by Carl Watner, Edited by Wendy McElroy

[Editor’s Note: shortly before his death on December 8, 2020, Carl Watner compiled an autobiographical essay that consisted of previously published reflections on his life as well as new, unpublished material. Carl was a co-founder of the Voluntaryist and the driving force behind the modern Voluntaryist movement. I have edited the essay to remove purely personal and family matters in order to focus instead on Carl’s intellectual and activist journey; otherwise, the essay is unedited except to include links and explanatory notes. This material is published in Agorist Nexus with the permission of Carl’s widow, Juliet Watner.]

Installment One. Something to Do with the Search for Truth: How I Became a Libertarian

I was born June 27, 1948, into a family of upper-middle class Reformed Jews and business people.

My father stayed abreast of the news by subscribing to the Wall Street Journal. For whatever reason, I started reading their editorials. One summer day I found an article about Ludwig von Mises, part of which I will reproduce below (I still have the original clipping!):

An Honor for a Philosopher

Of all the academic honors bestowed this month, as tradition prescribes, one struck us as particularly noteworthy. It was presented by New York University to Ludwig von Mises, the Austrian-born economist, long since U. S. citizen, now 81 years old. The citation is self-explanatory:

“For his great scholarship, his exposition of the philosophy of the free market, and his advocacy of a free society, he is here presented with our Doctorate of Law.”

[I]t is interesting in an age of increasing regimentation, that it was given specifically with reference to von Mises’ philosophy. For one of his greatest contributions is his demonstration that socialism, or the planned economy by any other name, cannot provide a rational substitute for the functions of the free market. More than that: the free market and the free society are indissoluble.

In this sense von Mises is the champion not merely of an economic philosophy but of the potential of Man.” [June 17, 1963, p. 10]

For making it possible for me to “discover” that editorial and von Mises we can blame my father. As I recall, I went to the Enoch Pratt Free Library in downtown Baltimore and got some of Mises’ books. At least one had the imprint of the Foundation For Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. In my scrapbook, I have a letter signed by Bettina Bien, dated August 7, 1963, in which she sent me information about FEE, and a list of their publications. [Editor’s Note: Bettina worked at FEE for decades, during which time she married the famed Austrian School economist Percy Greaves. Among her many contributions to libertarianism, Bettina became Mises’s bibliographer and close friend.]

For the next “discovery” we can blame my mother. During the summer of 1963, she gave me a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged when I asked her for something to read. I spent several weeks engrossed in it. Between Rand and Mises, I began formulating my take on capitalism and the free market. My dad also read the newsletter started by C.V. Myers in 1967, titled Myers Finance Review. Like Franz Pick, Myers was a hard money—gold and silver—man, and my father followed their advice. Gold and silver were relatively cheap, but they were REAL. I remember my Dad buying gold coins from a man in Texas, quite a few years before gold ownership was legalized in 1974.

During the school year of 1964-1965, I was in the 11^th grade. As a select honors student I had the opportunity to set up my own independent study program for one period each day for one full semester. What did I choose for my independent study subject? Nothing less ambitious than Human Action. As I read through the book, I found much of it beyond my comprehension, but some of it sunk in! It was during that school year that I concluded that high school was a waste of my time, and that public schools were socialism at its worst, since they were run and funded by the local governments. If I was to attend college, as my parents desired, then I was determined to skip my senior year. I applied to Raymond College, a three year degree program, operated under the auspices of the University of the Pacific, and went to Stockton, California in the Fall of 1965. There I encountered the same teaching of collectivism that I found in my local high school. Here are my first comments from Mr. Wagner, who taught me “Introduction to the Modern World” (I did, however, earn a “Satisfactory” in his course):

Your case is tragic. You are obviously unusually bright and dedicated to tenacious work. You could be a brilliant scholar. Regrettably, you are unteachable. You are so thoroughly ideology-bound that you distort all ideas and information into a support of your ideology or a subversion of it. Even the effort in this letter is being wasted for it will not be seen as an effort to release your potential but an attack on your ideology. I am sorry, Carl.

I left Raymond College after the academic year ended in the Summer of 1966, and then enrolled in New York University, Washington Square where I attended liberal arts classes and audited the Mises graduate seminar in the Fall of 1966. That was my last and final semester of college attendance. I returned to Baltimore, traveled for a few months in South America, and then lived at home and worked at American Transfer until my mother sold the company to Preston Trucking. The sale was completed in December 1973.

What prompted the sale of the trucking company was my father’s death in mid-June 1970. I was a capable manager but we had a union feather-bedding issue that I refused to compromise on with the Teamsters. One of our dock helpers could hardly read or write, but due to his seniority he had to work before more qualified freight handlers. (Not being able to read makes it difficult to distinguish written addresses and destinations.) When I refused to arbitrate the grievance according to the National Teamster contract, the local union initiated a walk-out August 13, 1971. The business could not operate without Teamsters, so my mother (and I) capitulated to the union demands. It was then I decided that I no longer wanted to run the business. She owned it legally, and decided to offer it for sale. This was several years before trucking deregulation took place, and American Transfer held valuable ICC rights to deliver freight between Baltimore and the southern parts of Maryland, so the company had significant value (including its rolling stock and freight terminal).

