santa Maria, Columbus’ flagship, and Basque sailors were part of the crew. After the U.S. Constitution was ratified, the Basques dubbed the United States The Promised Land. The Basque people have a customary law of liberty that has survived for hundreds of generations. It is similar to America’s common law.

My experience with Basque liberty and American frontier liberty has given me a powerful passion for liberty that is deep in my blood and in my bones and my DNA.

Liberty

In the early days of America, the word liberty was in everyone’s minds and on everyone’s lips. There are many definitions for liberty, and some are conflicting. As I write about liberty, I will to the best of my ability define precisely what liberty means in each context where I use it.

Here is one way to concisely define our frontier liberty: The right to be free from government and the right to do as you please with the obligation to be a good neighbor, be honest with your neighbors, do your share in the community, and teach your children to respect the rules.

Freedom from government is recognized as a form of liberty as stated in Black’s Law Dictionary. It certainly was a big part of our frontier liberty on the south end of the Madeline Plains. The other important part of our liberty may be stated this way. Liberty is the freedom to do as you please so long as you don’t infringe on your neighbor’s liberty. Your neighbor has the same condition of liberty. This might seem easy since neighbors lived miles apart. But cattle ranching involves large swaths of land, meaning that most of our land adjoined a neighbor’s property. We had real property in common, and we had mobile property in the form of livestock which did not understand or respect borders. Here is where our liberty got complicated.

I am not addressing most of the definitions of liberty here. Many will be covered in the two liberty books following this one. In this book we are addressing mostly American frontier liberty.

U.S. Constitutional Liberty

Simple definition: “Freedom from an all-encompassing central federal government by granting only a few certain powers to that government as enumerated in the U.S. Constitution and its amendments. Other powers are reserved for the States and the people.” Cited from Constitutional Liberty vs. Government Out of Bounds – American Liberty Book 3, Appendix IX, by Jon Garate.

U.S. Constitutional liberty is dependent on we-the-people self-governing from the bottom up. Customary law and the higher laws of Christianity are the keys to the successful operation of our liberty-protecting Constitution. Furthermore, I want to point out the importance of understanding customary law as essential to understanding portions of the U.S. Constitution. Tradition is a part of customary law, and tradition plays a very important role in the United States legal system under the Constitution. U.S. Constitutional liberty and the part that tradition plays will be fully covered in my Liberty Books 2 and 3.

See more about my books at https://americanlibertybooks.us/

Fillyosofy. No matter how you practice true liberty it takes a lot of hard work involving the nature of us humans, who can be quite quarrelsome. As you will see in the book, conflict resolution and problem solving were very important aspects of our customary law.

Warning! Liberty ain’t for sissies. Liberty is hard work. Some people would rather be ruled over by a controlling government and spend their lives complaining about it. If you are in this group, I hope reading this book will change your thinking and you will join with...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.3.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-2700-9 / 9798350927009