(Book Report) I’m Leaving Civilization

During the Costilla County Off-Grid Homesteading Struggle of 2015, Vince Edwards advocated for secession from Costilla as well as allegedly running for county sheriff. Not only that, but Edwards told Alex Ansary that he knew the fake judges really well, which prompted Ansary and Robin Rutan to escape the “Meet the Judge” event on October 16th near Lobato Bridge. Interestingly enough, it would seem to be the case that Edwards wrote a manifesto of sorts; so, much like Adam Kokesh’s FREEDOM!, such an opportunity to really peer into an individual’s political beliefs, through a comprehensive treatise, is too good of an opportunity  to pass up.

Quite a bit of this book revolves around what the author perceives to be seeing through the fog of illusion, but he misconstrues this by using the New Age term of “waking up.” Vilifying contemporary American “society,” Edwards appears like a disgruntled roughneck who just got fired from working on an oil rig and who now proselytizes nearly unintelligible ramblings throughout the alternative media. Frequent references to “living with honor” could arguably be something similar to the medieval Irish honor-price concept, but this quite doesn’t jive because Edwards claims that the root of all evil is money, which renders him to be more like what Objectivists would consider to be their mortal enemies; namely, parasites, looters, and moochers.

Exacerbating the sheer lack of first principles is the fact that Edwards believes in the corporate UNITED STATES myth. As he says:

“You will hear politicians say the word ‘law’ but you  will never see it written down on paper as a law. In fact every single ‘law’ you’ve seen passed on TV is not a real law. This is all just a clever deception by those who set up a slick corporation called ‘UNITED STATES’ instead of ‘MCDONALDS’…WAL-MART is a government entity. It governs it’s employees. UNITED STATES is also a ‘government entity’ which regulates its human resources.”

Obviously, corporations and governments are not the same, but that fact does not seem to faze Edwards at all. For the life of me, I wasn’t aware that Wal-Mart trains its own military, or collects taxes, but surely I jest. He continues by saying:

“The next right you give up is the right to travel when you ride your bike down to the DMV and get yourself a ‘Driver License.’ At the green age of 16 or 17 you’re in reality hired as a volunteer public servant, bound by all codes. ‘UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT’ is no different in its legal structure than WAL-MART. Both entities are ‘federal corporations’ and to see for yourself look up Title 28 3002 Section 15 for the definition of ‘UNITED STATES’ according to ‘federal law.’ ”

Leave it up to the oxymoronic “sovereign citizen” douche-bags to confuse the living hell out of everybody. Thankfully, this claim of his is falsifiable and has already been debunked by Jason Erb back in 2011 when he explained the irrationality of interpreting Title 18 USC § 3002(15) to mean that the entire United States federal government to be some sort of inexplicable super-corporation. Not only that, but both Ballantine’s Law Dictionary and Bouvier’s Law Dictionary define “United States” to be, respectively:

“The Union of several states, each equal in power, dignity, and authority, brought into being by the Constitution, emanating from and adopted by the people in whom the sovereignty resides.”

“The name of this country.”

This appalling intellectual dishonesty of the “sovereign citizen” douche-bags really does make them disingenuous activists, because no one can be this stupid, can they? Does Edwards possess cognitive impairment, or he is a confidence artist like Luke Rudkowski, who scammed his own donators?

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Edwards obfuscates the right to travel concept. He says:

“Someone running a delivery business and is partially responsible for wearing down the roads is reasonably expected to pitch in a portion of his/her profits to maintain that road. If you’re required to have a license to get in your car and travel to the store for a loaf of bread, you are being taxed without representation. The constitution expressly states taxation without a representative stream of ‘income’ is unlawful. If you’re broke how can you be taxed? If you’re poor do you still have the right to eat, and hence not have your food money be taxed away?”

What the hell is “a representative stream of income?” Poor people, contrary to Edwards’ socialist daydreams of exercising “the right to eat,” are not automatically exempt from taxation, generally speaking. He further spews that:

“If you have a firm grasp on the concept of liberty you realize these poorly trained peace officers are unlawfully enforcing commercial regulations on people who are not using the roads for profit or gain. These traffic cops are attempting to limit our liberty by controlling our right to travel, using the commerce clause as their excuse…I have the right to travel unencumbered, absent any evidence that I’m operating in the land of commerce using a commercial vehicle.”

Is Edwards so brain-dead that he thinks the FBI is regularly issuing motorists traffic tickets? The Commerce Clause (Art. I § 8 cl. 3) of the federal Constitution has nothing whatsoever to do with police officers, who are agents of the state governments, harassing motorists at the side of the road during a so-called “traffic stop.” This ridiculous failure of Edwards to understand how the government uses lawfare against the American people reveals his grotesque ignorance at best, and his manipulative deception at worst.

Whether it be his utterly pathetic “constitutional sheriff” campaign or his phony lawsuit against a county bureaucrat, Edwards is a failure, both as an off-grid homesteader and as a political activist (for lack of a better term). His main website has been suspended, he was only able to raise $447 for his political campaign to become the next Costilla County sheriff, his “Garden of Eden” looks worst than the Trailer Park Boys, and to top it all off, he mindlessly promotes Bitcoin, which is not easy to use, one of its main developers quit, and its grassroots lobbyists deliberately assist the federal government in how best to centrally plan and “regulate” it.

Vince Edwards’ I’m Leaving Civilization: Wanna Come With Me? is a horrific mishmash of utter nonsense that makes Adam Kokesh  coherent by comparison. Yet, although Vince Edwards has arrogantly declared that he has left civilization, he does not have the “right” to be forgotten, so I truly encourage everyone to examine what Edwards had to say about life, the universe, and everything, if for no other reason than as a slightly humorous example of what precisely not to do if you truly desire to secure your liberty. The only potential benefit I can derive from spending my time perusing Edwards’ “media outreach” (if it could be called that at all), is that he mentioned in one of his depressing vlogs that eGifter.com now accepts Bitcoins, which admittedly, might appeal to those who are currently experimenting with unbanking.

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Kyle Rearden is a blogger, podcaster, and videographer who started The Last Bastille Blog in 2011 since he thought the blogosphere would be more conducive to his study of a wide variety of subjects within the alternative media. From 2009 – 2012, his former YouTube channel amassed over 127,000 total upload views with 150+ videos; and between 2012 – 2014, his blog has received approximately 81,000 total views. Currently, he is the creative consultant for Liberty Under Attack Radio, a co-host of Behind Enemy Lines, and records the Liberty Intelligence Files alongside Alex Ansary.