In the meantime, beginning with my “discovery” of von Mises, Rand, and the authors and academics associated with FEE in 1963, I embarked on a quest to understand capitalism, limited government, and Austrian economics. By April 1970 I had read and digested Linda and Morris Tannehill’s The Market for Liberty. I still have a copy of a letter I wrote Morris on April 19, 1970 in which I told him that I agree with free market anarchism and that seeing those ideas in the full context of his book had convinced me of their correctness. “Government is [as] unnecessary as any other evil,” I wrote. In April 1971, I bought a set of The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner. It took me a while to plow through those six volumes, but by August or September 1972, I had written an article titled “Lysander Spooner: Libertarian Pioneer,” which was published in the March 1973 issue of Reason. That was followed by “California Gold,” (written January 1975 and published January 1976) and “Les Economistes Libertaire” (mainly about Gustave de Molinari; written October 1975 and published January 1977) (both in Reason). I wrote and published my monograph, Towards A Proprietary Theory of Justice, in the summer of 1976.

What inspired me to read and write, become a libertarian, and express my views? Certainly no one in my family or circle of friends was a free market anarchist or advocated the abandonment of coercive government, though my father never had any love for the Internal Revenue Service. One time he showed me a letter from the I.R.S., dated June 25, 1966, that his father’s estate still owed over $386,000 in back taxes, even though he (my grandfather) had passed away in 1961. Although I think you could say my father was critical of government, he did have a conniption fit when I told him I was planning to refuse to report to my draft board when I received an induction notice. Neither my mother nor my father were libertarians, so if anything, it had to be my search for truth and consistency that dictated my political orientation.

Reading some of Leonard Read’s books and articles from FEE certainly focused me on the issue of intellectual integrity, of matching one’s actions to one’s rightful understanding of the world. For whatever reason, Read never moved past the limited government views in his book, Government—An Ideal Concept (1954). However, his article “E is for Excellence,” (Notes from FEE, November 1963) did strike a cord within me. It highlighted Hanford Henderson’s essay, “The Aristocratic Spirit” (The North American Review, March 1920), in which Henderson defines “the aristocratic spirit as the love of excellence for its own sake, or even more simply as the disinterested, passionate love of excellence.” Add “truth” to “excellence” and you are probably describing my primary motivations. My attitude, taken from Ayn Rand, was that if one was to survive and thrive, one must not only understand how the world works and what is real, but also have a standard by which to judge what is right and what is wrong.

The basic ideas presented by Murray Rothbard had a tremendous impact on me. The axioms of self-ownership and homesteading, which he identified and wrote about extensively, formed the basis of a proprietary theory of justice, a standard of right and wrong which was independent of the determination of government courts, apologists, and/or propagandists. Rose Wilder Lane’s and Bob LeFevre’s emphasis on “freedom as self-control” led me to conclude that ultimately I am responsible for what I choose to do, even if I am threatened by outside coercive actors. I came to agree with the ancient Stoic outlook, that there are some actions which one cannot perform, even if one is to be imprisoned or killed for not doing them. “Obeying superior orders” was no justification at the Nuremberg trials. Only those with a strong conscience and independent mind can say, “No. I will not do this. It is wrong.”

On my 13th birthday, in June 1961, my father had applied for and received my social security number. He wanted me to have one so he could put me on the payroll at American Transfer. On May 6, 1978, I wrote the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn, Maryland (a suburb of Baltimore) that I no longer had further use of the social security number they had assigned me.

I wish to formally renounce any and all right, title, interest, or claims that I may have had against the Government of the United States and/or its Social Security Administration to any benefits either due me in the past or coming due to me in the present or future.

This renunciation is based upon my personal belief that a system of retirement, disability and death benefits administered under Government compulsion is wrong.

Please acknowledge that my name has been withdrawn from your rolls.

Of course, I heard nothing from the Social Security Administration, although I still have the return postal receipt for my letter. My search for truth, consistency, and personal integrity had led me to do this. However, this was neither the beginning nor the end of my confrontations with the federal or state internal revenue departments. More on that in the next installment of this essay: Installment Two, The Taxing Years.

Installment Two: The Taxing Years.

In Part I of this autobiographical series, I discussed my early years and how I became a libertarian. One of the mainstays of the libertarian ethic is respect for private property. Given that concern, and given the fact that all taxes are collected under threat of force or actual violence, it is not surprising that I came to view taxation as theft—as legalized stealing—and that I should try to resist it in every way possible.

