Dateline: Vilnius, Lithuania
To people who love lots and lots of government, the topics we frequently discuss here — international diversification, offshore bank accounts, second passports, etc. — can seem like the tools, not just of the “unpatriotic”, but of criminals. It’s funny how governments and those that support them can bend the truth to make anything that doesn’t accomplish their aims seem evil.
The United States and much of the West are bankrupt and they’ll need all the propaganda they can get to keep the party going much longer. That means demonizing people who hold money offshore (and even the millions of people who choose to live overseas) as “traitors”.
To them, it’s inconceivable that one would want to open a bank account in another country in order to escape the tiny interest rates Western savers are left with thanks to a global currency “race to the bottom”.
I was recently asked why I talk about things such as non-extradition countries if I’m not trying to aid and abet criminals. And I’m all too happy to explain. It’s quite simple really: when government is in total control of what is “legal” or “illegal”.
They alone control who is a “criminal” and who is not. Thomas Jefferson famously said, “Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”
Whether it’s “legal” or “constitutional”, the government has deemed it perfectly acceptable to steal up to half — or even more — of your income to keep its bloated operation afloat. Plus, the US government has deemed it appropriate to spy on every phone call and email within its borders and halfway around the world, much like the KGB or the Stasi would bug their country’s citizens.
No matter how evil your government becomes, they alone get to set the rules.
Gun control laws turn citizens into criminals
Case in point: a 69-year-old Connecticut man named Joseph Callahan was recently charged with 17 felonies for possessing hundreds of guns at his home.
Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that Callahan has no violent criminal past. He didn’t take one of his weapons out and start waving it around or firing it into the air. He merely kept the guns in his home. He is a collector, and acquired many from his years working with a firearm manufacturer.
When Callahan called the police to report a burglary at his home (nice to see them out there preventing crime), they came to his home and instead arrested him for being in violation of the state’s anti-Second Amendment policies. Recently, Connecticut required owners of “assault weapons” to register their guns. Hundreds of gun owners lined up to register their weapons.
Many other gun owners simply stayed home and refused to give up their rights. Those who refused became felons overnight. Owning an unregistered semi-automatic rifle or high-capacity magazine after January 3 is a Class D felony.
The state has said it has drafted a letter to gun owners giving them “one last chance” to come clean about their weapons before possible prosecution. In one day, civil members of society went from being family men and women to common criminals.
They didn’t change, the law did.
Why international diversification shouldn’t make you a criminal
With one stroke of a pen, the government can make anything you do illegal. They start with regulations and restrictions. In the case of international diversification, this includes requirements such as declaring your offshore bank accounts.
From there, things often get ugly.
Once governments know they can get away with chipping away at freedom, they get greedier and greedier.
Eventually, what was once legal becomes illegal — often with the support of the majority. Having an offshore bank account isn’t about tax evasion. It’s about diversifying your sovereign risk and realizing that no country — and certainly not the United States — is exempt from becoming a tyrannical state and taking your money.
The same goes for having a second passport. There are many people throughout history that wished they would have had an alternative travel document that would have helped them escape tyranny and oppression. When you look at some of the biggest government atrocities in history, the writing was often on the wall well in advance.
The government established law after freedom-eroding law in its descent into tyranny. Many of those laws made the most benign actions into criminal offenses. When the Nuremberg Laws went into effect in the 1930s, non-Aryans lost their claim to German citizenship. Being a “Jew, Gypsy, Negro, or bastard” became a crime overnight. Dating or marrying a non-Aryan became a crime, as did supporting Jewish-owned businesses.
Today, we’re supposed to believe that a government that supposedly has our best interests at heart would never do something so “uncivilized”.
Somehow, despite little improvement over thousands of years of government, YOUR government is completely honest and fair.
As many oppressed people can attest to, laws made by corrupt governments are rarely fair. You may well get caught in the crosshairs.
That is why preparing yourself is essential. The reason to practice international diversification is that you are a criminal.
It’s because the government is run by criminals.
And they’ll happily change the law to work against you anytime they please.
