In the television series The Prisoner, a British secret agent quits his job and is gassed in his room while packing for a vacation. Upon waking, he finds himself in a mysterious resort-like prison located in a coastal village. Here, men are identified not by their names but by their numbers.
He is Number Six.
And he can teach you a lot of lessons about considering expatriation.
In the prison camp, people from all walks of life are merrily going about their lives. The village is secured by numerous monitoring systems and security forces. A mysterious balloon called “Rover” tracks down the traitors who try to escape and brings them back to the camp.
As the new arrival and one who is shrouded in the mystery of having been a spy, Number Six is monitored heavily by Number Two, the goon village administrator working for the unseen Number One. Number Two uses his powers as village administrator to use mind control, social indoctrination, and other tools over Number Six in an attempt to get him to spill his secrets and conform.
Yet Number Six evades him and refuses to accept the pretense of being identified by his number, famously proclaiming “I am not a number, I am a free man”.
Across the United States and western nations today, freedom is dwindling. The once-great American spirit of individualism and accomplishment has been reduced to a nanny state bureaucracy dead set on eradicating as many of our freedoms as possible.
Just as many in the prison camp went about their lives accepting – even refusing to see – the life that they had been created for them, many in today’s society are happy to trade their freedom for more handouts from big government.
Unfortunately, at the expense of you and your liberties.
Today, the government uses the same monitoring systems – using things like the Patriot Act to listen in on your phone calls or tell Google to hand over your Gmail records. Their big business cronies are only too happy to oblige.
Their mission is simple: keep life in the camp quiet and squash dissent. After all, if you escape the camp, you might realize how much better life is on the outside.
Just like the giant balloon that sought to return escapees to the mind control inside the prison, governments today use similar tactics to bash those who escape their clutches.
In the United States, the only way to escape the endless litany of taxation being imposed by big government is to renounce your citizenship. You could move to as far away as you like for as long as you like, but the fact that you woke up on the outside of a womb in the United States means you’re indebted to pay it taxes forever.
Politicians like Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey think leaving the camp makes you a traitor. They’ve been part of the runway spending in Washington that has racked up a $17 trillion debt and squawk every time someone wants to cut it.
They’re the ones who have been driving government-funded retirement into the ground by replacing it with IOUs to pay for the latest round of spending to keep the other prisoners happy and mindless of the reality around them.
So what do politicians like these do when you decide to renounce your citizenship, or even park some money in a bank account out of the country? They call you a traitor. Specifically, an “ex-patriot”.
In a modern day version of sending a creepy balloon to drag you back kicking and screaming, they just tell the mindless flock that thanks to you, conditions in the prison will be miserable. It’s your fault for escaping to a better life outside the walls.
Fortunately, the other prisons have fallen so vulnerable to mind control by the likes of Number Two that they’re only too happy to blame you for escaping what they’ve accepted as their lot in life. They’re drunk and happy being subservient to the watchful eye of the prison masters.
Making your move to greater freedom isn’t always socially acceptable. You may get called a name by the prison masters masquerading as politicians who need your support to keep their unsustainable party going. They’ll use every form of propaganda against you in attempt to keep you within their walls.
Yet economic freedom is often on the other side of the fence and declaring your independence from one place will allow you to escape the mind control and realize the true freedom on the other side of the mountain.