My first act of resistance, even before mailing my Social Security card back to the government in May 1978, was to file 5^th amendment income tax returns (state and federal) for the year 1974. [Note: this tax return provides no information on the grounds that demanding it violates the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.] I had filed these returns because I had received dividend income of $1372.00 from American Mercantile, the parent company of American Transfer. My father had given me this stock (as well as other stocks) when I was a child. A tax agent from the State of Maryland personally confronted me on June 6, 1975 so that he could attest that I would not voluntarily supply information and file a proper return for the year of 1974. He knew about the sale of American Transfer, which had been completed in December 1973. After threatening to subpoena third parties for information, I agreed to complete the return. I did not want him investigating my personal financial affairs, nor did I want to involve my family in what was my personal confrontation with the government. I paid $168, and was questioned as to why I had not filed returns for 1972 and 1973. I explained that even though I had run American Transfer Company, I had purposefully drawn no salary during those years.

My tax situation for 1975 was far more serious. Another family company, which my father had started, was known as Rentaw Warehouses, Inc. For whatever reason, my father had made myself and my two younger sisters the shareholders. When the company was sold I received $36,593.60 as my portion of the sale. I had a significant capital gains tax to pay because my cost basis in the stock was only $500. In all, my federal tax liability for 1975 was $4081.18. For whatever reason (one that I cannot recall), I paid $3,000 of this amount and refused to pay the balance. Consequently, on April 19, 1977, the U.S. Department of the Treasury filed a tax lien at the county court house in Towson, Maryland against me for $1,283.10.

My next encounter with the feds involved a Gift Tax Return that I filed in December 1975. I had decided to divest myself of any visible property that I owned, since I realized it would ultimately be subject to government attachment. I owned 195 shares of American Mercantile, which had generated the dividend I received in 1974. American Mercantile had been my dad’s holding company, for it owned our two major family businesses: American Transfer (sold Dec. 1973) and Meadowridge Memorial Park (which my mother and I operated until January 1985, when it was sold). In order to prevent the government from satisfying its previous lien, and in an effort to make myself as lien proof as possible, I gave away my shares of our holding company—some at the end of 1975, and the balance at the beginning of 1976. They went to my two sisters, my mother, and both my maternal grandparents. I had hoped that by splitting the gifts over two years. I would be able to avoid any gift tax. However, the feds insisted on revaluing the shares so that ultimately I owed over $12,000 in federal gift taxes (Form 709). Since I refused to pay, the feds filed two more liens against me in June 1980, for $6,218.91 and $5,991.17, respectively. (In retrospect, I realize I would have been better off not to have even filed Gift Tax returns for those two years. How would the Feds have known that I had made these gifts, unless I told them?)

Two years later, in July 1982, I received a “Collection Summons” from the I.R.S., for the years 1976 through 1981. The I.R.S. wanted me to meet them on July 30″, with all my books and records. Other than the gift tax returns for 1975 and 1976, I had filed nothing for any of these years because I had purposefully refused to take a salary from our family business, the cemetery. I had worked at Meadowridge, and lived and boarded at home during these years rent free. What expenses I had were taken out of savings. My failure to honor the I.R.S. Summons eventually prompted them to obtain a court order (Y-83-1044) from Judge Joseph Young of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. He ordered me to appear before the I.R.S. on June 20, 1983. I did so, at that time, refusing to give them any information, other than the following statement:

I am a sincere and serious conscientious objector to taxation and as one human being to another wish to explain my position:

My objection to taxation is to its compulsory nature. Government employees are the only group of people in society that regularly use physical force or the threat of physical force to collect funds to sustain themselves. It makes absolutely no difference to me how this group of people spends the money it coercively collects; what I object to is the invasive nature of the taxation process. Your use of force and its threat is wrong. The very fact that you must initiate force to sustain yourselves proves that your services are unwanted by at least some people. Even if no one else chooses to object, I, for one, do.

There are two ready measures of human oppression in society: (1) to what extent do government employees confiscate property from individuals and (2) to what extent does one become a criminal by minding one’s own business. Although I have had no obligation to file or pay taxes for many years, the Internal Revenue Service refuses to leave me alone. I refuse to accept the burden of proof in proving that I am not responsible for filing or paying taxes.

I REFUSE TO BE A WITNESS AGAINST MYSELF, whatever the circumstances.

I realize that in making this statement, I am justifying my own conduct (which I consider unnecessary) and providing you with some information which may be used against me. I assure you that this is my final statement in this matter, regardless of what course of action you wish to pursue hereafter.

All I wish is to be left alone.

[I have an original copy of this statement stamped as follows: RECEIVED,

District Director of Internal Revenue, June 20, 1983, Field Branch, Baltimore.]

My refusal to provide the government with any information about my financial affairs ultimately placed me in contempt of Court. As I recall, I would have been entitled to plead the 5^th Amendment and the privilege against self-incrimination, if, and only if, I had raised that defense at the start of my refusal to co-operate with the ILR.S. Since I didn’t raise that issue until after the I.R.S. petitioned Judge Young, it was too late for me to bring it as a valid defense against the charge of civil contempt.

