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Essay 1: The Forgotten Foundations of Freedom
Subtitle: Rediscovering the Private Membership Association as the True Form of Self-Governance

Introduction: A Freedom Too Real to Believe

When I first began studying the concept of the Private Membership Association—what I’ll simply call the PMA—I was struck by how liberating the idea felt, and how unbelievable that liberation seemed to most people. It was almost too real. The notion that men and women can freely associate, contract, and conduct their own affairs—outside the tentacles of bureaucratic control—sounds, to the conditioned modern mind, like fantasy. But it is not fantasy. It is the origin of everything that later became the “Western world.” The PMA is not a new-age novelty or a libertarian loophole. It is the ancient foundation of lawful society, stretching back to the time when kings ruled by word alone, and private charter was the only law that mattered. In this essay, I will trace the true roots of the PMA, from royal privilege to lawful independence, and show why this concept—misunderstood and maligned—may yet be the most important key to restoring genuine freedom.




I. From Royal Decree to Private Right

Long before governments began masquerading as protectors of liberty, freedom was granted by the word of the sovereign. In those days, when the king’s command was law, he would delegate authority to trusted men by issuing charters—grants of privilege that permitted them to act in his name. These charters were the first private membership associations: exclusive groups operating under royal authorization. The Hudson Bay Company, for instance, was one such PMA, given dominion over vast regions of what later became Canada. It wasn’t a public corporation in the modern sense. It was a private enterprise under the king’s favor, with total jurisdiction over commerce, land, and law within its borders.

The Hudson Bay charter represents the original model of delegated authority: the crown empowering a private association to conduct its business independently. This was the genesis of private jurisdiction. And though history remembers these as commercial endeavors, they were far more than that—they were experiments in sovereignty. Within their territories, these associations set their own rules, dispensed justice, and created wealth. What they revealed, albeit unintentionally, was that the idea of self-rule works perfectly well without the ever-present thumb of centralized control.

But power, as always, is a jealous thing. The same principle that once gave birth to kingdoms eventually became the seed of their undoing. When the monarchies of Europe began to decay and the “nation-state” rose in their place, the principle of private charter was not discarded—it was absorbed. The state became the new sovereign, pretending to act on behalf of the people, yet quietly keeping the same structure: a small group of men deciding who may and may not act under authority.



II. The Public Illusion and the Private Reality

The deception of the modern age lies in convincing the common man that he lives under “public law,” while the powerful continue to operate privately. In truth, the entire architecture of Western politics—especially in the English-speaking world—is built on private associations. Political parties, for instance, are not governmental bodies at all. They are private membership associations. The Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the Conservatives, the Liberals—all of them are PMAs. They are not subject to constitutional restrictions; they are not accountable to the electorate in any lawful sense. They are private clubs that may admit or expel members at will.

A person may think, “I have a right to belong to this party,” but in law, no such right exists. Party membership is by invitation, and can be revoked at any time. Even the courts have recognized this, affirming that a political party may expel a member for any reason whatsoever. What’s more, these parties control who may run for office, which ideas are permitted to appear on ballots, and which voices are silenced. Thus, the “democratic” process itself is managed by private associations pretending to act in the public interest. It is a masquerade—a theater of governance where the real power resides in private control.

This duality between public illusion and private reality extends far beyond politics. Every major professional guild—the Law Society, the Medical Association, the Universities—originated as PMAs. They still operate as such. To “practice” within their domain, one must be initiated, licensed, and loyal to the rules of the private association, not to the public good. The irony, of course, is that ordinary people, stripped of these privileges, believe themselves free, while they are bound by invisible chains of membership they never consented to.


III. The Lawful Foundation: “Harm No One”

The true PMA, however, is not born of privilege, but of principle. It belongs not to the king’s charter, but to the Creator’s natural law. Its foundation is profoundly simple: harm no one, and do all things by consent. Within that principle lies the entire realm of lawful freedom. The moment two or more men and women of sound mind choose to associate for a common, beneficial purpose—without harm or coercion—they have formed a lawful PMA. No act of parliament, no registry, and no license can supersede that.

This lawful foundation separates the PMA from the legal system entirely. The legal system, bound by statutes, regulations, and artificial hierarchies, is the realm of the public. It assumes jurisdiction over those who have surrendered their private rights through registration, application, or ignorance. The lawful realm, by contrast, operates on contract and consent. It recognizes only one binding rule: do no harm. Within this sphere, individuals may trade, exchange, teach, heal, or worship as they see fit. It is the realm of adult human beings taking responsibility for their own actions—something the state cannot tolerate, for a responsible man is a sovereign man, and a sovereign man is ungovernable.

Yet this is precisely what must be rediscovered. The PMA is the mechanism by which free people reclaim their private capacity. It is not rebellion—it is restoration. It is the resurrection of lawful commerce, lawful community, and lawful trust.


Conclusion: The Return to Private Dominion

In rediscovering the PMA, I began to see history through an entirely different lens. The supposed “progress” of civilization—the rise of democracy, bureaucracy, and public law—was not progress at all. It was the gradual erosion of private dominion. Every act of registration, every license and permit, was a piece of sovereignty given away. The kings of old ruled by divine right, but today’s governments rule by implied consent. They depend on our ignorance of the lawful path—the private path.

The PMA is not a loophole; it is a return to the oldest truth of human interaction: that men and women, when left to their own devices, can govern themselves in peace and productivity. To associate freely, to contract without interference, to live by the principle of “harm no one”—these are not radical ideas. They are the only ideas that ever worked.

We were never meant to live as dependents in the public system. We were meant to live as participants in a lawful, private world—a world of our own making. The PMA is not just an association; it is the manifestation of that world, written in the oldest law known to man: the law of freedom under responsibility. And that, I believe, is the true foundation upon which any moral civilization must be rebuilt.