While all this nonviolent resistance against the I.R.S. was going on, I had made my first contact with Wendy McElroy and George Smith, as early as October or November 1978, when I had met George at a Center for Libertarian Studies Scholar’s Conference at Princeton, New Jersey. I continued to stay in touch with them throughout the following years. In January 1981, Wendy sent me a copy of George’s “Party Dialogue.” In May 1981, I stayed with them at their apartment in Los Angeles, while attending the Future of Freedom Conference in Long Beach. Later that year, at the end of July, I attended another scholar’s conference at Bates College in Maine, where George was one of the lecturers. It was there that he first suggested the idea of forming an organization to focus on the truly anti-political nature of libertarianism. This was germ of the initial idea for The

Voluntaryists. It was George who suggested using the word ‘voluntaryist’ to describe those libertarians who eschewed electoral activity. While researching the history of education in the English-speaking world, George had discovered that this word had been used to label the opponents of government-provided education in Great Britain.

The first issue of The Voluntaryist newsletter was distributed in October 1982,

and the next year was a busy one for voluntaryists. After the movie “Gandhi” came out in December 1982, Chuck Hamilton had the idea of co-sponsoring, with The Voluntaryists, a conference on nonviolence. Chuck lined up Gene Sharp, as the keynote speaker, and this took place in New York City on February 26, 1983. A few weeks later, I flew to the west coast, to participate in a debate on the validity of electoral politics in Vancouver. On the same trip, I also made a presentation to the Puget Sound Libertarian Forum (supper club), and helped Peter Walters start his League of Non-Voters. Later that year, I attended a Rampart Institute conference on non-voting and gave two work-shops at the Future of Freedom Conference in late October 1983.

Meanwhile, the wheels of federal justice were grinding very slowly. On September 8, 1983, I attended a hearing in federal court in Baltimore at which Judge Young found me in civil contempt for refusing to follow his order that I provide the LR.S. with my books and records. I was ordered to appear at the Federal Marshall’s office in the Baltimore federal court house on November 14, 1983, and was to serve 40 days in federal prison for my contempt. The story of how I appeared at the Federal Marshall’s office and made them carry me into a holding cell will have to be the start of the next installment.

Part III: The Middle Years: 1982—(ending August) 2011

In my two earlier installments, I explained how I became a libertarian, how and why I divested myself of all the family stock I owned, and how I became contemptuous of the U.S. government’s order that I show my books and records to the LR.S.

But before I continue with my narrative, I want to briefly relate a story (not about

myself). In this part of the country, the term ‘red neck’ refers to an uneducated member of the white-working class. They are oft-times reactionary and recalcitrant, as was Jimmy-Jack (you can tell by his name). Jimmy-Jack’s father had died and left him quite a collection of junk vehicles on their property. The county Department of Health and Environmental Control issued him an order to “clean it up,” which he refused to do, inasmuch as that junk had been around for many years and it was the source of his livelihood (selling parts, scrapping metal, etc.). Citing his refusal, the bureaucrats went before a local judge and got a court order that Jimmy-Jack follow their mandate. He continued to refuse, whereupon the judge held him in contempt and ordered him to jail for 30 days. What is the result? Three years later the junk is still there. What is the point of the story? The government may imprison you, but it can’t break your spirit. They may make it unpleasant for you; they may steal the body and your property, but they can’t

make you do what you don’t want to do. The government depends on you to obey their orders. Just imagine the result if a couple of tens of thousands of people refused to comply with the I.R.S. demands.

Now back to my story, which illustrates the point. The federal government imprisoned me for forty days: ten days in Baltimore City jail as a federal prisoner and thirty days at Allenwood Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery, Pennsylvania. What was the result? The same as Jimmy-Jack’s. They never saw any of my papers; I never shared any of my financial information with them; and I never filed any tax returns for the years in question. And not knowing what will happen in the future, all I can say is that I have never been contacted by the I.R.S. in the 29 intervening years. (I must add that I have purposefully kept my income below reporting levels, maintained a low profile, and avoided any activities which might require that my name be reported to them, such as getting a passport.)

The details of my forty days in jail have been told in an interview which was published in The Voluntaryist in Issue No. 8, titled “From the Bowels of the Beast.” (An earlier interview that took place before my contempt hearing appeared in Issue No. 6 and is titled “My Experiment with Truth.”) All I wish to add to these previously published writings (which can be found under “Table of Contents” on www.voluntaryist.com) is that everything I experienced and witnessed confirmed my view of the criminal and invasive nature of government. Governments and their agents will attempt to frighten you into submission or hold you or members of your family, or your property as their hostage(s). Terrence MacSwiney, an early 20th Century Hibernian patriot, noted that the voluntaryist spirit was like “a moral force.” It was “that great virtue of mind and heart that keeps a man unconquerable above very power of brute strength.” Or in the words of a late 20th Century Irish patriot, Bobby Sands, “My body may be imprisoned, but not my spirit.”

Upon my release from prison camp just prior to Christmas 1983, I returned to Baltimore and immediately took up residence at the farm house, which served as the office and headquarters of Meadowridge Memorial Park. I resumed helping my mother operate and manage the cemetery in return for room and board. During the next year, I flew twice to the west coast and renewed my friendship with Wendy McElroy and George Smith. On my first trip I attended the “Libertarianism and War” conference in Los Angeles (March 30—April 2, 1984), and on the second, during October, I made the acquaintance of Robert LeFevre, the main teacher and founder of Freedom School and Rampart College. It was at this time that Bob engaged me to write his biography, based on his voluminous auto-biography which he shared with me. My biography of Bob was self-published by The Voluntaryist in late 1988 under the title of Robert LeFevre: “Truth Is Not a Half-way Place.”

But a lot happened between October 1984, when I first met Bob, and the publication of my book.

For starters, my mom decided to sell the cemetery to Service Corporation International, and the sale was concluded on January 31, 1985. I became the new owners’ “resident consultant” and was able to remain living at the cemetery until April 30th. By that time I had taken on a freelance job with Mary Belle Grempler, who lived in Stevenson (near our original home). She ran a large real estate business in Towson, MD, and I lived at Villa Vista, her small estate. I became her caretaker and part-time chauffeur, driving her Rolls Royce limousine. In my spare time I worked on Bob’s biography.

The most interesting part of Bob’s life, for me as a libertarian and voluntaryist, was Freedom School. It began as a two week vacation-study program near Palmer Lake, CO in the summer of 1954. It was designed to be of interest to free-market and limited government advocates, but actually taught free-market anarchism, otherwise labeled by LeFevre as ‘autarchism.’ By 1964, the teaching courses had expanded to include college-level presentations under the rubric of Rampart College. Roger Milliken, owner of one the largest textile conglomerates in the world, also incorporated one week’s worth of Freedom School into his management training program for new-hires. After Bob retired from teaching in 1979, Freedom School was taught by Kevin Cullinane. Its home-base was moved to Campobello, SC in 1982, and became known as Freedom Country, the 10,000 square foot living quarters and conference center built by the Cullinanes. It was

there in late March 1985, that I met Bob and his wife, Loy. They flew in from California to meet me and to hear Kevin teach Freedom School.

Both Bob and Kevin in their teachings placed great emphasis on the importance of family. A strong society can only be built upon individuals who possess the virtues of integrity and independence. At lunch, one day after Kevin’s talk on the family, I was sitting with Bob and Loy, and Julie Pfeiffer, who worked for Kevin and Patricia Cullinane as their secretary and ‘girl Friday.’ Loy casually asked me if I had given any thought to marriage (I was still a bachelor at age 36), and I replied that I hoped that I was sitting at the table with my wife-to-be, Julie. This shocked (and embarrassed) her, to say the least, but the end result was that we were married at Freedom Country, one year later on May 3, 1986.

Afier some discussion with the Cullinanes and much discussion with Julie, it was decided that we would rent their basement apartment, known as ‘Korea’. Eventually we moved into their reclaimed pig barn/apartment during early November, and it was there that our first child, William, was born on January 17, 1987. During the summer of 1986, I continued working on Bob’s biography, conducted a one week boy’s camp for local youngsters, and began helping Julie’s friend, Mike Carruth, who made his living trimming trees and building fences. I sent out flyers advertising our work to real estate agencies, and one of the replies was from the broker-in-charge of Inman Realty, Clarence Gibbs.

Clarence arranged for Mike and me to repair his fence at his home on Gibbs Road in Inman SC. Thus begun my long business association with Inman Feed Mill and Inman Tire Service. Clarence, a few years before, had bought out his partner, Joe Peeler, in these two businesses. After seeing me work on his fence, Clarence asked if would like to operate Inman Feed Mill for him on “the halves” (meaning that he and I would split whatever profits were generated by my labor and management using his capital and equipment). Inman Feed Mill had been established in the early 1950s, when Inman was still a small town in an agricultural county. By the late 1980s, the demographics had shifted from agriculture to suburbia, backyard farm animals, and horses. Milling consisted of preparing chicken scratch, cracked corn, and whole corn, and combining oats, barley, and corn, which were purchased by the truckload, into horse feed (with the

addition of liquid molasses).

In late 1996, Clarence approached me about leasing Inman Tire Service, which was a totally separate corporation and operation—though the two businesses were directly next door to one another. (While I had full responsibility for running the feed mill, he had continued operating the tire store, which consisted of new and used tire sales and repairs, and a small one-mechanic auto repair shop). In June of 2000, we agreed that I could buy both businesses and their associated real estate for little more than I was paying in lease payments. Consequently, Julie formed Tamassee LLC., to take title to the real estate, and she signed a fifteen year mortgage with Clarence, which he financed. As I write this in August 2011, we have roughly 4 more years of payments to Clarence.

Meanwhile, Julie and I were very busy on the home front! Tucker, our second son, was born at the pig barn/apartment on March 21, 1989. During April to June 1989, Rod Gibbons from Sand Point, ID came to Campobello and built (with his crew of helpers from the Cullinane family) our new home on Chinaberry Lane, just around the corner from Freedom Country. We moved in officially on June 25, 1989, Julie’s 30th birthday. Our two daughters, Callia and Anya, were both home-birthed there, February 24, 1992, and July 10, 1994, respectively. We officially began homeschooling William in early 1993, and realized that our growing team would need an official school room, which Marty Littlefield constructed for us during December 1997—April 1998.

Our first graduate from Tamassee homeschool was William, who started college classes at St. Mary’s College (St. Marys KS) in September 2005. His graduation ceremony with an associate’s degree from college took place in late May 2007. That fall, Tucker began his two years at St. Mary’s, graduating in May 2009. Deciding to try for the priesthood, Tucker began his first of seven years at the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, MN. in October 2009. Callia graduated from homeschool in June 2010, but instead of proceeding to college took a year off during which she spent about 9 months on a church mission project in Gomez Palacio, Mexico. She is to start what we hope to be her first of two years at St. Mary’s in late August 2011. Last but not least, Anya is entering her final

year of homeschool at the same time. She hopes to plan a mission trip abroad, too, if she can find the right time, place, and money.

All of our children were born at home with midwives in attendance. Other than Julie’s migraine headache (which required her to be hospitalized for five days) after Anya’s birth, there were no complications. We purposefully did not obtain state birth certificates for the children, and they remained paperless until William turned 18, and wanted to apply for his driver’s license. It was at that time that we discovered that the state of South Carolina issues delayed birth certificates to those who somehow “fell through the cracks,” and did not have one issued at birth. (The procedure is to get paperwork from doctors, caregivers, priests, and others to verify that the person in question is really the person applying for the delayed certificate.) The next hoop that William had to jump through was his lack of a social security number. Most state Department of Motor Vehicles require that

a driver have one, but South Carolina provides that a person need not have a federal number if that person gets a letter from the Social Security Administration that none has been issued to the person in question. (Our local Social Security people gave us a letter that “no number had been issued due to religious objections.” William did eventually apply for a number after he graduated from college and began working for himself in Kansas.) When Callia applied for her passport to travel to Mexico, the State Department required extra paperwork to prove her bonafides, but she obtained one successfully (without a social security number).

In the background, during all this time of raising a family and running a business or two, was The Voluntaryist, which George, Wendy, and I had started in October 1982. Within a few years, they had both dropped out, leaving me to run the show. And run it I did, completing over 100 issues by year 2000, and publishing I Must Speak Out, a collection of the best articles from the newsletter, in late 1999. Not included in this collection were several articles relating to my family, such as “It’s Only Just A Beginning: Reflections on Being a New Father” (Issue 26), “How Bob LeFevre Found Me a Wife” (Issue 36), “Tucker: Reflections on the Second Time Around” (Issue 40), “Hassle or Castle: The Story of a House without a Permit” (Issue 41), “Anya Colleen: That’s What Family, Friends, and Neighbors Are For” (Issue 70). Even William had one, “What Constitutes A Weapon?” (Issue 116) in 2003.

Book projects also took up a good bit of my time, although article writing and anthology collections do double duty (using the articles in the newsletter, and them collecting them in book form). Before the LeFevre biography appeared, I had been instrumental in discovering (and helping to publish) Lysander Spooner’s essay “Vices Are Not Crimes” in 1977. Then in 1982, I compiled and wrote an introduction for A Voluntary Political Government: Letters From Charles Lane. That was followed by Neither Bullets Nor Ballots (with 3 of my essays, and two others by Wendy and George) (December 1983), and a bibliography that I compiled in Murray Rothbard: A Scholar in Defense of Freedom (1986). Three later book projects included Dissenting Electorate: Those Who Refuse to Vote and the Legitimacy of Their Opposition (2001), National Identification Systems: Essays in Opposition (2004), and Homeschooling: A Hope for America (self-published 2010). Again, as I write this in late August 2011, I am ready to have published Render Not Unto Caesar: Voluntaryism, Taxation, and Theft.

Such are the middle years: a growing, if not grown family, two businesses struggling to survive the Great Depression that began in 2008, and activity on the intellectual front with articles for the newsletter and books. Only time will tell what the next decade will bring!

Part IV—“Still Kicking—Just Not as High!” The Next Decade: 2011—2019

As I resume writing this autobiographical memoir in May and June of 2019, I am faced with a serious health issue. I have prostate cancer which has metastasized to my left pelvis. When people ask me how I am doing. I answer: I am still kicking, but just not as high as I used to. Meanwhile I am still working everyday and taking CBD oil to ease the pain of constant walking.

When we last left Inman Feed Mill and Inman Tire in August 2011, there were four more years to pay off the promissory note held by Clarence Gibbs. The note was successfully paid off in September 2015, with the help of a bequest from Floy Johnson who died in 2014. I am not sure if I ever met Floy, but I think I may have at a libertarian conference in California many years ago. If she was who I think she

was. She was a small feisty women committed to libertarian ideas. She had been a long time subscriber to The Voluntaryist and bequeathed me $125,000, most of which I used to pay off Clarence’s note. In passing, I might also note that Jeff Knaebel and Jamie Potter were two other Voluntaryist subscribers who also left me much smaller amounts of money when they died. We used the money from Jeff to pay for Anya’s second year of college.

There were no major changes at the feed mill and tire store after I paid them off. Julie often referred to me as “the man who walked between the buildings” since I was often seen doing exactly that. I would supervise, answer phones, and do some paper work at the tire store, and then move on to the feed mill, where I would run some feed, help customers, and then eventually return to the tire store. I did that all day. 5 and one half days a week for many, many years!

Jumping ahead to my prostate cancer: I had elevated psa readings and a bad case of urinary retention as early as 2015. In January 2019, I started noticing a dull pain in my left hip, which Julie and I attributed to the growth of cancer in the bone. This was confirmed by a bone scan on April 30, 2019.

Meanwhile, I was still working everyday, but due to the pain was much less physically active. I still loaded bags of feed (but as few as possible) and used the hand truck and customer’s assistance as much as possible. Consequently, I made the decision to ‘get my affairs in order.’ Julie and I prepared a legacy book, which was suggested to us by reading Dave Ramsey. It contained descriptions and records of all the pertinent things financial that would remain after I died. Part of this preparation included the decision to try and find a buyer for the feed mill and tire store. We ended up striking a deal with Ryan Kaiser of Enchanted Construction, a large home builder for our 8.66 acres of real estate, 2 rental houses, and our two businesses.

Another major event occurred in early February 2019, when my mother, Hya Heine, age 91, died. We bad visited her in Baltimore at Thanksgiving 2018, and she appeared to be fine. She still drove herself, cooked, and was very active socially. She was planning a trip to the Panama Canal and Costa Rica. However, by late December she was feeling weak and experienced at least two bouts of gout or ‘false’ gout. Her doctor told her not to take the trip and soon thereafter she was diagnosed with liver cancer. Julie and I had planned to visit with her on February 5, but she died two days before our scheduled visit. My sisters, Lyn and Hyll, and I were equal beneficiaries under her will.

While I am on the topic of finances and assets 1 would like to discuss my advocacy of gold as a long term investment and means of wealth preservation. Gold is real, cannot be easily counterfeited, cannot be created out of thin air like much of our electronic and paper money, and is relatively private. Detractors of gold say it can’t be eaten. True, but neither can paper money and stock certificates. Yes, the problem exists as to how to safeguard it,, but that applies to all property. During the years of operating the feed mill and tire store, instead of paying dividends from our profits, I had bought one ounce gold coins and labeled these purchases as “Building Funds,” with the idea that at some future point these coins would be sold and the proceeds used to (re)construct the feed mill and tire store. Tamassee LLC (which was Julie’s single proprietor limited liability company that owned the feed mill and tire store real estate) also bought some gold and between the three entities we owned over 200 ounces (current market price circa mid 2019 is about $ 1275 an ounce). Over the years I had been in South Carolina, I also accumulated both gold and silver out of whatever spare cash and savings I could muster. All of this, plus the expected inheritance from Hya, the proceeds from my father’s trust, and the prospective sale of the feed mill and tire store, gave both Julie and I a firm sense of financial security, for which we were very grateful.

One area of our life, which I have not discussed in this segment of writing is the wonderful adults which our children had become. William, who had graduated in 2007 with an Associate’s degree after two years of studies at St. Mary’s College remained in St. Marys, Kansas. He eventually started a welding repair and fabrication business, which now has two employees besides himself. He bought and remodeled a small house to accommodate his two sons, Luke (now 3), Silas (now 1 1/2), and his newly born daughter, Gemma. Tucker, our next oldest, graduated from St. Mary’s two years after William and decided to enter the seminary program run by the Society of St. Pius X. Although thinking he might

become a priest after 7 years, he and his spiritual advisers decided he would better serve the Church as a brother. So in late September 2014 he became Brother Maximilian (named after Maximilian Kolbe who gave his life to save another prisoner at Auschwitz). Tucker’s talents for fine woodworking and

carving were utilized by the Society, as well as his cooking talents. He has served at their seminaries in Winone, MN and in Dillwyn, VA. Our two daughters, Callia and Anya also graduated from St. Mary’s College 2014 (Anya going through a two year program, and Callia a three year one). They both became teachers in the Society’s elementary school in St. Marys. Both are presently engaged, after having met their fiancées in St. Marys. Callia’s wedding is set for June 15, 2019 (one week from the date I am writing) at the Society’s church in Mt. Holly (outside Charlotte NC), and Anya’s wedding is scheduled for mid-November 2019 in St. Marys. I have met both their prospective husbands, and both seem to be fine young men.

If there is one disappointment I have had in life it is that none of my children followed in my footsteps in advocating voluntaryism. But that is not too hard to fathom, since I haven’t really ever found a successor to write for, edit, and publish The Voluntaryist. However, to a stoic, despair is part of life. Things are what they are. And certainly both the voluntaryist and stoic recognize that people have

free will and the ability to advocate what is important to them. In looking over a chronology of my writings since 2011, I see that I have had some major milestones. Some might want to call me “Mr. Voluntaryist,” but I have done nothing except seek after the truth wherever I might find it. My focus has always been on principles and not on the personalities that espouse those ideas.

Just off the top of my head, three pieces that standout during this decade of writing include:

—-November 2011, RENDER NOT: THE CASE AGAINST TAXATION an anthology published by Cobden Press. I don’t think anything like this had ever been done before and I certainly claim it as one of my great achievements to gather together the text for this book.

—-December 2011, I submitted one of my most favorite essays “Freedom to Choose Your Own Money,” to a contest sponsored by the Foundation for Economic Education on the questions 1) Should the Federal Reserve System be abolished? 2) If so, what monetary system should take its place? My answers were 1) No; and 2) a voluntary one. Much to my chagrin, FEE’s judges refused to select a winner. I published my submission in Issue 156 of the Voluntaryist.

—-September 2013, I wrote an article, “Soul Rape,” another one of my favorites. Using Roger Williams’, the founder of Rhode Island, concept of violation of one’s conscience as being as serious as a crime or rape, I tried to demonstrate why being forced to pay taxes and being forced to sign a tax form were serious violations of conscience. This essay was published in Issue 163.

In later years, I researched and published many other articles on a variety of topics, including copyright, the history of the airplane, abortion, medical quackery in a free society, and jury duty. Hans Sherrer, a long time subscriber and contributor to The Voluntaryist came up with the idea of reprinting the entire run of issues from late 1982 to date. He has collected issues 1-22 in Volume 1 of

The Voluntaryist reprint series. Published by Kindle, the successor to Create Space, Amazon’s self-publishing arm, Volume 2, issues 23 to 47 (years 1987-1990) has just been published in May 2019. Other supporters of The Voluntaryist that deserve to be mentioned are its long time webmaster, Dave Scotese of Murrieta CA, and Shepard Humphries of Jackson Hole, WY who both promise to carry on The Voluntaryist after I die.

Before I close this chapter in my life, I would like to give an overview of my finances and long-term attitude toward the IRS. As I disclosed in earlier parts of this autobiography, I gave up my inheritance om American Transfer and Meadowridge by giving away my inheritance, thus leaving no property in my name. I never took a salary from American Transfer (except in the earliest years while my father was living) or Meadowridge so I could legally and ethically say I had no income. The same applied to Inman Feed Mill and Inman Tire. My name never showed up on any payroll report, nor on any list as a contributor to Social Security. Everything was in Julie’s name after we married. The inheritance from

my mother and from my father’s trust estate were assigned to Julie.

I have no way of knowing what will happen to me—regarding either my health or finances. People ask me if I am retiring, and I answer, “No, I am starting on the next chapter in my life!” What will it be? Only time can tell! Perhaps there will be a 5^th installment in this series? Who knows? Only a fool will try to predict the future!

Addendum: February 26, 2020

I am hobbling around on one crutch and not doing any kicking at all. However, I still wake up with a smile every morning. Julie and I arranged through Hospice for a palliative care nurse to visit. She was very supportive, professional, and gave me some good health tips. My primary alternative treatment has been a low sugar, low carbohydrate, and high fat diet. In addition, I have been using 1/4 of a gram of febendazole three times a week. However, nothing seems to be keeping the cancer at bay.

I have been devoting the majority of my time to voluntaryist projects and cleaning out an accumulation of notes, folders, books, magazine articles, etc. that have collected over thirty years. I donated about 175 books to the Ward and Massey Library at the Mises Institute in Auburn, AL. They are to be designated The Voluntaryist Collection, and hopefully remain a monument to my efforts over the years. Dave Scotese (webmaster at voluntaryist.com) and I have collaborated on moving The Voluntaryist toward issue 200. I am working on selecting and arranging articles for Volume II of I Must Speak Out. We are hoping to collect—in one place—all the Potpourri items published over the years. Dave has made a number of thumb drives containing Issues 1 through 192 in pdf format. We also have a volunteer who is working on a subject index to cover all the issues.

In late January 2020, I announced to the subscribers of The Voluntaryist that there would no longer be hard copies published due to my health condition. Future issues could be accessed digitally on a complimentary basis. A number of subscribers wrote me emails or letters praising me for my work over the years. Even though I consider myself very humble in terms of accomplishments, this recognition by others is meaningful.